Only those who spend months on the road can appreciate the pleasures of coming home. Flying into Quito at 11 pm last Friday, I watched the land undulating into view below me. The city lights shone like the luminous jellied eggs of some sea creature. Now, a few days later, I’m enjoying the brilliant sunshine that comes from being so high in the sky.

This summer, I’ve been as far north as Houghton in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as far west as Omaha, and as far south as Gainesville, Florida. I’ve seen a lot of people, a large number of them dykes. One of the last things that I did before leaving the US was go to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the city of womyn. It’s a place of rhythm - the rhythm of drumsong, music and dance, the rhythms of nature - and it changes you in some cellular way.

The summers are about experience. The rest of the year is about observation, and it’s easier to observe the US from outside its borders.

This last weekend, almost a half-million people gathered in the streets of New York City, to protest Bush’s agenda. And as I write this, the Republicans gather. They are working that 9-11 card, restimulating one of the country’s most painful and traumatic experiences for their own political gain. They’re also parading the most moderate voices in their party, while standing on a plank that’s a right-wing wish list.

I wish I could be sanguine about the upcoming election. But looking at Bush’s chart, I see a close Jupiter/Uranus trine, and this is one of those aspects that helps a person turn bad luck into good. In G.W.’s life, disaster has often been a positive force. This is probably why he’s so into the apocalypse. He figures that if the four horsemen turn up, they’ll carry him off to some heavenly country club before they do their fire, brimstone and pestilence thing.

Yes, he tends to get away with it - no matter what he does. Will his luck hold this time? Or will we - the country, the world - get lucky instead?

Astrologically speaking, September is one of those months that makes hope spring up anew. Looking at the planetary patterns, the astrologer wants more than anything to believe in the goodness of Jupiter. But can we do that? On the one hand, Jupiter is the planet of generosity, luck, expansion, protection, and community connection. On the other hand, Jupiter is also the planet of respectability, conformity and privilege, and it tends to favor the status quo.

All the planets have dual natures, like everything that exists. Even a stone can be used to construct or to destroy. And Jupiter, traditionally called “the greater benefic”, promises riches and favor - as long as you buy into the prevailing philosophy. The more you’re plugged into mainstream society, the more success Jupiter brings.

At the same time, Jupiter challenges the negativity which can be a recurring problem for those in alternative political movements. Positive thinking has a bad name in leftist politics, right up there with new age religion. If you’re looking for win/win situations all the time, it seems that you lose your edge, your desperado panache.

And what would be a win/win situation here? Keeping the Republicans furnished with golf clubs and ego boosts, while the rest of us redistribute the world’s resources?

And yet, optimism can be our tool as well. Those hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of New York, they all operated on hope - a hope that joint action will yield results, and that the world will see the vast mass of people who are not represented by the current US government. A positive perspective is necessary, essential. After all, do we want to spend our energy undermining the current establishment, or do we want to build something so gorgeously inevitable that it will prevail without struggle?

And so what is Jupiter doing in September? Why is it so important? For one thing, it changes sign this month, moving from Virgo into the cardinal (more active) sign Libra. And it doesn’t make this transition alone. At the new moon on the 14th, it’s joined by the sun, moon and Mars, all in late Virgo. The sun and Mars stay with Jupiter all the way through the fall equinox on the 22nd, and till the month’s end.

And so Jupiter has two escorts, as it crosses the threshold from Virgo into Libra. It has the sun, the planet of identity, and Mars, the planet of action. All three of them move from the hard-working sign of Virgo, into Libra - the sign of peace, beauty and relationship.

What does Jupiter’s prominence mean? Does it mean that the privileged classes will be even more privileged, more expansive, luckier? Does it mean prosperity - or apparent prosperity - of a kind that might buy Bush the election? It doesn’t look good that the new moon degree, 22 Virgo, is right on Neptune in the U.S. chart. Neptune is the planet of confusion and deceit, and so the people of this country could easily be fooled by a display of pomp and ceremony, or by the inflation of their hopes and dreams.

How can we take Jupiter and make it ours? How can we use the energies of the new moon and the autumnal equinox? For all of us, the last year has been a time of very hard work, with Jupiter in earthy, practical Virgo. As Jupiter moves into airy Libra, the focus will be on our idealism, our capacity for abstract thought. It isn’t enough just to strenuously poke lots of little holes in the establishment. We need to take the long view, to adopt a more objective approach.

Libra is the sign of diplomacy and compromise, and the message of Jupiter in Libra will be to create relationships, to build coalitions. The first compromise that we will make is to vote for Kerry, and there will no doubt be others. But it’s the nature of Libra to hold an idealistic vision of how the world could be, to dream of peace and gentleness and balance. At the same time, we want to avoid the main trap of Jupiter in Libra - mainly, being too nice, too ready to compromise in order to keep things peaceful.

But Libra is also the sign of justice. It is the sign that is most equipped to see the other person’s point of view, to reconcile opposing factions, to point out a higher level of civilization. And it does tend to smooth out the extreme highs and lows in the distribution of power.

And so let’s finish up the work of Virgo, and leave it all neatly archived. We have been practical and detail-oriented for the last year. This was our struggle, and it was a good and honorable one. A new phase is beginning, and we can only succeed if we adopt a new way of looking at the world, if we create a beautiful pattern based on respect for all people. Life itself is the privilege we uphold.

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