Show Me The Place by Leonard Cohen

If you have been hanging around my website over the last years you would know I am not someone who really has much astrological interest in celebrities. For me the most fascinating things about astrology are usually the deeply personal ones and we can’t really know that much about a celebrity’s personal life.

My interest in Leonard Cohen  is the song that he has written for his album Old Ideas to be released at the beginning of 2012 and the fact that he is not just a Virgo but seems to be a double Virgo. (September 21, 1934: 6:45AM: Montreal, Quebec.) Perhaps you have heard the song? It’s called ‘Show Me the Place’

Some of you have heard me say words to the effect ‘Only Virgo can save the world’. I like to make bold statements. But I do believe it. Virgo is the sign most maligned and most threatening to dominator culture. Virgo at its most conscious is about integration (the anxiety we often associate with this sign comes because there is no time, no appreciation of the need to integrate our experiences and feelings). Integration celebrates diversity and allows for all things to be included in the Circle of Life. Virgo likes a puzzle, so if it isn’t obvious how to make things work it will figure it out. Domination is elitist, it requires everyone to know their place in the hierarchy and stay there. Now with Regulus having recently gone into Virgo and Mars hanging around in Virgo from November of 2011 – July of 2012, we will undoubtedly become more and more aware that to really survive the coming changes it is the integration of all people and all things that is necessary. (See the article about Regulus and the information about the Virgo Project on this site.

 There are iconic things that happen in the world that signal astrological themes.  This wouldn’t be the first time a song has hit the very crux of the times. I believe this song that Cohen has given us in anticipation of his album is a song from the heart of Virgo, his heart. Forgive me if my analysis of this work of art sounds like an English major’s ramblings. I mean mostly to make connections  not to reduce the meaning of the song into a description of Virgo. I’m pretty sure it’s not what Mr. Cohen was thinking about when he wrote the song.

Show Me the Place is about someone who acted like a slave, not someone who was forced to be a slave. Someone who became a slave “when the suffering began”.  Someone who ‘loved you like a slave’ and who ‘hastened to behave’ because ‘there were chains’. Someone trying to salvage what might be saved, ‘a shred of light, a particle, a way”. (Or is it a wave?)

I believe that Virgo has lived in the margins of our culture for thousands of years. Virgo is the  nun, the manual laborer, the farmer, the mechanic, the cleaning lady. Virgo is the cook, the nanny, the healer, the herbalist, the midwife. The so-called witch. Virgo has suffered terribly at the hands of dominators but Virgo has lasted. Virgo is ready to return and take its rightful place on the wheel. It won’t be a dramatic throwing off of chains. It will be a necessary loosening of bonds because suffering is too great to ignore and only Virgo knows where the healing balm is stored.

I can’t say where the suffering began but I am sure it got a lot worse once we switched to a domination oriented way of life.

When I speak of Virgo I am not necessarily speaking of people with the Sun in the sign of Virgo. I am speaking of an archetypal concept that belongs to us all as does every sign and planet. Our specific astrological picture may indicate our attunement to a particular archetypal symbol but we all have everything within us.

 Lyrics – Show Me The Place by Leonard Cohen 

Show me the place, where you want your slave to go
Show me the place, I’ve forgotten I don’t know
Show me the place where my head is bending low
Show me the place, where you want your slave to go

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began

The troubles came I saved what I could save
A shred of light, a particle, a way
But there were chains so I hastened to behave
There were chains, I loved you like a slave

Show me the place, where you want your slave to go
Show me the place, I’ve forgotten I don’t know
Show me the place, where my head is bending low
Show me the place, where you want your slave to go

The troubles came I saved what I could save

A shred of light, a particle a way

But there were chains so I hastened to behave

There were chains so I loved you like a slave.

Show me the place, Show me the place, Show me the place,

Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began