The above came up on MSN news feed today and the death of Australian musician Nick Cave’s two sons saddened me.. Nick lost his son Arthur after a fall from a cliff in Brighton in 2015 and his other son Jethro only a short while ago on 9th of May this year.. This prompted me to explore his astrology which I find fascinating considering the dark themes Cave explores in some of his music. Most notable in this chart is the close conjunction of N Moon in Virgo at 1 degree of the sign with the planet of death Pluto at 4 degrees this speaks of perhaps something dark in the family history reaching back but most certainly shows the preoccupation of themes in his music.
In Cave’s chart we find the energies all gathered around a certain portion of the chart between the two fire signs, Leo and Sagittarius.. What intrigues me is that Uranus in Leo starts the configuration at 10 degrees of that sign and Saturn in Sagittarius ends it at 9 degrees of the sign.. These two energies relate both to creativity and originality as well as to the earthing of facing harsh feelings and realities in a tough school of painful finite limits.
In myth Saturn castrates his father Uranus at the urging of his mother because one after one, after giving birth Uranus is eating his children. Apparently this also relates to the struggle with the inner critic we undergo when we seek to create. There could also be a theme here of creativity demanding so much energy not a lot is left to nurture one’s children.
We then find three groupings of three planets in each of the signs Virgo, Libra and Scorpio.. Moon Mercury and Pluto sit close together in Virgo, Sun, Mars and Jupiter also cojoined in the sign of Libra, while Venus Neptune and the North Node sit in Scorpio. It was this configuration being sent off in opposition by eclipses in May that corelated to the death of Cave’s son Jethro, from undisclosed causes in that month.
What we do know is that Cave was not a part of his second son Jethro’s life (born in 1991) until the age of 7 or 8 (having never married his mother Beau Lazenby) and that Cave then married his second wife, model Susie Bick in 1999 and she gave birth to twin sons Arthur and Earl in 2000. Arthur was 15 years old when he fell to his death in 2015.
This a life marked by tragedy and Plutonian themes. The Venus Neptune North Node conjunction also speaks of a fate or destiny that leads one into painfully deep seas of loss (Neptune) in relationships (Venus) that then give rise to the beauty and soulfulness of art. It is Venus that is born of the sea foam after Saturn or Chronus tosses the severed genitals of Uranus into the ocean.. Some of the most profound art and music can arise as thise mourning native through stormy seas of out paunful severings or loss.
In any chart the North Node shows the path of spiritual destiny in one’s life, something the soul has to undergo in order to grow and one can seek the deep pain etched into Cave’s face after recent events.
Cave’s art and music is constantly transforming.. some of his earliest music from the band The Birthday Party accompanied some of my own darkest times in the 1980s… at that time Pluto was transiting over the top of Cave’s stellium in Scorpio. Artists give expression to collective energies of the times and it speaks to our own soul because even as our experiences differ they still share certain archetypal themes.
Emerging From The Dark Night 