Jupiter Combust Dates

Jupiter is combust for about four weeks each year, when the Sun passes within eleven degrees of it. Parashara and Surya Siddhanta give that orb. For those weeks the guru is invisible, hidden in the light of the Sun. Jyotish calls the state asta and counts it as a loss of strength.

The Sun and Jupiter are friends, and the Sun outshines Jupiter without opposing it, so the combustion is gentler than Saturn's or Mars's. Jupiter's significations, wisdom, teachers, children, wealth, dharma and faith, are muted for the period. Advice is harder to hear, and money expected is delayed. The teacher is present and the student cannot see them.

Read the house from the Moon and from the lagna. In the favourable houses Phaladeepika gives for Jupiter, the second, fifth, seventh, ninth and eleventh, the four weeks are a pause in a blessing. In the sixth, eighth or twelfth they can bring a short loss of faith.

Jupiter combust shows how one holds wisdom when its source is hidden. It reveals whether the person's dharma was their own or was borrowed from a teacher's presence. A person whose practice continues in the teacher's absence has understood the teaching.

The remedy is to keep the practice without the reward. Honour the guru on Thursday, give yellow cloth and gram as Parashara prescribes for Jupiter, and recite Om Brihaspataye Namah. Offer water to the Sun at dawn.

Muhurta Chintamani counts Guru asta among the standard reasons a muhurta for marriage, upanayana or a new home is postponed. The same caution applies to a course of study or an initiation, and the wedding waits for Jupiter's rising. The work already begun continues without harm.