Jupiter takes close to twelve years to go once around the zodiac. So you would expect it to give each sign one year, or one part in twelve of its time. That is 8.33 percent. It does not. I measured it over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402, and Scorpio gets 9.03 percent. Only Libra and Virgo get more. Aries, at the low end, gets 7.57 percent. So Jupiter spends about a fifth more time in Scorpio than in Aries.
The cause is the shape of the orbit, not a secret in the sign. This page gives you that measure and the method, so you can check it. It also gives the exact dates of every stay of Jupiter in Scorpio from 1900 to 2100. If you want to know whether you have this placement, the dates are the answer.
Do you have Jupiter in Scorpio? Every stay from 1900 to 2100
Jupiter comes back to Scorpio about every twelve years. Each visit lasts a bit over a year. Most visits are one clean run. A few are not. Jupiter turns retrograde once a year for about four months. Retrograde means the planet seems to slide backwards against the stars. Nothing turns round in space. Earth, on the inside lane, simply passes Jupiter, the way a slow car seems to slip back as you overtake it. When that backward slide falls near the edge of a sign, Jupiter steps out and comes back.
Here is every stretch of time with Jupiter in Scorpio between 1900 and 2100. Times are in UTC, the world clock used by astronomers, and rounded to the nearest minute. If you were born in these years, your birth date tells you the answer.
| Stay | Jupiter enters Scorpio | Jupiter leaves Scorpio | Where it goes next. |
| 1910 to 1911 | 11 Nov 1910, 17:04 | 10 Dec 1911, 11:35 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 1922 to 1923 | 26 Oct 1922, 19:16 | 24 Nov 1923, 17:31 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 1934 to 1935 | 11 Oct 1934, 04:55 | 9 Nov 1935, 02:56 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 1946 to 1947 | 25 Sept 1946, 10:19 | 24 Oct 1947, 03:00 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 1958 to 1959 | 13 Jan 1958, 12:52 | 20 Mar 1958, 19:14 | Back into Libra. |
| 1958 to 1959 | 7 Sept 1958, 08:52 | 10 Feb 1959, 13:45 | Ahead into Sagittarius. |
| 1958 to 1959 | 24 Apr 1959, 14:11 | 5 Oct 1959, 14:39 | Into Sagittarius for good. |
| 1969 to 1971 | 16 Dec 1969, 15:55 | 30 Apr 1970, 06:43 | Back into Libra. |
| 1969 to 1971 | 15 Aug 1970, 17:58 | 14 Jan 1971, 08:49 | Ahead into Sagittarius. |
| 1969 to 1971 | 5 June 1971, 02:12 | 11 Sept 1971, 15:33 | Into Sagittarius for good. |
| 1981 to 1982 | 27 Nov 1981, 02:19 | 26 Dec 1982, 01:57 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 1993 to 1994 | 10 Nov 1993, 08:15 | 9 Dec 1994, 10:54 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 2005 to 2006 | 26 Oct 2005, 02:52 | 24 Nov 2006, 04:43 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 2017 to 2018 | 10 Oct 2017, 13:21 | 8 Nov 2018, 12:39 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 2029 to 2030 | 24 Sept 2029, 06:24 | 22 Oct 2030, 23:14 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 2041 to 2042 | 11 Jan 2041, 19:33 | 21 Mar 2041, 00:01 | Back into Libra. |
| 2041 to 2042 | 6 Sept 2041, 00:12 | 8 Feb 2042, 23:53 | Ahead into Sagittarius. |
| 2041 to 2042 | 24 Apr 2042, 12:41 | 4 Oct 2042, 09:59 | Into Sagittarius for good. |
| 2052 to 2054 | 15 Dec 2052, 06:53 | 30 Apr 2053, 04:32 | Back into Libra. |
| 2052 to 2054 | 14 Aug 2053, 07:30 | 13 Jan 2054, 07:59 | Ahead into Sagittarius. |
| 2052 to 2054 | 4 June 2054, 06:27 | 10 Sept 2054, 18:30 | Into Sagittarius for good. |
| 2064 to 2065 | 26 Nov 2064, 12:00 | 25 Dec 2065, 16:54 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 2076 to 2077 | 9 Nov 2076, 18:46 | 8 Dec 2077, 23:30 | On into Sagittarius. |
| 2088 to 2089 | 25 Oct 2088, 00:57 | 23 Nov 2089, 02:48 | On into Sagittarius. |
To use the table, find your birth year. Then check that your birth moment falls between an entry and the exit on the same line. Turn your local birth time into UTC first if you were born on one of the border days. For a birth in New York, add five hours in winter and four in summer. A child born in the evening of 9 October 2017 in Los Angeles was born on 10 October in UTC, but still before 13:21. That child has Jupiter in Libra.
The last stay ran from 10 October 2017 to 8 November 2018. The next one starts on 24 September 2029. A child born in the gap has Jupiter in some other sign.
Four stays cross the border twice
Of the sixteen stays between 1900 and 2100, twelve are one clean run. Four are not. In 1958 to 1959, 1969 to 1971, 2041 to 2042 and 2052 to 2054, Jupiter crosses both borders twice. It enters from Libra, slips back into Libra, comes in again, moves on into Sagittarius, slips back into Scorpio, and at last leaves for good. That is six crossings in one stay.
These split stays follow a rhythm. 1958 and 2041 are 83 years apart. So are 1969 and 2052. Seven turns of Jupiter take almost exactly 83 years. After that time, the planet and Earth line up in close to the same way again. The retrograde loops then fall on the same stretch of sky, and the same double crossings come back.
Two single stays came close to a split. In June 1982 Jupiter turned direct at 0°26′ Scorpio. That is less than half a degree from the Libra border. In June 2065 it will turn at 0°20′ Scorpio. A slightly deeper backward loop and each of these stays would have split in three.
Over the long run the split stays are common. From 1600 to 2400 I counted 68 stays of Jupiter in Scorpio. Twenty one of them, close to one in three, cross a border more than once.
How long Jupiter stays in Scorpio
Between 1900 and 2100, each stay gives Scorpio between 385 and 394 days of Jupiter. The median is 394 days. The single runs last 394 days, give or take half a day. The split stays add up to a little less, 385 to 387 days, because part of their loop is spent over the border. But a split stay stretches from first entry to final exit over 630 to 635 days. That is close to 21 months, so far more birth years touch it.
On the 800 year window, the time in Scorpio per stay runs from 363 to 395 days. The short end is a single case, in 1649 to 1650.
Why Scorpio gets more than its share
Jupiter’s path round the Sun is not a perfect circle. It is a slightly stretched oval. The planet is closest to the Sun at one end, called perihelion, and farthest at the other, called aphelion. Kepler showed in 1609 that a planet moves fastest when close to the Sun and slowest when far away. Jupiter’s orbit is only a little stretched, but the speed gap is real. Near aphelion it moves about a fifth slower than near perihelion.
Seen from the Sun, Jupiter’s aphelion now lies near 15 degrees of Libra. Its perihelion lies across the circle, near 15 degrees of Aries. So the slow side of the orbit covers Virgo, Libra and Scorpio. The fast side covers Pisces, Aries and Taurus. The signs on the slow side collect more days. That is all there is to it.
Here is the share of time Jupiter spent in each sign over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402, as seen from Earth in the tropical zodiac.
| Sign | Share of Jupiter’s time | Rank out of twelve. |
| Libra | 9.14 percent | First. |
| Virgo | 9.06 percent | Second. |
| Scorpio | 9.03 percent | Third. |
| Sagittarius | 8.76 percent | Fourth. |
| Leo | 8.58 percent | Fifth. |
| Cancer | 8.48 percent | Sixth. |
| Capricorn | 8.16 percent | Seventh. |
| Gemini | 7.94 percent | Eighth. |
| Aquarius | 7.88 percent | Ninth. |
| Pisces | 7.71 percent | Tenth. |
| Taurus | 7.68 percent | Eleventh. |
| Aries | 7.57 percent | Twelfth. |
So Jupiter in Scorpio is not rare. It is one of the most common Jupiter signs. Over the long run, about one moment in eleven has Jupiter there.
The ranking is not fixed forever. The aphelion drifts forward through the tropical signs by about one and a half degrees per century. Most of that drift comes from the slow wobble of Earth’s axis, which moves the start of Aries. From 1000 to 1400, Scorpio ranked only fourth, behind Virgo, Leo and Libra. Since 1400 it has stayed in the top three in every 400 year window I checked. The share also moves by a few tenths of a point from one window to the next. That is why I used 67 full laps, close to 800 years, and not one lifetime. A window of a century or two gives a noisier picture.
How I measured it
A number you cannot repeat is worth nothing. So here is the method.
First route. I used the astronomy-engine code library to find where Jupiter stood, as seen from the centre of Earth. I took its apparent place on the ecliptic of the date, which is the tropical zodiac. The ecliptic is the path the Sun seems to trace across the sky over a year. I stepped through time one day at a time from 1600 to 2410. Each time the sign changed, I split the gap in half again and again until the crossing was pinned down to within a tenth of a second. The share of time in each sign is then the plain sum of the days between crossings, over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402. Each lap runs from one entry into Aries to the next, so no sign gets an extra part of a lap. No random draws are involved.
Second route. I checked every one of the 48 crossings in the table against JPL Horizons, the public ephemeris service of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It runs on the DE441 planet model. I asked it for Jupiter’s place every minute, three hours either side of each crossing. The table above gives the JPL times. The two routes agree to within 24 minutes. The largest gaps fall close to a turning point, when Jupiter barely moves and a tiny error in its place becomes a larger error in time. JPL serves Jupiter itself only from 1600 to 2200. So I also asked it for the place of Jupiter’s system as a whole, the planet and its moons, every three days over the same 67 laps. It gives Scorpio 9.020 percent of that time. The first route gives 9.027 percent.
A third, rough check comes from the orbit itself. Jupiter’s orbit has an eccentricity of 0.048. Eccentricity measures how stretched an oval is, from zero for a circle upward. By Kepler’s second law, that stretch makes the planet cross the sky about 21 percent faster near perihelion than near aphelion. The measured gap between Libra and Aries is also about 21 percent. The oval explains nearly all of it.
Jupiter holds almost no rank in Scorpio
Old astrology gives each planet a rank in each sign. The ranks are called dignities. A planet is at home in its own sign, called its domicile. It is honoured in its exaltation. It is weak in the sign opposite its home, its detriment, and in the sign opposite its exaltation, its fall.
For Jupiter the map is clear in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, in Vettius Valens’ Anthologies, and in William Lilly’s Christian Astrology of 1647. Jupiter’s homes are Sagittarius and Pisces. Its exaltation is Cancer. Its detriments are Gemini and Virgo. Its fall is Capricorn. Scorpio is none of these. Scorpio is the night house of Mars, and no planet is exalted there in the classic scheme.
There is a third, lesser rank, the triplicity. It is a share in ruling a whole element. The water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. In the older scheme of Dorotheus of Sidon, the water rulers are Venus by day, Mars by night, and the Moon as a partner. Lilly gives water to Mars both by day and by night. In neither scheme does Jupiter share in water.
Jupiter keeps only one small foothold. Each sign is split into five uneven slices called bounds, or terms, and each slice has its own ruler. In the Egyptian bounds used by Valens, Jupiter rules 19 to 24 degrees of Scorpio. So Jupiter between 19 and 24 degrees of Scorpio has a minor dignity. Anywhere else in the sign, it is what the old books call peregrine: a guest with no standing, like a traveller in a town where he owns no house.
None of this changes how common the placement is. Rank is a matter of reading. Frequency is a matter of the orbit. A planet with no rank in a sign can still spend more time there than most. That is the case here.
What the placement means
Jupiter is the planet of growth, trust and a wider view. Scorpio is a fixed water sign. Fixed means it holds on and does not easily let go. Water links it to feeling and to bonds between people. Its ruler, Mars, gives it force and nerve. Modern authors add Pluto as a second ruler, with its themes of loss and renewal.
Put the two together and Jupiter grows through depth, not breadth. It trusts what it has tested. It looks for the truth under a polite surface. It gives a great deal to a small circle and very little to the crowd. Money, trust and shared goods come into view: debts, loans, estates, joint funds and the risk you take on with other people.
Ptolemy saw Jupiter as a planet that gives and makes things fertile. Lilly listed its good side and its bad side on the same page. At its best it is just, loyal and generous. When ill placed it is wasteful, easy to flatter and loose with trust. In a sign where it holds no rank, the old writers would say its gifts come through the host, Mars, and depend on how Mars is placed.
Modern writers frame it in terms of the mind. Liz Greene, trained as a Jungian analyst, reads Scorpio as the sign that looks at what is hidden, including in oneself. Stephen Arroyo ties each planet to the element of its sign, and water points Jupiter toward the inner life. Robert Hand reads Jupiter as the urge to grow and to join with something larger. In Scorpio, the something larger is a bond, a shared stake or a hard truth faced with another person.
On the shadow side, the same drive can turn into a need for control. Growth that only comes through crisis wears people out. Trust given to very few can shrink to trust given to none. The work is to let depth serve others, not to hold power over them. Our guide to shadow work gives simple steps for that kind of inner work.
Reading your own Jupiter in Scorpio
The sign is shared by everyone born in the same year. What makes it yours is the rest of the chart. Four things change the reading.
The house. The house tells you where in life the growth takes place. Jupiter in Scorpio in the tenth house works through career. In the second house it works through your own money. In the eighth house, the house linked with shared money and endings, the themes of the sign and the house line up.
Day or night. Hellenistic astrologers split charts into day charts, with the Sun above the horizon at birth, and night charts. Chris Brennan and Demetra George both explain this split, called sect, in their books on ancient astrology. Jupiter belongs to the day team. In a day chart it works with more ease. In a night chart its gifts come with more effort.
The degree. Jupiter between 19 and 24 degrees of Scorpio sits in its own bound. That gives it a small say in the matter, where elsewhere in the sign it has none.
The aspects. Aspects are the angles between planets. A link to Mars, the ruler of Scorpio, matters most here, since the guest works through the host. A link to Pluto was shared by many people born in the same years. From late 1983 to late 1995, Pluto itself was in Scorpio, so people born in the 1993 to 1994 stay had both planets in the same sign.
Your Jupiter return
A Jupiter return is the moment Jupiter comes back to the exact spot it held at your birth. For Jupiter in Scorpio, that happens each time Jupiter comes back to Scorpio. Those born from 2017 to 2018 get their first return in the 2029 to 2030 stay. Those born from 2005 to 2006 had theirs from 2017 to 2018. The ages are not neat round numbers of twelve. Our main guide to Jupiter in astrology gives the ages it measured for the first three returns.
When Jupiter passes through Scorpio again, in 2029 and 2030, it touches every chart, not only yours. It crosses one house of your chart. That house tells you where the next year of growth takes place, and whether the trust you give pays off.
Where this fits with the signs next door
Jupiter in Scorpio is not the same as being a Scorpio. Your Sun sign comes from your birthday. Your Jupiter sign comes from your birth year. For the sign itself, its dates and its traits, see our page on the Scorpio sign. For all twelve, start with our guide to the zodiac signs.
Shift Jupiter one sign back and you reach Jupiter in Libra, where balance and fair terms set the pace. Libra is the sign Jupiter visits longest. One sign on, Jupiter reaches Jupiter in Sagittarius, its own home, where it has full rank.
Frequently asked questions
When was Jupiter last in Scorpio?
From 10 October 2017 to 8 November 2018, in UTC. It comes back on 24 September 2029 and stays until 22 October 2030.
How long does Jupiter stay in Scorpio?
From 1900 to 2100, each stay gives Scorpio between 385 and 394 days. The split stays stretch over about 21 months from first entry to final exit.
Is Jupiter in Scorpio rare?
No. Jupiter spends 9.03 percent of its time in Scorpio over 67 full laps of Jupiter, 1607 to 2402. Only Libra and Virgo get more. Aries gets the least, 7.57 percent.
Why does Jupiter spend more time in Scorpio than in Aries?
Its orbit is a slight oval. Jupiter moves slowest near the far point from the Sun, which now lies near 15 degrees of Libra. Scorpio sits on that slow side of the orbit.
Is Jupiter strong in Scorpio?
Not by the old rules. Scorpio is not Jupiter’s home, exaltation, detriment or fall, and Jupiter has no share in the water signs. Its only foothold is its bound, from 19 to 24 degrees.
I was born in 1970. Do I have Jupiter in Scorpio?
Only if you were born before 30 April or after 15 August, in UTC. Births from 30 April to 15 August 1970 have Jupiter in Libra.
Go deeper with your own chart
Dates are a start. Your chart is the rest. An Astrovision report reads your Jupiter with its sign, its house, its sect and its aspects. It comes as a written guide and as a personal podcast you can play on a walk.