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

"Understanding Your North Node and South Node: Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose."

It's got to sound a bit 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/therapist. I specialize in helping you understand the complex soul directive that is contained in your particular North and South Nodes.

This new book, “North Node Astrology” is a fairly large book, and about half of it helps you find and understand the Nodes based on your birthday and year. (You don’t need to know astrology or even have your chart for that—the book has a table in it where you can find all you need.) The other half of the book is about the life passages we all experience and ideas for navigating through these challenging “transits.” The book is personal— a writer speaking to a reader—and that conversational, accessible tone attempts to bridge the gap between Jungian and astrological ways of thinking.

So what are the Nodes? Readers of this blog know that 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, and although there may be “gold in the shadow of your South Node” you mostly want to move away from the negative tendencies of this sign.

Besides the signs of your Nodes, the areas or “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 of your life that needs emphasis.
And then it’s necessary to bring in the other “players”: the Sun, Moon, Saturn, Rising Sign, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto to see how all they fit into the puzzle. 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.

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 our Shadow qualities.

For those who want to go deeper into the Nodal story, you also need to consider the rulers and 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 elaborate upon what the Soul is up against, and what the Soul is yearning for this time around.

Yes, it’s simply a theory. But I like to know how this plays out in my life—of course, we all are wise to take our own intuitive wisdom as first priority, but looking at the transits and Nodes have certainly 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 what good astrological insight can offer. The hard part is what to do with it all, and how to live it out. (c) Elizabeth Spring

Inquiries for readings at: www.elizabethspring.com or elizabethspring@aol.com

North Node Astrology Available March 21st!

Dear Readers~
The book will be available to
buy on www.elizabethspring.com/
on March 21~and NOW on
http://www.amazon.com/.



It's all very exciting! As you can
imagine, this book is the result
of years of effort. You won't need
to have your astrology chart in hand
to read and understand this book,
because there is a chart included,
so you can look up the Nodes and
descriptions for yourself, your family,
friends, or clients.


Here's Amazon's review:

Professional astrologer and Jungian psychotherapist, Elizabeth Spring, weaves personal stories with the astrological wisdom of the North and South Nodes. There are detailed explanations of how to find and understand your own karmic Nodes as well as the life-changing transits that impact your life direction, soul purpose, career and relationships.



Elizabeth’s heart-felt chapter on the "Astrology of Menopause" has been re-published around the world, and the humorous chapter "Cocktails and Karma" explores the bridging between astrologers, ministers, and therapists. The “Family Karmic Inheritance” inspires a compassionate view on family relationships.


Endorsed by Jungian author Jim Hollis, and evolutionary astrologer, Steven Forrest, this book is a reference book as well as a collection of articles that shed light on unconscious motivation. An inspiring guide for transmuting the grace and grit of life into the gold of healing and personal success.

Till later then~ elizabeth www.elizabethspring.com/

North Node as Gateway, South Node as Essence

How interesting it is that the South Node is often the essence of the first part of life and the North Node can be seen as the gateway to the second part of life. There is no automatic passing through this door, but rather a gradual movement based on one’s choices and experiences. Take a moment to consider what the Nodes look like visually:


The South Node glyph in your astrology chart looks like a container, or a crucible, or even a womb. Whereas the North Node glyph looks like a curved doorway, the reversed womb, or an upside down crucible. And, every planet conjunct the North Node can be seen as something you’ve been “up against” or opposing-- either earlier in this life or in a former life. Yet if you use the higher expression of the North Node and any planet that conjuncts it, it can work for you, and be like “homeopathic North Node medicine.” Jungians would say it has a compensatory function in the psyche.


Planets conjunct the South Node reflect a necessary karmic lesson in order for you to
“go North.” The same can be said for planets squaring the Nodes—a necessary karmic lesson, or skipped step, that you need to go back and look at again. More about these in the “label chapters” on this blog, and lots about it in my new book being released around March 21st: North Node Astrology: Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose.


Astrology is such a unique way for exploring what Spirit intends for us! We don’t need it, but it’s another helpful tool that has been given us. I believe that prayer, and all forms of divination—if done in a sacred heart-felt context, will bring to light answers, deepen our questions, and soothe our Souls. It’s another gift, as when Jesus said: “Ask and ye shall receive…”


During this period of retrograde Venus, we are all being called to look at our unfinished business within the Venusian realms of relationships, love and beauty, and money. Something to consider…!


I also need to say that I’m not being able to answer some of your comments now (you can still make them, and I read them all!) but the publishing of this new book seems to have swallowed up all my energy and time….so be patient with me. Wishing all you readers a happy spring, and enjoy our new daylight savings time!

Love is Our Soul Purpose

Love is our Soul purpose. Our life direction is the trajectory we take, or the story we weave to get to that place of deeper love of Self and Other. Self is not “selfish” in an egoic self-centered fashion, rather it is the honoring of the place within us that is larger than our personal life story, or is our “higher Self/higher Power/God.” We all choose the vocabulary that feels right for us.


Oscar Wilde once said: “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” Isn’t that a delicious and outrageous thought? Who doesn’t want to rediscover themselves and fall in self-love again; to “re-invent” our lives and feel that sense of Self? Or maybe we are more humble and simply want to have “a more determining say” in our destiny and fate; and perhaps like a good makeover, we confess it’s an intriguing idea.


I like to ponder the ancient esoteric equation: fate + character = destiny. Perhaps it’s the same thing as being wise enough to know what we can control, what we can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. One can also add to this the the idea: “if I know what I can control, and what is wisest for me to do, then why aren’t I doing it?” That step from knowledge to action engages the unconscious agenda, and that, to my mind, is what makes things fascinating and difficult. That’s what this blog and the book, North Node Astrology is all about.



Most of us believe, as Mother Teresa said: “We can’t all do great things, but we can do small things in great ways.” It’s not always about what we do in life that truly matters, but how we do what we do. And how we speak about what we do—for example, I could say my writing is about my re-enchantment with life and “my inner Jung; my inner wise man/woman” or I can say it’s about astrology and Jungian thought.



So “life purpose” isn’t about quitting your day job and moving to India to work in an orphanage, although that might be perfect for some. Life purpose evolves as we find meaning in whatever we do, and we do this by bringing to consciousness what we have kept in the unconscious; in our “shadow”. This term shadow is about all those very human things we disown about ourselves—things we tend to not see or that we dislike, and all those things we tend to “project” upon others who either irritate us. Yet this shadow also holds the “gold”—those noble tendencies and talented parts of ourselves that we have been too blind to see.


In astrology, we find the gold and shadow by inquiring into the birth chart and the North and South Nodes. We gain insights. In analysis or therapy, we get help in living out our insights and refining/reframing the story of our lives. Together, they’re a great combination, and something that truly helps us to find ways in which we can love Self and Other again.
Elizabeth Spring (c) www.elizabethspring.com