Jupiter

This piece was inspired by a real image of the gas giant, turned 90° (see below for reference). I started planning and drawing shapes looking at the reference but as the painting progressed, I realized looking at the reference image obstruted my creativity and the progression of the piece almost came to a halt. I was once again reminded to rely on inutition and source information.

As a person with a science background, I developed a lot of shame around astrology. I was influenced by external input and thought that astroloy was a scam and only ignorant people can "believe" in it. I had to go through crises and transformation only to go back to my factory settings. No, I do not "believe" in astrology. I know that it is a tool to understand ourselves. Astrology does not work with scientific methods, nor there is causation. There is only meaningful correlation, what Carl Jung described as synchronicity. A large amount of astrological data has been collected by different civilizations for thousands of years. This historical body of observations is symbolically correlated with contemporary events, either in human lives or on a societal level. As time passes, more observations are collected and interpreted, suggesting probabilistic tendencies.

An astrological chart can be made for any human being, event, country or establishment with a known birth (establihsment) date. It is a snapshot of the solar system as seen from an Earth-centered perspective at any given moment. From a psychological perspective, different planets in a chart can be seen as reflections of Jungian archetypes.

Jupiter is my favorite planet. It symbolizes expansion, meaning, and the human drive to understand life as a coherent whole. It is my chart ruler and I admire these concepts associated with it: growth, faith, optimism, hope, justice, ethics, higher knowledge, philosophy, abundance and broadening horizons.