An Alternative Look at Kurt Cobain's Astrology
Bending the wave: distortion or astral streaming? The musical search for belonging and divine feminine through fixed stars
by Kamila Lizis
An esoteric understanding of the Nirvana frontman drawing on fixed stars, elements and modalities
I always wanted to think that I was an alien. I used to think when I was young that I was adopted by my mother because they found me, and a spaceship let me off. I was from a different planet. I wanted to be from a different planet really bad. Every night, I used to talk to my real parents and my real family in the skies.
– Kurt Donald Cobain
Kurt Cobain in 1991
Source: Julie Kramer, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Music fills spaces within us, it offers us a sense of belonging. Sound finds us when we feel at odds. Alone with music we can feel consoled, vulnerable and in some metaphysical way ethereally at home. Regardless of genre, music connects with us in a frequency we respond to in a spectrum of feelings invoked by sound that penetrates our immediacy. Music we deeply resonate with has the power to hold us in intimate moments, whether we actively play it, compose it or are on the receiving end as its listeners. It is the vehicle of memory; it infiltrates our inner worlds where our truth lives. There is no more powerful path than the one guided by the music of our own truth.
Thus, what was the truth of Kurt Cobain, the leader singer and founder of US rock band Nirvana? What was the unique melody coming from his core? And has it been heard? Kurt Donald Cobain born on 20 February 1967 at 19:38 in Aberdeen, Washington, US, openly shared a profound longing to reconnect with something more meaningful, non-superficial, perhaps of alien origin that his inner child was yearning for. But could what he intuitively hinted on searching have been inside him all along? Perhaps the feeling of alienation and the path his life meandered on with-out reflected Kurt – the alien with-in?
Astrology is a language of consciousness. The planets within our solar system up to Saturn symbolise the consciousness of the everyday; the trans-Saturnian planets represent a more subtle collective form of consciousness whilst the celestial bodies that are beyond our solar system are beyond human consciousness – it is ‘alien consciousness’. Similarly, the points beyond the boundary of the Sun (‘out of bounds’ – OOB) symbolise a deeper yin and more feminine expression.
Cobain’s nativity interweaves tightly with the fixed stars realm and OOB planets. In the light of the fixed stars in conversations with Cobain’s planets and midpoints (1), his inner frequency was a highly charged vibration that his body was compelled to hold and created a deep sense of belonging elsewhere in a different space than the mundane world around him that he was so sensitive to, that seemed to disappoint and hurt him, akin to the body rejecting foreign objects.
There was another side to Cobain that has not been widely explored – his connection to the Divine Feminine which had manifested in his open protectiveness about women. Deep inside Kurt was a vulnerable ‘sonic alien’ that intuitively bended sound and ultimately transformed music experience for the collective.
My approach to exploring his ‘star consciousness’ is based on embodiments (2) and drawn extensively from the Blue Rose School of Astrology publications by Andrew Smith.
Astral music and the journey of the soul
In order to dive into Kurt Cobain’s journey in the symphony of his stars and understand his chart from an alternative perspective, it is essential to consider the concepts of the Music of the Spheres. I will not focus on the more mainstream interpretation of his astrology as it has been elaborated on extensively by other astrologers in the past. Instead, I invite you to hear the invisible and follow the bending wave with Kurt.
The notion of the Music of the Spheres offers understanding of the art of music as celestial harmony. Each human with their own psycho-spiritual matrix has a unique voice to reverberate their inner cosmos harmony, which joint in play with others creates a symphony of sovereign sounds reverberating into the universe.
Music and the human soul are both aspects of the eternal. The one stimulates the other powerfully and, one might almost say, with scientific precision, thanks to the essential kinship of the two.
- (James, J. 1993)
The Moon connects two different worlds of conscious and subconscious and accounts for our expression of the inner worlds. The soul is a vessel of the luminous realms from which we draw imagination. Therefore, consider how the journey of the soul can take us individually to merge with a unique source of inspiration, the deep imagery looking to be drawn through us, or sounds we encounter in the dreaming. Since astrology is polysemic (capable of having several possible different meanings), we might notice many wells of inspiration through its lens. However, in Kurt’s case, it is undoubtedly his OOB Moon wandering beyond the boundaries of the Sun, and its unique sequence that opens a gateway to a higher octave of the soul.
In the moment of incarnation, we come with a unique nativity in which potential for our growth and explorations is held. Hence, our soulful experience makes up for our unique relationship with sound and music, whether we chose for it to be of an intimate nature or shared with the world, like in Kurt’s case.
His emotional intelligence, initiated through cardinal water, Cancer (3), would have prospected for a soul filled with imaginative proactivity, longing for a caring environment to proactively weave from the strong imagination, and to reflect what the soul absorbs through this tremendously deepened, divine emotional questing.
Punk Rock – it was the anger I felt, the alienation – and I realised it was what I always wanted to do.
– Kurt at age 17
Kurt’s nativity speaks of someone who longs to channel experiences of his inner frequency and could find refuge in bending conventional sound. Why? Because it would have mirrored the search to connect with something he could fit in with, though constant attempts to express the full capacity of his internal world bubbling with sounds to come through him.
In one of his interviews, he admitted. "Most of the time I sing right from my stomach. Where my stomach pain is." This vibration, accumulated in Kurt, gradually stirred towards his surface through riffs and his signature tearing-intensively voice. One would wonder if such sensations could set his body off and cause his continuous stomach issues, since it would have to hold a tremendous amount of vibration.
Fixed stars and sonic questing
Kurt’s Natal Chart including Vega, Sirius and Spica (4)
I strongly believe that Kurt’s persistent experience of longing and finding refuge in music reflected the unchartered frequencies that he merged with internally. In order to understand his music, one needs to gauge how important fixed stars are in his nativity. Cobain has undoubtedly been so highly tuned into the Music of the Spheres that an image of him as a sonic alien emerges. It seems that this sensitivity has ultimately led him to push boundaries of sound. But there is much more to this journey happening in his vertical realms, indifferent to the tangible and immediate.
Specifically, Vega and Sirius are intrinsically interwoven with his sense of becoming, his progressed axis of purpose, the beginning and end of matter, the aspiration which soul strives towards!
Vega – the Sound of Heavens or the Sound of Home? (5)
The sapphire blue star Vega at 140 cardinal earth is a gateway through which
the astral can be accessed and allow the song of god to breathe life into being; to allow non-linear (intuitive, Akashi) information pass through you; to help you understand what enchants you; to describe the phenomena of being spellbound; to outline the theme of the power of sound to facilitate birth and death; and to act as a portal through which you can pass between worlds. (6)
Vega allows the voice of god to manifest through us, and through the medium of our song. Kurt’s attunement to this stream-of-consciousness comes from a tight conjunction that Vega makes to his Venus/Mars midpoint, therefore, arising a theme of channelling Music of the Spheres literally through him, whilst bringing inspiration into form, actualising something utterly deeply inspiring, weaving god’s melody through his whole being to be offered back into spirit. Kurt’s heart was a conduit of the Sound of the Spheres. We can only imagine how the intensity of inspiration would have been energising him to write and to play, how loud this inspiration must have been, continuously penetrating his intentions and adding courage to perform!
The midpoints that fall at 150 cardinal are key median points through which Vega can be integrated, also pointing at what this Vega’s energy can heal within you. (7)
In Kurt, the alchemical union of the merging of Venus and Mars was filtered through the 14th degree of the cardinal earth consciousness, less than a degree away from Vega, initiating creation and building tangible manifestation of spirit and their song.
Cobain was a lightning rod for a higher energy opening a healing space. (8) He was determined to bridge the bending waves that would rise withing him through grunge, a genre characterised by distortion and penetrating volume. Kurt admitted writing about things that hurt him. Was performing a medicine for his insecurities and traumas?
Perhaps since his childhood the energy of Vega felt familiar at heart, offering a safe space to withdraw to and create a sense of belonging beyond rejection of his family and school peers. In the arms of sound, he would learn how to play, removed from the troubling family circumstances. He played in the safety of his room, subconsciously enchanted by the inner space calling, away from the earthy challenges, something that the opposition to Sirius and his cardinal water Moon possibly only amplified awareness of.
Sirius – the inner world behind the inner world (9)
Sirius, the brightest star in our sky, the Rainbow Star ‘eye’ watching us from above at 140 cardinal water is a gateway to the Divine Masculine consciousness. Kurt’s Moon, therefore, blending his inner worlds with the vaster light, was not only beyond the bounds of the masculine ego (OOB) and living from a more yin expression but also merged with the Sun behind the Sun, our spiritual star opening one to the Higher Masculine principle.
Sirius is a gateway into the Divine Masculine Light and a realm of strength, courage and honesty, which can only be reached by unwavering faith, loyalty, commitment and simplicity. It feels to be central to accessing our Higher Yang Consciousness and is the animating “force” behind the 12 zodiacal consciousnesses. (10)
Kurt’s soulful belonging was extra-terrestrial. His inner world’s journey was infused by this cosmic light bridging divine consciousness completely indifferent to the mundane. Cobain’s galactic depths of imagination would have been constantly seeding in the rays of the spiritual Sun. His sense of becoming, therefore, would have been illuminating the sense of being highly indifferent to ego and the immediate.
The conjunction with his OOB Moon in cardinal water would have immersed his emotional body in the Higher Masculine consciousness and have a profound effect on Kurt’s feelings. One would wonder, were his emotional needs so profoundly infused by this divine frequency ever fulfilled? Would his primal yearning to feel safety be deepened beyond imagination when he was at one with himself? Would he have eventually found a partner who was conscious of such an intensity of feeling and meet them in this ‘extra-terrestrial’ language?
Kurt Cobain in 1992
Source: P.B. Rage from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
His cardinal water Moon would also ebb and flow this whole dynamic in a public manner: it is placed in the arena of his chart associated with aspirations, in his career, and opposing Vega’s portico where his home and roots were anchored. No wonder that as a child Kurt questioned where he came from, whether he was adopted, and longed to reach out for safety to his other, ‘intergalactic parents’!
On another note, the opposition of Sirius and Vega, the two godly streams, implies that the Higher Masculine can be accessed through sound or chanting which young Kurt would have been developing. When Cobain’s parents divorced in 1974, an event that spun him into questioning his belonging at the ripe age of 8-9, Kurt was exploring music, learning several instruments that helped him channel his complexity of feelings.
I believe that on a soulful level Kurt was ready for an attunement to the Song of the Spheres, asked to refine his inner world and surrender to the dissolution of his outer world, to let his undercurrents flow into the relationship with music that he constantly wrote, recorded, experimented with. (11) Trauma of separation of the family and his hurt beyond what he could express at such young age have been a background in preparation to seed a refined expression, though the road to it must have been utterly painful and paved with personal torment.
Something of a higher meaning and wisdom, however, was rooted in him back then. The seeds sown underground could stem power into his band Nirvana in future, and Kurt’s intense passion could be widely received and ultimately transform the music scene. It was a realisation to be expressed in divine timing.
Sirius is the spiritual Sun. The union with his Moon would suggest that his yin and higher yang consciousnesses were in affinity. Did this feeling contribute to Kurt’s demise in enjoyment of ‘fame’ that he mentioned in his last letter before his tragic passing? At that time, Cobain had reached a stage of his emotional evolution during which he was preparing to let go of a lot of his emotional ties (12). Therefore, the inner vibration experienced by the musician must have felt aggregated.
Moreover, Kurt’s Venus/Sun midpoint at 140 mutable water is in a tight trine to Sirius and square to Rigel, a divine presence, ‘the Christ principle arises through. (13) The musician’s heart-light concerned with compassionate emotional exchange would have been deepening his sense of unconditional love for people. It feels like Kurt’s masculine light was infused with this spiralling feeling despite living in a world into which he felt he never fitted. In his last note before his passing, he describes the surging waves of empathy:
On our last 3 tours, I’ve had a much better appreciation for all the people I’ve known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can’t get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There’s good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too f****** sad. The sad little, sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man.
Sirius in waning quadriundecile with the Piscean Sun stands for social consciousness! This complex and intimate astrology was in motion through his invisible realms. Therefore, imagine how the applying progressed Moon was amplifying this dynamic in his spaces, the sensitivity to the world must have felt absolutely out of control.
On another note, the waxing quadriundecile between Sirius and natal Neptune could imply that Cobain’s ethereal qualities would have acted like a tuning fork for those he was a muse to, a meaningful icon of an almost evangelical quality for his fans. Watching Kurt’s interviews, I gauged that on some level he had the spirited understanding that what he brought to the world was from somewhere beyond him, perhaps surprising him with the level of transformation he breathed into music.
Spica – the voice of the Feminine (14)
Revealed in non-verbal and non-linear expression, Spica speaks up for the deep yin within. Connecting with Spica happens in the invisible, through sound and movement. Spica is a knowing, filtered through planets she comes in tight aspects to; she brings clear messages from the Deep Feminine consciousness, empowering the more reflective, creative part of us. (15)
Cobain channelled the voice of the Feminine in his creative expression. When Spica and Uranus are in conversation, sound brings sacred Feminine insights into awareness. The experience can stream a sudden abstract knowing that comes in as a tone. This vibration stimulates to create, to bring out a radical tone in one’s voice, a unique voice that travels off the beaten track.
Essentially, the urge to liberate the voice of the Feminine was wired in Kurt as he subconsciously embodied an awakening light chord electrifying him to release music exhibiting often shocking lyrics.
The musician was a lightning rod of creation in synergy with the deep wisdom of the Feminine which sounded out in his protective attitude towards the abused and shamed Feminine uniquely honoured and consistently immortalised in his work.
Polly wants a cracker
I think I should get off her first
I think she wants some water
To put out the blow torch
(…) Polly wants a cracker
Maybe she would like some food
She asked me to untie her
A chase would be nice for a few
(Polly)
Writing songs like ‘Rape Me’ or ‘Polly’, detailing the abduction of a young girl, told from the point of view of the attacker, was Kurt’s way to channel the pain of violation and abuse of women he got to notice along his path.
The accentuation of Cobain’s rebellious spirit propelled him to push the boundaries of the sexist bias of his time. He had an evolved awareness constantly stimulating him to embody the feminine voice.
Furthermore, Kurt was deeply concerned to find cognitive understanding of suffering, loss, separation, repression, and abuse – all reflected in his native sequence of Ceres and Algol star. l will elaborate on these themes in more detail in ‘Bruises on a fruit’ – my follow-up article to the present one.
Cobain was adamant to use his ‘position’ in the music industry to speak up for these issues and to empower anti-violence movements.
Kurt’s ability to honour the feminine in his writing would bring the congruency in his band breaking out of the sexist rock star image. Even in the incipient stages of Nirvana’s existence, Kurt was bringing the awareness of the need to hear the feminine and adjust the attitude towards women in written music. The waxing biquintile between Kurt’s Spica and his Piscean Mercury only emphasises his urgent need to make music that has an aptitude to express these sensitive and highly emotional messages. There is also an interesting corelation between the progressed Moon cycle and Spica. Cobain was introduced to musical instruments in 1973 by a profound feminine figure in his life, his aunt Marie Early, who was a guitarist. At that time, Kurt’s progressed Moon conjoined Spica.
Kurt’s progressed chart on 23 December 1987 – progressed Moon and Venus were opposing Spica (a seeding point of this cycle). (17)
When the progressed Luna reached 230 cardinal fire in the opposition to Spica and at the same time trine his natal Ceres and conjunct his progressed Venus, the first demo recordings of Nirvana emerged in 1987.
Moon and Venus together are the ‘Yin Dharma’ (16), but also suffice for an alchemical union drawing the creative force from within (Moon) and without (Venus). Since the two progressed planets merged in cardinal fire, one could think that the resonance of the inner child impassioned an open expression of Kurt’s creativity. As if the soul clock remembered the seeding of this cycle when in his childhood his aunt ignited the passion for music in him, and now that first note has evolved to illuminate the music path ahead.
Bending the wave
It is imperative to delve into the nature of Kurt’s sovereign sound as this is the key to understand the glue between star consciousness and his expression. The genre he chose to play encapsulates his minor tones and his major frequencies, the anger and unfulfillment around his safety and emotional needs but also the excitement and mission to play. When thinking of Kurt, picture a sound wave bending, searching to reach a higher volume, to become heard in its uniqueness!
This bending wave is distortion!
Distortion challenges sound to become heavy and untamed, disturbing the simple and plotting intrigue in the calm, breaking through the ordinary. Cobain bended the waves naturally in music and other sonic experiments.
Sonic experiences and their intensity
Embodying a saturation of otherworldly consciousnesses pouring through sound, music and imagination can be complex to any (never)-mind and hard to contain for anybody. There are periods when this frequency rises and intensifies. Could it have contributed to Kurt’s alienation in his own home-like world or even to the body issues around his stomach (Moon)?
I sing from my stomach, right where the pain is. All I can do is scream into a microphone
– Kurt Cobain
Those familiar with similar experiences may derive from such periods of cosmic frequency surges that truly feel as if waves of energy bend under skin: that body is humbly holding it together and something needs to be urgently created out of this electrifying charge.
Montage of Heck as a subconscious interstellar transmission
In 1987 (18) Kurt assembled Montage of Heck, a 36-minute-long cassette, a surreal, abstract insight into the mind of then 20-year-old Cobain. It was a true ‘atonement’ (19), a timeframe to seed an opportunity to restructure home and career, truly reflected in Kurt starting Nirvana at that very time! But there is another layer to this energetic weave involving Saturn. She is the embodiment of the soul. She finds form and offers a vehicle to the retrieved treasure.
Triwheel: Natal, progressions and transits on 24 November 1987
Inner wheel: Kurt Cobain's natal chart
Middle wheel: secondary progressed chart for 24 Nov 1987
Outer wheel: transits on 24 Nov 1987 (Montage of Heck tapes recordings)(21)
Kurt assembled cut-ups patching together random sounds of TV shows interspersed with the sound of the toilet flushing, people vomiting, outtakes of music, albums mixed with lullabies, disturbing alien-like screeches, white noise and unexpected silence.
Subconsciously or not, this was a creative attempt of a sonic transmission. Interestingly, at that period, Spica opposed Cobain’s progressed Moon, speaking for raised imagination and inspiration coming from a soulful level. Simultaneously, there must have been a radical push to retrieve the path home within Kurt (20), perhaps the mash up of recordings was a mosaic of sound, a fractured language that he unconsciously chose to send off into the ether like a transmission and define pieces of the resurfacing pain of separation and existential displacement as these planets would have been transiting the empty leg of Kurt’s Ceres – Pluto/Uranus – Chiron/Mercury mutable t-square!
Most certainly, what Kurt had been moving through then has found an outlet in breaking the mould of how he shared his vision in the world, how he exchanged his voice in the public arena, how his journey with Nirvana seeded that year. Montage of Heck leaves you distraught, unsettled and awakened to Kurt’s internal uniqueness galvanising regular forms to create such an intense and bizarre piece. It is an intimately assembled transmission invisibly rippling through the night, from the womb of Kurt’s creation, as he worked on it in the dark questing through a language of noise, distortion, voices and songs.
Perhaps Montage of Heck was an attempt to find a common language with the Spheres? Or perhaps it was a projection of the business of the internal frequencies coming in sharp from the ‘gates of his watchers’ from beyond?
Astrology is music
There are waves in all of us that ebb and flow, some subconsciously familiar and others immense like unchartered oceans but all merging and spiralling through our realms, streaming the depth of our spheres into unique processes of creation. A musician plays these waves, akin to an astrologer divining them. Music and astrology are, therefore, one path of harmonics and spheres, they only differ in sound and expression when drawn out.
Both fabrics speak of conversations with your soul, or a dialogue of co-creation that once played or spoken reverberate forever.
Kurt’s music reveals his true essence, and a vision emerges of his consciousness infused with sacred Higher Presence that wired and enlivened him. Perhaps playing created moments of soulful bliss in him where tones made the Sonic Alien feel complete, ‘coming as he was’, and eager to share his light with those genuinely meeting him on the bent waves.
Author’s note: This article draws extensively on the Blue Rose School of Astrology publications by Andrew Smith. For more information contact: blueroseastrology@gmail.com and view website andrewsmith.ie/.
I will explore more illuminations of the Divine Feminine consciousness in Kurt in Part 2 of this article in the July-August issue of Journal.
Bibliography:
Godwin, Jocelyn, Music, Mysticism and Magic: a Sourcebook, Arkana, 1987.
James, Jamie, The Music of the Spheres, Abacus, 1993.
Newman, Paul F., Declination in Astrology: The Steps of the Sun, The Wessex Astrologer, 2006.
The Mountain Astrologer, Volume 7, No. 9 November 1994.
Plato, The Republic, Penguin Classics, 1955.
Portnoy, James, Music in the Life of Man, Holt, Rinehart & Winstone, 1963.
Rudhyar, Dane, The Lunation Cycle, Shambala Publications, 1971.
Rudhyar, Dane, The Galactic Dimension of Astrology: the Sun is also a Star, Aurora Press, 1982.
Endnotes:
1. This article mentions midpoints. A midpoint is a point halfway between two planets outlining an energetic blend of these archetypes.
2. Embodiment is a process that allows to experientially access invoked consciousness, where one opens themselves up completely to feel, channel and honour information within their body and senses.
3. From here on after, I will refer to signs of the zodiac by the breakdown of modes and elements.
4. For full chart including aspects see Appendix A (in Part 2).
5. Vega – aspects: waning quintile Mars, waxing quintile Venus, conjunction to midpoint Venus/Mars, opposition to OOB cardinal water Moon, waxing octile to Sun and waxing sextile to Mercury.
6. Andrew Smith, Vega article, Blue Rose School of Astrology, 2019.
7. Andrew Smith, Vega article, Blue Rose School of Astrology, 2019.
8. Reference to Vega conjunct Cobain’s Mars/Chiron midpoint.
9. Sirius – aspects: conjunction to OOB Moon (the closest natal conjunction), waning squine to Saturn, waxing quadriundecile to Neptune, waxing sesquiquintile to Mars, waxing biundecile to Pluto and waning quadriundecile to Sun.
10. Andrew Smith, Sirius article, Blue Rose School of Astrology, 2020.
11. At that time Neptune in mutable fire was in waning semi-sextile to his Vega and quincunx to his Sirius/Moon conjunction.
12. Reference to the balsamic phase of Kurt’s progressed Moon return.
13. Andrew Smith, Sirius article, Blue Rose School of Astrology, 2020.
14. Spica – aspects: parallel to Sun, waning semi-sextile to Uranus, waning trine to OOB Ceres, waning undecile to Ascendant, waxing semi-sextile to Neptune, waxing quincunx to Chiron and waxing biquintile to Mercury.
15. Andrew Smith, Spica diaries, The Blue Rose School of Astrology, 2020.
16. Reference to the notion of ‘Yin Dharma’ in ‘The Light of Venus’ by Adam Gainsburg.
17. For full chart with aspects see Appendix B (in Part 2).
18. Transiting Saturn conjunct mutable fire IC and progressed Moon and Venus in cardinal fire opposed Spica.
19. Reference to the notion Saturn crossing the IC as ‘Atonement’ from Saturn in Transit: Boundaries of Mind, Body and Soul by Erin Sullivan.
20. Transiting Saturn and Uranus would have opposed natal Ceres in mutable air.
21. For full-sized chart see Appendix C (in Part 2).
Published by: The Astrological Journal, May/Jun 2022
Author:
Kamila Lizis: Astrology and Music are my path of living. I am a consulting astrologer based in Dublin, Ireland. In my astrological practice my intention is to help people live consciously and explore their creative potential. I am a student at the Blue Rose School of Astrology in Dublin, mentored by Andrew Smith. I have been a performing/recording musician for over 19 years. I hold an MA in Philosophy and in Translations. I write and create, experimenting with sound, music, voice and visual outlets in the ever-evolving discovery of astrology. My contacts:
kamilalizisastrology.com
email: liziskamila@gmail.com
IG: @kamila_lizis
FB: @kamilalizisastrology
© Kamila Lizis, 2022
