Astrology of the infamous 27 club
Title image by Dietmar Reinhard
I realized recently that many of my friends are around 27 years old, and to be honest, everyone seems a little sad. Of course, life is testing us all right now, but I remembered hearing about the “27 Club” and started to give it some thought.
If you aren’t familiar with the 27 Club, it’s the haunting coincidence that some of the world’s most talented musicians leave this world at the age of 27. There are always a variety of logical reasons for their deaths–– overdose, addiction, freak accidents...all of which can probably be attributed to living a life that not many people do.
As an astrologer, I seek to explain the world through seasonal patterns dictated by the movements of the planets. So my natural question isn’t why they died, but why at 27?
What was the crux that led to their demise at this ripe age?
In examining my own social groups, the trend of pain and confusion around age 27 is not uncommon. I’ll call it the “27 Sorrows” because, thankfully, none of my close friends are world-famous rockstars, so they’re already statistically more likely to live past 27 and not join the 27 Club.
Traditional astrology claims that you feel your Saturn Return beginning the day that Saturn enters the sign where it lives in your natal chart, even if your Saturn is at the last degree of the sign. With an open mind, I wondered, could my 27-year-old friends really be feeling their Saturn return this soon? Does Saturn at 2 degrees Aquarius really hit those with Saturn at 29 degrees?
I came to the conclusion that no, it is not the Saturn return to blame (entirely) for the 27 Club and the 27 sorrows. The energy at 27 is different from the energy at 29. Saturn’s energy (age 29) is here to lay down the law and show you where you need to rein it in. If you’ve been screwing around, this is a rude awakening into adulthood. If you’ve been working hard, building something for yourself, confronting your demons, and going to therapy well before 29, you might have a pretty easy initiation into adulthood because you’re already there.
So what happens at 27, astrologically?
Using a technique known as secondary progressions, which moves the natal chart forward one day for each year of life, we all reach what’s known as the progressed lunar return around age 27-28. If it takes the Moon about 28 days to go around the zodiac, it takes the Moon 28 years to go around the day-for-a-year zodiac.
Between 27 and 28, the Moon in the progressed chart returns to where it was when we were born. This is a sort of initiation of the emotional aura as one progresses into adulthood. This awareness of depth and emotion isn’t always comfortable, and it can feel almost like a dark night of the soul, especially if you’ve been one to escape more challenging emotions—a cry for help and no mother to lean on. You learn what soothes you, and oftentimes, if life is already challenging like it is for a rockstar, this can mean using substances, drugs, and other escapes to cope.
At this homecoming of the emotional body, one is forced to confront their greatest vulnerability. If you like the life choice you’ve made up until this point, you might have a pleasant experience full of nostalgia while gaining a much deeper understanding of yourself. If you’ve tried to push away who you are or have unprocessed regrets, trauma, or have made decisions that betray your personal boundaries, they might come up from the depths to be addressed during this time.
As we’ve observed with our superstar examples, they might have tried to hide the challenges coming up for them with drugs and alcohol, only to succumb to their chosen escapes.
The progressed lunar return happens about a year or two before the Saturn Return and with no coincidence. This event is meant to strengthen your resilience, help you tap into your feelings and emotions on a deeper level so that when you’re presented with Saturn’s lessons, you have a solid foundation to build upon.
So what to do to make this time period less painful?
It can be helpful to return to the things you gravitated toward when you were a young child. Entertaining your creative mind by letting yourself create just for the sake of it (not monetizing your craft) can be the best way to channel any hard feelings.
This is also a time to build coping skills that you will carry with you for the rest of your life. Instead of running from your problems, mustering up the courage to face your pain and transmute it into something useful is the test you must pass at the progressed lunar return.
Taking responsibility for your feelings and effectively managing them so that they don’t take control of your life is a big part of the lesson in emotional maturity that comes around this time.
If you’d like to know more about how this period shows up for you based on your unique birth chart, let’s talk it over in a session together!
