Jimmy Page - Led Zeppelin
howling energy, sex, and death
Led Zeppelin's 1st LP came out in 1968. Widely described as hard rock, psychedelic, and heavy metal, they were immediately loved for their driving intensity and hippy machismo.
Jimmy Page was their star guitarist, who had already made major contributions to many of the stars of the day, doing session work on songs for: The Rollingstones, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker, The Yardbirds, Who, the Kinks, Marianne Faithfull, Donavan, Brenda Lee, Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger", Lulu, and Petula Clark's "Downtown".
Page has 2 parivartanas and 4 retrograde planets! His chart is full of combinations for success and prominence. But his chart also promises turbulence and relationship chaos, and intense sexual lust.
Parivartana yoga happens when 2 planets exchange signs. It is as though the planets are in their own signs, which gives great strength to a chart and links the themes of the houses that are exchanged. With 2 Parivartanas, that makes it like there are 4 planets in their own signs, bestowing enormous power and potential to planets and houses involved.
Venus is the lord of the chart and makes Raja Yoga combinations with Mars and Saturn. Raja yogas are a combination that can raise the status, capacity, and wealth of an individual, especially when the planets are strong, as they are here. Mars and Saturn also make a powerful Raja yoga with each other.
Page’s 1st house has Libra, and Venus is its lord. Libra is the 7th sign, aligning it with 7th house themes: partnerships, romantic, and business, as well as sex and desire. Venus is the planet of love and the arts. Influences on the 1st house and its lord will have a prominent influence on the individual’s life.
I think one of the most intense combinations you can have in a chart is Mars and Saturn. He's got them both retrograde and in the 8th house! Their music was very sexual, full of mournful guitar and songs of dysfunctional relationships and wanton encounters. What's more, Mars exchanges with the lord of the chart, Venus. Venus sits in the 8th sign of Scorpio, famous as the darkest and most intense sign, similar in its themes to the 8th house. When Venus connects with Mars or Saturn, you get a passion combination, especially with Mars and Saturn in H8, the house of cold sexual encounters. The band's fame was in part its intensity and its drugs, sex, and rock ' n ' roll lifestyle. Their debauchery and hedonism are legendary. See how the house for partners, H7, the lord of H7, goes to H8, a house of unleashed chaos, at times. All of his business partners, ie, band mates, were consuming vast amounts of drugs, resulting in the drummer dying from substance abuse and Page falling into severe heroin addiction. All 8th house themes. His taste for underage girls is a profound sign of his immaturity, and we see the lord of his 7th in the 8th, with Saturn, while Venus gets the influence of that 8th house. These days, he'd go to jail.
Having 4 retrograde planets are a striking feature of this chart. Retrograde is counted as being as powerful as exaltation, but has a wildness, hard to predict, intensity, and raw power. Some possible qualities of retrograde: Oblique, curled, ornate, fine distinctions, subtle, nuanced. Corked, curved, bent, unique. Different, eccentric, evasive. Ambiguous, commitment phobic, tortuous, and twisted. Deviation, meandering. It gives these results vexatiously, fitfully, sporadically. Retrograde mallefics are said to be more malefic.
His Moon is in the sign of Gemini, a mutable air sign, considered the most changeable and unstable sign. Gemini is a vata air element=roaming/ restless/ instability/ independent spirit, in his 9th house of foreign travel. he traveled constantly, and his music was often restless and full of changes. The Moon is the fastest-moving planet. His Moon is very bright, giving it strength and enhancing the house it sits in, the house it aspects, and the house it owns, the 10th house.
Vayu, aka vata, God of Wind, blows away foes with a loudly bellowing voice, making a deafening sound, a daunting force, moves about violently, creative, spontaneous, freedom/roaming at will/ swift and constant moving. He likes to drink the soma with Indra. The band had several mournful songs about loss, restlessness, leaving, and unstable, ungrounded love. Page was also known for his dramatic stage movements during concerts.
Moon is in the nakshatra Ardra; the deity is Rudra, the howler, known for weeping, and roaring storm sounds. dealers of primal energies, the watery tear drop implies loss or disappointment, strong feelings which may be overwhelming. Page's guitar playing no doubt expressed his inner emotional world, and this Moon in Ardra is part of the longing and emotional energy the band was famous for.
By the fall of 1968, the band had a contract and was off and running for the next 12 years. Their rise was continuous, gaining them all enormous status and wealth. In Jupiter Sun the band was formed. In Jupiter Moon, the Zeppelin was launched with their first album, which was a huge success and is to this day considered one of the greatest rock albums.
Jupiter dasa, Sun bhukti mark a very auspicious birth of the band. Jupiter is a natural benefic, exchanging signs with his friend Sun, creating a powerful yoga. They form a favorable 5-9 relationship, Jupiter being 9 houses away from the Sun and the Sun 5 houses away from Jupiter. This is a cooperative relationship, suggesting there will be a smooth and easy dynamic between the 2 planets in their mutual time period. Adding on to this in a positive way is the fact that Sun and Jupiter are friends, and friends are supportive and cooperative. Another thing to add is that Jupiter aspects the Sun while the Sun sits in Jupiter’s sign. This is called a technical sambandha. The Sun is under the control of Jupiter and will do his bidding. Jupiter is a powerful benefic. There’s a principle that a retrograde benefic becomes more benefic and hence more beneficial.
A strong Jupiter will bless all that he touches through his house placement, his aspects, and the nakshatra he sits in. Indeed, we see the themes of the 3rd house, 5th house, and 7th house all went extremely well for him. There’s a nadi principle that a retrograde planet also aspects from the previous house, H10 in this case. That would mean Jupiter is aspecting houses 2-7, plus H11. In his Jupiter dasa, he was able to achieve great fame (H11), wealth (H2), excel in the performing arts (H3), buy an old mansion and fabulous vehicles (H4), excel in creativity (H5), and be free of debt and obstacles (H6), create a lasting and powerful business partnership with his band and manager. The exchange between the 2 Kama houses, H3 and H11, suggests that a powerful stream of desires and pleasures would be experienced.
But all the while, as Jupiter was bestowing him the glories of fame, in the hidden 8th house were lurking the seeds of his fall. Mars and Saturn are 2 natural malefics, sitting very powerfully in the most difficult house, the dreaded 8th house. These 2 planets are tamasic in nature, as is the 8th house. This combination suggests a turn into a darker, constricting, and hard-to-control group of forces working on Mr. Page. While the intensity of Mars and Saturn served him in his Jupiter dasa, in his Saturn dasa, this same 8th house became his undoing. Saturn sits on the midpoint of his 8th house, further empowering Saturn to express his destructive qualities. On 24 September 1980, in his Saturn Venus dasa bhukti, the drummer died, likely from a fatal combination of drugs and alcohol abuse. At this same time, Page was addicted to heroin and was losing his grip. The band disbanded.
Saturn brought the death of his band partner and the death of the band. Saturn is the significator of death, in the house of death, with death inflictor, aka maraka Mars. The 8th house is also a house of addiction and deep turmoil. He recounts this as the most difficult time of his life. Saturn was transiting his house of loss, H12.
In his post-Zeppelin years, Page was never able to achieve any real success on his own. He retains the status of R&R royalty and is living out his years as a wealthy man.
