Book Review | By Jove! by Liz Greene

Book Review courtesy of Chapter Member, Arlan Wise, May 2025

Check out more of Arlan’s book reviews and get to know her in the April 2025 Member Spotlight.

BY JOVE! The Meaning of the Astrological Jupiter

By Liz Greene

Liz Greene continues her work into the 21st century complete with her brand of wisdom, dry wit, and clarity of teaching.  She begins this book, which is a transcription of three seminars she gave in 2021, stating that Jupiter is not the “Great Benefic” that the textbooks tell us. She moves on to discuss Jupiter in his many roles and facets. By the end of the book, the reader has a deep understanding of this planet, which Liz calls “the most enigmatic of all the heavenly bodies”.

She begins with the mythology of Jupiter, aka Zeus. The word Zeus/Jupiter means “father of light” or “shining father”. She weaves the myths and stories of Zeus as she shows how they connect to the planet and the signs he rules, Sagittarius and Pisces.

  “ …myths about the planetary gods, especially older versions of the stories, can reveal dimensions of a sign that we might tend to overlook…Stories are always more powerful in conveying deeper internal truths that didactic explanations”

The text is illuminated with classical pictures of each story.

The next chapter explores the psychology of Jupiter. There is fascinating material on the connection between Jupiter and the archetype of the puer aeternus. The joy of this book comes from reading her deep level of scholarship combined with her comprehensive psychological knowledge. She states that: “Humans of any age, background, and situation need a good dose of the puer in some shape or form to feel life is worth living”. And follows that thought with a detailed discussion of Jupiter and narcissism. This chapter is so complete and so educational that it is worth buying the book just for the information in this one chapter.  

After this thorough introduction, Liz give us the astrology of Jupiter, Sagittarius, and Pisces. She also gives us tidbits of her knowledge like the fact that she uses large orbs, or, a new perspective on the 3rd house. The reader learns astrology from her chart delineations in this chapter. Her examples range from Florence Nightingale to Adolf Hitler, along with Mick Jagger, Mata Hari, and Carl Jung. She reminds us that : “Jupiter’s natal house, sign, and aspects can help us to understand where we might experience both joy and the impulse to rejoice”

The second section focuses on Jupiter in motion.  She covers Jupiter returns and transits both to and from Jupiter. Looking at Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, she compares how Jupiter functions differently in those charts.

She then discusses Jupiter in synastry, Jupiter in the composite chart, and Jupiter in the progressed chart. Liz covers everything to be known about how to understand Jupiter when looking at a chart. “Even though the Jupiterian temperament possesses the gift of optimism about the future, concrete expectations seem to annoy Jupiter”

The chapter includes questions from the students in the seminar. They ask Liz to speak on the issue of transits versus progressions and how she uses them.

The third seminar in the series is on Jupiter’s cycles in history. It is a full, detailed look at Jupiter with the outer planets. The theme is that Jupiter brings something meaningful and a sense of a deeper purpose to the cycle. She backs up what she says with dates and historical events.  It brings an added understanding of your personal life journey to see which cycle was happening around your time of birth.

This book is inspiring and leads to self-examination along with increasing your understanding of astrology. It gives you an opportunity to feel that you are a student sitting in her class. Her work has become clearer, more defined than in her earliest books. She speaks with more humor, more wisdom:

…the way each of us treats the other people in our lives each day actually does change something, and it would be a mistake to assume it’s too small an effort to matter…change like charity, has to begin at home in our own psyches if we want to work with Jupiter cycles in a creative way.”

Buy this book. It is a worthy addition to your collection of Liz Greene books. If you are not familiar with her work, this is an excellent way to start to know one of the important astrologers of our time.