The music of the spheres 

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For those who subscribe to astrology, it can feel like fate is written in the stars. But what about the songs musicians write?

It’s not as simple as knowing the corresponding Zodiac sign to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach (as much as pop culture would tell us otherwise).
Enter Teagan West, a practitioner of Ayurvedic natural medicine and an astrologer. The esoteric expert from Rochester has studied astrology for more than 10 years, but has never created astrological birth charts for songs — until now.

CITY selected four songs by local artists, who then provided the exact date, time, and place where the song was written. With a knowledge of Zodiac archetypes and ancient data about the positions of the planets and constellations in the sky, West constructed a wheel-like chart for each song as a way to reflect patterns in the creation of the music.

“When I'm looking at an astrology chart, it's a map of creation, organizing itself through these symbols,” she said. “So whether it's a person or a song or an art piece, these are all aspects of creation that are here for us to kind of understand the archetypal energies that they embody and express.”
“Shrooms” by Coral Moons

Singer-guitarist Carly Kraft was at home in Canandaigua at 9 p.m. on January 4, 2023. She had purchased a JHS guitar pedal, and the wobbly tone it produced sounded drug-induced to Kraft’s ear. That sound prompted the leader of rock-pop quartet Coral Moons to think about the annual party she hosts at her woodsy abode for her old college soccer buddies, and in a matter of 20 minutes she had written the song “Shrooms.”

“I felt kind of high and happy writing it, which was exactly the emotion of doing drugs with my friends at my house and getting to share my space with people,” Kraft said. “Like that kind of high as well — having hospitality toward my friends to come experience something special.”

The reading: key symbols were the ruling planet of Mercury, with a Capricorn sun and Virgo rising. There’s a strong sense of earth energy, and ultimately a sense of shared liberation.

“The Earth placement tells me that there's a lot of organization and percussion,” West said. “Because Earth gives us rhythm, it gives us structure. And so with ‘Shrooms,’ there is this beautiful, channeled writing, but it comes through this very well organized, clear pace.”

“The Darkness” by Daggz

Electronic musician Ryan Daggs, AKA Daggz, is no stranger to mystical interests. A student of occult mythology and hermetic Gnosticism (a religious belief system considered heretical to Christianity), Daggs came across a text called “The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean,” which speaks to the fall of Atlantis and communication with evil forces that led to human corruption. A pulsating, groove-based dance track, “The Darkness” — which he wrote in Rochester on April 2, 2021 at 3:28 p.m. — begins with a cryptic reading from that book.

“The idea came to me for the build-up, swelling bass sound that ushers in the drop,” Daggs said. “I wanted it to map up with a portal, like it was some priests’ cult in the Atlantean times using black magic to bring dark forces in.”

The intended sensibility is foreboding and unsettling, but also awe-inspiring.

The reading: Unlike with the other songs, West was already familiar with “The Darkness,” having participated in a video for it with Daggs, who is a friend. Going into the reading, she knew the song would address occultic themes while tapping into the unconscious and things that are present in society but are rarely discussed.

The presence of the “rebel with a cause” Aries and mysterious Pisces confirmed West’s suspicions. “The birth chart of the song has this whole cluster in the eighth and ninth house, and these houses deal with the occult, with the hidden with higher wisdom traditions, and the seeking of knowledge to achieve liberation,” she said.

“Tides” by Reddy Hollow

Matt Geffers and Noah Parshall, the duo behind indie rock outfit Reddy Hollow, wrote “Tides” at their apartment in Rochester on March 2, 2023, at 10 p.m. An upbeat song with complicated emotional underpinnings, “Tides” speaks to the frustration and indecision that comes with everyday struggles, particularly as they pertain to relationships and money problems.

“It's a really fast, upbeat song, because especially when you're frustrated, everything seems to be moving twice as fast,” Parshall said.

The reading: The seemingly contradictory characteristics of the song resulted in a complicated astrological chart. The ruling planet was Aries, representing creativity and boldness, but the presence of Pisces and Cancer signs indicated emotional complexity.

The birth chart spoke to an attempt to balance between what is revealed and what is concealed, which West said is at the heart of the track. “The song felt like it was trying to negotiate how much it was really just going full-blown emotional, or having this more upbeat, playful energy to it,” she said, “and I felt that the paradox was really evident in the chart as well.”

“Sucker’s Broth” by Ku

Bassist-songwriter Kamara Robideau, AKA Ku, provided two dates for her song “Sucker’s Broth” — one for the beginning of the writing process, and another for its conclusion. She started writing the song in Niles, New York, on March 19, 2021 at 11:15 a.m., and finished it on May 21 of that year at 11:20 a.m.

Unlike most of Robideau’s compositions, “Sucker’s Broth” began with the title, after she incorrectly read a street sign. Although the song captures a sadness and cynicism the musician was feeling at the time, she knew she wanted to write simple, straightforward pop. “A lot of the songs that I have are either really happy, really creepy, or this confusing blend,” she said.

The reading: The creative energy that comes with Gemini and Pisces symbolism took over the initial chart, imbuing it with a dreamy quality, said West. The second chart indicating the completion of the song still contained heavy Gemini influence, but the presence of Pisces had shifted to its polar opposite, Virgo.

“Pisces is just pure creative inspiration and this dream-like flow state,” West said. “And then its opposite mirror, Virgo, is the refinement of that energy: ‘How do we bring this into tangible form? How do we write it and compose it and make it actually something that we can hold?’”

Check out CITY’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ mini-playlist, featuring the songs above.

Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].