Son of Jupiter, Joy of Jupiter: Jupiter in Cancer Talismans
When I first began considering these talismans, I assumed they were about building wealth. Jupiter is traditionally associated with prosperity, and in these times I feel that for many people, being more financially resourced is something wished for. I’d been looking at the citrine gemstones featured in this collection, thinking about how they are symbolic of wealth.
But very quickly I was redirected. The spirits made it clear that this was not about “wealth-building.” The instruction was move toward Joy. Joy is the resonant current here.
Wealth-building can be viewed as a kind of dam-building, which can be a very good thing in the right contexts, but it is a structure of fixed water. This is Jupiter in Cancer, and Cancer is cardinal water.
The energy here is new birth, outpouring, overflow, surge, breaking-open, a release of what has become constricted.
Cancer is the ascendant of the Thema Mundi, the birth-chart of the universe. Cancer marks the moment when the cosmic waters surge and burst forth in an ecstatic creation of life. With Jupiter exalted here, the current swells at the source and releases.
Keywords: ecstatic, overflowing, generosity, joy.
There is something in this about releasing to receive, about resourcing from a different place, creating space for abundance. Jupiter is the principle of abundance, and Joy is the emotional coherence through which that abundance enters. Joy itself is a magical attractor of fortune — Fortuna as spirit, as a current to participate in (not possession).
Joy is the key.
And so these talismans are named:
Son of Jupiter, Joy of Jupiter.
Why Son of Jupiter? Because each talisman is engraved with the image from Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy:
“They made another image for Jupiter for a religious and glorious life, and for dexterity of fortune, whose figure is of a man with a head of a lion or ram and feet of an eagle, dressed in yellow garments, and he was called the son of Jupiter.”
Who is this Son of Jupiter?
Out of all of Jupiter’s sons, I have it on good gnosis that it is Dionysus, and that gnosis is supported by classical sources and the reconstructed Orphic tradition.
Dionysus is the son of Zeus associated with both the ram and the lion across mythic and Orphic material. He is also the liberator; one of his epithets is Lysios—“the liberator”—and he is a god of Joy. This fits perfectly with the theme of releasing to receive. Throughout classical literature we find references to Dionysus delivering humankind from sorrow, grief, and constraint. He is said to bring joy to gods and mortals alike.
Contemporary-popular discourse flattens Dionysus into a minor god of wine and festivity. His gift is indeed the vine, but the symbolism goes far deeper than pastime or pleasure.
There is so much more to Dionysus.
Let’s begin with wine. In the Orphic gold tablets, wine appears in initiation and funerary rites as a substance tied to the blessed afterlife. In Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, Dionysus calls wine the nectar of the gods, given to heal human sorrow. Within Dionysian and initiatory settings, drinking wine is a sacrament — an immortalizing liquid administered by ritual officers, in which drinking wine is understood as ingesting the god himself.
A tablet from Pelinna (4th c. BCE) speaks to this:
You have just died and have just been born, thrice-happy, on this day.
Tell Persephone that Bacchus himself has liberated you.
… You have wine, a happy privilege,
and you will go under the earth once you have accomplished the same rites as the other happy ones.
And Hermes calls him:
“Dionysos, joy of humankind, shepherd of human life.” — Nonnus
In Orphism, Dionysus is more than a lesser god of the vine. He is the divine spark within humanity.
According to Orphic myth, Dionysus was the child of Zeus and Persephone. When he was still a child, Zeus placed him on the throne and declared him the new king of the cosmos, delegating sovereignty over the gods to him. The Titans, perhaps encouraged by Hera and jealous of the child-god, decided to kill him. They tore him apart and devoured him. Zeus punished them by striking them with lightning. From their ashes, humanity arose.
Because humanity was formed from matter that was predominantly Titanic — but mixed with ingested flesh of Dionysus — each human is born with both the stain of the Titans’ crime and a fragment of the consumed Dionysus. This fragment is our divine part, the part that longs to rejoin the original unity.
Orphic cosmology explains why Dionysus is inside the human being. We are part Titanic, part Dionysian. In this framework, Dionysus functions as the Monad and his dismemberment (sparagmos) represents the breaking apart of the One into multiplicity. Our Dionysian fragment is our divine component, and joy is ontological, emanating from our Dionysian spark.
Plato (unexpectedly) also names a category of Dionysian joy that cannot be stored.
Plato, in the Laws, distinguishes between the gifts of the season that can be stored — fruits set aside and saved for later — and what he describes as the “unstorable,” which he calls"Dionysian joy". I read this unstorable quality of Dionysian Joy as resonant with expression (release): a joy that cannot be contained.
Bringing it altogether, this is the equation:
Dionysian Joy + Jupiterian abundance = a capacity to release and receive. This is Dionysian liberation and Joy meeting Jupiter’s principle of abundance, a release that supports a growing capacity to receive.
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Son of Jupiter, Joy of Jupiter talismans are companions for new endeavours.
Some suggestions for working with the talismans::
• start new projects/endeavours
Begin the thing you’ve been circling, hesitating on, or procrastinating around. Jupiter in Cancer favours beginnings, initiations, and planting something that will grow.
• break through dam walls you’ve built
Not the good and helpful structures, but the ones that have become self-limitating.
• get clear on what brings you joy — keep a joy journal
Notice the small things. Track what genuinely lights you up rather than what you think shouldbring joy. Treat these experiences of joy as expressions of your own Dionysian (divine) nature.
• prioritise joy as a spiritual practice
Once identified where joy arises in your life, make more deliberate space for it. Consider this a new spiritual practice, as devotions to Jupiter and Dionysus.
• begin new magical practices
Especially the kinds of magic oriented toward positive outcomes, visioning, attracting, manifesting. The kind of practices that are often written off by more traditional or austere practitioners as “too new-agey” or “we do other things now,” but (Saturn, sit down) this is Jupiter in Cancer territory — and here we throw cringe out the window.
Think:
— New Thought (Mitch Horowitz’s work is excellent)
— manifesting practices
— practise gratitude
— make that vision board
— simple intention-setting rituals
— chaos magic revival: let’s go sigils!
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The release of these talismans are staggered, membership gets early-bird access -
First release:
Wednesday 10th December 11am PT
— the one-of-a-kind Jupiter talisman rings —
This is a collection of 10 Talisman rings, each individually hand carved from jeweller’s wax and engraved with the image of Jupiter (from Agrippa) during the chosen election. The rings are cast in sterling silver and feature citrines and beryls (aquamarine) - gemstones chosen for their sympathy with Jupiter.
Many of the gemstones in this collection are SUPER interesting! I hand-selected them — some for their story, others for their faceting, which is an artwork in itself. There are some gorgeous precision cuts in here, mostly concave cuts.
A concave cut replaces some of the flat facets with curved ones, creating an optical illusion where the light seems to fold inward on itself, forming a layered dimensionality deep inside the gem. This is a high-skill lapidary technique, each curved facet is hand-cut and you can see the cutter’s artistry in the finished gemstone.
These precision-cut stones have a strange cosmic futurism to them, some of them make me think of those “big bang” images you find online (the title image I’ve used is an example). I was inspired to create sculpturally abstract rings to hold them.
Second release:
Saturday 13 December at 6:30pm PT
The Jupiter talisman pendant features a small cabochon-cut lapis lazuli (another stone sympathetic to Jupiter), engraved with the image of Jupiter (on the back) during the election. The lapis is held in a pendant meticulously hand-carved in wax to symbolise the bursting forth of the cosmic waters — think watery rather than star-burst — at the birth of the universe (this repeated reference will make sense when you read the write-up!). It’s an ornate design and quite different from the rings.
The pendant is cast in sterling silver and hangs on a sterling silver chain.
Third release TBA
* Please note that I have included the Astrological chart and details about it in each talisman listing.