When I was starting out in astrology I read a book by Isabel Hickey that claimed anything to do with the 12th house was a question of service or suffering.
As one who has a Capricorn Sun and Moon there, I was always looking for more options.
But it seems that this word service can cover all kinds of things.
Like members of the royal family claiming to be devoting their lives to it, for being photographed once every three months walking to church, while spending the rest of the time throwing tantrums because your fifty cuddly toys are not arranged in exactly the right place when you come home from your latest spot of underage trafficking.
So what kind of service are we actually talking about with the 12th house?
The chart begins with the Ascendant and the emergence of the self.
Just like with the 1st sign, people with a strong 1st house have very clear personal themes that demand to be asserted and expressed.
The 12th sign and house requires a giving up of the self and it’s sense of separateness from the whole.
In a way you could say that the same thing applies to everyone in the end, but I feel that true 12th housers carry with them something of this theme throughout their lives, not just at the end.
If we think of service as simply letting go of that separate sense of the self, I believe that Hickey was right. It is a case of service or suffering.
Someone with a stellium there will feel this acutely.
“For a singer-songwriter who only made three albums, Nick Drake continues to cast a long shadow. A mixture of extreme shyness and difficulties with mental health meant that his beautiful, meditative and deeply melancholic take on mystical English folk slipped through the commercial cracks during his lifetime. There is no known footage of him performing live and very few interviews exist. Drake died from an overdose of antidepressants in 1974, aged just 26, but since his death, his music has found new audiences as successive generations have discovered an enigmatic but immaculate body of work.”
“John Martyn (who in 1973 wrote the title song of his album Solid Air about Drake) described Drake in this period as the most withdrawn person he had ever met.
Don’t know what’s going ’round in your mind
And I can tell you don’t like what you find
When you’re moving through solid air, solid air”
Nick Drake’s musical genius is to be found in the close Sun/Uranus conjunction, but his acute sensitivity and suffering comes from the 12th house stellium, combined with a Scorpio Moon and Cancer rising and the Mercury/Venus square with Neptune.
The exact quincunx between the Sun and the 8th house ruler with that Moon suggests that he wouldn’t last long on this planet.
“Drake’s third and final album Pink Moon is a bleak, minimal affair, seemingly wrenched from the depths of mental illness, it’s a reflection of his brilliance and the uncomfortably intimate nature of the material”
Musician and friend Richard Thompson reflected “I was disturbed. Part of what had made Nick’s earlier music so appealing was a balance between dark and light. The sadness inherent in the music had been veiled behind beautiful arrangements and an intriguing voice that drew you in. However, his third album seemed a stark cry for help, the voice of a man teetering on the edge of sanity.”
The chart for the release of Pink Moon has two T Squares.
One involving a Saturn/Neptune opposition and an apex Pisces Sun.
The 2nd involving an exact Venus/Uranus opposition to an apex Cancer Moon.
These patterns suggest someone who is far too sensitive to survive in this world.
At the time that Pink Moon was released , “Drake had a nervous breakdown, and was hospitalised for five weeks. He was initially believed to have major depression, although his former therapist suggested he had schizophrenia.”
Just over two years later, Nick died of an overdose. “The coroner stated that the cause of death was “Acute amitriptyline poisoning—self-administered when suffering from a depressive illness” and concluded a verdict of suicide.”
The Sun/Neptune square in the Pink Moon chart was triggered by the Sun, Venus and Jupiter joining with Neptune.
Transit Pluto was square to Drake’s Venus and Saturn was conjunct his Ascendant.
Could his fate have been avoided?
Probably not, but his true 12th house service was to leave a musical offering so simple, so hauntingly beautiful, that his legacy lives on even half a century after his death.
For Nick Drake, a Pink Moon meant it was service and suffering.
Posted on 12 Mar 2024
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