Message for Tuesday 30 August 2022

Tuesday 30 August 2022

}Remembering Nirvana and Kurt Cobain{

Moon in Libra

< moon in the Via Combusta (often loss of morale, or confusion, during a cosmic reshuffling)

Venus opposite Saturn, ongoing, got a lot of attention in the weekend report which previewed the Fortnight ending September 7. Then yesterday I heard someone on the Tim Pool IRL podcast mention how popular music underwent a sea change when Nevermind by Nirvana was released in 1991. I listened to the whole album and thought again about the tragic composer and lead singer of the group, Kurt Cobain (February 20, 1967-April 5, 1994).

Looking at his horoscope I see that he was born with Venus exactly conjunct Saturn, the “absent love” or “nobody loves me” aspect which is mournful yet profound. In his case it was both. In fact he married someone named Courtney Love and had a daughter. But he ended his own life, tragically, at the age of 27 after serious drug issues and an attempt at rehabilitation. Some of his photos show him looking ravaged and even fearful. That s sad because he had a phenomenal horoscope which, partly because of two Grand Trines in water signs, made him enormously popular. The moon in Cancer, Mars in Scorpio, and the sun in early Pisces made one Water Triangle; Venus plus Saturn in late Pisces plus Jupiter in Cancer plus Neptune in Scorpio made another Water Triangle. Such individuals have a universal sympathy and empathy which makes people feel them as kin. The water grand trine can also, except in saints, make for a varied and potent sex life.

Not only was Cobain’s Venus conjunct Saturn but opposite Pluto and Uranus. Love could not be simple and easy for him but would have to be almost frantic and even perverse. In one of his songs his shouted mantra, repeated endlessly, is “Stay away!” In another it is “Rape me!” The timidity of Pisces and Cancer may have been a side of him he deliberately overcame in order to be a star, which he definitely wanted to do.

When listening to the “Rape Me” song I felt, at first, violated and upset, then gradually I felt “He was singing for us, giving everyone an ‘out’ when it comes to such feelings, admitting to himself and us what we never admit to ourselves, whether male or female, that some part of us wants to ‘give itself” to someone almost as if being raped.” I have seen this work out in straight males time and again. For example, in fraternity initiations. It is not politically correct to say that it manifests in many females, but it does. Cobain was breaking a taboo in accord with Venus opposite Uranus in his chart, but also implicitly mourning the suffering which accompanies any semi-violent (Uranus) thrill, Venus conjunct Saturn. It’s almost as Kurt were “atoning for” our sins or peccadilloes or making them explicit so we can be more aware of them and deal with them.

Cobain’s chart has a lot of “natural dignities” which make for luck. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, and Venus in Pisces, and in a very close trine to each other. Apart from the drugs perhaps, he might have gone on to a long and happy life of fulfillment, but it is true that many Piscean individuals (he had the sun, Mercury, Venus and Saturn in that sign) give in to alcohol or drugs for mood-control or mood-sustainment. Of course there are better ways, but who can say for sure that Kurt could have managed to be other than he was? Yes, or no, or nobody knows; and his songs seem to project such fatalism: “This is just what is, what’s happening: Smells like Teen Spirit.”

Of course he did have phenomenal luck, Nirvana’s albums winning awards and setting sales records. As for his personal love-life, I have not studied that although biographies are available. One might say he was omnivorous, devouring experience and then rechanneling the results of it into his songs, which spoke mostly by indirection, a Pisces proclivity.

All but two of his planets are in water signs! The other two being in earth mean that all are in the so-called “female” or “negative” signs, and this is very rare. I cannot recall having seen it before. In some of his photos he looks very feminine. But of course he was a father and his Mars is in its own sign, Scorpio and is the “planet of oriental appearance” (see Marc Edmund Jones, Essentials of Astrological Analysis). The male in him was potent through this, plus Mars’s square with Jupiter, which can be incendiary, often violent or semi-violent. He ended his life with a gun. That is tragic and yet it fits the planetary picture of Mars in Scorpio square Jupiter. Perhaps the “negative” placements of the planets, though not depriving him of male strength, mean that it was finally turned against himself.

I believe that he voiced, in wizard-like and often ironic manner, inchoate emotions of the human race which needed to be voiced and that this had, usually, a healthy effect on his fans.

I give astrologer Grant Lewi the last word, quoted from his book Heaven Knows What which provides a profile of each of the 144 sun-moon sign combinations. In Kurt’s case that is sun in Pisces plus moon in Cancer:

“You are a dramatist, and the play you re most interested in is the drama of You. You are sensitive, alert to the opinions and feelings of the world around you and, through a sort of sixth sense, able to give the public what it wants almost before it knows it wants it. You are courteous, kind, considerate and genuinely charitable . . . You are really a very shy person, and your personality and forcefulness is the product of rigid self-discipline, for you have overcome timidity and stage fright and made yourself go forward into the public eye. You have converted timidity to sensitiveness and fear into an understanding of other people . . .” (first published 1935)

{Tuesday} {Kurt Cobain}

Cosmic Piper