God Only Knows I Want to Take You Higher.

   

 Two musical legends passed this week.  I can't get around how parallel their careers seemed to be.  Born almost exactly 9 months apart, (so their Sun's were in a tight square,) Brian Wilson brought the whitest music possible forward into the psychedelic era, while Sly crafted an integrated invasion of funky black soul into the 60's realm of the entheogenic release.  Both of them sadly had difficulties maintaining their time in the Sun however.  In examining possible connections between their natal charts and lives, the fact that they were both born while Jupiter was in Cancer was a stunning revelation.  In fact; Sly died the day Jupiter returned to its exaltation in Cancer, which brings me to the point of this post, the metaphysics behind why recurrence transits are so prevalent in the death charts of people.  Just the amount of people who die within a week of their birthday alone is astounding when you start to examine it.  Jupiter in Cancer is widely considered an extremely positive transit (waxing square to Saturn and Neptune notwithstanding,) so why would it indicate death?  For starters, the Jupiter return is a reckoning of one's choices, and whether one has integrated wisdom from the follies of one's life or not.  Both men suffered greatly as casualties of recreational drug use, which is certainly not the purpose of this post.  If anything, I want to highlight that the very fact that recurrence transits correlate with death so frequently actually implies that perhaps death can be a welcome release from the physical plane.  The comfort of a return of the planets to your own natal home base, a gentle guiding hand into the next realm.
    Sly, unfortunately does not have a timed chart, but Brian does, and the amount of recurrence transits he was undergoing is astounding, so I'll focus this post mainly on Brian Wilson's chart. 

   Notable is his Taurus rising with Venus ruling conjunct the ascendant.  The lush beauty of his compositions is readily described here as Taurean of the highest degree.  Again; we see my favourite artistic super power signature in his chart; Moon in analytical Virgo.  The ability of the colour of Virgo to be able to manifest in reality the emotional visions of the Moon should never be over-looked, especially when ruled by a relentlessly novelty seeking Mercury in Gemini, in his first Placidean house no less.  The Moon with Rahu is interesting.  While the nodes certainly imply all kinds of harsh circumstances, the Moon on a node means the Moon is ON the ecliptic, which can be catastrophic when the Sun is there, but also absolutely implies a very powerful Moon, soaking up the stars in that line of the sky we have focused most of our astrological conscious energy towards, in the fifth house of creativity no less.  (Conjunct Zosma and Coxa, which tell a powerful tale I'll leave to you to research if you are so inclined.)  Rahu wants more and more.  One can see Brian Wilson in the ecstasy of trying to accomplish his great vision of Smile here, envisioning grander and grander ideas, which no one else around him understands or wants to spend the exuberant amount of time and money to bring into the light.  His fall away from the spotlight would follow this great disappointment.  Ketu, directly on his eleventh house cusp of social groups shows this lack of support from his social group at this time.
   Of course, his Moon is squared by Saturn and Uranus.  The square to Saturn indicates difficult internal emotional processing, but can also lead to an enhanced ability to ground the imagination into reality.  The square to Uranus shows great inspiration, but also great instability.  His twelfth house, which can represent mental illness, is ruled by Mars, which is directly conjunct Pluto on the IC, next to Chiron.  The brutal and abusive authoritarian father he had can be seen here clearly, laying the traumatic ground work for his later internal processing issues.  The IC is our deepest, core motivation, umbilical cord to your ancestry.  To have such trauma encoded in his chart there ensured a childhood he would spend his whole life running away from.  Brian said he would sing so loudly on stage because he was trying to drown out the voices in his own head.  Lord 12 conjunct Pluto and Chiron on the IC in Leo.  Here we see how shining on stage was his path to curing his own illness, or at least keeping it at bay.

   All but one planet in Brian's chart is below the horizon.  It is not surprising with a below the horizon night chart that someone's vision is not understood, and has a difficult time manifesting. The dividing line, his ascendant hovers in the extremely active narrow zone between Algol and the Pleiades.  One offers the rejection of societal norms, while the other offers the profound ability to keen the sorrows of loss.  Either way, they are both extremely powerful points with intense artistic potential through pain.  Venus is the one planet rising in his chart, the light bringer of the Morning Star, in Taurus.  Whether you loved his music or not, everyone can see the lush beauty of the tonality of Brian at his best.  The glorious texture of the music is undeniable. 

   Now we don't have an exact time or cause of death yet, but we do know it happened on June 11th, which was a full Moon widely squaring his own Moon.

   The amount of recurrence transits here are stunning.  He was just over a week away from his birthday, Venus is in Taurus, Jupiter is in Cancer, Mars in Leo.  The nodes are approaching his nodal opposition, and he was experiencing his Pluto opposition, which is also Pluto opposed his Mars.  I do hope that his passing was peaceful, and signaled a cessation of the voices in his head.  What he brought out of his internal domain is of such stellar beauty, no one can deny that there were angels singing to him through the demonic clamour.  What beauty he struggled to bring into this realm will be appreciated forever.  
   One need look no further than this glory to know it is true, a song which can never be overplayed. 

And in case you thought I forgot about Sly, trust me, I'll never forget about Sly.  He was rock solid.

   Because there is no birth time for Sly, we are lacking some serious information about his chart, but there's still some fascinating stuff to see. 

   At Noon on the day of his birth, the Moon was exactly conjunct Jupiter, both ruling and exalting Jupiter here.  No matter the time that day, he had a Moon Jupiter conjunction ruling his Pisces Sun and Mercury.  It would be amazing to see the houses this beautiful alignment ruled, but regardless; we can see the tendency of Cancer here to take care of those one considers family, whether blood or not, with the high minded, global consciousness of Pisces at its best.  Sly formed one of the first widely successful bands, the Family Stone, which incorporated multiple ethnicities, and women into a cohesive and profound pop sensation. 

 

   It's all there in his chart, along with an Aries Venus in its own decanic dignity despite being in exile.  He made music of a profoundly joyous and uplifting music with a relentlessly hard Aries edge.  Fearless, and always wanting more; this is Venus in Aries, unafraid to go out and get what it wants.  It stuns me to see that while Brian was born with Pluto conjunct Mars very exactly, Sly was born with Mars opposed exactly.  Given the parallel tracks of these two men, this alone feels like a stellar acknowledgement of racial privilege.  Brian, born white in California with an in to the record industry, his Martial inclination to create is with the Plutonian power structure, while Sly had to struggle against it.  One wonders if this isn't descriptive of one man being carried by the recording industry after significant difficulties ensued, while the other was resolutely left behind. 
   I truly hope that with Pluto conjunct Sly's Mars, abducting his fire into the netherworld, it was Jupiter returning to the nurturing waves of Cancer which took his hand and led him into a glorious after-life.  Surely he deserved it for this track alone.  This song ends in the single greatest drop of all time.  Try not to dance until you cry when it hits.  Rest in glory fabled warriors of sheer beauty.  Rest in glory.