Nodes

The North Node and Protection

“Protection” is the keyword that the great 20th Century astrologer Marc Edmund Jones gave to the North Node. How do we access this protective quality of the node? First, it is important to understand that according to Kabbalah there are two forms an individual’s spiritual light takes: the “internal light,” and the “surrounding light.” The “internal light” is that part of the divine energy we have already integrated into our being. The “surrounding light” is that which we have yet to take in, that part of consciousness, which, when embraced and made a part of us will result in our enlightenment.

Kabbalah states that there are two paths of evolution: the path on which every aspect of us suffers, and the path on which only the ego suffers. Therefore the way to avoid suffering is to consciously and deliberately put ourselves in positions and contexts in which the ego suffers.
The North Node could be called the “Point of the Surrounding Light.” It represents that part of the light which we are yet to evolve into.

Even though suffering often seems to be meaningless it has a very specific purpose. It pushes us toward higher states of consciousness. We are not expected to become enlightened overnight. We are given time to evolve. But if our progress is too slow, then situations arise in our lives which push us forward, and those situations most usually involve suffering. How can we avoid this? By cleaving toward our North Node, by making a conscious effort to assimilate our surrounding light.

The only thing that stands in our way is our ego. Our ego likes routines, safe limits, the known. This is symbolized by the South Node – our past lives, the progress we’ve already made in the past, our internal light. When we fall back on this we betray ourselves by forsaking our evolutionary path. This is why Marc Jones called the South Node a point of betrayal.

When we follow our North Node we don’t need suffering. We ward it off. We are on our path and so the universe does not goad us to get on with it. The following gives some indications of actions that can be followed to protect ourselves on all levels, based on the house position of the North Node in our chart.

It has been often noted that there tends to be a resistance to pursuing our North Node – doing so can threaten the ego, which can be relentless in seeking out ways to avoid connecting with the North Node. All efforts toward actualizing our North Node, though, are of utmost importance, for they inevitably pull us forward and will eventually guide us toward completing our spiritual work.

North Node in 1st House

Always try to be yourself, and allow yourself to change. Don’t let other determine who you are. Don’t feel you have to change yourself so they can relate to you. Beware of compromising – you could easily lose too much by doing so.

North Node in 2nd house

Use what you have, do something with it to help other people. Cultivate your talents. Don’t allow feelings of inferiority to prevent you from developing your skills. Realize that you may have untapped abilities that you have not yet discovered. Think carefully about what you are going to do with your resources, including money.

North Node in 3rd house

Let others know what you think and where you’re at as much as possible. Communicate, and when it seems to not be working, try another way. Learn as many techniques as you can that will facilitate you in your work

Try to always be finding new ways of saying things that will make your ideas more clear to people. Try to be specific rather than vague.

Engage vibrantly with your environment. When circumstances place you with people you don’t know, communicate with them — introduce yourself to your neighbors, talk to the person who works at the desk next to you.

Be attentive to what is near at hand, and organize your immediate world so as to make it more efficient.

North Node in 4th house

Follow your heart’s desire. If you feel you need privacy, set up good boundaries with the world so you can have it. Connect with the earth and with nature. Allow yourself to have a family, which may or may not be your blood relations, but might include friends as well. Overcome your fears of intimacy.

Always be aware of the foundations in your life — your home, your health, the nurturning connections that you have with other people. Maintain and nourish these foundations so that they remain strong.

North Node in 5th

Allow yourself to play and to experiment, and to not take in the criticisms and judgements of people who may try to prevent you from doing this. Let out your creative, primitive and playful urges. Take risks when you feel the impulse to do so, and let yourself be adventursome. Don’t worry so much about the future — trust that it will take care of itself. Learn to enjoy the moment.

Don’t fear wasting time and energy. Think of your life as a laboratory and know that sometimes time and energy have to be used up in the process of experimentation, a process that is so very nourishing to your soul.

North Node in 6th

Define your problems clearly as clearly as you can, and figure out what you’re going to do about them. Learn to work on them piece by piece, so that you don’t get overwhelmed by them.

Always try to look deeper into the causes of problems so that you can get closer to the root of them. this will help you to solve them more effectively and completely.

Don’t allow others to put responsibilities on you that you don’t want. Be responsible in working with other people — tell them about any problems you have with them and share your feeling about your interactions. Try to find people who can help you with your problems, and who you can work with productively.

North Node in 7th

Take the initiative to negotiate with people and be willing to compromise. Reach out to others, and be open to connecting with people. If you don’t see opportunities for what you want to do, create them, maybe by moving into a new context or finding a new field of action.

Don’t be afraid to tell people what you think, but try to be diplomatic. If you get “no” for an answer, try approaching the same situation from a different angle. You are working on your negotiating skills in this lifetime.

North Node in 8th

Let yourself change, even when it seems scary, or difficult. Remember that the more you allow yourself to die, the easier it gets. If you feel you’ve gotten off the track, renew, rejuvenate and regenerate yourself. When things go wrong, don’t buy into the idea that there’s nothing to do — you can always make a comeback.

Find others who can help you market your talents, who can act as an agent for you, or people whose talents and resources you can promote. Get a clear picture of the expectations that others have of you, and whether or not you are able or willing to fulfill them.

North Node in 9th

Keep working to rise above stress, negativity and other distractions. Take time to get away from it all, maybe through meditation or other rejuvenative techniques. If you can’t physically “get away” as much as you need to, learn to “get away” by surrounding yourself with white light so as to shut out the world’s static.

Share your understanding of things with others. Consider moral, ethical, spiritual and philosophical questions carefully, and when feeling dejected or lost, learn to remind yourself of spiritual truth as a means of uplifting yourself.

North Node in 10th

Question authority and try to listen to and be guided by only those authorities who exemplify what you feel is right, and whose energy is nurturing, supportive and empowering to you. Try to overcome shyness so that you can share yourself more fully with the world.

Taking on leadership roles and being in positions of authority is good for you, as is being a parent and giving nurturing and guidance to other people.

North Node in 11th

Cultivate friendships and try to get close to people. Seek out people who will positively reinforce your best aspects, rather than those who will be codependent with you and retard your growth. Engage in networking. Find groups that share your common interests.

Always keep checking in with your feelings and thoughts about the future. Make plans, trying to make them as realistic and do-able as possible, and modify them as circumstances change. One of the most important things you are learning in this lifetime is that your beliefs shape your future.

North Node in 12th

Listen to your intuition, and even if it tells you something that your logical mind can’t make sense of. Try to follow its guidance, and when possible to do what it tells you to do. Do not ignore thoughts, images or impulses that keep coming to you. Ask your intution to tell you what they mean.

North Node in 12th can benefit greatly from meditation techniques of all types, shamanistic soul travel, guided imagery work, etc.

The South Node

The South Node can be a place where we get stuck. Since it is a known, familiar place we associate it with a false sense of security. But rather than offering true security it only offers a stasis that keeps us doing the same old things, and if we engage in this repetitive activity too long, the force of evolution will push us forward in ways that can be highly unpleasant. Therefore the South Node has always been thought of in classical Hindu Astrology as a place of danger.

Let’s look at, for instance, South Node in 7th house. This person knows how to interact with others for they have probably been doing it for many lifetimes. They know how to get the response they desire, they know how to negotiate, how to interface, how to connect. But if they get too caught up in all this interaction, it is easy to lose THEMSELVES, to forget WHO THEY REALLY ARE, for when South Node is in the 7th house, North Node, of course, is always in the 1st house – the house of identity.

North Node in 1st house is learning in this lifetime how to play meaningful roles in life that will serve one’s spiritual purpose, be healthy, and be furthering to one’s evolution. They need to adopt these sorts of roles without giving in too much to others, without being overly concerned about the reactions that people have to them – for if they are too concerned with what those reactions are, and become too compromising they would be reverting to favoring their South Node in 7th house over their North Node in 1st house.

The Great Italian Astrologer Alexander Ruperti says that since the Node Move backwards through the chart, to understand their placement once should number the houses backwards, starting with the 12th house and calling it the 1st house. The 11th house would then become the second house, etc.

If we look at the above chart this way, we see that the 7th house, by Ruperti’s reckoning, becomes the 6th house, meaning that the person need to steer away from trying too hard to fix problems, and gravitate more toward their North Node, which, by Ruperti’s system would change from the 1st house to the 12th house. And so what this person needs to focus more on in this lifetime is their deep inner self, and learning how to navigate the energies of this. In other words, they need to develop their connection to their intuition, and follow its promptings.

I think the best way to analyze the Nodes is to look at both the common system as well as Ruperti’s system, always keeping in mind that the Ruperti system address more the hidden aspect, while the common system addresses the outer aspect.

Let’s take my own chart, for instance. I have North Node in the 9th house, meaning that in this lifetime I need to focusing on synthesizing my knowledge into an overall and integrated understanding. I also need to get above things so I can see them as a whole, as well as view them in their spiritual perspective. In Ruperti’s system my North Node is in the 4th house, meaning a need to cleave toward my heart’s desire (“heart’s desire” as an intepretative indication for the 4th house is from Classical Hindu Astrology). It makes sense that if I seek my true hearts desire as my core work, then on a more outward level its bound to lead to greater understanding.

My South Node is in the 3rd house, so I need to be careful of collecting information solely for its own sake, and of amassing tools and learning techniques just because they fascinate me. South Node in 3rd can mean running your mind aimlessly and falling prey to any and all distractions. By Ruperti’s system my South Node is in 10th house. So inwardly, I need to avoid focusing too much on the world, my reputation, or what others think. 10th house can mean “Complexities.” Which makes sense, because if inwardly one is focused on the complexities of life, it can manifest in a passion accumulating mountains of facts and gravitating toward anything one feels is interesting.

And just as the 10th house signifies “complexities,” the 4th house – opposite the 10th – signifies simplicity. For getting in touch and following one’s heart’s desire always magically causes the complex to become simple.

South Node: The Same Old Thing

Because the South Node signifies what we have brought with us into this lifetime, it is a place of piled up memories and automatic responses that we have built up in our past. In short, we often experience the circumstances of the South Node by its house and sign placement as “the same old thing.” For instance, a person with South Node in 7th house may find it difficult to relate to the world around him or her in a fresh way, a way unclouded by the baggage of the past. In interacting with another person they may think, “oh, I know where this is going,” or “oh, I know what they’re going to say before they even say it, ” or “nobody really understands me and this person won’t either.” They think this because that’s how they’re used to it being in the past. Even if they don’t remember the specific events of the past that caused this, they still carry this bias of how thing are in their emotional body.

Taking another example, I have South Node in third house. One of the meanings of house 3 is that in shows how we go about doing things. I often make life difficult for myself by doing things in the same old way, when another way would be easier. Sometimes I have difficulty communicating with people (communication being another meaning for the 3rd house) , and it’s often because when they don’t understand me, I just keep reiterating my thoughts in the same old way, rather then trying to approach the communication from a different standpoint. I can get stuck on certain thoughts which I can’t seem to let go off, thinking “the same old things.” Many people see me as having an innovative mind, and as loving new ideas. This is true about me, but when it comes to certain thoughts, I can most definitely get stuck in “the same old thing.”

One potential difficulty is that a person often doesn’t know they are stuck in this way. When they approach their career in the “same old way” (South Node in 10th house) they take for granted that this is the only way, and this erroneous assumption creates unnecessary limitations.

The key healing our South Node is to become increasingly aware of how the storehouse of memories it holds is trapping us, and to always try to experience the house and sign of the South Node with fresh eyes, as if we’ve never experienced it before. This then frees us up to actualize our North Node, which is what we came here to do.