Chapter 4: Invisible Points in Space

Not all astrological significance comes from planets and Zodiac signs. There are invisible points in space – vortices of energy – that mark intersections of influence. They are called nodes. Out of curiosity I checked my dictionary and found some interesting meanings. A node is a pathological swelling, an entangling complication, a point at which a wave has an amplitude of zero. Revealing as these are, the definition I’m talking about are the points at which planetary bodies intersect the ecliptic.

The ecliptic is a belt of space, 23 degrees on either side of the path of the sun as seen from Earth. This belt holds all the imaginary signs of the Zodiac, images concocted of individual stars separated from one another by millions of light years, but appearing to form a symbol for one or another sign of the Zodiac.

I’m not discounting the significance of the Zodiac because it is the imagined projection of human consciousness. This is exactly why it is significant. The heavens are a map of our consciousness. The stars reflect to us constellations of archetypal energy which operate in the human psyche.

When you were taught about the solar system back in grammar school you probably saw a diagram of perfectly concentric circles representing the orbits of planets around the sun from tiny Mercury all the way out to Pluto. The reality is that each planet has an inclined orbit and they all intersect the ecliptic forming their own nodes, as the moon in the above illustration.

We’ll talk about planetary nodes next time, but for now I want to focus on the nodes of the moon. Every month, as the moon encircles Earth on its inclined orbit, it crosses the ecliptic heading north and at a later time heading south. If we draw a line from the North Node to the South, we see that these nodes are exactly opposite one another at the same degree, but in opposite signs in the Zodiac. In ancient times this line was imagined as a dragon, the North Node being his head, the South Node his tail. Astrologers saw this dragon as a symbol for one’s journey, the head ingesting life experience and the tail eliminating the waste.

The North Node indicates the future, the direction in which we are heading. It is the unknown. The South Node is the past – where we have already been. The South Node therefore holds our past experience. This is our karma.

Karma is mistakenly understood as a reward/punishment tool of the gods: if you killed someone in the past you will suffer and probably be killed in this one. But Karma has nothing to do with punishment, although it can bring a lot of suffering. Karma is the unresolved material carried forward into this lifetime from past incarnations, reinforced in childhood by family conditioning as well as societal paradigms.

The Moon is a symbol of our emotional body where our karma is stored. Day and night the moon circles the Earth and we move out into life, carrying our karma, perceiving through its lens, encountering highs and lows, trying to find our way.

The moon represents our conscious mind, our individual ego, the person we think we are and about whom we have collected, if not an epic tale, at least a book of short stories. This is the learning/experiencing self. The nodes describe the full arc of our experience, the accumulated growth and the path of potential evolution. Every year and a half they pass into a new sign, vibrate at a new frequency, expose you to new energy, a new filter, as they complete their own full orbit through the zodiac in 18 ½ years. Right now they are in Cancer and Capricorn. When a full moon or new moon occurs near one of the nodes we get an eclipse because the sun, moon and Earth are aligned. We’ll see both types in July.

Everyone has their own set of nodes, power-points that reveal their destination, or destiny. Imagine you and your Soul had a chat about the life you were about to live. She pointed out that you could benefit from some more experience in relationships. In your last life you were too submissive and dependent. In this next life it would be good to learn self-reliance and create relationships based on equality. You map out a plan. She erases your memory and selects the ideal time to slip you into the material plane, just as the moon’s nodes are passing through Aries and Libra in your first house, the house of self, and the 7^th house, the house of relationship.

Now I don’t know how it really works, but that fantasy appeals to me. The nodes are energy vortices, whirlpools of constellated karmic energy at the South Node opposite your highest potential at the north. Because of the inertia of the past, the habits learned early in life, the weight of personal suffering, the safety of the known, there is a tendency to cling to the past. We are drawn to the same types of relationship, the same attitudes, the same interests. We get stuck on the wheel of life. At some point, however, the evolutionary impulse  overpowers inertia and we strike out on a hero’s journey looking for our highest potential. That’s when the gods sit up and declare, “We’ve got a live one!”

As I write, retrograde Saturn is only one degree away from a conjunction with the moon’s South Node in Capricorn. Think back to the last chapter. Think of what Saturn asks of us – to grow up, to become emotionally mature, develop self-discipline, integrity, authority. Now add that to the South Node – our past conditioning, our karma. Saturn is giving us all, individually and collectively, an opportunity to release the past, to clean up our karma, to take responsibility not just for ourselves, but for the impact we are having on the world. Imagine if everyone did that! That would take care of 90% of our problems.

Next time we will discuss the south nodes of Saturn and Pluto, also in Capricorn, and begin to look at how this confluence of planets and energy vortices are affecting the collective. We’ll also examine the nodal axis and the potential of the North Node in Cancer to point the way.