This week’s agenda: Doing a road check with Jupiter Rx in Sagittarius

When we first posted about Jupiter’s year-long transit in Sagittarius, we talked about it in optimistic tones. A planet going through its home sign has to be a positive thing, right? And with the giant planet all about expansion and the sign of the Archer all about exploration, this astrological event would be anything but stagnant and boring.

It definitely hasn’t been. The downside to this transit, though, is its tendency to egg us to go a little too fast and a little too far. Depending on where a person has Sagittarius in their astrological chart (there’ll be a post in the future about how each of us has all the 12 signs in our charts), Jupiter in Sagittarius may have had us get a little too enthusiastic about certain areas in our life, to the point where we do things in a rough-shod manner out of excitement or we talked over others in our conviction that we’ve learned what is right. Too much of anything isn’t good, and so Jupiter going retrograde, retracing its steps, and even dipping back into Scorpio for the next few months can provide a good balancing energy that we all need.

Retrogrades are periods for reviewing and reassessing. Mercury going retrograde is probably the most popular astrological event of this kind, to the point where people jokingly use it as an excuse for any sloppiness in communication. When it’s Jupiter doing the backwards shuffle, we’re called to look within and reflect on the life lessons we’ve picked up. In the sign of Sagittarius, it will have us reflecting on our philosophical beliefs and what we think is the truth.

In my case, for example, with Sagittarius as my rising sign, a.k.a. in my first house, this period has me examining how others perceive me, how I perceive others’ perception of me, and the differences between the two. How I present myself to the world, both consciously and unconsciously, and how that ties in to my image of myself. Sounds a little too navel-gaze-y? Sure, but at a time when everyone on social media is cultivating and curating a brand, whether or not they’re selling anything other than an online persona, this kind of self-reflection cannot be easy. And it isn’t, especially when our self-image plays a lot into how we initiate things and how we hold up and defend ourselves.

While Jupiter Rx starts officially on Wednesday, April 10, it has been in its shadow phase since January 14. Again, depending on where you have Sagittarius on your chart, for quite some time now, you could have been feeling the need to go within regarding a specific part of your life. Wherever that is, don’t be afraid to pause and do some introspection, because it’s a necessary process that will continue to unfold for the next four months. Jupiter will go direct on August 11 but will fully go forward again on November 5.

Take this lengthy period as a small break where you can pull over to check the map and see if you’re still on-course when it comes to what you want to do with your life; maybe you’ve unknowingly taken a detour somewhere and just need to do a U-turn to get back on track. Or it could even be that your original plans for this road trip no longer resound with you, so you need a new map to figure out a new destination. And that’s okay, because none of us are in a race anyway.