Squares to the Nodes: the "Skipped Step"

Squares to the Nodes—Your Karmic “Skipped Step”

How do you get to your North Node? How do you know how best to prioritize things? What has been left unresolved karmically from past lives? At this point, you understand the idea of the Nodes: the North Node is the direction your Soul longs to go towards in this life, and the South Node is the direction you need to move away from—your default patterns that you may have “brought over” from another life. But how do you get to what the North Node is all about? You’ve read the description of the North Node sign and house placement, and you’ve read the description of the South Node sign and house, but still you have questions. Good questions.


One of the hints the chart gives us to look at is the aspects to the Nodes—especially if you have squares to the Nodes. Many people have this aspect, which is called: the skipped step. To understand it you need to let your imagination roam around the meaning of the planet that is squared. Again, what sign is it in? What house? There is something in the nature of this placement that is telling you what you need to do as part of your process of getting to the North Node. You need to pick up the unfinished business here—there is something about what that skipped step is about that remains as a complex or as a forgotten way of thinking that needs to be addressed and brought into your life now. You can understand that skipped step as being a karmic “bad habit” from a former life, or simply a blind spot in your psyche.


Blind spot? The skipped step is often what we don’t want to look at or deal with—it’s the missing piece of the puzzle, the dropped stitch, the piece that needs the most priority in your life now, and often receives the least.

For example: today I did a reading for a woman who had so many skills and abilities, yet she was feeling quite stuck for a number of reasons. We touched on what those issues were about, but I was left with the feeling that if she would take care of her body/health, then the rest would fall into place rather easily. She needed to address the square to her Nodes, which pointed to the 6th house of health. And, at this point in her life I felt there was a certain urgency to it.

Jeffrey Green and Steven Forrest were the first I know of to call this aspect the skipped step. The blockages and distortions that are symbolized by the planet and house that is square to the Nodes is a critical piece to consider when looking at a chart. Yet nothing is ever truly skipped or lost—it’s just put away till another time, or done unconsciously. But for those who want more direct answers to life direction and soul purpose questions, these aspects are a wealth of information. Ironically, as easy as they are to see, they’re never easy to understand. Elizabeth Spring www.elizabethspring.com

Understanding the Polarity of the North and South Nodes

Our emotional bodies are heavy with the many unresolved past lives we carry within us unconsciously. The personal unconscious, as well as the family unconscious, seems to carry an “imprint” from these lives, as well as from our early childhood. It invites us to try again and again to find new endings to old stories, and to release and heal whatever is still undigested by the heart. Not an easy thing to do! The good news is that deep in our psyche is also a remembrance of some very deep inner truths and inclinations/talents/wisdom that we intuit within ourselves.


The North and South Nodes reflect this duality in many ways. Each Node contains a polarity within it, describing a potential for its highest and lowest expression which we express in each choice we make. So each Node speaks to both what is unresolved and undigested within us, as well as being the “medicine” that will bring us greatest relief, and help us evolve into all that we can be.


The North Node can be seen as the area in our life where we are open to an “inflow” and where we nourish our Souls. However, there’s something unfamiliar about the North Node, and like tasting a new food, we often don’t know what to think about it. Do we really like it? Are we open to it? If we can take it in, it’s our best cure; it’s the vitamin that we’re deficient in. We nourish ourselves here. In contrast, the South Node, in its highest expression, is where we can feed the world; it’s our gift—it’s something we innately understand and can give to others.


The polarities and paradoxes of the Nodes are not truly opposite—in fact, every astrological opposition carries within it the seed of its opposite, or like the yin-yang symbol, each side holds a piece of the other contained in it. So it’s not all about just reaching for the highest expression of the North Node and struggling against the lower expression of the South Node—what is truly called for is a balance and a movement between the wholeness of the two—a give and take: a dance.


When we are able to do this, what “shows up” within us is an energetic re-engagement with life, inspiration, and a growing re-enchantment with the process of our life. Ah… when we extend ourselves past our comfort zones—that’s the North Node! We reach into that place where we can love more and truly give of ourselves. The surprise is, of course, that in the giving we receive more than we expected, and nourish ourselves.

© Elizabeth Spring More information on: http://www.elizabethspring.com/

Venus,Neptune Astrological Aspects: "Dropped Stitiches" of Illusion and Disillusion

Dropped Stitches;

The Illusions of

Venus and

Neptune

Following threads
Of chosen words
One crafts a quilt
As one “pieces” a life—
Following threads
Of small acts of courage and choice—
Raveling and unraveling
The particulars of a life…
Following the story-line home.

Catching hold of a purple thread of sorrow
A yellow line of joy
I needle through the cloth
Buttoning together the places of the heart
Knurly and knotted,
Piecing and stringing such fragile threads—
I hide the back from view.
“Such a beautiful piece” they’ll say
Yet I know how I suffer the broken threads
The illusions, false engagements, subtle betrayals--
Such paradox and possibility—
At times, the fabric barely holds.

For far too long, I’ve sewed through button-eyes
Unknotted—they released themselves
As I sought to make connections
That were not mine to make.

But now the needle moves rhythmically
Through the holy quartet of a single button.
I see how singular threads
Need to be knotted and stitched—
Buttoned with the belief
That there are patterns
In this life of sixty-one years.
The stitches are beginning to hold
The torn places are mending.

But still the heart cries out—
The dropped stitches persist—
But what needs to attach, attaches—
And what needs to detach, detaches—
As I’ve become a keeper of buttons. ~

(This photo is one I took of an ancient astrolabe, and will be used on the cover of my new book: Astrological Gold; Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose.)

elizabeth spring http://www.elizabethspring.com/

North Node 12th House, Pisces North Node, Virgo South Node

Is your North Node in the 12th house? Then it has an undertone of Pisces, and your South Node automatically falls into the 6th house, which has a Virgo undertone. Add the description of the sign of your North Node to this house position to deepen your understanding of your Nodal axis...and, you can deepen your understanding of North Node in Pisces, no matter what house it falls in your chart.

With a North Node in the 12th house we are deep in the “house that Carl Jung built.” This is the area of the deep psyche, the unconscious, and with a North Node here we are wise to explore beneath the surface of life to the unconscious subtle realms of the heart as expressed in music, art, poetry and painting. We are called to “the monastery” here in the sense that it is a non-verbal, solitary, spiritual call towards Self awareness. The 12th house has sometimes been called the house of troubles, because it can’t be dealt with logically and pragmatically, and to do so doesn’t benefit the person with a North Node in this house. However, the key to this house placement is that there is no longer any need for troubles, duties, obligations, humility and service! All those are embodied in the opposite 6th house. As a 12th house North Node person you have earned the right to take the deep pleasures of the unconscious: gifts of magic, insight and deep peace.

The karmic pull of your past with the South Node in the 6th house will be one that tries to pull you back to be of help to others, with an emphasis on the skillful use of the mind and duty, rather than the promptings of the heart. The default tendency here will be about thinking rather than feeling, working rather than playing, honoring logic more than intuition. The North Node goal is a move away from the particular and detailed attention that the 6th house requires, to the spiritual meaning-making, and only partially “conscious” quality of the 12th house. This evolutionary pull towards the 12th house, which is ruled by Pisces, will be to balance and correct that tendency with a more imaginative and universal type of thinking in which the goal is to create more compassion in our lives by simply loving ourselves and others more. We’ve earned a degree of rest and release from duty.

This placement is sometimes, paradoxically, not an easy one because it’s not easily accessible by rational thought and direct approaches. It almost sneeks up on us, like pleasure does sometimes. So we approach 12th house activities with our hearts, with the arts, with feelings, and obliquely through dreams and divination. There are often issues around trust and faith, when Neptunian confusion fogs the clarity that can be attained with this placement. True enlightenment and clarity are real possibilities for people with the North Node in the 12th, however “getting it” for you may often be as simple as just softening and accepting into the process of living and loving.

The high road for North Node 12th house folks is a fascinating journey into the worlds where not everything is obvious or as it appears to be. It’s a world where even limitations can be a profound gift. Who has not enjoyed the occasional “mental health day” when we’ve stayed in bed or in our pajamas without leaving the house? In the 12th house, what is buried in the unconscious is begging for conscious understanding and acceptance. Jungian psychology and counseling, with its emphasis on creative expression of non-verbal dreams and images, and its encouragement towards unique individuality rather than collective moralities, can be very nurturing and deepening for 12th house people. ~elizabeth Spring More at: www.elizabethspring.com