Fate & The Flow Of Fortune

The Fates are fickle, and I expect they have a great many to please. As they weave the fabric of time, at times they favor us, and at times they don’t. I suspect this isn’t personal but simply a matter of the squeakiest wheels getting all the grease. Perhaps then, if we’re dissatisfied with the weft of our narrative in the strands of the great story, it is as simple as, politely, making one’s self known and heard.

How does one compete for such busy gods’ attentions? The Moirae (Fates), Clotho, and her sisters Lachesis, and Atropos, though they rule human destiny, are aspects of Hekate and subject to the will of the Olympians (planetary rulers). As tends to be the way with gods, veneration is the currency of exchange. Correctly timed acts of devotion to the right planetary spirits is a very good place to start when earning favor from the gods.

To stimulate growth we turn to Solar deities, for spiritual insight, the Moon. For power and victory, Mars is our champion. For agility and intelligence, Mercury our guide. Luck is ruled by Jupiter, desire by Venus, and limitation and degrowth are the realms of cold Saturn.

All the gods are divinely present in every moment. Power, desire, attainment, restriction, as we experience them, are the presence of spirits manifesting into the world through our actions. Just as volcanoes erupt with martial energies, and the phases of the moon express themselves in the bodies of women and the great oceans of the world, the intangible also finds manifestation in the thoughts we choose to act upon.

The magically operant choose to take an active role in destiny by appealing to the spirits that move the world from within; exchanging acts of devotion with Olympians for the authority to transact with the lower denizens of their domain.

Humans have rightly sought the blessings of the gods over their families and futures stretching back to the dawn of time. Improving one’s good fortunes, just as with health, happiness, or security, is -or ought to be- negotiated “in spirit” as much as in body; and an embodied spiritual practice is all the better.

Our family’s fated journey from corporate dystopia to a regenerative life in paradise, will require no small amount of good fortune. As a result, our practice incorporates Jupiter and Saturn in various ways to harness the steampunk power of constrained, and focused, energy.

On The Importance Of Good Luck

For most of my life I believed that luck was simultaneously both very real, and beyond human influence. Despite a growing fascination with magic, the evidence in my life seemed to indicate that luck was not on my side. I presumed this to be fated, like space weather (astrology) and unavoidable, and that magic was a way to combat my natural unlucky streak.

On the other side of a few especially formative years in my magical practice, I’ve fully reversed this view of luck and magic. Luck isn’t entirely fated, in fact it seems to be essentially circumstantial and also incredibly biased towards people that believe in their own good luck and wield it boldly to shape the future.

Luck is a very real force in the universe and his name is Jupiter. In my natal chart, Jupiter sits in the 12th house (of “secrets”), hiding most of my luck from view. But Jupiter is also my chart ruler (and soon to be time lord – while ingressing into Pisces!) and directs the flow of fortune to me through its aspects with other planets (thanks to @Hawkstrology for pointing this out!).

Increasing one’s luck, especially in matters of fortune and fate, is the realm of Jupiterian magic. It’s common to refer to this as wealth or prosperity magic, but really, it’s magic designed to woo the beneficent attitudes of Fortuna. And you know what they say about her…Fortune favors the bold.

A regular practice of Jupiterian devotionalism will, generally speaking, lift prosperity. Layering on specific, targeted rituals can buoy good fortunes through particularly rough waters or increase one’s trajectory of success in a project. Lodestones (attraction magic) work especially well for the former purpose and candles painted with sigils and dressed in Jupiterian oils are excellent for the latter, targeted applications (read more about this).

We have an altar dedicated to Jupiter, with a lodestone for attracting financial prosperity, surrounded by several candles burning on stacks of sigils (each representing a separate project). A candle for driving competition between potential homebuyers. A candle for growing our savings (with the sale of the house). It all adds up to build momentum towards successful potential futures.

On The Importance Of Structure

Luck is all well and good but opportunity requires strategic action to unlock its potential. Being lucky, but inactive, is no path to success. It’s the combination of good fortune and smart action that moves us towards our goals.

Consider the power of water, formless and harmless in a still, shallow pool; yet unfathomably powerful through momentum and restriction. Rushing river currents, tidal waves, and spinning hydroelectric turbines all demonstrate how formidable water really is -when its path is limited and its flow directed towards some definite end.

Luck, like water, is tame and placid until its flow is directed and pressure is added, turning its fluidity into a source of power simply by providing boundaries. Restriction, when applied to a storehouse of potential energy, creates pressure -which can be levied to power all kinds of industrious acts.

The expansive power of Jupiter, pressurized by the restrictive properties of Saturn, provides the squeeze necessary (friction) that turns good fortune into an engine for growth.

Before we can sell our home, we have to renovate it. This project takes place while Saturn is in Aquarius, and we produced several candles during a recent magical election featuring Mercury on the midheaven conjunct the royal star Deneb Algedi (election provided by Nina Gryphon) which we burn for favor while the work takes place around us. We also regularly anoint our doors and windows with Deneb Algedi oil from Sphere + Sundry for general blessing and protection. We anoint contracts (and mortgages) with this oil as well, to keep them on track.

The Current Flows Along The Path Of Least Resistance

The combination of big Jupiter energy directed by the steadfastness of Saturn is a powerful tool for accomplishing goals. And there’s never been a better time to harness those two forces in our lives than the last year. What could be a better incubator for pressurized potential than a year-long quasi-lockdown?

Saturn and Jupiter spent 2020 dancing around each other in the climax of an astrological epoch, marked by their conjunctions moving from occurring in earth signs to air signs. Every twenty years Jupiter and Saturn occupy the same spot in our sky and this has occurred in earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) for the last two hundred years. December 21, 2020, the great gods met above us for the last time in an earth sign for eight hundred years. With that we moved into Aquarius, and marked a new two hundred year period of great conjunctions in air signs.

Luck, a Jupiterian energy, is a current that flows where it is most conducive -where it meets the least resistance. Jupiter and Saturn are oppositional, locked in step; expressing the essential, eternal struggle in their heavenly revolutions. Magnanimous, expansive Jove (Jupiter) seeks to supplant the cold, restrictive rule of Kronos (Saturn) but their struggle is our gain. Expanding force, enclosed and directed, becomes a powerful source of locomotion.

Strap your dreams to this steam engine. Stoke the coals of desire. Transmute the latent into the emergent. But as the steam builds, the engineering must be sound. Force always follows the path of least resistance.

It’s especially portentous that this historical period of restriction, transition, and revolution be marked by such a visible stellar omen. The magic of it is striking -as are its implications. Jupiter’s need to grow has been building pressure under the thoroughly Saturnian global lockdowns of 2020 and, soon, will burst forth with urgency into a new era –an era ruled by the element of air.

We don’t have to look hard to see the truth in this. Air rules information, communication, and the ethereal -making it a perfect metaphor for the digital age we occupy. Good fortune, in this part of the timeline, will be found in the ethereal realms of mental and cyber spaces.

In the physical sense, our fates are constrained by the digital (archonic) and technocratic worlds we’ve built around ourselves. In the spiritual -and sorcerous- sense, it may be fitting to enter this new age of air with a return to the ethereal; prayer to the divine and communion with spirits.

Featured image: Jupiter Blues – NASA