Day 13/100

Perfectionism is unsustainable + Grand Cross Part 3/4

Today is Day 13 of The 100 Day Project! For my intro, see 100 days of creativity.

I’m drawing another card today from Tricia Hersey’s Rest Deck and tomorrow I’ll be back at the crochet squares. Here’s your resistance message for today:

Grand Cross Part 3/4

Today is our third day of examining John Coltrane’s fixed grand cross in cadent houses involving Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Neptune. Yesterday we looked at the Mars in Taurus/Saturn in Scorpio opposition between the 3rd and 9th houses. Today we’ll look at the other opposition, Neptune in Leo in the 6th opposing Jupiter in Aquarius in the 12th.

Honestly I’ve been waiting eagerly for the moment we would touch on Neptune and the 12th house in Coltrane’s chart. One of the things that fascinates me about him is how he openly incorporated his spiritual life into his musical vocation. In 1957, at age 30, Coltrane had a heroin addiction that led to him being fired by Miles Davis. He returned to his mother’s house and quit cold turkey, suffering through withdrawal symptoms for days until he emerged on the other side. In the liner notes for A Love Supreme, he talked about how in this year he had a spiritual awakening. From that point on, even though he talks about the path forward not having been exactly linear, his music became his gift to the world.

During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.
—John Coltrane, liner notes from A Love Supreme

First, let’s look at Coltrane’s Jupiter/Neptune opposition to keep going in our analysis of his grand cross, but then, just out of curiosity, let’s look at what transits were going on in his chart in April of 1957 when he got fired by Miles Davis and went cold turkey and had his spiritual awakening.

Neptune in Leo in the 6th house opposite Jupiter in Aquarius in the 12th house

Even though Jupiter comes before Neptune in the planetary order of things, I’d like to tackle Neptune first because it’s in the 6th house, and that feels like a good starting point to give context for 12th-house matters. The 6/12 axis is known as the “axis of service.”

First of all, when we’re looking at Neptune, we’re looking but may not be able to see clearly. Neptune loves to fog things over, make things cloudy and dissolve anything that seems solid. With Neptune we always have to ask ourselves: is this real or just an illusion? We saw in Marilyn Monroe’s chart how this lent a shapeshifting quality as well as the glamour and magnetism she was famous for (Marilyn and Coltrane both had Neptune in Leo, as they were born in the same generation). Leo is a sign that’s typically associated with performers, and so is Neptune, even though Neptune isn’t the ruler of Leo (that’s the Sun). Neptune is associated with the entertainment industry because of the gifts it can bring in creativity through the arts and music, and through its ability to allow people to project things onto it, to see what they want to see through the artist’s work. In fact, in a Critic’s Notebook piece about him in the New York Times on what would have been his 75th birthday, the writer Ben Ratliff said this:

Coltrane is so complicated that we must turn him around, look at him this way and that; his art wasn't insular and signified different things for different people. There is more poetry written about him, I'd guess, than about any other jazz musician.
—The Miracle of Coltrane: Dead at 40, Still Vital at 75

Neptune is also the quintessential planet of spirituality and transcending the everyday concrete world for something higher, something divine, something that goes utterly beyond anything material. With Neptune in the 6th house, we’re looking at a Neptune that wants to find some higher meaning or purpose through the daily grind of work. This is a person who won’t be satisfied if their work is just a mundane means to an end; likely this person is going to want their work to be of service to others in some way. When it comes to health, we could certainly imagine a 6th house Neptune manifesting as mysterious or hard-to-diagnose health issues or using substances as a form of escapism from the drudgery of a daily routine.

As an opposition, we have Jupiter tugging at this Neptune and asking it to leave behind the structure of a routine and “real world” responsibilities like a steady job and instead expand in to the larger consciousness and the Oneness of all things, which is the 12th house’s realm. Since it’s Jupiter, the planet of expansion and idealism, it’s quite similar in many ways to the energies of Neptune, which also wants to touch something that’s bigger and more expansive than itself as it dissolves ego into the collective. It’s almost as if these two planets are playing off of each other and mirroring each other because Aquarius (the sign Jupiter is in) also wants this—service to the collective, radical freedom and individual expression, futuristic innovation. It makes me think of when you stand in front of a mirror with a mirror behind you, and you get that weird infinite image.

Although this is a tense aspect because it’s within this grand cross, the potential here is enormous. We see the struggle: he literally went cold turkey to beat a heroin addiction, the power of the will here is remarkable (if you look at Saturn in the 9th, besides its two squares to Neptune and Jupiter, it also has trines to Uranus and Pluto, which likely helped Coltrane break free and go deep into the underworld of his addiction and emerge—look how the North Node is conjunct Pluto in the 5th, the house of creativity and joy—it’s as if his soul mission was to find a way to constructively work through and manifest the potentials of this grand cross.)

Now, let’s look at the transits that were occurring at the time of this addiction crisis and spiritual awakening. I’m using the Whole Sign house system here because I’m experimenting with how it resonates specifically for transits; as I’ve started to use it for transits, I’ve found its accuracy to be more spot-on for me personally.

Uff, do you see what’s going on here in relation to the grand cross? The transits are the green planets on the outside of the wheel. We’ve got transiting North Node sitting on top of his natal Saturn in the 9th, transiting Chiron sitting on top of his natal Jupiter in the 12th, and transiting Pluto sitting on top of his natal Neptune in the 6th. Neptune is early in its transit of the 9th house, Pluto is about to cross the descendant, transiting Saturn is conjunct the Midheaven, and transiting Jupiter is opposing his natal Uranus in the 1st house. Honestly that’s enough material to write about for another week at least. Suffice it to say, we’d be shocked if there wasn’t a major crisis and opportunity for a spiritual breakthrough here. With that North Node transiting conjunct Saturn in the 9th, it’s the trigger point for finally manifesting his vocation as a career and a spiritual calling, because it activates that entire grand cross as well as the two trines. Transiting Saturn conjunct the Midheaven in the 10th is Miles Davis firing him and Coltrane getting the colossal wake-up call from the Universe that he better get his act together or he’s going to lose his chance.

Ah, this chart. Just like the image of the infinite mirror, there are layers upon layers of meaning here. Such depth and strength of character, and the fact that he was able to harness this grand cross and make it work for him instead of allowing himself to remain trapped inside it, is inspiring.