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One of my favourite Virgos- Leonard Cohen

Posted by Shannon Cunningham on

Thinking of one of my favourite Virgos- Leonard Cohen. 

It’s odd to have someone I never met hold such a place in my heart, but that’s Leonard. For my 50th birthday a few years back, my husband gifted me a visit to Hydra, where Leonard wrote some of his best work. My mind was full of his poetry and music the entire time we were there. And I was not alone in my quest to find some pieces of Leonard.

One Monday afternoon in the middle of September, searching out his apartment, we encountered 4 other parties looking for the same place. It was not clearly marked so we were all circling around with the directions we had been given by locals, trying to match it up to pictures we had seen. It was pretty comical.... Here's a pic of Harrison and I outside the door to his flat:

He’s been on my mind a lot lately. I wonder what he would have to say about where we are now. What kind of poetry and songs he would write. How long he would sit, blackening the page, throwing away stanza after stanza searching for the right words.

Leonard was his harshest critic- in true Virgo style- and struggled his whole life trying to say something true. Something real. To my mind- he was a blazing success. He saw the world for what it is and tried to explain it to us. 


His Virgo Sun conjunct his Ascendant meant that what you saw was largely what you got. There was a strong congruence between his public self and his true nature. Venus was just one second away from Neptune in Virgo at the time of his birth, a signature shared by many profound artists. It can also create a kind of amnesia in love, where former partners begin dissolving into mist once they’re in the rearview mirror. Neptune conjunct Venus natives can be beautifully romantic, but also elusive.

His Moon in Pisces, opposite his Sun, created a painful tension between his emotional world and his ego that constantly drove him inward, plumbing his depths in search of relief, meaning, or transcendence. Mars in Leo propelled him forward and gave him that fiery solitary presence onstage. Mercury and Jupiter in Libra inclined him toward lofty reflections on justice, balance, love, and the shifting power dynamics between people - both Godly big and I and thou small. And Uranus at 0 degrees Taurus, a critical degree, vibrated through him as a kind of primal wildness: fully inhabiting and celebrating the body, then trying just as passionately to leave and transcend it.

What a complex and beautiful man:

 

I think I'll walk in the ravine this morning listening to his album Thanks for the Dance. Happens to the Heart puts a lump in my throat every time.

P.S. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and Leonard Cohen all had Moon in Pisces. That placement seems to hear the music underneath life. MJ actually had his Sun in Virgo as well... Perfectionism that tortured them but paid off, big time. 

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