I am a little bit obsessed. Ever since the nodes of the Moon switched signs, and shifted from the Scorpio/Taurus astrological axis to the Aries/Libra one on the 18th of July, I randomly started listening to Marylin Manson and Nine Inch Nails and kept to it on a daily basis (as I’m writing this, Coma White keeps playing in my mind, for example). It’s such a strange break in my habits, and I was wondering what pulled me in so suddenly to the dark rock figures of the 90s? Naturally, I had a look into Marylin Manson’s & Trent Reznor’s charts, and the idea for this post was created since the meaning behind this weird & spontaneous revival of interest started unraveling.

You see, much like myself in this period, Marylin Manson is having his nodal return, since I noticed that he was born with a North Node in Aries in the 8th house (and conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer and Saturn, the Lord of Karma sneakily placed in his 9th house). On the other hand, I have my North Node in Aries in the 6th house and conjunct Jupiter. Marylin Manson also has his Venus in Pisces, while my Sun and Mercury are in Pisces and these placements are currently being karmically linked by Saturn in the sign of Pisces, the Neptunian master of all things musical, emotional and spiritual. So the dark music that Marylin Manson creates with all that Martian intensity in the fiercest house of the zodiac (the 8th, ruled by Scorpio) makes me strangely happy in this period. Maybe happy is not the best word; his music makes me feel as if I just finished arguing with somebody and there is that relief that washes over me that finally the truth, no matter how brutal, has been conveyed.

Psychologically, Marilyn Manson’s music is facilitating in me a sort of healing regression to my past, bizarrely reminding me of my puberty, when as an anxious teen I had my eyes glued to MTV and can still remember how the videos for ‘The Nobodies‘, ‘The Beautiful People‘, and ‘Disposable Teens‘ terrorized me and I had to actively avoid them in order to sleep well at night. It was only during the ‘Dope Show‘ era that I could spend time actually looking at a Marylin Manson video but still the songs didn’t hook me in, I just found it scary and uncomfortable to watch. Aries is about identity, so this nostalgic dive into the past can help me understand better what messages I was exposed to while growing up.

Segway to my late 30s and I find the songs, aesthetic and lyrics of that dark rock era to be strangely comforting and pertinent to a lot of the social problems increasingly encroaching around me. I live in a loud neighborhood, where people constantly fight and shout at each other, construction workers abound and everything feels dusty and industrial. I also am feeling highly sensitive in this period and rather isolated, as Neptune & Saturn are conjunct my already Neptunian-afflicted Sun. So I think I can understand where Marylin Manson’s music is coming from now. It also helps that hearing someone scream in a rock song, takes the pressure out of my own capacity to get angry, because I can simply project it onto the song and sublimate my real-life emotional experience. I can’t pretend I feel attracted to either him or Trent Reznor, but it’s their music, the aesthetic and the lyrics that I kind of find comfortable enough to psychologically ‘live in’ at the moment, as the nodal return is stirring up some anger inside of me, some romantic longing, some regret, and fears about the future.

The hopeless desolation of this music, the biting social critiques, the fury of being seen and judged as an outcast, the extremity of feelings – I’m completely on board with that, while simultaneously remaining curious to see how long this phase with last (the nodal return is taking place across 18 months, but I doubt I can sustain the interest for that long). It’s interesting to see how the name that Marylin Manson chose for his shock-rock alter-ego stems from the metaphorization of his nodal placements, as he named the band after someone beautiful (Marylin Monroe, a representative of Venus) and someone violent (Charles Manson, a representative of Mars). The nodal axis of Libra and Aries deal with exactly these themes of peace & war, beauty & violence, masculinity & femininity, personal anger & social justice. I also find it fascinating that I was thinking of both Marylin Manson and Trent Reznor in this period, not knowing that Trent actually helped Marylin Manson in their debut & they actual had some sort of years-long, twisted, bromance that frequently ended up in feuds and reconciliations. This chaotic & karmic energy between them, emerges so clearly when we put their charts in synastry, and as always Venus and Saturn are heavily involved.

_{Image of the birth-chart of Marylin Manson taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/marilyn-manson-horoscope}

Marylin Manson, by his actual name Brian Hugh Warner (born January 5, 1969 in Canton, Ohio; 54 years old) is a Sun in Capricorn in the 5th house (conjunct his Part of Fortune) and a Moon in Leo in the 12th house conjunct his Leo Ascendant. After seeing this, it’s not surprising to me that he is such good friends with Johnny Depp since Johnny has a Moon in Capricorn and a Leo Ascendant too. Coming back to Brian’s chart, we see here a lot of Ego markers in tandem with a Light & Shadow play since he has strong Leo placements (light) in combination with Scorpio and Capricorn (dark). His Mars is in Scorpio (conjunct Neptune) and his Venus in Pisces, so we can witness here some pretty powerful romantic and emotional energies especially since these Watery energies are placed in his communicative 3rd house, private 4th house and relational 7th house.

The interesting thing is that Brian is getting ready for his second Saturn return which will begin for him from 2025 until 2027 and it will take place in his 9th house (the house of freedom, adventures and good luck) and in the pioneering sign of Aries and conjunct his North Node in Aries tied in to Chiron in the sign of Pisces. With both Saturn on his North Node and Venus conjunct Chiron, I can see why he might associate love with pain and mix in romance with cruelty. The final stretch of Pluto retrograde in his sign is also urging him to change right before his karmic retribution comes in, as Saturn will return. His buddy, Johnny Depp had a very public Saturn return in Aquarius in the courtroom, and I wonder if we will see Marylin in a similar position two years from now, as he is having to deal with an impressive number of abuse allegations.

_{Image of the birth-chart of Trent Reznor taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/birth-chart/trent-reznor-horoscope}

Trent Reznor’s big three placements are: his Sun in Taurus in the 4th house (conjunct Mercury), his Capricorn Ascendant (conjunct Lilith) and his Moon in Sagittarius in the 12th house (conjunct the South Node in the 11th house). His Mars is in Virgo and Venus in Gemini, while the nodal axis is connected to the signs of Sagittarius and Gemini, with a really crowded North Node placement in Gemini in his 5th house involving conjunctions to Jupiter, Venus and the Part of Fortune. That’s fascinating to me because I recently saw an interview with him in which Trent mentioned how he played most instruments in his band at the beginning, and it spoke volumes to his 5th house Sun placement since the 5th house is the zodiac house of skill and talent (naturally ruled by Leo). He also mentions in the interview that he got a reputation of being ‘a control freak’ or an ‘ego maniac’ which speaks volume to how others perceive his Capricorn Ascendant trine Sun in Taurus blended energies. These two signs are the most stabilizing influences in the zodiac, and to create order and stability one has to exercise control over themselves and their surroundings.

The theme of control can be seen in Brian’s chart as well, since Trent’s Ascendant mirrors Brian’s Sun both in the security-obsessed sign of Capricorn, the sign of limits, effort and karma. Not only that but Trent is actually going through his second Saturn return as we speak, since his Saturn is in the sign of Pisces and in the 2nd house conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer. In an interesting synastry aspect, we can also see that Marylin is also having the transit of Saturn over his natal Venus in Pisces. To be honest, I am surprised at how many astrological energies these two men have in common in their chart. We see in Trent’s Saturn placement some problems with his sense of self-worth which could negatively reflect on his body, on the money he earns and the wealth he is able to create in life. He could make a lot but he might feel it is never enough, and judging by his materially-sensitive Taurus Sun and ambitious Capricorn Ascendant, the struggle for wealth & respect as an artist could have marked his whole life.

Looking into the backstory of how he created some of the NIN albums, it seems that this path towards self-love and making healthier decisions reached a pretty low point around the time Nine Inch Nails released the album ‘The Fragile’ in 1999, detailing he destruction of a man and Trent’s personal metaphor for his struggle with addiction. During that era, Pluto began its transit through the sign of Sagittarius in the year 1995 and it touched upon his natal Sagittarius Moon. Rather than analyzing his emotions, Trent did everything he could to avoid them which made him dive head first into addictive patterns at the root of which where emotional problems (Moon). By the time Pluto was ready to leave this sign, NIN released ‘With Teeth’ in 2005, an album covertly about recovery and re-empowerment. His self-worth and artistic struggles of that period stand as a testament of a Pluto’s transit capacity to break you and then re-make you.

Looking at the synastry points between the two men, I can see a pattern emerging. As Brian’s Sun in Capricorn (energy) touched upon Trent’s Ascendant (opportunity, direction), they took on this master and apprentice roles. Usually, having met someone who has the Ascendant in the same sign as your Sun, will make one attracted to look like the Ascendant person, so I guess that Marylin really enjoyed how Trent looked and the whole aesthetic of the Nine Inch Nails creative project, while having an Ascendant conjunct someone else’s Sun would make the Ascendant person obsessed with reaching the ambitious goals, prestige and charisma of the Sun-born placement so I think that on some subconscious level Trent did emulate a lot of Marylin Manson’s art after they met, it wasn’t all just Brian learning from him.

It’s also intriguing to notice how both men have Fire Moons, Brian having his in the sign of Leo and Trent in the sign of Sagittarius. Without this energy and with so much Earth governing their chart, both men would’ve been conformists; traditional types who would’ve respected hierarchies and allowed their lives to be confined by social norms, habits, codes of conduct and pragmatic achievements. But with these feisty lunar subconscious worlds, they both had a fire in their hearts to create, and to especially express anger in creative and powerful ways.

Anger is especially a big theme in Brian’s chart, since learning how to cope with it and integrate it as fuel for his creative work, rather than as violence against his partners is the key to his success in this lifetime. Unfortunately, anger is also one of the few emotions allowed in the construction of traditional forms of masculinity; it is a toxic character trait but one which many still associated with male privilege and dominion. It’s interesting to see that at the time when Pluto in Sagittarius was reshaping Trent’s body, finances and self-worth issues, Brian was building and then destroying his personal relationships. Following a short period of being married to the gorgeous Dita von Teese, he entered into a toxic relationships with the luminous Even Rachel Wood, but it has been speculated that both of these relationships failed due to infidelity, drug abuse and intimate partner abuse. Brian has a Pluto in Virgo in the 2nd house which is a marker of someone who may use money and material objects to control people, while his Mars in Scorpio in the 3rd house is also about verbal control or secrets texts messages and emails that could be created to solicit sex, to exert control and power or to keep things hidden; so I don’t doubt that there is some truth to the allegations.

A final word about their Moons – since the lunar placement matter a lot in the charts of artists – is that both men also have these lunar placements in the soft and imaginative 12th house of the zodiac, which tempers a little bit the strong passion, powerful anger and sense of entitlement they might feel, since a 12th house lunar placement gives one a penchant for suffering, a need for solitude, and a deep need to feel loved and held (this need could be so vast and deep that no human experience might be able to fulfill it, so the native turns to a higher power, like God and the angels…or in this case, the available demons). The 12th house is also a place of confinement (like a prison), privacy (secret bed pleasures) & altered states of consciousness (such as those induced by drugs or alcohol). And most of these landscapes of confinement, deep melancholy and mutated powerlessness figure prominently in the earlier and edgier songs and videos of both Nine Inch Nails and Marylin Manson. Those very images, that on a subconscious level at least, shaped my impressionable teen brain a couple of decades ago, especially because they seemed so obscene and forbidden.

If the music of Marylin Manson or Nine Inch Nails is something new to you, feel free to start here & here. Have a listen and let me know what you think (it’s certainly a different soundscape than what is popular today, in the ‘constant positivity’ era).

With universal love,

Lexi