1: The Homogenic Landscape
2: Bjōrk: the Mid-Sixties Wild Child
3: The Outer Planetary Connection
4: Reverse Node Trouble with Ricardo López and Lars Von Trier
5: The Call to the Sacred Shimmering
6: The Sound of Sedna
1: The Homogenic Landscape
Björk’s music and her unusual vocals have touched many people and repelled many others. She breaks all the rules of conventional song progression and mixes up the musical arrangements with jarring, unexpected shifts in tone. Hers is a hybrid and juxtaposed style that uses electronic drums and strings that contain ugly clashes of sound, rushes of excitement, to moments of delicacy and pure ecstasy. She’s weird but in a wonderful way; eccentric to the core and a genuine original musical phenomenon. Each track she creates is multi-layered and repays repeated listenings to fully appreciate the depth of feeling. The lyrics are often raw and honest like she’s talking to you directly and in person.
Her voice has been called ‘supernatural’ perhaps not surprisingly as she warms up for a performance with Kundalini yoga breathing exercises. With Uranus and Pluto conjunct in Virgo this is good use of ‘chi’ energy through bodily practices and daily routines. Mercury can represet the breath and that is in a fire sign. The voice gets pumped up to maxiumum through prana. Richard Tarnas in his book Cosmos and Psyche (2009) even pointed to a burst of creative ‘shakti’ from 1962-1970 in the period when Björk was born.
The name, Björk, by the way, rhymes with ‘jerk’ not ‘york’ in case you want to pronounce it correctly. She is a a soprano with a three-octave vocal range and she uses this voice as an instrument. Some even say that her voice getting better with age. One of the highlights of her back catalogue for me was the darkly, trippy sounding ‘Jóga’ from Homogenic (1997). In that song she says ‘Emotional landscapes, they puzzle me- confuse. Then the riddle gets solved, And you push me up to this- State of Emergency, How beautiful to be, State of Emergency, Is where I want to be.’ She does not hold back or care if her voice sounds off key; some feelings in life are very awkward but that provides some of the creative tension needed.
The video directed by Michel Gondry had a major impact at the time. It has a fast-moving drone camera flying across gigantic craters, ridges, frozen lava rocks, remote lakes, glaciers and treeless spaces. Iceland is a new country, still geographically forming itself into colliding landscapes within Bjōrk’s heart, underscored by volcanic beats echoing erruptions. It’s all very exhilarating and intensely dream-like and still ahead of its time. But in any case, Björk her own universe; you enter through the looking glass and obey the rules in her world, or you don’t bother.
She said ‘Homogenic’ is about a person so under pressure they become a warrior but does not fight with weapons, but fights with love. She’s a kind of Freya, Scandinavian warrior goddess, but with an innocent child-like tone. Her astrolocation chart reveals that angular Pluto, the planet of transformation, goes directly through Iceland where it crosses over her Neptune on the Ascendant. That is along with her Moon, Ascendant and Uranus towards the West of Iceland over Reykjavík, her birthplace. She even wrote a song with fierce-sounding beats called Pluto which is modern ruler of Scorpio her sun sign.
She has a lovely Trine aspect from that hidden Scorpio Moon to asteroids Vesta to Ceres with Saturn/Chiron so that she embodies the Earth and becomes a vehicle for a message about caring for a sacred connection to the land makes sense. But take your pick of all the other albums there’s something lush, challenging and innovative on all of them. A floral-looking typography was created specially for Vespertine’ (2001) and the album used only ‘thin-sounding’ instruments. Mercury, master of communnication, rules that innovative Uranus/Pluto and squares the Mercury in Sagittiarius which loves to fire off in new directions.
Plus, she has Jupiter at the 29° anaretic degree of Gemini which means she communicates the ‘whole’ emotion in its entirety whether you like it or not as that’s her truth even if it jars in your ears. An example is in the song Hyperballad (1996) where from the top of a mountain after acknowledging the view is beautiful, she contemplates her own death “I imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks. Will my eyes be open or closed?”
This was written about a year after her first Saturn return in January 1995 when Saturn returned to 10° of Pisces and conjoined with asteroid Psyche which represents the soul. Her second Saturn return was this past March of 2024. So, she has fully matured by now and has survived- yet the elf-like urchin is still there- though naurally she hates being compared to an elf and claims to have never seen one. It is what people project on to her with that Neptune on the Ascendant -is it a mirage or the real Bjork? No one is ever sure. Saturn retrograded in Pisces to 13°, so it’s close enough to her natal position to be significant. I would guess that when Saturn went direct on November 15th 2024, it was a welcome release for her and a sign to move forward into her next 27 years on the planet.
2: Bjōrk: the Mid-Sixties Wild Child
She was born in 1965- so a mid-sixties child and as a triple Scorpio is given a penetrating vision into sexual and psychological realities. An example is the controversial video of Pagan Poetry (2001), another outstdanding song, was filmed by director Nic Knight in his London studio. Just wearing a dress made of strings of pearls by Alexander McQueen, Björk is shown being penetrated and pierced by needles sewing pearls into her flesh, so the bondage imagery is strong -Scorpio can be kinky- but it was immediately banned by MTV. Knight said he wanted to ‘strip her down’ which she agreed to do.
There’s a fearless, confessional style in her work that goes way beyond that of Joni Mitchell and it might again be that Mercury in mid-Sagittarius speaking; she can say what no one else dares to say or sing about. Sometimes, Mercury in Sagittarius is a breathtakingly intimate revelation, and other times it goes over the top and becomes preachy. This Mercury is particularly outspoken as it is at the apex of the T-Square of that challenging Uranus/Pluto opposite Saturn/Chiron. So the Mercurial spark which can be a bit off kilter in Jupiter’s sign is her saving grace enabling her to articulate that which is not usually articulated.
In Sagittarius, Mercury is truthful in spite of the fallout; she lets the words fall where they may without excuses. She once said she is into ‘National Geographic porn’ and prefers animals to David Attenborough- and that sexual orientation is like’ ice cream flavours’- all of which can be easily misinterpreted. To watch her sing is to watch her whole body be fully invested to support that full-throated voice. It demands she widen her mouth to let out those primordial tones.
She is a late and ‘triple’ Scorpio, which is both a culmination of Scorpio but also I think about to become a Sagittarius with the Sun at 28° holding back into that darker more mysterious sign. Anyone born at this cusp is a kind of transitional being, a kind of liminal-hybrid, about to morph into the Phoenix (Jamie Lee Curtis, born on the 22nd, 1958, is a good example). This area in the chart points to the hidden constellation of Ophiucus, the serpent bearer, in the background as that’s the area beyond the ecliptic where Ophiucus resides. All issues of healing from alternative medicine emerge in this domain. The casting therefore was perfect for Björk’s shamanic role the ‘whispering seeress’ in the film The Northman (2022) which was based on the legend of Amleth sourced by Shakespeare for one of his best known plays- Hamlet.
Neptune on the Ascendant would be naturally associated with art, poetry, music and mystification. She’s a musician’s musician- as her talent is appreciated by those who know how hard it is to create anything that hasn’t been tried before. The film soundtrack nature of her music is apt here and the band Sigur Ros, also from Iceland, took that to its ultimate degree. Neptune is about photography and especially film making. She risks a lot by making daring choices, clunky chord progressions, changes of key, vocal dynamics like Acapella, beats based on the pace of her feet, and oceanic soundscapes, but Neptune there also makes her mystifiying and for some people quite chaotic, impenetrable and difficult to understand. She apparently loves to baffle people with endless riddles and a quirky sense of humour.
This is a powerful chart with the Moon, the Sun and Ascendant all in Scorpio, a triple whammy of intensity. She has that Pluto/Uranus in Virgo opposing Saturn/Chiron in Pisces. If she ever lacked for inspiration, it is not obvious as it seems to live and breathe inside her. Her creative process continually experiments with form. Inspiration is clearly there in Calliope, who is the chief muse of poetry n her third house of communication. It’s a triple whammy really because Calliope conjuncts two major asteroid goddesses- Juno and Pallas. Juno is good at negotiating the balance of power in relationships, and Pallas Athene aces clever strategy and emotional intelligence. These are positioned from 10-12° of Aquarius. So she’s has become a force for social and humanitarian projects, with some wayward political posturing, but she still allows vulnerability to show amid her obvious strengths. With all her quirkiness, these are her only placements in Aquarius, her 3rd House of communications, a sign she otherwise seems to have a natural affinty towards. But if her chief muse is Aquarian, that makes sense.
3: The Outer Planetary Connection
What is very balanced in Björk’s chart is that the outer planets are nested together in a beautiful formation – the Pluto/Uranus conjunction is sextile to Neptune on her Ascendant. And that Neptune also trines to her Saturn/Chiron in Pisces. This is alongside a trine from Saturn to the Moon to asteroid Vesta- the asteroid of the sacred hearth and ability to devote oneself. This could suggest that she is already very in tune with what is going on in 2024 and prepared for it, or she was just way ahead anyway.
In the current astrology late 2024, a major turning point for humanity, there is a similar weaving together of the outer planets, each one lending the other a helping hand. Neptune at the end of Pisces is at the watery mid-point between Uranus at the end of Taurus and Pluto at the final degree of Capricorn. That’s a Water sign enclosed by two Earth signs. Neptune even sextiled the Taurus Full Moon of November 15th 2024. Something was in divine alignment there offering artistic blessings as the Moon was exactly conjunct Uranus electrifying our energetic bodies with shock intensity. It could be explosive as well as Pluto is at the tipping point and has now left Capricorn for our lifetimes disintegrating the old guard hold on power.
Also, Neptune at the end of Pisces is a signal for something major to exit the planet, the end of an old paradigm – that’s death both physical annd spiritual- watch for the old shifting to the new in April 2025 when Neptune arrives with Saturn in Aries, spiritual warriors indeed.
So just take stock of this uplift from the outer planets: Björk’s chart has Pluto and Uranus conjunct in mutable Virgo which could be challenging- it’s the constant morphing of new forms- but they are sextile to Neptune on the Ascendant which trines Saturn and Chiron opposite Pluto/Uranus. That’s one hell of a creative triangle to have where the trine and sextile soften the friction created by the oppostion and she’s able to transmute her painful experiences cathartically into music. It’s also a signature of the abilty to heal transpersonal energies and benefit the rest of us.
On the one hand the Uranus/Pluto represents the turbulent, explosive volcanic topography of Iceland from which she draws so much inspiration as it is close to the MC and Virgo is an Earth sign. But on the other hand the Uranus/Pluto in Virgo points to all the experimentation with sensory nature of the micro-beats, some of which she recorded directly from her home country, or derives from her own heartbeat while walking. Some spliced sounds come from crunching snow.This is in addition to use of a range of instruments than most choose to play: plucked harp strings, the glass harmonica, the glokenspiel, and she even harnassed the sound of Tesla Coils for the song ‘Thunderbolt’ on her seventh album Biophilia (2011). The Tesla coils had to be carted around with her on tour. She even invented a new hybrid instrument called the Gameleste -a Gamelan mixed with Celesta- to use in her innovative soundscapes- Uranus is originality and with Pluto it pushes the boundaries.These sounds have a direct sonic effect on the body- which Virgo loves. It’s the kundalini energy too as mentioned.
So if this outer planetary interconnection in mutable signs also signals that she is in tune with the collective, then it’s a protection during her personal battles in relationshps and with the world. She can be calm amid the chaos. No doubt she has suffered a lot -a personal bomb attack in London, abusive directors, broken relationships and the death of her mother in 2018. But there is an alien feel in some of her work (Pluto/Uranus) like she comes from way out there, that somehow she is not of this earth and the Saturn in Pisces roots it downwards into productive work. But with all this adaptability as a given, it appears she does all the inner work with the emotional turbulence, she takes challenges in her stride and triumphs elegantly through singing.
4: Reverse Node Trouble with Ricardo López and Lars Von Trier
In life there are often fated encounters. They can even bring a life and death feeling, of something abusive and dark that might give anyone the shivers. But they are also remembered as a major karmic lesson. Whoever we meet leaves at these moments an imprint hard to remove. Björk has had many such experiences but two clashes stand out, those with Ricardo López and Lars Von Trier.
In 1996 when the Sun was conjunct Neptune, Björk was stalked by an unbalanced and obsessive admirer called Ricardo López, a Capricorn born in Uraguay with a North Node conjunct Neptune. He was unhinged clearly as when he was living in Florida, he began stalking Björk who was having a relationship with British musician Goldie at the time. López sent Björk a letter bomb laden with infected needles and sulphuric acid. It failed to explode but his feeling was so intense that he filmed himself committing suicide while listening to Bjork’s music. The implication was that Björk was the cause of his personal suffering. She was duly freaked out and worried about her own life and the safety of her son.
Björk reached truly international fame in her first major acting role in the film Dancer in the Dark (2000). She even wrote the songs in an ironic anti-musical style. She played Selma, a girl losing her sight who had to work with heavy machinery but who falls foul of the law. This was directed by Danish director, Lars Von Trier, a Taurus with a conjunction of Pluto and Jupiter in Leo.
Some think of this film as a kind of twisted masterpiece, but others say it is a kind of relentless doom porn. Make your own mind up. Von Trier puts his leading actress through every form of difficulty, creating an absolute hell on screen all of which can be disturbing to watch. But they had personal disagreements on set. She refused to be his pet leading girl and he did not like it. She avoided acting for 22 years after that until she did ‘The Northman.’ She published a statement in 2017 explaining Von Trier’s abusive and domineering behaviour as Björk is not one to be pushed around as the female journalist learned to her cost in Bangkok when Björk physically attacked her. Von Trier denied all these accusations and claimed his behaviour towards Björk was not unusual in any way. But since that denial has kept quiet.
So what brings this challenging behaviour out in her chart? I noted a fascinating pattern of the reverse nodes of the Moon. This is where the the North Node in one chart conjuncts with the South Node in the other. Björk has her North Node in early Gemini and her South Node in early Sagittiarus. Both these men who challenged her have the reverse positions to those of Björk. Both their North Nodes are in early Sagittarius and their South Nodes are in early Gemini. This clash shows a potental for aggravation or some kind of karmic reckoning. López even said he wanted ‘to punish’ her.
Nodal positions can bring about fated events. In 1984, aged 19, when her nodes returned to the natal position, not reversed she published her first book of poems. But in synastry where two natal charts overlap, there’s a sense of it being like compass points where the magnetic pull in each direction is forced in the opposite direction. While not exact to the degree, these natal points are close enough to show that there might be a clash of wills, a reversal of fortunes, or at the very least a struggle with different goals, and how each native might trigger the other native to operate from their projections on the other.
To have this alignment would not be auspicious synastry for a good marriage for example. But deep lessons can be learned for the events that happen, not all necessarily bad, but where it appears to polarise two people. Ricardo López and Lars von Trier are both Earth signs and upon encountring Björk, it may have mirrored something lacking in themselves that they perceived in her an energy that is both emotional yet other worldly. Another interesting factor of this node reversal phenomenon is the age gap: Lars von Trier was born nine years before Björk in 1956, and Ricardo López ten years after her in 1975.
5: The Call to the Sacred Shimmering
Polyhymnia is the muse of sacred and choral music and her prominence in Björk’s chart validates the search for these lesser-known asteroids- as there she is prominently conjunct Bjork’s Venus in Capricorn. That is an outstanding connection to have for a musician. Venus is the love of art and beauty and in Capricorn is classy, status conscious, professional and tends to age very well, but with this added touch of the sacred includes yearning for the ineffable, the celestial, which brings about a purer and more mystical state of mind. That gives stature and gravitas to the lush style of a classical composer to all the string arrangements she weaves into her songs. Sometimes this orchestal sound is when she uses the Sibelius computer software and other times, it involves actually being accompanied by the Brodsky Quartet or a clarinet sextet as on the album Fossora (2022).
In 1999 Börk was selected by British composer John Taverner to premier a 15-minute version of a spiritual and devotional piece of music, ‘A Prayer of the Heart’ which is Kyrie Eleison sung in Greek, Coptic and English. Tavener has a powerful kite formation in his chart and the asteroid of sacred music Polyhymnia is conjunct Chiron in mid-Virgo which just happens to conjunct Björk’s Pluto/Uranus so this was a good collaboration. Thrown into the mix here with Bjork’s Venus with Polyhymia by degree are the asteroids Kaali and the asteroid of the poet Sappho. Sappho gives the personal ‘intimate’ touch to the sacred sound implying there is no difference between lower and higher for her.
Also asteroid Kaali brings the shadow side of the feminine, the fierce cutter off of heads who is celebrated in India as the force that releases karmic bonds with multiple chopping knives. As if that’s not enough, and this is quite fascinating, there are the asteroids Amphritite and Salacia – all within a 10° range all in Capricorn. One is the Greek version Poseidon and his consort Apmhritrite and the other is Roman Neptune and his consort Salacia. These two wives of the water gods together here add that extra layer, that shimmering, glistening effect to the dance of light on water in the music that if you stare at it long enough can transport you to another world. This little cluster of asteroids is focussed around the same degrees – 21° in the last decan of Capricorn.
If this is reflected in her art then visuals predominate almost as much as sound in her work. She has had some extraordinary looks as she is somewhat of a total performer using multi-media and costume to paintbrush her ideas as visual metaphors. Sometimes this is not subtle at all as with the caterpillar dress, but somehow you never question her honesty in attempting the unthinkable. She has in her time been linked to numerous fashion designers from Junya Watanabe, Hussein Chalayan, Olivier Roustieng, Iris van Herpen and especially to Alexander McQueen who created one of her most iconic looks for the album cover for Homogenic. She is also associated with several musician lovers/frieds Tricky, Damon Albarn, Thom Yorke, Goldie and surrealist artist and video maker Matthew Barney of the Cremaster video series. All her other collaborations are too numerous to mention.
6: The Sound of Sedna
In speaking of Björk, it’s not possible to ignore the dwarf planet Sedna, the Inuit goddess who created seals, dolphins and whales from her cut off fingers as she sank into the ocean. Sedna seems a perfect fit for Björk and she has this Oceanic flavour woven into the fabric of her work. Sedna’s orbit is long and distant yet contains the mysteries of deep water. She is in her words ‘turned on by nature’. She embodies this sea-loving archetype so well in her highly organic imagery and wearable art. She is not one for geometric shapes and squares- the only ‘cube’ she ever referenced was in her first band, the Sugar Cubes. She prefers sinuous, wavy lines inspired by spiralling floral and organic growth- and her idiosyncratic song structure and development captures this innate sense of nature too. It is deeply instinctive and all the better for lacking any intellectual overlay that would deaden the energy.
She has no problem appearing in designer creations and wearable art as a sea anenome, a caterpillar, or a seed pod bursting in all directions. This is often about embodying themes of evolution, biophilia, and transformations of all kinds. Scorpio is after all about morphing and shape shifting. If she appeared next as mythical bird, the Phoenix, don’t be surprised. She has already been the swan as the infamous white swan dress proved. This was on the cover of Vespertine and on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Apparently, it was David Bowie who encouraged her to appear in the swan dress at the awards as he ‘always wanted to see her as a bird laying eggs’.
Björk has Sedna at 29° of Aries which could suggest the angry warrior activist making a last stand for justice. She even calls her latest project ‘a call to arms.’ Alan Clay who has researched the dwarf planets calls Sedna the higher octave of asteroid Ceres, the goddess of the grain. Sedna has now retrogaded back to at 0° of Gemini, so it aligns more or less with Björk’s North-South Node axis. She has an affinity with cold Arctic places and often sings with a female choir of Inuit throat singers from Greenland. Sednna opposes the 0° of Sagittairus position squares 0° of Virgo and Pisces. Sedna will eventually come close to her North Node at 4° of Gemini. That won’t be exact until 2029 which could be a challenging climax for her ‘nature’ activism as it becomes more strident.
But she has already set up a foundation called AEGIS whch an organistion against open net pen fish farming in Iceland. The industry which spews poisons and plastics into the ocean. She wants to protect the Wild Salmon from this fish-farmed variety. Her next musical release due on November 29th Björk and Rosalia, remixed by Oral and Olof Dreijer from the Knife, is waiving all royalites in order to pay towards AEGIS and saving the environment. One of her statements articulates this Pan-Psychist approach.
She never really understood loneliness she said because as far as she was concerned she was ‘in an orgy with the sky and the ocean.’ The song Isobel is about a girl who rejects the urban environment and retreates into the forest to collect moths. It’s the ‘epic’ side of Björk. There is a bit of a drama queen in there too along with the experimentation. She’s a ‘complete’ a universal artist, not just a pop singer. She just works through the medium of Pop to be able to reach more people.
Prince, when he was alive, said ‘In a perfect world, Bjōrk would be more popular than Madonna’. A better reference point though might be Kate Bush, a Leo, who has been a shining influence on her work. There’s a song just called ‘Moon’ on Biophilia which says ‘the best way to start anew is to fail miserably….. then realign the whole’. This could be the perfect advice from a triple Scorpio whose feelings are occluded, yet also expressed in music, but who also finds it easy to shed skins and transform.
It is interesting that her Moon is in the 12th House -and has always claimed to be a genuine introvert. If that means she’s in touch with shifting feelings that is certainly true. But the Moon also rules her own last decan of Scorpio. Her latest sound installation in Paris ‘Nature Manifesto’ talks of ‘the web of life’ and the ghosts of animal sounds ‘remind us of improving our primordial mindfulness’.
Björk is a fascinating strange creature and even when annoying, always an artist to watch closely as she evolves along with the planet and keeps us on our toes about the way music should be or how a female artist should act. Next year, in 2025, she’ll reach the age of 60 and she’s not done yet as a creative force.
© Kieron Devlin, Proteus Astrology, November 19th, 2024, All Rights Reserved.
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