All posts here are from sections of the books: "North Node Astrology; Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose" and "Lifting the Veil; Becoming Your Own Best Astrologer" and "Astrology for the Third Act of Life" and finally "Saturn Returns~The Private Papers of A Reluctant Astrologer" All available in paperback, Kindle and Audible on Amazon.com

To inquire about readings or for more articles on the North/South Nodes, go to: https://www.NorthNodeAstrology.com

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Existential Astrology


In the next few posts—maybe longer—I’m going to diverge a bit before moving deeper into the evolutionary Nodal story. What I’ll be writing about will circle back to the Nodes, but not before bringing in some other ideas.

Baby boomers---those born between 1946 and 1964---are attempting to do something that previous generations did not do the same way. We are trying to age well---that is, we’re attempting to do “conscious mid-life-ing.” It’s not just about staying healthy, looking good and staying connected. We’ve been told that it needs to be an ‘inside job’ as well, and yet we often feel at a disadvantage without the familiar grounding of traditional religion, unconflicted patriotism, and family rootedness that our elders had.
We still look to the trio of God, country and family to help us, but the assault of the evening news continually shocks us into a belief that we live in a meaningless world in which random acts of violence and catastrophe can happen daily.

At the same time, many of us are seeing something new and unusual happening. Some people call it “the New Paradigm” but it’s not just one theory or idea--- for there are many new paradigms, but what they all share is the willingness to look at things differently and to make connections between things that were previously seen as separate. In this paradigm that I’m inviting you to explore with me, it’s about saying yes to explore a mélange of ideas that strike at the heart of our creative and spiritual lives.

I’m challenging you to pause…. to look at the intuitive art of re-incarnational, or evolutionary astrology combined with the spiritual-symbolic psychology of Carl Jung, and the world view of some of the Existentialist philosophers. This Existential viewpoint, used by many creativity coaches today, seeks to inspire us to wrestle meaningfulness out of a world in which the presence or absence of a God doesn’t matter as much as the need to make authentic and creative choices.
The evolutionary time table of the Soul in evolutionary astrology can serve as a powerful guide as we move into aging through the deeper and deeper levels of individuation and authenticity as Elders. This paradigm stirs them all together in what looks like a heady stew with challenging chunks, but really is quite a tasty new recipe that I believe can nourish you in a surprising ways. It's not complicated or difficult to digest-- I have been circling around these ideas for a lifetime, and I love how the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke put it when he said:

“I live my life in growing orbits
Which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
But that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
And I have been circling for a thousand years,
And I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm
Or a great song.”

In this case, the invitation is to circle around the musings of this new paradigm—of how three subtly interconnected world views—that of existentialism, Jungian psychology, and the astrological re-incarnational view of the Soul’s journey through time. It is more a poetic language of the Soul than a true synthesis or science. But perhaps that is what a language of the Soul must be---not a dogma but more a compelling metaphor---a suggestion! And if we become familiar with a language that speaks to our deepest needs and longings, I believe we will then have a guide to navigating the murky waters of meaninglessness that often accompany aging.

In astrology, we are star-gazing in the sense of being in awe of the patterns and scaffolding that frame a life and connects one to the larger cosmos. And there’s a hidden promise there that there’s something deep and mysterious that can hold us as we look into that ‘quantum’ area where physics meets metaphysics, where astronomy meets astrology, and into that luminous nebulae where the artists, philosophers, scientists and astrologers are subtly pointing us to...and it looks less like a black hole and more like a new space where the infinite cosmos meets the individual psyche. And it is at this point that something rather magical can happen....
...to be continued.....~elizabeth

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Pisces North Node






Pisces North Node, South Node Virgo



Having been the one who was duty-bound and played according to the ‘Rules’ in a former life (or earlier in this one) you now have the chance to relax your linear mind and move towards your heart’s true desires. What is it you truly long for now? Is it love, beauty, imaginative creativity? Or is it simply the chance to relax your guard and take in the view from the mountaintop? In the past you may have felt that you were the person who always had to do the right thing. You were being observed, and you had high expectations of yourself and others did too. You may have been a doctor, priest, or skilled craftsperson in a previous life—someone who was expected to be precise and perfect.


But now you have the chance to relax, to not be perfect and to unite the impulses of your heart with those of your head. You can dare to be gentle with yourself now, and dare to make mistakes, to let some details go, and to be as compassionate and forgiving with yourself as you are with others. It’s a good idea to practice getting out of unpleasant situations gracefully rather than being duty-bound or judgmental. You don’t “have to be right” now or confrontational, and you can dare to use your intuition and take action even when you don’t have all the answers. You don’t have to over-analyze things any more. Part of your soul-yearning in this life is to learn to trust in the process of life and to surrender your anxieties to a higher power. You are more loved than you realize.


Pisces North Nodes often find that having two or more jobs or roles is more pleasurable than just one---you can be an artist as well as a parent, or an accountant by day and a musician by evening. And at times you will benefit from swimming against the prevailing social currents of your time and swimming upstream like the Piscean symbol of the two fishes. At times you may find yourself struggling with issues around fear and faith, spirituality vs. religion or independence vs. dependence or addiction. You will find that beauty in all its forms nurtures you and helps you to access your higher power. Like the salmon that make their way home against all odds, you have the inner strength and the homing radar that can lead you to your spiritual home.


As a Pisces North Node person, you are the compassionate visionaries who light the way for the rest of us. And no matter what career path you choose, it’s going to be your inner compassion and intuition that brings you success and satisfaction. As you reach for the gold in the shadow of your South Node Virgo you’ll still enjoy analyzing, yet you’ll be able to soften in your position—and sometimes just simply doing what needs to be done with an accepting attitude. There’s a purity of heart in the Virgo ways that is released by the hopes, yearnings, and struggles of your Pisces North Node…..and remember…. that which you are reaching for, is already deep in your Soul.

Soul Purpose: Transcending boundaries by bringing compassionate and imaginative awareness into everything you do. You are meant to become an explorer of the deep psyche; the unconscious in all its manifestations, and to know that you are loved unconditionally. Let go of the idea that life “is a struggle” and embrace the idea that a pleasurable life is a good life, and that you deserve the “magic of a creative life” in which your head and heart, body and soul, work as one. The phrase “Be good to yourself” is meant for you.

Shadow: Do you still feel yourself struggling, self-doubting, and stressing about the little things in life? Lack of self-confidence, and issues around duty, guilt and shame need to be released. You are your worst enemy at those times when you buy into self-limiting beliefs about yourself.



The “anti-guru Guru” J. Krishnamurti, had these Pisces/Virgo Nodes. He was raised by New Age Theosophists in the early 1900’s to become a great spiritual leader, and he had enormous expectations put on him to “be right and almost beyond human” in all he did. In fact, he was expected to move into the role of becoming a World Teacher, if not “the second coming of Christ.”


The pressured discipline inherent in his South Node Virgo played itself out in his early life, and ultimately brought him to a nervous breakdown/enlightenment in his late twenties. Taken out of India as a child, he was educated in England, and it wasn’t until he was past his first Saturn Return in his thirties that he truly came into his self-confidence in himself as a person. At a huge assembly in Belgium, Krishnamurti stood up in front of thousands of people and declared that he was not the Messiah they were hoping for. He released himself from expectations and roles, and insisted that the only thing he could teach was how to be free. However he spoke with so much charisma, and experience bred from his personal struggles, that he created followers even in his rebellion.


Krishnamurti insisted that the only thing he could teach was about the nature of the mind itself and the way to freedom—a way that was without dogma or guidelines. He distained spiritual gurus and religions of any kind, and essentially had the heart of a mystic which shines through in his poetry. Ironically he ended up becoming just what the Theosophists predicted—a great spiritual teacher, yet what he taught was radically different than expected.


Freedom is the foundation for the Pisces North Node. Krishnamurti suffered in order to be free from limiting expectations, and he is best known for his teachings around the philosophy that: “Truth is a pathless land.” The use of “spiritual imagination” is another cornerstone for Pisces, and Krishnamurti evolved into becoming a cognitive mystic who dialogued constantly about moving beyond the realms of duality that most of us live in. His teachings influenced millions of people, including metaphysicians such as David Bohm.


The Pisces North Node urges us to bring the head and the heart together, and to find ways to transcend traditional boundaries and even to flow into altered states of consciousness. Meditation, in all its forms, is one of the most time honored ways to do this, and Krishnamurti spoke endlessly about meditation —here are a few of his quotes on the subject:



"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy-if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation."



“Man, in order to escape his conflicts, has invented many forms of meditation. These have been based on desire, will, and the urge for achievement, and imply conflict and a struggle to arrive. This conscious, deliberate striving is always within the limits of a conditioned mind, and in this there is no freedom. All effort to meditate is the denial of meditation. Meditation is the ending of thought. It is only then that there is a different dimension which is beyond time.”


© Elizabeth Spring For more: http://www.elizabethspring.com/

Saturday, March 15, 2008

North Node Leo


North Node Leo


It's time to take center stage! Have you been waiting for the support of friends or colleagues, or even for "more information" before stepping up to the plate in your life? Your Soul yearns to come forward now, to take chances, to see life as a game worth playing—simply because it's fun and a challenge. Somewhere in your past you may have lost a joyful sense of play and spontaneity and now it's time to recover your exuberant self-confidence again, and to share it.

Either earlier in this life or in a former life, you were living on the sidelines watching others interact on center stage. You felt exiled, even if you weren’t. Now its time to engage yourself actively--be creative with a paintbrush, your children, or simply how you live each day. Color outside the lines of your everyday life and rejoice at the results. “Follow your bliss” the mythologist Joseph Campbell was fond of saying, and as the Persian poet Rumi once said: “Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.” Following your passion and bliss is good North Node medicine for you. If you don’t know what it is, you are called to listen to yourself more—ask yourself: what makes you laugh, cry, rage?

When a person holds the energies of the rebel, the genius and the outsider, we see Aquarius strong in the chart—often with a South Node in Aquarius. There’s an unconscious soul conditioning to think differently, and therefore you may be aware of not being really heard. You may speak your Truth in a way that doesn’t understand how it’s being received—so learning to communicate well, and with empathic feeling is important for you. Aquarius can tend to be so objective, or so focused in one direction, that it loses touch with the feeling-based world it lives in.

Why is this? In re-incarnationally based evolutionary astrology. it could be said that you may have soul-memories of persecution or even torture, so there can be a tendency to dissociate at times—a reflex defense that “gets you away emotionally”. And why not, if you might have suffered as an exiled heretic before? Now, you are moving away from that lonely position of being the outsider to the savvy position of being effective in the world—and feeling connected to others. You are learning to love and to express yourself with others who might have burned you at the stake in a former life for the beliefs you held. Whew—evolutionary re-incarnational theory can get intense at times.
So… whether married or single, don't detach yourself from emotional situations, but engage yourself fully and find ways to keep all your relationships fresh and alive. But this is not a license for irresponsibility, in fact, you may be surprised by how upset people can get with you when you act carelessly around issues of trust or with changing plans--people can get quite attached to you and take your actions too personally. It is also through the interrelationship with others that you'll find the high energy and passion that feeds you.

In this life it's healing for you to leave behind an overly balanced sense of objectivity, seriousness, and perhaps aloofness as well. You are meant to open your generous heart to everyone this time around and to let your true light shine. Be real and unique, for you have the soul of a performer, the touch of the aristocrat, and the charm of a child. You've come into this life to be seen and accepted and to feel the joy of knowing love. Dare to give your talents and gifts to the world. Don't wait for others to ask you--take the initiative yourself.
As you turn on your path and retrieve the gold in the shadow of your South Node of Aquarius, you may find that you have a talent for discovering fresh ideas, new inventions, and innovative ways of being in the world. However be mindful of what groups and friends you choose to affiliate yourself with. There is a tendency for some N. Node Leos to get into groups they don't have a natural affinity with. When you act from your own passions, values, and priorities you'll naturally find the people who are right for you. Don't sacrifice who you really are for the appearance of popularity or for the sake of duty. Instead, keep your mind on your intuitive promptings and proceed step by step to making your dreams a reality...and in the process you'll find your true friends as well.

Soul Purpose: Loving connections with others healing the sense of being the outsider or the persecuted one. By leaving behind harsh judgments of self or others, the idea now is to “Come in from the cold and become one of us.” Join with the family of man, and make your presence felt. Be effective and compelling rather than “being right” and alone and different.

Shadow: A deeply entrenched unconscious fear can entice you to be controlling, inflexible or stubborn especially in the little things of life. Practice forgiveness and letting your funny bone out. You could be a good comedian! Humor acknowledges the dark side of life with a detached and ironic perspective, and a heartfelt humor that knows the pain of life yet accepts the full drama of it as well.
***
Folk/rock singer songwriter Joni Mitchell has this Nodal combination. Writer of songs such as “Woodstock” and “Both Sides Now” Joni has had great professional and personal success in her life. As a child, Joni moved around Canada quite a bit with her parents, but discovered her passion and joy at an early age: At the age of nine, Mitchell contracted polio during a Canadian epidemic, but she recovered after a stay in hospital. It was during this time that she first became interested in singing. She describes her first experience singing while in hospital during the winter in the following way: "They said I might not walk again, and that I would not be able to go home for Christmas. I wouldn't go for it. So I started to sing Christmas carols and I used to sing them real loud...The boy in the bed next to me, used to complain. And I discovered I was a ham." In later life, Joni was also able to happily reunite with her daughter whom she had given up for adoption earlier in life. Her early life feelings of social disconnection (past life?) could be described in an interview she gave to the The New York Times in which she said that her memoirs were "in the works", and that the first line would be "I was the only black man at the party"[



Elizabeth Spring (c) For more insight into the meanings of the nodes or to find out about a Nodal reading: http://www.elizabethspring.com/

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Transitions, more thoughts on Uranus sq Uranus


Elizabeth graciously asked me to do a guest post for her blog and I decided to add more thoughts on the cyclical transit I'm undergoing of Uranus squaring my natal Uranus. As I am now in my early sixties, this will be the last Uranus to Uranus transit before my Uranus Return (if I live that long . . .) :-D
I don’t whether it’s the waxing transit of Uranus squaring my natal Uranus or Pluto having moved into Capricorn but I’m finding myself thinking about the aging process and what it means here recently. The USA is not the best place to be to grow old gracefully with the emphasis placed on youthfulness. We are deluged with advertisements for products designed to preserve an appearance of youth . . . and after we pass 60 that’s so not happening! I’m not entirely sure whether my first house Venus could resist having a little something “done” if I could afford it though I’d like to think so, after all I’ve spent most of my life bucking the current fashion trends. ::grin::

Having successfully negotiated my second Saturn Return a couple of years ago, this final Uranus sq Uranus transit marks the next step in the maturation cycle and it’s feeling like it will be liberating. All Uranus transits encourage us to express our uniqueness and this one is no exception. With my natal Uranus inconjunct Mars/Mercury/Ascendant my expression of individuality is going to be a very public one and most likely out of sync with my peer group as usual. The Uranus in Aries generation who are now in their seventies opted for what I call the “country club/golfer” look – short dyed hair, aggressively tanned with lots of plastic surgery if they could afford it. Yuck! No way!

Playing peek-a-boo with my granddaughter last weekend, I also realized the affinity of those in their first childhood with those of us moving into our second. We both have strong Uranus/Mercury aspects in our charts – her Mercury is conjunct Uranus & mine is inconjunct. We were both giggling like maniacs being happy sillies, playing on the living room floor. Uranus has no concern what so ever for what others think unlike Saturn. And my little Pisces sweetheart is completely oblivious to gramma’s wrinkles – just responds to my joy in her.

What I’m suggesting is why not be comfortable with the natural cycles and rhythms of life. Why push childbearing years past our thirties and compete with our daughters in the sex appeal department? There is great value in sharing experiential knowledge and allowing our bodies to rest in the crone phase instead of pushing hormones on it in pursuit of youth. Pluto is phasing into Capricorn now and providing an opportunity to gain understanding of what it means to be mature in the best sense. Pluto also rules Scorpio and the 8th House where we learn about death and re-birth and what happens when we attempt to fool Mother Nature. Seems to me there is a very good lesson to be learned from the rise in cancers and the use of HRT therapy . . .

As Uranus continues to encourage me to be my most individual self and embrace the present, enjoying what is rather than attempting to be something I’m not, I will also do my best to remember what it took to get here. Due have been paid.

Post by Neith