Nick Cave- An Astrological Reflection of Two Houses
This is an astrological reflection on Nick Cave’s life through just two houses. I will look at just the planetary signatures, there is a lot we can reflect on and see the music of the spheres aligning with Cave’s own music and his sphere he has lived in.
Full disclaimer, Nick Cave’s chart has been rectified, due to not having a birth time, only date and location. This is purely for educational purposes, and any errors I am open to editing and correcting. I move forward in this project with immense respect for Nick Cave’s life, and realize I only know what I read and watch, and with that, errors will surely exist.
Nick Cave’s life began in 1955, and has been colored with equal fame and tragedy. When it comes to his music and art, he has been blessed by Venus’ signature, and yet when it comes to his personal life, it has many chapters of grief, despair and pure heartbreak, an imprint of Saturn and Pluto. Like any life, we cannot just look at one chapter and see the whole of an individual. It is all of these chapters, as a collective, that have led Cave’s life and art further down the road of divinity, spiritual reflection, and religious devotion.
Writing, music, and art have always been the focal point of Cave’s life. From early choir years to art school to early bands such as Birthday Party, dubbed “the most violent band”, his trajectory has always been a path of creating art. He went on to form Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Grinderman (both projects are still ongoing), written many scores for movies and television, authored numerous books, collaborated many music projects, and has even acted. He currently has an ongoing blog, The Red Hand Files, where he directly interacts with his readers and fans who can ask him anything.
Death in Nick Cave’s life has followed him since a young man, especially around males. His father passed when he was just 21 years old, dying in a car accident. In his life he has lost two sons, Arthur who fell to his death off a cliff after ingesting LSD on July 14, 2015. Jethro Cave who died on on May 9th 2022, yet details around his death still remain illusive and how he died still remains undisclosed.
Nick Cave’s music has always been centered around nuanced human condition themes, with heavy spiritual undertones. He notes in an interview with Unherd, “Music was a prayer. Search for something more. Creative and religious impulse are connected and always there. Whether religion or heroin, it is the same impulse." His deep baritone voice alone evokes Plutonian emotions, and yet he backs it all up with intense themes of love, sensuality, death, grief, violence and religion. His style is equal goth, punk and experimental. As he ages, his music matures, reflected in relationship to stories of loss, dances with addiction, and human heartache and raw love.
The signature of Venus, which signifies his creative life and love is in the house of Scorpio. Scorpio a water sign, symbolized by the “scorpion”, relates to layered ardent emotions we lock up in darker caverns. Protecting our heart and lives with a venomous stinger, only letting a trusted few in to access the deeper recesses of our heart. Venus actually finds herself in her detriment here. Yet I see this signature as one who expresses the heavier Scorpio themes and emotions through their art and can transform what they are experiencing to exceptional imagery and words. Venus in Scorpio produces a darker art, one that is based in the more intense and existential themes of the human condition like death and drugs, and laced with sensual and sexual overtones. Scorpio also has a connection to sexual impluses, and is related to the loins.
Neptune is present in this house too, Neptune is a boundless planet and in a water sign can expand the depths of our imagination with unlimited potential. It is also a planet related to spiritual notions, including spiritual and drug-induced ecstasy. This planet with Venus in a Scorpionic well, really fuels the bridge of somber art, religion and a near obsession with both. They both are present with the North Node, which only fuels the insatiable hunger he continues to feed in the name of his work.
Nick’s Sun is in Virgo, temple of Mercury, this house focuses on the details, what is being communicated matters. This house includes an intense stellium of Mars, Mercury, Moon and Pluto. A stellium of planets like this will create a heavy concentration of energy in this house, which may just be the 9th house of religion, God, and higher learning. Mars is cazimi to the Sun, the Moon is there in its balsamic, dark phase ready to conjoin the Sun. This Balsamic, lightless Moon also speaks to his draw toward the darker aspects of life. Mercury is in its domicile and exaltation in Virgo and Pluto is nearly conjunct the Moon. The Sun and Mercury in Virgo speaks to high levels of communication, writing and ideas. He has noted that his work process is a structured 9-5 process, and he shows up consistently to meet the muse. He is constantly transforming himself in matters of music and the media he uses, including writing scores, penning books, and sculpture. If the Sun is the overarching plot line and the Moon is where we find ourself in relation to the plot, well he has never budged from his own life trajectory.
Mars is cazimi in his chart right there at the 28th degree, in the heart of the Sun and how he shows up on any scene is explosive, passionate and even instigating, as one would expect with a strong Mars/Sun signature. He has remained in the game for decades, this takes actual passion and strength, even the way he moves on stage speaks volumes to his unfettered energy. If it is correctly placed in the 9th house, this also fuels his religious fervor.
Conservative Cave
His music and his views both have matured as he has aged. Yet he still remains poking around at the cracks of the collective, making people squirm and also reflect.
His view on religion and Christianity is challenging for many onlookers, but it is right in line with how he has always viewed his role in this world. When he was younger, his music was not a rebellion to the system as he put it, but a rebellion to his peers and their perception of the world. He didn’t view his music as “kicking against the establishment”, like many of his peers in punk rock. He liked to confront his peers and challenge creative perspectives. In his interview on Unherd he is asked how he fucks with people today at his age. In a humorous and classic deadpan Cave response, “Go to church and be a conservative.”
Nick Cave is unapologetically religious and open to discussing religion. He is critical of organized religion and yet also explains it this way in an interview with Unherd when asked about how he squares up the institution with his religious views, “There is so much about the church and Christianity that there is so much to that is difficult for me to accept, on so many different levels. To sit in a church with all this stuff around it, and to somehow be moved, seems to be an achievement in some way. Even through all this stuff, here I am. There is something about the distance traveled, from sitting there with my skeptical stuff in this quite possibly completely corrupt institution, finding that I can walk out of there and having a transcendent moment is something. I don’t get it sitting in a park and I don’t get it watching a sunrise. It is authentically transformative.”
This view on religion and God is also a perfect example of Mars cazimi the Sun, trying to square up God and the institution, but also feeling fully connected despite the controversies. The Sun represents the godhead, and Mars splits and divides. This signature of Mars in the heart of the Sun is a perfect analogy of Nick Cave’s life.
Pluto’s presence, the god of the underworld, closely conjoined the Moon further colors his expression and drive. It is also representative of his experience of death in his life. Due to the painfully slow speed of Pluto, every planet in his stellium had to cross the river Styx and were touched by the hand of death. Loosing two sons and a father, all to tragic deaths, is represented really in the entire stellium. The Sun represents males, the solar figure, our life course, and God. Mars seeks to inflame, separate and sever. Moon is our environment. Pluto is death and transformation. Mercury is allowed to travel between our realm and the underworld. Nick’s whole life has been one of traveling and communicating between the grips of life and death, and the lessons learned around loosing and mourning loved ones. His art connects him to the turning fortunes of the Moon and deeper godhead of the Sun and Pluto. You cannot listen to his music and not feel this.
This heavy stellium is the story of Nick Cave’s life, and it connects through a sextile aspect to the house of Scorpio where Venus, Neptune and North Node live. A sextile, a gracious bridge, which is harmonious and Venusian in nature, is the path the muse travels in his life and perhaps feeds his whole existence.