Ludwig van Beethoven was already well on his way to being deaf as a post in 1817 when he received the commission to start the work, and for whatever reason, he didn’t even roll up his sleeves and get busy with it until the fall of 1822. Much of it wasn’t even truly original work. Ludwig lifted an idea from his own Choral Fantasy (Opus 80) written in 1808. The lyrics came from Friedrich Schiller’s poetry… a piece that other composers had already been setting to music for over thirty years by that point. So really, it’s not like Beethoven really had anything new to say, was it?
Despite it all, in late 1822 transiting Jupiter was square Ludwig van Beethoven’s Neptune, and transiting Saturn was beginning the trine to his Neptune. Throughout the next year, Jupiter moved from the square to the sextile of Ludwig’s Neptune, and Saturn was still forming the trine.
“He does no work. All he does is scribble incomprehensible phrases. Then he bellows this stupid, childish tune at the top of his lungs… dadadada NAnanana, nanananaNAA na… He says this is the motif of a grand symphony. I think it’s ridiculous.”
-Immortal Beloved
But: something amazing can happen if you are lucky enough to have been born at a time when, at some point in your life, both transiting Jupiter and Saturn are doing good things for your Neptune.
Hey — you know that project Beethoven had been sitting on for years? That thing he’d avoided for so long… what with all the health problems and the deafness and the lack of money for his live performances taking up so much of his time and attention… he could have been forgiven for forgetting about it completely? The one he didn’t get rolling on until he was starting to get old and sick and was stone deaf?
It turns out it was the greatest piece of music ever composed.
Now: click on “play” below and read the rest of what I have to say to you.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBlQZyTF_LY
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I know, I know… it hasn’t always been easy lately. Yes: there’s a Uranus-Pluto square that’s been going on for far too long. And sure, the other transits and eclipses and whatnot have likely been blocking your moves for a while now. It’s not easy following your Dream when you’ve got bills to pay and invoices to file and laundry to do. Maybe you got tired. Maybe you got discouraged. But that’s okay… you can’t have lost Hope unless you had some in the first place, and if you leave the door open for it, Hope has this strange way of wandering back in when you least expected it to. But you have to remember to leave that door open.
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere. Freude!
(Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us instead strike up more pleasing and more joyful ones. Joy!)
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Whatever your Neptune has left bubbling away in the deep background of your heart and your head for a while now is still there. Want to start a business? Plant a garden? Have a baby? Write a novel? Start a relationship? Learn the violin? Open a lemonade stand? I don’t know. Your individual details are yours, and your mileage may vary. Somewhere out there, before you were even born, someone had started businesses and planted and had babies and written novels and started relationships and learned the violin and opened lemonade stands… and maybe your results won’t be any better. Or maybe they will.
But now is he time to start finding out.
If you born between 1962 and 1967, transiting Jupiter is trine your Neptune and Saturn is conjunct your Neptune. If you were born between 1991 and 1996, transiting Jupiter is opposite your Neptune, and transiting Saturn is sextile it. Good Fortune feeds your Dream now, and Reality is providing the contractions, trying to squeeze that Dream out head-first into an unfamiliar world that is larger and more wonderful than you could have imagined.
Now is the time to scribble your incomprehensible phrases. Now is the time to “bellow your stupid, childish tune.” Breathe through it. Believe it. DO it. If I can do it, then so can you.
Something amazing awaits on the other side of it all.
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