Brihaspati is pictured as a golden skinned, learned figure, riding a golden chariot drawn by eight horses, carrying a staff, a rosary and a manuscript, the attributes of a teacher rather than a warrior. Thursday (Guruvar) is kept as his day across much of India, observed with yellow offerings, yellow cloth, turmeric, and gifts to Brahmins and teachers, on the understanding that a favorable Jupiter brings learning, righteous conduct and good fortune to a household. Dedicated Brihaspati temples are relatively rare compared with shrines to Shiva or Vishnu, and his worship, like that of the other navagraha, is generally folded into a temple's planetary shrine, though a small number of sites draw pilgrims specifically seeking his blessing for education, marriage timing and the birth of children.
In everyday religious life Brihaspati's name survives in the honorific use of guru itself, and in the widespread practice, still followed in many families, of consulting a Jyotisha reading before naming a child, arranging a wedding date, or beginning a new venture, on the premise that a well disposed Jupiter in the chart smooths the way. His long standing rivalry with Shukra, his opposite number among the asuras, is remembered less as active myth today than as a byword in popular speech for two teachers or two schools of thought permanently and honorably opposed.