by Deb Hardy
I first learned about Jeff Buckley in a documentary about Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah. Hallelujah became publicly associated with Jeff Buckley because of his frequent performance of this amazing song. It was featured on his Grace album released just prior to his approaching Saturn Return.
The composite chart between Jeff Buckley and his father Tim (both with AA chart data) features Pluto exactly on the Ascendant, squaring the Nodal axis closely on the MC – where Saturn is also prominently positioned.
Mark Jones teaches that Pluto squaring the nodes in a composite chart can represent the potential for father-son dynamics. These dynamics, however, seem fatefully, mysteriously, or secretly tied to their shared physical deaths and perhaps the psychological effects of living in the shadow of a famous deceased father.
Pluto seems so literal here, but Pluto’s secret essence is deeply buried and cannot be literalized. Both deaths occurred near their Saturn Returns. Tim from a drug overdose, while Jeff was “accidentally swept away,” dying from drowning in the Mississippi River. The so-called “Together Ascendant in Pisces (DSC) evokes a vast watery-mythic Neptune dimension that speaks to both addiction and drowning but also a deep longing to merge with the spiritual unknown.
This father-son composite seems to represent a shared legacy of unfulfilled maturity, potential empowerment/disempowerment, and profound suffering. The power struggle for Jeff may have been psychologically buried – feeling the weight and the urge to emulate or exceed his father’s talent.
One cannot rationally explain their entangled fates, but the Composite resonates with some eerily fated component as if Jeff is unconsciously “filling the empty space his father’s body made.” Proving one’s worth and value might have been a secret or unspoken and evolving core wound.
The nodal axis in Taurus and Scorpio squaring Pluto has some remnants revealing issues of self-worth, shared values, and feelings of trust and betrayal as magnetic life themes.
Pluto rising suggests the urge for resourcing those deeply buried treasures often associated with the underworld and the potential of experiencing the Grace that sometimes arises from the aftermath.
I can’t help imagining what drew Jeff to the Hallelujah lyrics but it is clear to me, especially after viewing the “official video” of this recording, that he resonates with some secret essence of Pluto’s domain in a way that can only be imagined.
Although Hallelujah was a featured song on his Grace album, it did not gain full recognition until after his death (although it was a cult favorite among his most devoted fans).
The video features two lit candles in the background during his performance of Hallelujah. The sacred tribute is akin to a prayer and/or affirmation honoring the coexistence of suffering and beauty . . . “The holy and the broken Hallelujah.”
