Today I’m going to share another connection between music and astrology, and how I followed the astrological clues to understand its meaning and appearance in my life. This comes thanks to all of you who suggested it after my first reaction video on System of a Down. I’ll tell the story of how a song by A Perfect Circle played a role in my life, along with the detective work I did to explore its astrological significance, the timing of the album’s release, and some fascinating synchronicities with the band’s lead singer.
The Noose (A Perfect Circle cover) by Peter Spiker: https://youtu.be/_L0pGKvGMt4?si=cBCKVvenAYQnNevh
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Transcript
Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].
And today I am going to share with you another interesting connection to a piece of music and the astrological clues that I followed to understand some of its meaning and appearance in my life. This is actually thanks to all of you who suggested this in one of the reaction videos that I did with System of a Down, which is a first reaction video that I did.
And so I'm going to tell you the story of how this song by Perfect Circle played a role in my life, and some of the interesting detective work that I did to explore the astrological significance of its appearance, some of the connections of the release of the album it comes from and some of the interesting astrological synchronicities with the lead singer as well of the band Perfect Circle.
So anyway, I think that you'll enjoy this, and you'll also get to hear a cool song if you've never heard it before. I'm going to show you a version of the song that I found from an amazingly talented musician who's actually covering the song. And I hope that you'll check his work out too, because if you like this kind of music, you will absolutely adore the covers that he does of a lot of different songs.
So anyway, on that note, before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments and reflections. Drop a comment and hit the like button. It really helps us grow. You can find transcripts of these daily talks on the website, which is NightlightAstrology.com, so check it out there.
And, yeah, let's go ahead and get into it. I'm going to give you some of the background first as a setup. Then we'll take a listen to this song called The Noose by A Perfect Circle and then I'll show you some of the really magical connections that I was able to discover digging deeper into this song's appearance in my life.
So first of all, after I did the reaction video to System of a Down's Chop Suey, someone said you should do something with Tool. I guess that's another kind of heavier band. And I was expressing, well, I don't really listen to metal music. I don't listen to heavy, edgier music.
And someone said, I'd love to see you do a reaction video to Tool. And I honestly, I'm not lying when I say this. I've never listened to Tool before. I just have never listened to them before. And yet, I know for a fact that the lead singer of the band Tool, or I think one of the front men whose name is Maynard James Keenan.
I think Maynard is a nickname. James Keenan might be his actual name, but anyway, I happen to know that the lead singer. I didn't know his name, I looked it up, but I happen to know that he was the front man of a band that I have heard and listened to called A Perfect Circle.
So let me tell you how A Perfect Circle came into my life, and the reason that immediately it struck a chord with me, and I thought, oh, that's astrological. There's the hair standing up on my skin, and something is here, and I need to go explore this.
In the spring of 2004 I was in a period of time in my life. I was in my early 20s, and I was suffering from addiction, and at that time in my life, in the spring of 2004 I had my first ever psychedelic experience with mushrooms. I've written about this in several of my books. Told the story before on the channel, so I won't rehash it, but it was an incredible experience.
Unlike what I thought was going to happen was just taking another drug and getting high. It ended up being a very revelatory, healing and eye opening experience, paradoxically very sobering. That was the first of a number of experiences between May of 2004 or May, I should say maybe it was April, the spring of 2004 and May of 2005 when I drank ayahuasca for the first time and came home essentially on a path of sobriety and recovery.
So within the year between my first psychedelic experience and a year later, drinking Ayahuasca for the first time, I was gradually detoxing and purging myself of addiction and the reason that Tool slash A Perfect Circle and the lead singer being the same guy, came to my mind and really stood out to me is because that first night, the tail end of the night, coming down from the mushroom experience, for at least an hour, I sat by myself, staring into a candle. That's psychedelics for you.
I sat staring into a candle, and a person who had been at my house that evening had left a CD there, and I popped it in, and it was A Perfect Circle, an album called The 13th Step, I think it was called. And I had no idea who this band was, or what this was, and I was just curious and in another dimension.
So I turned it on, and I came across the song called The Noose. And the song was so moving to me, so deeply. It touched something in me at a very deep level. I ended up. Remember CD players, you could press repeat. So I ended up staring into a candle for at least an hour, maybe hour and a half, coming off from the last effects of the mushrooms, listening to this song, The Noose by A Perfect Circle, over and over and over and over.
So the reason that this stood out to me when someone said Tool, because I was like, oh, that's the guy from Perfect Circle and oh, my god, that was the, quite literally, one of the first songs. I think it was the first song that I ever really had a prolonged psychedelic experience with. Know what I mean? Like, this was the first time where I ever was taken somewhere really, really profound while experiencing psychedelics and hearing a song, so immediately I was like, Oh, that would be interesting.
Because I wonder what was happening in the sky at that time, and I wonder what the astrological connections between myself and that band might be, or the release of that album might be, because it was very, very moving to me.
Here's the thing, as all of this was coming up, and I was thinking, Oh, this might make an interesting reaction video. Here's the thing is, I could barely remember the lyrics of the song. I hadn't heard the song for many years, and I have no idea the backstory of the album, the meaning of the song, nothing.
I have no idea about the backstory or personal life of the lead singer or of Tool or anything, and when I was listening to it long ago, I did not know what the song was about that night, when I was listening to it, it was touching something in me that was not yet conscious, and I can now see through the research I did, probably some of why it was, excuse me, speaking to me so much, but I didn't understand it that night.
So I hope that the discovery process I'm about to lead you down will be a good illustration of astrology and fun and interesting. And if you haven't heard this song, it's pretty beautiful, although it is sort of dark and haunting at the same time. So that is the backstory.
What I would like to do for you is, I want to play you the song. So I found this cover of the song by this guy, Peter Spiker, and I'm hoping that maybe even just using a cover version of it that I really like will help with the copyright thing. It's really like tricky to do reaction videos with the way copyright strikes work and stuff like that.
So I'm trying to navigate that situation. And hopefully, if Peter sees me using this, he'll appreciate that I'm using it artistically, and also hopefully pointing people to his very beautiful work. He does so many good covers. So check his work out. I liked a number of his other wonderful performances, but this is someone covering the song The Noose.
So I'm going to show it to you now from A Perfect Circle, and you can imagine me long ago, going through my first psychedelic experience listening to this song on repeat. This is an acoustic version of the song.
I'm so glad to see you well, overcome and completely silent now, with heaven's hell you cast your demons out, and not to pull your halo down around your neck and tug you off your cloud, but I'm more than just a little curious how you're planning to go about making your amends to the dead. To the dead.
Recall the details. As if they're wrong. Someone else's atrocious stories. Now you stand reborn before us all so glad to see you well. And not to pull your halo down around your neck and tug you to the ground. But I'm more than just a little curious how you're planning to go about making your amends to the dead, to the dead.
To the dead. With your head halo, slipping down your head halo, slipping slipping your hair halo, slipping down your head halo, slipping your hair halo, slipping. Halo, slipping down your head halo, slipping your head slipping down your head halo. Your halo to choke you now.
Wow. Absolutely amazing. That cover is by Peter Spiker, just again to throw him some credit there. And I just loved, not only that, but he has a lot of other really good covers. So that song, that's the only connection to Tool that I have. And in fact, I don't even know the whole album 13th Step that that song comes from. I really don't. I just know that song from this random encounter that I had that night.
So I was thinking about this, and I was thinking to myself, Well, I wonder why that song was so remarkable to me, like, what does that? What is that? Where's that coming from? I did a little research, and it turns out that this song from the album The 13th Step is an album referring in the 13th step to the 12 Steps of recovery, and the album is about addiction.
I can promise you, I had zero idea that that was the case until just now, until just now making this video and doing this research. So there I was, in the spring of 2004 having this psychedelic experience that was making me aware for the first time that my body was filled with drugs and alcohol, that I was walking a path of self destruction.
And here was this song that meant so much to me, that was on an album that I had no idea was an allusion to the recovery process, and that not only that, but many of the songs on the album are about addiction and recovery. This one in particular, I want to read you the lyrics, because they're so powerful.
So glad to see you well, overcome and completely silent now, with heaven's help, you cast your demons out. And this is a reference, as I understood it through again, just doing a little bit of research here to someone who's gotten sober and not to pull your halo down around your neck and tug you off your cloud, but I'm more than just a little curious how you're planning to go about making your amends to the dead.
You see one of the steps in recovery? I can't recall which one off top my head, but one of the steps in recovery, I have been part of Al-Anon for a while now, and certainly the process of recovery has played a big role in my life and other paradigms as well, through things like yoga, Ayahuasca, etc, is that there is a part of the process that involves making amends when and where you can when and where it makes sense without hurting people to do so.
So there's a reference here to making amends. It's interesting how prophetic that would be for me, since a good portion of the next few years of my life would include that theme as I became sober, and here I was just soul sucked into this song that I had no idea was referencing this.
Recall the deeds as if they're all someone else's atrocious stories. Now you stand reborn before us all so glad to see you well and not to pull your halo down around your neck and tug you to the ground. But I'm more than just a little curious how you're planning to go about making your amends to the dead.
So this song, there's a cynical edge to this song that in hindsight, I can also really appreciate, because one of the early stages of recovery for many people is initially you feel really good because you're sober, you're healthy, you're healing, you feel like you've cast your demons out, literally, in the case of Ayahuasca ceremonies, you can feel like you have cast demons out.
But then there is this, yeah, like almost predictable way in which many people going through a process like this will become self righteous and start feeling like that person that they was, now I'm better than that person. And there can be like a pride that creeps in, an almost like an arrogance, like a superiority trip, because you've transformed and now you're maybe even high on yourself.
I would actually go through that over the next two years in my own way, in the same way that I think many people do who go through a process of recovery again. This song was almost predicting the future for me, and I didn't know it. I didn't even know that that's what this song was about.
And obviously the last part of the song was with your halo slipping down, your halo slipping your halo slipping down. And at the end it says, to choke you now. And the lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, I think it was him. There was someone in the band that mentioned that they heard someone in a recovery group, or knew someone who's in a recovery group, or something like that, who used that phrase like, don't let your halo slip down and choke you or something. Don't choke on your own halo slipping down, which is just the kind of thing.
Honestly, as someone who's been in Al-Anon for a while, just the kind of thing you could hear a wise person in a recovery group saying, Don't let your sense that you're now above it all slip down and choke you, this reminder of the danger of pride and self righteousness around recovery addiction.
So this to me immediately, when I did this research, I was just blown away, because I was like, wow, that's profound. But now I want to show you the astrology. Because, to me, the astrology of all of this is where it gets even more, you know, even more magical, truly.
I need to give you a little bit more backstory for this to make sense. So let me just get my charts organized here. So in the spring of 2004 when I had that experience, the major transit that was happening in my chart. I'm going to show it to you right now. I couldn't find the exact date of the psychedelic experience. I just know which month it was in.
So I'm going to take you back to the approximate month in which this occurred for me, and we'll just do our best with that. It's close enough. The transit is very obvious. So it was April of 2004 that I had this psychedelic experience.
The first and foremost, I researched my own chart, and I just thought, Okay, well, you know what was happening, and the transit that was, to me, most profound was Saturn, opposite the moon, one of the archetypal themes of Saturn and the moon will bring up the phenomenon of emotion, emotional attachment patterns, family karma patterns, health of the body and Saturn will often provoke a heavier or weightier exploration of those themes.
What does healthy dependence, emotionally or physically look like? What does nourishment look like? What is the family backstory? What are the hard or dark elements of family, karma, et cetera? So I have addiction in my family. I was struggling with addiction. I was struggling with poor health.
And all of those things were to me the most when I look at the transits at the time that I was listening to this song, having this first psychedelic experience within a year of which would lead to my experience with Ayahuasca and sobriety. This was really, for me, the first step in that process, and Saturn was opposite the moon.
Now, the day after this psychedelic experience, I called my mother, and I told her that I was sick, that I was unwell, spiritually, psychologically, existentially. I didn't necessarily reveal all of the levels of addiction that I was dealing with, but I told her that I needed help. Reached out to my mom for help, as Saturn was opposing my moon after that psychedelic experience, and within a couple of weeks, she arranged to come and help me move to a family piece of land out in the country where I would end up living while I decided to go back to school, to graduate school in creative writing.
That passage of Saturn to the moon would happen as I literally moved and my mom came and got me. Now I want to share with you part two of this interesting story. This is the release date for the album 13th Step that the song came from. It was September 16, 2003, some months prior to this psychedelic experience.
And what I noticed right away was that Saturn was basically in the same swath of degrees and also opposing my moon. At that time, I thought, huh, it's interesting that the only connection that's really standing out to me is that when I heard it, Saturn was opposing my moon. And when the album was released, Saturn was opposing my moon. Well, why would that be? It just felt a little abstract.
Well, then I realized I was living outside of Chicago in an apartment, and at that time, when Saturn opposed my moon, I also called my mother and told her that I was sick, not divulging the addictions, but just reaching out for help psychologically and emotionally. And she came and stayed with me for a week, and it bolstered me and gave me support.
But I also got some, she was a nurse, you know, so I got some mothering, like, this is how you should be taking care of yourself. And I knew she was right, but it was kind of hard to accept. But she came and sort of mothered and nursed me during a time where I was really self destructive, and it was that month as Perfect Circle released that album, that Saturn was opposing my moon for the first time.
The second time in the spring when I heard the song from that album and then she came back and moved me home. That would be the most important sequence in terms of moving home and starting a path to sobriety. So pretty amazing connection.
But still, it's like I felt like there should be something more about the band, about the lead singer, something that connects me, maybe to them at a deeper level, or to the archetypes that I was experiencing and the archetypes of some of the band members. It just felt like, well, that's a neat connection. I can see how it made a difference in my life. But what's the overlap, you know, maybe with the band or the I felt like there could be something more.
So I took a look at Maynard James Keenan's chart, and this is what I found. When I looked at his chart. I found right away. This is a rectified chart at 12 o'clock, so any later than this, and it would be even more appropriate. Any earlier, it wouldn't be a huge deal either, but certainly any later than noon, and it would fit even more than it already does at a noon chart. So it's a rectified chart anyway, but he has the moon at around the exact same degree space that opposes my Moon in Capricorn, and means that Saturn would have been on his moon during the process of this year and the release of the album and the coinciding of the events that I experienced.
So I thought, huh, that's wild. I wonder what Maynard James Keenan, in addition to the album release, might have been experiencing in 2003 and sure enough, what I found was that in the summer of 2003 as Saturn entered cancer and would have started coming onto his moon, his mother died. Wow.
And his mother, who I think her name is Judith, and there's actually a song that he wrote about her as well. Had been a Christian woman who 29 years earlier, a year in her life, when, by the way, Saturn was last in cancer, coincided would have been on his moon. In other words, coincided with a major aneurysm that she had that left her paralyzed for the rest of her life, and 29 years later, when Saturn returned to cancer and would have hit his moon again, she passed.
And I thought, wow, so there's a definite connection in his life during this year, the release of this album with his mother passing, and a profound synchronicity in terms of family karma, some mom karma, you know, that is present, right? It's, you can see how the threads are sort of connected. I was like, wow, that that's really, that's really something.
In fact, he ended up opening a wine, what do you call it, a vineyard, and I think somewhat recently, made a documentary about this too. I watched part of it. He ended up making a vintage of wine, if that's what they're called, a bottling that was named after his mother, and when she passed, he spread her ashes in the vineyard, something like that.
So anyway, her passing occurred in June of 2003 as Saturn was present around the moon. So there was a major connection to mother, home, family, karma that was coinciding with the release of that album that year. That was another startling connection.
But then the next connection really blew me away. I thought, Well, I'm just curious. I wonder if I can find her birth chart. She was born on the same day as my mother. So that really blew me away. I looked up Judith Marie Keenan, and found that she was born on the same day as my mom.
So I don't know. Here's the thing, like all of that is just really profound to me. The fact that any of that should be there, somehow able to be seen, felt and appreciated through this language, is enough for me. I don't need to know exactly why all these things happen or what exactly the connections are.
This was an album about addiction and recovery. I didn't even know it at the time. It was a warning against different difficult aspects of the recovery process. That would be prophetic. I didn't know it at the time, Saturn in cancer was opposing my moon, and as it opposed my moon, I reached out to my mom for help, because I was struggling and that album was being released.
And then when I had that psychedelic experience, it began a process of recovery from addiction. I called my mom for help. Saturn was opposing my moon. The lead singer of that song in that year when that album came out, lost his mother, and his mother was born on the same day as mine.
She had been paralyzed 29 years earlier under Saturn in cancer, and when Saturn in cancer came back around, in both cases, to Maynard James Keenan's Moon in cancer, his mother was paralyzed and then passed away. This somehow links the themes of addiction in my own journey with my own mother and my own family karma and mother's support, to Maynard's grief and loss of his mother in the same year, and the themes of addiction and recovery in ways that I absolutely don't understand.
But the fact that any of this can be seen or drawn out is amazing to me. So when someone suggests that I listen to Tool, and I thought, Well, I haven't listened to Tool, but I've listened to one of the other projects that came out of Tool, this song that changed my life. I wonder what that song was about.
We don't always need the threads to tie together neatly. What matters is noticing them, honoring them, and that simple reminder that our lives are woven into something larger and mysterious and profound that connects us to so many people that we can scarcely see how many of these beautiful threads exist.
So I hope this was inspiring and interesting. And shout out again to that lovely musician, Peter Spiker, for the cover that he did. I highly recommend going and listening to the actual song. Until I figure out a way of doing reaction videos with the copyright craziness, I might have to find some workarounds. So hopefully this works, we'll find out.
All right, that's it. Hope you're having a good one. Talk to you later. Bye.




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