I found the following article, and think it's a really interesting, well-composed read, credit to Nick Dagan Best.
The page: http://www.astrologyforthesoul.com/creativelives/johncoltrane.html
John Coltrane:
Recurrence Transits
and the Jupiter-Neptune Opposition
On December 9, 1964, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and the members of his quartet entered a recording studio in Englewood Cliffs NJ at 8:00 p.m. for a four and a half hour session. The music he taped that night - his classic, spiritually inspired suite A Love Supreme - was conceived and performed as a personal testimony to God.
A Love Supreme session chart:
December 9, 1964, 8:00 p.m., Englewood Cliffs NJ
“All Made From One”
As a composer and instrumentalist, Coltrane used music not only to express himself emotionally, but also to communicate spiritual and ideological concepts through non-verbal means. A consummate innovator, he was always discovering new sources of inspiration.
For A Love Supreme, he adapted musical passages from lyrical structures (1) – specifically, the suite’s title itself as well as the text of a poem Coltrane included in the album’s packaging. This approach to composition enabled him to transcend music’s abstract quality and speak directly to his listeners.
The suite’s first section, Acknowledgement, explores a three-note, four-beat melody (based on the suite’s title: a-love-su-preme) that, at the piece’s climax, Coltrane randomly repeats in all twelve Western musical keys. According to jazz scholar Lewis Porter, this was done to convey a particular spiritual message: “he’s telling us God is everywhere – in every register, in every key.” (2)
Also, during Psalm, the suite’s final section, Coltrane’s improvisation was based on the rhythmic pattern of the poem included on the album jacket. Again, always purposeful, he explained in the liner notes, “Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts, fears and emotions – time all related...all made from one.”(3)
Spiritual Awakening
In A Love Supreme’s liner notes, Coltrane refers back to an epiphany he had seven years earlier as the suite’s source of inspiration:
“During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” (4)
In early May 1957, Coltrane retreated for a two-week stay at his mother’s house in Philadelphia, to tackle his substance abuse problems - specifically alcohol and heroin addiction. He had just been fired for a second time from Miles Davis’ quintet, with whom he had been playing for a year and a half, due to his habits having compromised his playing ability.
Davis, himself a recovered heroin addict, had been willing to overlook his musicians’ habits – to a degree. But as he described Coltrane at the time he was fired, “Here was Trane (Coltrane) up on the bandstand sometimes nodding out...he’d be playing in clothes that looked like he had slept in them for days, all wrinkled up and dirty...showing up late, sometimes not at all.” (5)
Coltrane’s subsequent musical growth after emerging clean and sober from his two-week spell in Philadelphia was nothing short of miraculous. Over the next few months, he played in composer Thelonious Monk’s band, and also recorded his first classic solo album, Blue Train. By the end of 1957, Miles Davis was so impressed with Coltrane’s development, he invited him to re-join his group.
Coltrane remained in Davis’ band for another two years, where they recorded some of the most memorable music in jazz history. Once Coltrane went out on his solo career in 1960, it wasn’t long before his own group eclipsed Davis’ as one of the most popular and influential bands around.
A Love Supreme
On June 29, 1964, five months before recording A Love Supreme, Coltrane was saddenned by news of the mysterious accidental death of his good friend, multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Dolphy, who had been in Coltrane’s band during 1961 and had since played with him intermittently, though never diagnosed with diabetes, died of insulin shock in a Berlin hotel room.
Curiously, just two months after Dolphy’s death, on August 26, 1964, Coltrane’s first son, John W. Coltrane, was born. Immediately following the birth, in early September, Coltrane disappeared into his workshop, emerging a few days later with the completed score for A Love Supreme.
It is no simple coincidence that Coltrane’s compositional tribute followed a personal experience with the cycles of both death and birth. A Love Supreme expressed his spiritual gratitude not only for his musical gift, but for the second chance he had been given to make something of his life.
From his awakening of May 1957 to his death ten years and two months later, Coltrane was relentless in the pursuit of his musical vision. His dedication to music was so intense that, during nightclub engagements, he was known to continue practicing in the bathroom between sets.
Having faced his mortality at the hands of self-destruction, then through Dolphy’s tragic end, Coltrane had learned to make the most of life’s brief and cherished opportunities. In gratitude for his gift, he made A Love Supreme as “a humble offering to Him.” (6)
Recurrence Transits
The story of Coltrane’s musical life leading to the recording of A Love Supreme can be used to demonstrate the use of recurrence transits in astrology.
Most astrology books and articles that discuss planetary transits to a natal chart usually refer to what I call “zodiacal contact”. If, for instance, someone has the planet Jupiter at, say, the 13th degree of Leo in their natal chart, and the planet Neptune comes around by transit and moves to the same degree of the opposite sign (Aquarius), then any astrologer will tell you that the person has just had a Neptune to Jupiter opposition transit.
However, recurrence transits refer to times when specific planetary combinations (aspects), such as Jupiter-Neptune oppositions, are repeated in the sky on a given day or series of days.
If someone has a Jupiter-Neptune opposition in his or her natal chart, and Jupiter and Neptune are opposite at a given time, then that person’s natal opposition gets “activated”. That is, there is some form of event or set of circumstances that somehow reflects whatever the Jupiter-Neptune opposition means in that person’s life.
What is special about the recurrence transit is the fact that this “activation” will occur even if the transiting aspect doesn’t make any kind of contact or aspect to a point in that person’s chart. Needless to say, if someone has a recurrence transit of any kind that does make “zodiacal contact” to a given point in that person’s chart, then it is likely to coincide with something really big in his/her life.
Jupiter-Neptune Opposition
John Coltrane has a Jupiter-Neptune opposition in his horoscope (in Aquarius and Leo, respectively), in a grand cross configuration (i.e. two oppositions square to each other) with another planetary opposition: Mars in Taurus and Saturn in Scorpio.
Jupiter and Neptune were also in opposition during the recording of A Love Supreme. As Jupiter’s cycle lasts around twelve years, Jupiter-Neptune oppositions occur every twelve to thirteen years. Both Jupiter and Neptune are often associated with spiritual qualities, though with important distinctions between them:
Jupiter has more to do specifically with one’s relationship with the universe, a supreme consciousness and/or a deity/deities. Jupiter’s character, by virtue of representing a sort of “unbroken” or “eternal” principle, is related to faith itself, in that it signifies anything that an individual believes to be true – our “relationship” with eternity.
In a personal horoscope, Jupiter represents an individual’s sense of favor or disfavor with these forces, hence it is also associated with matters like luck and personal confidence.
Neptune, on the other hand, represents “universality”, an awareness of all life as a connected whole. Neptunian spirituality has more to do with the spirit that links human consciousness: culturally, politically and spiritually. Neptune blurs the lines of distinction between the individual and the masses, and at a higher level, between humanity and the universe.
The Jupiter-Neptune opposition in a given horoscope represents a polarity between one’s personal faith and the zeitgeist that appears to be governed by the greater human collective. An individual with this configuration is driven to reconcile one’s spiritual life with the force of the human collective.
Acknowledgement
The Jupiter-Neptune opposition, relative to Coltrane’s horoscope, has much to do with his spiritual concerns, which were inextricably connected to his musical life.
He told interviewer Frank Kofsky in 1966, “...I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express just what is happening. I feel it expresses the whole thing – the whole of human experience at the time that it is being expressed.” (7)
Both of Coltrane’s grandfathers had been Methodist ministers, and his upbringing included regular Sunday visits to church. His maternal grandfather, Reverend William Wilson Blair, was a community leader with a strong academic presence and had a particular influence on Coltrane’s spiritual sense, as well his intellectual curiosity.
As he told a Japanese interviewer in 1966, “I am (Christian) by birth; my parents were and my early teachings were Christian. But as I look upon the world, I feel all men know the truth. If a man was a Christian, he could know the truth and he could not. The truth itself does not have any name on it. And each man has to find it for himself, I think.” (8)
As an adult Coltrane read all kinds of spiritual texts, from the Bhagavad-Gita to the Torah – he was even interested in astrology, as evidenced by such composition titles as Equinox and Fifth House, as well as a whole album, Interstellar Space, with musical sections named after each of the planets.
Connected at Birth and Re-birth
Coltrane began playing the clarinet for his school band in the fall of 1938. On December 11, 1938, his grandfather, Reverend Blair, died - followed in the next few months by the death of Coltrane’s father, uncle and grandmother. Thirteen year-old Coltrane’s profound sense of loss drove him further into practicing his new instrument, setting him firmly on the long path to musical mastery.
Interestingly, Coltrane’s long-time pianist, McCoy Tyner – who played with Coltrane from 1960-1965 – was actually born on December 11, 1938 – the exact day Coltrane suffered from the first of three deaths in his family. Tyner had actually first played live with Coltrane at a local club in Philadelphia in May 1957, just as he had emerged from his self-enforced addiction recovery.
McCoy Tyner:
December 11, 1938, time unknown, Philadelphia PA
These coincidences that connect Tyner to important times in Coltrane’s life reflect the tremendous musical bond they shared. As the death of Coltrane’s grandfather represented a sort of symbolic birth of his musical life (though he had begun playing his instrument about three months previously), Tyner represented a sort of “twin” to that life.
Given Coltrane’s interests and beliefs, it is not a stretch to suggest he may have viewed Tyner – a devout orthodox Muslim – as an extension or possibly even a new incarnation of his late, religious grandfather. Regardless, Tyner ‘s musical value was clearly felt by Coltrane, having been his first choice for a pianist (9) once he left Davis’ band, and the first member of his eventual classic quartet to join up.
Note that, like Coltrane, Tyner’s natal Jupiter is in Aquarius. However, Tyner’s natal Jupiter is much closer in opposition to Coltrane’s natal Neptune than Coltrane’s own natal Jupiter, which is about seven degrees apart from an exact opposition. Indeed, Tyner’s added presence – the implied incarnation of Reverend Blair - emphasized the music’s spiritual power.
Resolution
In expressing his sense of the distinct polarity between Jupiter and Neptune during the opposition recurrence transit, Coltrane produced the sound of “a man facing God with the gift of his music.” (10)
Sparked by the incidents of death and birth in his life, he was compelled to communicate his vision of spiritual life through his music: the omnipresent power of a supreme consciousness, the universe as a loving creator – what he called “a love supreme”.
