Jupiter and Being Too Much

Written By Maeg Keane

I don’t know when the phrase “too much” became shorthand for a whole slew of personal insecurities but it’s rare for me to meet someone who isn’t concerned with being “too much.” The fear of too-muchness is pervasive. It’s also painful. And it’s not just something we worry we are. It’s also something people ascribe to others: “They’re just — they’re a lot.”

What is this? What does too-much mean?

When I use the words “too much,” I’m talking about excess. To be excessive means “to go beyond the limit or proportion.” Reading this definition was made something new click for me. I’d been thinking about my muchness as an inherent quality, when in fact it is a relationship. “Too much” can only exist in the presence of a thing and that which cannot fully receive it. The grapes overflow the basket. The river floods the banks. Without a limit to define the proportion, nothing can exceed it. When we talk about excess, we need to broaden our perspective so we can take in the whole scene. From there, maybe we can sort out what to do, if anything, with the more-than.

Jupiter, a planet often accused of being excessive inherently, has several strategies for the generative deluge of too-much. I’ll get into this but first, some background.

My thinking about Jupiter has been unresolved for a while. I have had two Jupiters in my head. One is stabilizing, discerning, wise, joyfully devout, and buoyant. This Jupiter grants ease, abundance, and freedom (note this doesn’t mean that receiving any of these gifts is easy for us, as I have written about a little elsewhere).

The other Jupiter I’ve come across is boisterous, overindulgent, a visionary with no plan, and certainly the most Too Much. He’s the anti-Saturn, a permissive parent, ignoring boundaries for the sake of his ongoing, ever-expanding ways. This over-the-top Jupiter needs to be hemmed in but he’s a good dude. Even if he has no concern for consequences or for your own limits — you need that sometimes, right? Just be sure to balance him.

There’s some overlap here but these two Jupiters don’t really go together. One Jupiter brings stability. The other, while he’s got different gifts, needs stabilizing limits. Where do we go from here?

All the planets can act in excessive ways. All of them can spill over their right-proportion. In his 4-part class called The Proper Care and Feeding of a Birth Chart, Austin Coppock outlines what all 7 planets look like in states of excess and deficiency. We know too that any planet near the north node is prone to an insatiable hunger. Austin goes out of his way to make the point that Jupiter, all other things being equal, actually has a net balancing effect because the planet’s big perspective puts things into context. Context is stabilizing.

And yet, Jupiter is the planet I see most often associated with “excess” as an inherent quality. Venus gets this too, but not as much as Jupiter does. I think “excess” is one of the ways astrologers try to articulate how “good” planets go bad. It’s too much of a good thing. But we need to go back to the definition of excess and see the dynamic. Too much for what. For whom.

Jupiter has things to say about Too Much. Absolutely. I just don’t think too-much is an instructive way to talking about Jupiter himself. Nor do I think Jupiter is about “more more more” for its own sake. Jupiter is the whole scene of too much — the overflowing thing and the container that receives it, and what happens next.

When I hear “expansive,” I don’t think “stable.” At least, I didn’t. This makes sense considering my own where and when. Whether in the form of corporate greed, colonization, or wellness culture’s obsession with “self-improvement,” words like “expansion” and “growth” have a nasty taste to them. But growth, even overgrowth, does not have to be mutually exclusive with wisdom, discernment, or stability. Part of growing is outgrowing.

When a potted plant grows, it may outgrow its container. That doesn’t mean the plant is “too much.” It means it needs a bigger pot. The transfer to the new container is stressful for the plant. Its roots are exposed. It has to get re-acclimated. The plant has to find its place in its new context. But if the plant stayed in the smaller pot, it wouldn’t have been stable at all. Growth is stabilizing even if we don’t feel secure while we’re doing it. It’s a vulnerable moment to be as big as you are. It’s vulnerable to move from one container to another.  

This is one Jupiter strategy for too-much. See the whole scene (a Jupiter move in itself) so you have more to work with. Rather than locating the problem in what is exceeding the limit, you can puzzle out whether the limit can change, whether the container can grow. If it can’t, what can be cleared to make more space? Here, you may start to hear the Saturn-Jupiter partnership rather than polarity. What kinds of boundaries would be necessary to receive a little more?  

Part of being alive is letting yourself be every size you are. Jupiter is, as a planet of the water and fire element, about growth. We need warmth and moisture for most things to grow. Continuing to change shape, to move laterally, diagonally, every which way, to spill out— it’s how we touch each other, change each other, and are changed.

Jupiter growth is not just a pushing past. It’s also a bringing in. Jupiter wants us to include more into our dreams. Include more in what we think could be possible. Jupiter wants us to include more beings into who we think we are, more parts of us accepted and loved. More others, human and other-than, included when we say “us.”

I’ve started calling Jupiter the Great Includer rather than describing him as expansive. It’s not that he doesn’t expand or stretch us — or other things. He does. But I find “inclusion” is a more helpful way of talking about how Jupiter grows. Jupiter grows by gathering more and circulating it.

To include, we have to either make space (a more Saturn task) or be willing to be bigger. To be a community is to be a mess together. It’s not clean. To this, Jupiter says the more the merrier. That is his wise counsel. It is how we pronounce freedom, to quote my brilliant friend and colleague E.Y. Washington.

The more the merrier is part of the generosity of Jupiter. Jupiter understands that the circuitry of abundance includes giving away. Jupiter gives us more than we need so we can be generous in turn. Generous with ourselves, generous with how we grow, so we can give more to others. For Jupiter, exuberance, generosity, and discernment are not at cross-purposes.

In Jupiter’s supposed “indulgence” and excess, I hear a moral judgment on Jupiter’s abundance. It’s only cruel to have more than you need if your idea of “you” is limited. Jupiter knows no such limits. Another Jupiter strategy for too-much: if you’ve got surplus, give it away. This is another way to grow.

To be clear, Jupiter’s the more the merrier is not about always going way beyond your capacity. It’s figuring out what allows your capacity to grow and stretching it. Jupiter does not want to stretch you thin. Jupiter would only ever want you to spread thickly. Which, coincidentally, is much easier to do if you quit playing small.

I’ve used images of grapes in baskets, flooding rivers, and potted plants. While they are our kin, it’s a bit abstract for that human feeling of being too much. So I want to return to that. When I say I’m worried I’m too much, what I’m saying is I’m worried I’m overwhelming people. I’m worried I’m more than is expected. My energy, my need, my enthusiasm, my earnestness, my nervousness — this tumbling sentence structure, this! it’s too much! If I describe someone else as too much, what I’m saying is I don’t have the capacity required and often, I am not relating to that person in a way that honors my capacity. That’s part of the scene. And it’s possible to overflow someone else’s capacity. It’s worth it to be sensitive to that and it’s up to the other person to communicate their capacity. But your too much, my too much, is not inherently wrong. It’s a mix match of proportion. There’s something for everyone in the scene to try, if they want in.

There’s something else going on here and it has to do with a specific kind of too much. Too much exuberance. This subject comes up a lot in my 5th House Readings. The 5th House is the part of the chart that tells us about our joy, pleasure, and creativity. It’s how we play and desire. A lot of the people I talk to say their exuberance, their enthusiasm, their joy has felt like it’s “too much” to other people. Their joy has become a source of shame. Their expression of joy is something to make as small as possible to stay safe. It has to be small enough so they receive care and regard.

While these painful experiences reflect an interpersonal dynamic, there’s something systemic going on too. This will seem like a tangent but stick with me. Puritanism certainly has a lot to answer for with regard to the suppression of exuberance, but the problem predates Puritanism. The Romans suppressed the cults of Dionysus for its members’ exuberance. And here we see the connection perhaps to Jupiter’s inclusive, generative, joyful growth, and indulgence. For those in power, it is in their best interest to paint exuberance as an overindulgence — as a superfluous, distasteful thing. Don’t be too loud. Don’t dance too hard. In fact, don’t dance at all. Don’t flirt. Don’t participate. Don’t sway or bounce or twist. Just watch. Just be still. Be solemn. Calm down. Behave.

Exuberance is threatening to a certain kind of status quo, especially collective exuberance. Exuberance is one way we connect directly with the divine. If we connect to the divine with each other, what else will we do together? If we bond through ecstatic devotion, will our bonds be stronger to each other than to the state? The Romans worried about this. So did the Catholic and Protestant Churches.

Although Venus is more closely tied to ecstatic devotion, I see Jupiter all over collective ecstatic ritual. You can bet that speaks to the 5th House/11th House axis. I’m not going to go into this too deeply here. The Emerald podcast episode in the Resources below covers it well. I will, however, quote Barbara Ehrenreich whose book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy is a treatise on the 5th and 11th Houses, even if she doesn’t say so.

Ehrenreich describes the slow shift from participatory festivals in the ancient and medieval periods to the entertainment spectacles we have now. Rather than being an integral part of performances and rites, audiences are expected to be still and attentive — even though our mirror neurons desire otherwise. Especially when it comes to music or dance performances, it is really hard not to have what Ehrenreich calls “muscular involvement” with what we observe. We want to be in rhythm with each other. Ehrenreich writes:

“To see a man marching or dancing, swaying as he plays the saxophone, or simply waving his arms to draw melodies from an orchestra is to ready oneself internally to join in the marching, dancing, swaying, or arm waving… a well-behaved audience member—who does not even snap her fingers or nod her head in time to the music—is not really at rest; she is performing a kind of work—the silent, internal work of muscular inhibition.”

When I read this, I had to remind myself to breathe. How often have I worked at not moving? At not responding? At not joining in so I could stay the right size? So I could not disturb, not inconvenience? How often have you?

Jupiter’s abundance and joy aren’t contradictory to his generous justice, stabilizing growth, and wise discernment. And this was the thing for me that really confused matters. I lean traditional in my approach to astrology so I was ready to take the older significations on, no problem, but my devotional experience of Jupiter is so joyous. It’s an effervescence. It’s ecstatic. It's so much. It overflows. It’s a profoundly huge feeling of connection, gratitude, and enlivenment. In that way, it's not gluttonous but certainly celebratory. Certainly more exuberant than I feel I can be in a lot of contexts. I didn’t know how to square that with “Jupiter, the planet who stabilizes and who brings balance.” What I’ve learned is what I see as a contradiction is cultural. Jupiter does not see these parts of himself as contradictory. He, unsurprisingly, includes it all.

I suspect that wherever Jupiter is in your chart is where you feel, most palpably, the whole scene of too-much. I suspect that Jupiter transits and profection years, with all their promised boons and joys, sometimes feel like you are receiving the planet’s fertile rains and other times you're receiving Jupiter’s shattering thunder rumble and lightning crash. Which is to say, you feel like a plant with its roots exposed or a hermit crab who needs a new shell.

Jupiter demands we include our dreams even if we can’t bear to look at them. Jupiter demands we find the right proportion for us. That’s the “temperance” of Jupiter. It’s not moderation. It’s right-sizing for joy, for stability, for growth, for inclusion, and then doing it again. Continuously including all of you. Including your most exuberant self. Including many others too. A festival of many and much.

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Resources and References

This writing is inspired by personal conversations with the luminous astrologer Jo O’Neill. Jo has Jupiter in Leo in the 1st House and it’s palpable. The way Jo welcomes too-muchness was with me for every paragraph of this project. Diana Rose Harper’s work on Jupiter can be felt throughout (get her excellent talk on Saturn and Jupiter here), especially her teachings on Jupiter and capacity. While I was working on this post, I listened to Josh Scheri's episode “Festivals! Initiation and the Brilliance of Eternity" on his podcast The Emerald. That episode impacted this writing a lot. Thank you also to E.Y. Washington, another astrologer of brilliance and my queer kin. E.Y. is quoted in this post and served as a much-trusted first set of eyes. A deep thank you to you all.

Maeg Keane
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