And how does one understand the North Node, and South Node; Life Direction and Soul Purpose

Understanding Your North Node, South Node:
Life Direction and Soul Purpose

It has got to sound outrageous that anyone can help another person discover their soul purpose and life direction! And especially from information gained through an astrology chart—but that is exactly what I do as an astrologer. I specialize in helping you understand the complex “soul directive” that is contained in your particular North and South Nodes.

It’s more complex than it appears at first. The sign of your North Node describes the experiences and lessons your Soul wants to move towards in this life, whereas the South Node sign describes what your Soul has already brought into this life and what it wants to move away from. It’s your default pattern when all the chips are down.

Besides the signs of your Nodes, the “houses” of your chart in which they are placed are crucial because they tell much more of the story---they describe in more detail the area or part of your life that needs emphasis, and needs de-emphasis.

And then it’s necessary to bring in the other “players”; the Sun, Moon, Saturn, Rising Sign, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, to see how they fit into the puzzle. The first four mentioned are probably the most crucial pieces of the story, but the art of astrology is to know how to take the exquisite mandala of the chart apart and then put it back together—to synthesize and prioritize what is truly meaningful and what is not. It’s not hard to read about your Nodes by sign and house on this blog, but quite honestly, you’re probably not going to get the whole picture unless you have the ability to be objective in weighing the relative value of each piece.

Another important consideration is this: the South Node reflects not only past life karma and traits, but also the patterns you are still getting stuck in! These are what the Jungian writer, Jim Hollis calls “the swamplands of the Soul.” The same issues keep coming around in more and more sophisticated ways, but we’re still dealing with the same South Node problems. It’s good to know what to call it; to name it.

To go deeper, you also need to consider the rulers of the Nodes, and the aspects to the Nodes. Many people have what is called a “skipped step” or a piece of unfinished business that is reflected by a square aspect to the Nodes. A trine aspect represents people and situations that enabled you to live out your “default pattern.”

And finally we look to planets that aspect the Nodes. These tell us how this energy is “echoed” in the chart and in your life, and gives us hints as to how to draw out more information and elaborate upon what the Soul is up against, and what the Soul is yearning for this time around. Look to other posts on this site to explain more.

Yes, it’s complicated, and simply a theory. But I wouldn’t want to not know how this plays out in my life—I take my own intuitive wisdom as first priority, but this certainly has helped me know things about myself that I wouldn’t have considered. I’m sure a couple of years of good therapy would have brought up the same things, but then again, I like the easiness of knowing. The hard part is what to do with it all, and how to live it out. Elizabeth Spring (C)http://www.elizabethspring.com/ Contact for a reading at: elizabethspring@aol.com

South Node 8th House Scorpio, North Node 2nd House Taurus

Away with the drama and trauma and melodrama! No more tragic love stories, no more battles for power, struggles for revenge, hidden agendas and all the stuff of great novels. Just peace. Serenity. That’s the movement away from the South Node in the 8th house to the North Node in the 2nd house. Your Soul needs a rest…

The 8th house South Node, ruled by Pluto, has struggled to transform and be re-born like the phoenix, and somewhere in all that struggling has come an exhaustion and weariness of the spirit. This life is now one where you are being called to rethink your values, your priorities, and put the Venus ruled 2nd house of Taurus back in its position of prominence. This is not the Venus of the struggle, but of gentle inquiry---the one that has the savvy to pick her own battles and chooses the “mutual fund” that agrees with her political and ecological consciousness. This is the Venus that soothes us, and reminds us of our roots in this good earth. She’d rather write a poem than put on the dress that makes her into the femme fatale. She finds the sacred in the commonplace, and makes it extraordinary.

The South Node here has great gold in its shadowy inheritance---it has a hard won wisdom and occult knowledge that can serve us well when used right. Certainly astrologers and those interested in astrology, have resources here in the 8th house. But as always with the South Node there is the defeat and despair of what we didn’t get right earlier in this life or in a former life. We paid too much attention to other people’s business rather than our own. We were the power behind the throne, or the one who “borrowed” another’s values, glory, money or husband. Our own yearning for these things seemed to make it acceptable, but we missed the basic course in ethics and compassion and fairness.

This new North Node in the 2nd house is deceptively easy---stay away from all that. Just be good and mind your own business. Enjoy yourself, don’t tell me you have to “work”---instead, take a picnic to the beach to watch that beautiful sunset. Easy….yes?!

Elizabeth Spring © www.elizabethspring.com

Astrologer tells the Poet...

"All poets need to wander
Through the bramble and the bush
Through the labyrinths of city streets
Lost and listening
In a foreign land
Till they find themselves
Cast up—
Upon the ragged edges
Of some blank
And questioning page.

All poets need to wander
The untrodden routes
And unclocked byways
Of memory
Till they’ve shaken off
The familiar ways
And unexamined life
The way a dog
Shakes off his sluggishness,
Then bounds back
Into the scent of a place,
A time, a story.

All poets need to wander
Through labyrinths of lines
Saturating their pages
With cries and shouts and sounds—
Raging against the sorrows
That have no voice—
Bestowing meaning where
There once was none,
Bestowing blessings
Upon the luminous
Yet ravaged landscapes
Of our lives.

All poets need to wander
Through blackened pages
Of spilled wine and words
Till finding themselves once again
Kneeling and kissing the ground—
They find the words that
Allow us to hear
As if for the first time—
The sound
Of our one true voice.

All poets need to wander
Till they hear themselves say:
“And this is how it was for me”
Then listen to hear how others too—
Have also caught the way:
How light has entered their lives
And then left; how night comes,
And morning follows…
How different and yet the same
Held together by
This one uncommon life.

All poets need to wander…."

Elizabeth Spring July, 2008
elizabethspring@aol.com

Saturn-Neptune Disease

"The tip of my pen paused over the sign of Saturn and then moved like a hand on a ouiji board across the chart in a direct line to Neptune and stopped. Damn! I stopped breathing. The pen circled the rim again looking for something else—Jupiter, Venus, Uranus—what else was happening? Coming around full circle it hovered over Saturn, quivering there on the line-- the cusp between the 5th and 6th houses, between health and illness. My mind quickly calculated the 90 degree square to Jupiter, and froze. My hand lost its grip on the pen; paralyzed. I didn't want to see that, I didn't want to know.

I've been studying astrology for thirty-eight years. Eighteen years ago I started charging money for my services. But I'm not the kind of astrologer who traces her chart daily—in fact, I've always been a little dense when it comes to understanding my own chart. Or maybe I just resist looking. But this morning, after seeing Dr Haverstein I just had to look closer. Besides, maybe I would see something there that he had hadn't seen. So when I got home, I opened my computer and pulled up my chart.

I have always felt that the more information we have the better choices we make. Yet the more we know, the greater the array of possibilities. Naiveté is seldom a good position for making choices, but neither is fear. But how much is it helpful to know? I see myself as one who likes to delve beneath the surface of things to find out what's really happening—and yet, I question--does it really do any good to have a glimpse into what could happen?

Ancient astrologers have always proclaimed that character equals fate, and therefore as we change our character we change our fate. Sounds reasonable, but these subjects are so much more fun to debate over a glass of wine than over the lens of anybody's x-ray.

I'm scheduled to have a Cat scan on my lungs tomorrow. If cysts are found, there will have to be an operation. And if the liquid from the cyst spills into my lungs it could kill me. But the doctor said he has medicine for that. They can stop the infection. Don't worry, he said, I'm sure you'll be fine.
Right now I'm looking at my astrological x-ray of the psyche. This cat-scan shows a Saturn-Neptune opposition; a classic signature of disease. But it's occult; hidden. With Neptune one can never see clearly—it could even be an illusion—not even there. And there's also Saturn squaring Jupiter, hinting at a certain lack of luck or grace. I will have to use my own medicine here; my own way of seeing the larger picture overlaying the smaller picture. And with Neptune, there will be layers of meaning and metaphor here; perhaps an illusive prognosis, or lost pieces of information. Don't worry I tell myself, I'm sure it will be fine. It shouldn't be so hard after all, it's the work I do--it shouldn't be so hard. "

This journal entry was something I wrote awhile back, and it was interesting for me to find it again today and to see that what I believed to be an almost life-threatening disease--a Saturn/Neptune disease, having to do with a parasite I picked up in Mexico--was really FEAR of the disease. I may actually have the disease but it is occult, hidden, and not treatable. A Neptunian disease for sure...and it never caused any problems once the transit passed!

Elizabeth Spring www.elizabethspring.com

*Painting is by my grandmother, Elizabeth English, done in 1904. It's called "The Fortune-Teller".
Elizabeth Spring