Broken down and hungry for your love
With no way to feed it
Where are you tonight?
Child, ya know how much I need it
Too young to hold on
And too old to just break free and run
Sometimes a man gets carried away
When he feels like should be having his fun
Much too blind to see the damage he's done
Sometimes a man must awake to find that
Really he has no one

Lover you should’ve come over – Grace (1994)

A visceral cry that goes through the emotional hells that only Scorpio dares to face and, therefore, allows us to get to know the crying of the Phoenix, a divine and golden song born from the light found in the depths of the darkness of the soul. That’s the voice and music of Jeff Buckley, a Scorpio native.

I have decided to do this analysis without using the time of birth because there are two different records in the files. Anyway, when we analyze a birth chart without the zodiacal houses, we can discover the essential Self of an individual.

At first glance, we notice a large stellium (conjunction of three or more planets) formed by Neptune, Mercury, Sun, and Venus in Scorpio. This stellium makes 60-degree angles (or sextiles) with the Moon in Aquarius and with the Pluto-Mars-Uranus conjunction in Virgo. It also forms a trine (120-degree angle) with the Saturn-Chiron conjunction in Pisces. And another trine with Jupiter. Sextiles and trines describe a harmonic relationship between the energies of the planets that connect to each other. The only aspects of tension that we see in Buckley’s birth chart are the oppositions between Saturn-Chiron in Pisces with Pluto-Mars-Uranus in Virgo and the one between the Moon in Aquarius with Jupiter in Leo. That said, we can see in Jeff Buckley a great coherence between the different parts of his being, except regarding his will and emotional security.

Planets represent parts of our consciousness that seek to express themselves. At first glance, Jeff Buckley’s birth chart shows that these parts are grouped into specific signs. We find Neptune (inspiration), Mercury (conscious mind), Sun (identity), and Venus (grace) united in Scorpio, the sign of emotional intensity, of cathartic transformation. Everything that Scorpio experiences is a kind of emotional purification that aims to release its natural instincts, see them face to face, and, therefore, allow transformation. In Scorpio, we can differentiate three states of consciousness: the scorpion, intensely emotional, and reactive, defends itself through its sting; the eagle, active, and intellectual, knows what they want and seek it; and the Phoenix, the mystic, who has been able to open his heart and let the world in, after having given himself completely to the reality of his own limitations. This individual feels compassion towards his neighbor because he understands that he is not different from others.

In Buckley’s interviews and music, we can see these three archetypes. Jeff has connected to his animal instincts at the same time that his mind was able to see poetry in sorrow. He was not afraid of despair; rather, he felt it as a source of life. And we hear that clearly in his music. In his lyrics, Buckley talks of restlessness, of the unattainable, of what he has to let go of. The pain his voice transmits when howling like a wounded wolf describes what it feels like when we realize that the union between two souls culminates the moment the bodies are separated. It is at that very moment when the possibility of a mystical experience opens up, since … at least for an instant, we can feel our own soul.

“Relentless, endless joy peaking into tears, resting in calmness, a simmering beauty. If you let yourself listen with the whole of yourself, you will have the pure feeling of flight while firmly rooted to the ground. Your soul can fly outward, stringed to your ribcage like a shimmering kite in the shape of an open hand. Be still and listen to the evidence of your own holiness.”

Jeff Buckley

Chiron in Pisces tells us about an extremely sensitive Buckley. This astrological position describes an individual who fuses with the Whole and is able to stop feeling his own being. Compassion is natural. For Buckley, dogs abandoned to their fate, orphans, poverty, in short … everything that represents the vulnerability of an innocent being were situations to which he could not remain indifferent. This position creates difficulties in discerning which are our own emotions and which are not, opening the door to internal crises that do not even have roots in ourselves. However, Pluto-Mars-Uranus’s opposition to Chiron must have unconsciously allowed him to protect his emotional receptivity through physical tension.

Buckley’s sensitivity to the intangible was extreme. For him, “sensitivity isn’t about being wimpy. It’s about being so painfully aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom.” His Dark Moon, also in Pisces, reinforces the possibility that Buckley was permeable to the mood of other people. This may have caused the need to isolate himself, avoid crowds, or exacerbate nervousness and the pressure described by the Pluto-Mars-Uranus conjunction. When we see Jeff Buckley in the few interviews he’s given, we see fast, impatient, and nervous movements that exemplify Uranus’ electrified energy, almost like a high-voltage source. This same energy connects with his planets in Scorpio, which may indicate that the tension he felt acted as fuel for his craft. The distorted guitars that Buckley uses in many of his songs, describe this energy literally (as in the case of Eternal Life).

“We are spirits and the whole tension is that we don’t know that we are. Yet music is able to touch this.”

Jeff Buckley

Its nodal axis is in Scorpio (south node) / Taurus (north node). Scorpio is lava, the underground sea that when it rises to the surface, destroys everything in its path and when it finally cools, it creates spaces that can generate new forms of life. With the southern node in Scorpio, we are used to living through long periods of devastation. Thanks to this, we have developed a very deep understanding of what emotional purging is … if we allow ourselves to feel it completely. Many times, with the Scorpio node, we are stranded in despair, especially before the first 35 years of life. With his northern node in Taurus, Buckley came into the world to learn how to channel his powerful, ethereal, and tumultuous emotional torrent into the simplicity of life on Earth. He came to discover that the body is not an obstacle to feeling the soul … but that the body is the manifestation of its essence. Taurus symbolizes matter, touch, patience, self-esteem, valuing his own talents, the world of physical sensations, the arts, and especially the voice.

I don’t know if Jeff Buckley ever managed to sense the magnitude of his talent. Especially since, despite his genius, the opposition Moon Jupiter describes certain difficulties in exploiting his potential due to a lack of self-confidence. Unfortunately, he left this world when he was only 30 years old. But he left us a studio album, Grace, his legacy. After his death, several compilations and live recordings appeared.

I thought it was worth mentioning … On the day Jeff Buckley was born, Earth’s orbit passed through the fragments of Comet Tempel-Tuttle, providing the most spectacular meteor display in 133 years.