The Family Karmic Inheritance

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man’s life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As an astrologer I am continually struck by the potential for sorrow and suffering when first reviewing a client’s chart. However upon meeting them, I am usually astounded at how uniquely they have coped, survived and even flourished in spite of the potential for anguish. How do they thrive in spite of their history? How do they forgive and let go of their past? Longfellow must have had a sense of it when he wrote that sentence, and if we change the word “enemies” in that quote to “families” then the most important point of this chapter would be made. If we could know each other’s pain, this would indeed “disarm all hostility.” I believe that the oracle that speaks through the language of astrology teaches compassion.

It has been said that the soul is ruthless in seeking its own path home, and that the needs of the soul, not the desires of the personality, orchestrate our lives. I have been finding that there is a mystery and history to each of us that reaches back beyond our present lives directly to our family lineage. We’ve inherited a karmic legacy that reflects the victories, defeats, and hard won battles of our ancestors, for they are indeed very much with us.

Within families there is a karmic inheritance that is handed down the family line along with the genetic blueprint. We inherit deeply entrenched emotional and mental perspectives, as well as unearned propensities such as musical and mathematical talents. Yet unfortunately, we know that alcoholism, depression, abuse and certain illnesses are also inherited. We gladly accept the unearned talents—such as Mozart-like propensities, but a negative family inheritance such as the Kennedy family “curse” is not pleasant thinking.

Even if we believe that our soul “picks” our family and our karmic inheritance so that we can inherit both the gifts and the challenges needed for our highest soul growth, it’s still hard to understand. Essentially the soul’s choice of when and where to incarnate is a mystery. Yet astrologers believe that the synchronistic moment of birth is the key element in the life story, because it gives us a genetic, or karmic blueprint of the soul; a map of the psyche. By looking at our family members charts, we can decipher emotional patterns that have been playing out for generations. All that we’ve learned so far about the Nodes and the planet Pluto, figures strongly in this tale.

These karmic patterns are not in themselves innate curses or blessings, for our will, intention, and grace are always operative. But anything can behave erratically if willfully suppressed for generations. Carl Jung wrote about the personal as well as the collective unconscious, saying that both talents and troubles are to be found in the subconscious. He didn’t say how the unconscious works its way through the family lineage, but he did claim that there was gold in the “shadow” of the personal and collective unconscious. I believe that we can use the astrological technique of overlapping charts, called synastry, to help us see that gold in the family inheritance, as well as the imprint of family shame and secrets. We can become conscious of what has been hidden, and become freer by stepping out of the secret matrix of familial denial. We can then make choices to express and heal rather than to conceal. We can change the pattern for the next generation.

Everyone, not just astrologers and Jungians, are aware of the unconscious nature of family dynamics and what I call “the family karmic inheritance.” Just as we might see that we’ve inherited our parents’ tall bodies and long noses, we might also see a predisposition for sudden anger or alcoholism. We might notice too that the males in the family pride themselves, and judge others by physical prowess and athletic ability. But what happens when mental illness, greed, sexual confusion, or insatiable power and control dynamics are passed along? Isn’t it then that we question ideas of fate and destiny, wondering if we were born trailing not only “clouds of glory” but “clouds of dust” as well?
Most astrologers accept the theory of reincarnation as the basis for this inheritance, whereas other people see it more as some mix of genetic and emotional DNA. Evolutionary astrologers find the theory of re-incarnation makes sense as it resonates with a sense of justice that moves beyond the karma of one life, as it echoes back to the idea that the “sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children for seven generations.” It’s a thought or theory that I never liked, but everything I knew about the Nodes seemed to fit in---at least in theory.

Actually I didn’t choose to delve into this karmic stew as much as it chose me. One Sunday morning many years ago, I awoke with a confusing depression that had been building for months. I knew my Uranus Opposition was almost exact, and that the time for something to “come to light” was upon me. I had moved across country, to California, and had made significant changes in my life. Yet I couldn’t feel the joy or freedom that is the “gift of Uranus” despite my efforts. As was usual on Sunday morning, I called my mother, and had another depressing conversation with her. She was threatening suicide again if I didn’t return East. Nothing had changed in that area of my life, even though I fought the co-dependency by moving thousands of miles away. It was a constant litany of shame and blame between us, with tears and heart wrenching reconciliations followed by more accusations of abandonment and blame. I was on the defense, and as usual, nothing I said assuaged my guilt, anger and grief.

But this morning, the grief overflowed into tears that didn’t stop. I was paralyzed; I had no psychic energy left to move me out of this mood. I glanced at my chart and saw the same line-up of planetary archetypes, the same old story. But next to my chart was a “mythic” Tarot deck I had just bought, written by one of my favorite astrologers, Liz Greene. Because astrology pulls its symbolism from myths, similar to Tarot, I had bought this as a tool to go deeper, and to amplify what I knew astrologically. Now here it was for me at my time of need. I needed an oracle, an insight, something that could bring new light to this unending situation. (It’s always hard to be objective about one’s own chart! Asking advice from other astrologers or using other similar symbolic systems can be of tremendous help when you are blocked.)

So that morning I took out the deck, pulled the Ten of Swords, and read the story about it. On a divinatory level it said that this card marks the ending of a difficult situation, and it went on to tell the story of Orestes and the curse of the House of Atreus. It is a dark tale full of conflict and bloodshed involving Athene, the three Furies, and Orestes. I remembered that Athene, as a goddess of justice, is often related to Libra, my Sun sign, and the Furies have to do with feminine fury and unrest.

I could feel a shift beginning to happen within me as I wrote down what I read: “A family curse such as Orestes has to bear is an image of inner conflicts passed down from one generation to another, where the grandparents and parents have been unable to face life’s conflicts honestly and the children must inevitably suffer until insight is gained.” It went on to say: “A deep seated and ancient problem is now forced to the surface and something must ultimately leave our lives…we can now move on not merely disillusioned, but freed of some deep canker which has its roots in a past older than ourselves, and which our own suffering has released and redeemed.”

I then went to my computer and pulled up the charts of my grandmother, my mother, my daughter, and myself—four women linked by genes and an obscure family history. I had often felt as if there was some secrecy in the family history, yet when I questioned my parents and grandparents they would speak only of their successes, or of the failings of others. The same old stories repeated; and I found that probing questions yielded little. But now I questioned the nature of this family karmic inheritance by looking at the interconnecting positions of the Nodes, the Sun, the Moon, Chiron and Pluto. What I saw in this synastry of charts was a pattern of connections that was enough to lift the morning’s depressing fog. At least now I could see—and once seeing, I could make an attitude adjustment. I could feel a mood of compassion rising.

So I pulled up my chart and had another long look at it. I knew that Pluto in the horoscope is the “Lord of the Underworld” and reflects the Law of Nature for which the Greeks had so much fear and respect. And there it was, strong and highly visible in my chart. While thinking about the mythological curse that the Tarot hinted at, I rummaged through my astrology reference books and found that a family ‘curse’ involves some violation of natural law by earlier generations. I read that one can expect Pluto to be strong in the horoscope for anyone who has the need to make peace with an inheritance from the past.
What makes Pluto strong? If you look to the chapter on Pluto you’ll see that it tends to act up when in hard aspects to the Sun or Moon or other planets, and in the watery 4th, 8th, or 12th houses. It is then that it makes a tight bond to the unconscious and the family line. Yet I didn’t have Pluto in those areas of the chart. I looked again. Pluto was the “ruling planet” of my Scorpio South Node, and Pluto squared the South Node—there it was! A powerful sign to bring to consciousness whatever was brought down the family line.

So here was the challenge. How was I to make peace with it? I pondered the charts: my grandmother, Elizabeth English, had a chart with a predominance of planets in the earth sign of Taurus and—Ah! There was the Pluto aspecting the Sun with a tight conjunction. I couldn’t tell which house it was in because I only knew her birth day, and didn’t know her time of birth. But I could see that the South Node was in Cancer, and North Node in Capricorn. I knew that she was born in 1880, and that she had been a talented artist as a young woman, and after she married she had five children and never painted again. Her husband died in his late fifties of alcoholism. With five planets in Taurus, there were issues around money, security, and values, and with Sun conjunct Pluto she would have experienced many symbolic—if not real—deaths and rebirths in her life. In fact, her mother and sister both died young from “heart problems” and when her favorite son succumbed to alcoholism as well, she retired to her room for the rest of her days. I remember that she had an inner authority and independence when she spoke, but I don’t remember anything more. She died when I was seven.

It seemed as if my grandmother, Elizabeth, never felt the serenity and security that is the touchstone for Taurus---without which Taurus folks cannot release all their gifts. The mystery of her abandoning her painting was never told to me, and her only remaining oil painting is a dark Rembrandt-like rendition of a fortune teller reading the tea leaves in a china cup to a well dressed lady at the turn of the century. The painting was done in 1903 when she was twenty-three years old, and now hangs in my astrology office. Some people see only its darkness and the sad look on the woman’s face; I however find it delightfully fascinating that my grandmother’s last painting was called “The Fortune Teller”---foreshadowing the work that her grand-daughter would do. I also saw that when I overlaid my chart on hers that my North Node was conjunct her Taurus Sun, implying that there was something about who she was (her Sun) that could be an inspiration or a suggestion for me.

When I looked at my mother’s chart and mine, I saw that her South Node, hinting of the past life story, was at the exact degree of my Libra Sun. I knew that any planet aspecting another person’s South Node is an indication that the two souls have been in relationship before in another life. Ah—yes, our enmeshment and struggles in this life felt “larger than this life” and to see that we had “danced together” in some way before was not really a surprise. In fact, it felt like a relief to see that our connections were part of a karmic dance that had it’s roots long ago in other lifetimes. I suspected then that all my work in therapy around us was more significant than I originally knew.
Then I noticed that her Capricorn Sun was within 2 degrees of her mother’s North Node. So if the North Node was a “good suggestion” for my grandmother, then something about her daughter’s life would be an inspiration for her. And indeed, my mother was able to combine motherhood with her art, and she painted up until her death at the age of 88.

I could see our wounds. There were painful issues around creativity, freedom, and ambivalent feelings about motherhood here, as well as enmeshment and co-dependence. I could see the connections though the wounded secret trail of Pluto’s pride, shame, and insecurity. I couldn’t know the secrets of my grandmother or her family or the specifics of possible abuse. But what I could see was my grandmother’s Sun touching Pluto and her afflicted Moon. Her artistic freedom was severely curtailed by raising children, like most of the women of her generation. My mother’s confusing demands for both independence and connection reflected her own Aries/Libra Nodes as she worked out the last of that struggle with me, her only child. By virtue of simply living a long life, beyond my father’s time, she struggled painfully to reach the independence of her North Node Aries. I have found this easier in my life, as I struggle to combine my art, my writing, and being a mother as well.

I then pulled up my daughter’s chart, and saw more correspondences and overlapping. It’s not hard for anyone to bring up family charts and to look at the connections between them, yet delving into this kind of astrological analysis, this “synastry,” is best done with an astrologer who is familiar with the technique. But even a glance at these intertwining aspects tends to open understanding and empathy. In all the charts, the aspects between Pluto, the Nodes, and Venus hinted of an inherited struggle with creativity and relationship. It all echoed back to Elizabeth English who fought with the competing demands of art and children, and seemed to lose. I would never know the secrets of her heart, or what pain she may have passed on to my mother, but my heart was beginning to open.

In a much more radical fashion, we can look at other charts, such as our country’s royal family the “presidential Kennedy’s” and see their history of assassinations and signs not only of great gifts but also of a family “curse.” In 1969 when Senator Edward Kennedy saw the collapse of his Presidential hopes after Chappaquiddick, it was said that he actually asked whether there was a curse on his family. And indeed, if one examines this family there are elements in the family story that suggest this possibility, though a good astrologer would never call it that.

Call it what you may, what happens with the challenges that are unconsciously inherited down the family line? Sometimes a bad seed develops, as rage and alcoholism can insidiously move down through the family genetics. Some children, such as serial killer Charles Bundy, showed signs of this when he encircled his sister with knives as she slept, showing the peculiar signs of rage at the age of three. What’s happening here?

At heart I believe we are up against a mystery, because in each life the soul has free will and can play out genetic or karmic tendencies so many ways. We may be able to see the footprints of something in a chart, but astrologer’s move into shadowy hubris when they dare prescribe “how it will be.” Free will and consciousness gives us a great chance to change patterns. We don’t have to pass these secrets and silences down to our children. Instead the “buck can stop with us” as we heal the pain of our own legacy. We don’t have to perpetrate silent crimes.

Instead we can look at the heart of astrology—the myths that the planets are named after, and we can find clues. There are certain features which appear in every myth about a family curse, and it usually begins with an individual’s abuse of a God-given talent or advantage. Something positive gets misused or distorted through arrogance and pride, what the Greeks call hubris. The abuse of creative potential, which is sometimes linked with a subtle or not so subtle abuse of children, is made worse by the denial and hubris carried on within members of the family. In generations past, we hid our shame within our families. Today we think all is out in the open because it is the stuff of soap operas and reality shows and the evening news. But shame and lack of courage runs deep.

In mythology, we see that although each generation and each person could expiate the negative family inheritance, or “curse” by accepting a certain degree of limitation in their life they don’t--- and this refusal to make what is unconscious conscious, and to make the necessary sacrifices needed, can be seen as an act of putting personal desires before the needs of the soul. The soul’s needs are ruthless, and require a transformation of consciousness to change the family legacy.

Anything consistent in our lives and which shows up in the chart, can behave like a curse. Because we have free will, our behavior can change it, although old attitudes with very entrenched roots are harder to change. In the case of the Kennedy’s, one could speculate that the arrogance, ambition, and possible abuses of “Papa” Joe Kennedy (including his choice to have a lobotomy done on his first daughter) exacerbated a karmic situation that had its roots in the history and sufferings of the Irish people. Perhaps it’s a long shot to think that way; perhaps not. But if one looks at he collective struggle of Irish against English, Catholic against Protestant, and the tragedy of the famine which drove so many of our grandparents out of Ireland we can see how this could have fueled his ambition. He may have groomed his children for political power in order to redeem, in his mind, the shame and tragedies the Irish have had to endure in the last few centuries. The flaw of his daughter would have caused him great shame, and he took powerful action to correct it.

Could this powerful man have set in motion a set of inherited attitudes that produced both great goodness and unforeseen tragedy? Was his ambition and the shocking deaths of his sons a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of our country and the Irish? Perhaps. Were John Kennedy’s (and Bill Clinton’s) sexual transgressions an act of hubris? When John Kennedy Jr died in his night flight through the fog, was he acting like the mythical Icarus when he dared to fly on a foggy night? There was a judgment he made that night that failed. Could he have avoided this by observing the limitations of flight or the cautionary limitations of the exact transiting Pluto square which he was in? An astrologer might have cautioned him from any daring acts, and called his attention to his North Node in Virgo, which demands attention to details, yet…. perhaps all this is just speculation and hypothesis, but this is what astrologers do.
The opportunity to heal the pride, shame, and painful family legacy is a challenge, and the opportunity to act on the unlived gifts of our family legacy is a gift. We do it by bringing the issues to consciousness. Not to blame, but to bring to light the repressed painful attitudes, and to bring compassion to our past. What a unique chance it is to redeem what was once lost through ignorance, lack of courage, arrogance, or willful unconsciousness. Especially at each major life passage, such as the Uranus Oppositon and the Saturn Returns we get a chance again to ponder our karmic inheritance and to bring forth all that is longing to be expressed through us.

On that particular Sunday morning, during my Uranus Opposition at the age of forty, I began to look at my maternal inheritance differently. The painful legacy of expectations and attitudes that my mother inherited from her mother was not quite a “curse” although her desperate expectations sometimes felt that way. I could see again my inherited gifts: the artistic ability and a feisty blend of persistence and tenacity. But now I had a choice. I could see what I would accept in this inheritance and what I would attempt to heal or to reject.
The simple act of seeing the reflection of pain and grace moving through the charts lifted the depressive fog. I could see that I was not alone in my struggle to free myself, but that these women had struggled too, in their time and in their unique way. The mythology behind the planetary configurations enlarged my sense of self, and it was comforting to see how the orbs of my personal mythology touched the collective mythology. My unconscious wound was really no different than Orestes’ wound or the Kennedy family’s wound. Until that morning, I had been bound in my family’s karmic web until I began to lovingly separate and untangle the knots. I could now choose what I wanted to inherit.
Perhaps I should have known that moving across the country was not going to improve my difficult family inheritance. External solutions to internal problems are the line of least resistance. It took a lot of effort to move, but Uranus, unlike Saturn, is not about “efforting.” Instead, grace comes like a sudden storm— in its own time. When I consulted with “the gods” that morning, I felt a sense of awe and a lightening of my spirit. I didn’t know any more of the family secrets, but I knew there was not only a “blood line” but a karmic bond made of similar patterns along this family line. I felt we were of “one skin.” It was a compassionate epiphany, and it was then that I changed my first name from Janet to Elizabeth.

By looking at such family patterns one can almost hear the ancestor’s whispering: “This was my hope and fear for myself and my children; I tried to do my best.” And one gets a sense that the soul’s choices (the Nodes) are not always that of the conscious ego (the Sun.) The connection between soul and ego always has this mystery, this uncharted territory, leaving room for free will. Misfortune and sorrow is often the soul’s last resort in moving a person closer to the right path for them. And who is to say what is truly misfortune? The soul’s path is not easy to describe, and rarely simple to resolve. But we try.

Elizabeth Spring Elizabethspring@aol.com

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/

North Node Virgo

North Node Virgo



Virgo North Node, South Node Pisces

Virgo is probably the least understood and most under-estimated sign of the zodiac. Whether it is your Sun sign or your North Node sign, you have a unique ability to visualize the ideal and the willingness to do what must be done to bring this ideal into reality. What a gift! However for you to do the high path of Virgo, you must use the tools of discrimination and discernment--which also means you need to "dot your i's and cross your t's." By carefully attending to the little details of life, and by analyzing what's really happening, you'll be able to make your dreams come true.



Earlier in this life, or in a former life, you've merged with the Divine in some way and yet you weren't savvy about how to live the mundane life on earth. Whether you merged with God, your Art, your lover, or your bottle of wine, you now need to relax the urge to merge and pay attention to the demands of reality. Some of you may have died, suffered, or been persecuted because of your beliefs, so now you need to regain your faith that life in the real world can be good. Many lifetimes may have been spent in the dissolution or sacrifice of ego or simply sacrificing your life for the sake of another person or ideal. Now it's time to develop a healthy ego and strong sense of Self that allows your Soul to feel safe.



As a North Node Virgo, you've been naturally drawn towards developing a vision of the "ideal" and you innately know how to bring that vision into reality. Don't allow yourself to get distracted, but get good at the mundane details of life and see how that process of focusing and becoming competent enables you to bring your dreams into reality.


Dare to take risks in spite of fears, and avoid addictive tendencies and escapism. The wisdom and sense of Oneness you earned in former lives can now support you in this world. Because you see the ideal and are willing to work for it, you often get what you want, as long as you don't let your perfectionism or self-criticism stop you from giving 100 percent in whatever you do. There is a need to plan and strategize in this life and follow through on your ideas.



You are likely to have skills in crafts, teaching and in the healing professions, but whatever you do, use skillful means to your ends, and empowerment will happen naturally. You have a psychic sensitivity, a great imagination and a uniquely creative way of seeing things. These attributes, plus an innate understanding of people helps you in countless ways.
As you turn on your path and retrieve the gold in the shadow of Pisces, remember your half-forgotten visions and sense of knowingness..."remember to remember" all that is good and beautiful and meaningful in life. Remember the magic you know in your heart.


Soul Purpose: to bring order, harmony, healing, and practical wisdom into your life and the lives of those you touch. By knowing what is truly good—since you’ve been doing the work of “separating the wheat from the chaff” and the real from the illusory, you preserve and maintain the best of what our culture and our mutual lives have to offer. Learn a skill and offer it to the world. When you become truly useful to others—when you are “in service” to others—you regain a lost sense of self and self-appreciation.


Shadow: A default tendency to see the world as a dream, and one in which you don’t have a strong sense of Self. You may have spent lifetimes dissolving the ego in unselfish tasks, or religious life, but that stance doesn’t serve you now. In a former life you may not have developed a strong enough ego that could have helped you thrive—you might not have been “mirrored well” as a child, or you may have lost your sense of sense in the collective (like in the military) or in addictions (communing with the bottle.) When you don’t look beyond your inner world to skillfully participating in life, you sink into a dull dream of life that’s bound by other people’s expectations, and you lose that cherished love that comes from serving and loving others. There’s a subtle difference here—basically, give your gift/service to the world, but do it your way!



***
Joseph Campbell had this Virgo/Pisces Nodal polarity. Campbell was a world famous mythologist, writer, and lecturer in comparative religion and mythology who also became popular to the American public due to the PBS television series, the” Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers. In this series, Americans remember him for his depth of sharing on the “myth of the hero” through all cultures, the Universality of certain spiritual “truths” and the necessity for “following one’s bliss” in life.



As a North Node Virgo, Campbell tackled the enormous job of chronicling, cataloging and synthesizing details of the world’s mythologies and religions. His painstaking analysis allowed us to see connections and parallels in man’s religious nature—the kind of work that Carl Jung had also done.



However Campbell began his studies in the time of the Great Depression, and when conventional graduate school wasn’t available to him he devised a plan of study as he was trying to figure out what to do with his life. He engaged in a period of intense and rigorous independent study which he discussed in The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. Campbell states that he "would divide the day into four four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four hour periods, and free one of them...I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight." Now this is reaching for that skillful and disciplined North Node Virgo!



Campbell believed the religions of the world to be culturally influenced “masks” of the same fundamental, transcendent truths. All religions, including Christianity and Buddhism, can bring one to an elevated awareness above and beyond a dualistic conception of reality—that is, beyond the idea of “pairs of opposites,” such as being and non-being, or right and wrong. Indeed, he quotes in the preface of The Hero with a Thousand Faces "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names." In this line, we can hear the echo of his Pisces South Node: that place in him that could permeate beyond boundaries, masks, and linguistic or cultural divisions.



Campbell’s body of work was huge and even affected the world of screenwriting and film. George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to openly credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977 that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero With A Thousand Faces . Campbell’s life itself was like a film of one hero’s journey, and contains both the discipline and the imagination of the Virgo/Pisces axis.

(c) elizabeth spring For more information: http://www.elizabethspring.com/

North Node; Soul Messenger

The North Node: Your Soul Messenger



“The North Node is the single most important point in the chart...it describes what your Soul wants to learn and experience in this life. It is a Soul Messenger.”

Have you ever wondered what life-lessons and experiences your Soul wants to have in this life? Do you know what you truly yearn for? Unique insights into these questions are found by using the ancient astrological technique of examining the North and South Nodes of your natal astrological chart. Soul purpose and life direction questions are profoundly significant, and the Nodes in your chart address those questions from the perspective of your Soul---instead of your rational mind and ego.

The re-incarnational theory behind this is simply that your Soul chose to be born at a certain time and place so that it would carry over the gifts and challenges from previous lives, and that your chart reflects the original Soul intention on coming into this world. The great psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that the time of birth was not a coincidence but was a mysterious synchronicity that reveals a great deal. He used astrology in his practice with his clients, and found that it simply worked. So what may seem unimportant to you--your birthday, time, and place is actually a profound tool; an ‘oracle.’ And what may look like a mystery to you, is not a mystery to the astrologer who can read the meaning contained in the chart.

Let’s see how this works. There are three pivotal key-points in solving the mystery: the Sun, the North Node, and the South Node. . When an astrologer looks at your chart, these points–these clues--are described in some detail by their sign, house and aspect positions. But we don’t need to get complicated–let’s look at it briefly–

Your Sun sign, reads like a personality description presenting all the positive and negative ways you can “play out” your Sun sign. For example, as a Gemini Sun, you can play out the flirty, fickle, uncommitted aspects of the sign or you can use your great breath of knowledge to live a very full life in which you make wise and helpful decisions. You are the communicator of the zodiac. From the Soul’s perspective you chose to be born a Gemini in order to play out the highest octave of the sign. That’s the first clue to the mystery: look to the highest possible use and talents in your Sun sign. Almost any astrology book can help you with this.

The second clue is the North Node. Many astrologers today believe it is the single most important point in the chart. It is unique to each person and describes what your Soul wants to learn and experience in this life. It is a Soul Messenger, describing the evolutionary needs of your Soul. When we act out the qualities of this Node we heal and nurture ourselves. It tells us in what area of life we need to bring emphasis, and some of the ways to do it. The North Node has a sign, a house position, and aspects, and is an excellent suggestion---similar to the idea of a personal guiding North Star.

By contrast, the South Node describes the qualities brought over from our previous life, and describes how we lived when we were young. Our deeply habitual ways of being and thinking are shown here, and as we mature we tend to act out the qualities of our South Node less. It shows both the unhelpful and negative qualities that our Soul wishes to move away from, as well as containing what Carl Jung talked about as the “gold in the shadow”. This gold is the unconscious unrecognized talents and abilities that we bring over from a former life or that are simply latent or repressed qualities. It is wise to uncover and use the gold in the South Node, while leaving the negative old patterns behind, and to move in the direction of the North Node.

Most astrologers would agree that the South Node reflects karmic qualities of our previous life, describing the unfinished business and things that we didn't 'get quite right.' Although there are gifts and talents shown there, it is the North Node that points to the qualities our Soul wants to use and acquire in this life. So when you have a chart reading, take a long look at what your North Node tells you, even if it feels a little unfamiliar and challenging. It offers a potent suggestion.

So how does this all work together in a chart? Let’s look at my chart as an example. My Sun is in Libra, North Node in Taurus in the 2nd house, and South Node in Scorpio in the 8th house. “Houses” are the areas of life where things get acted out, and the Nodes are each in different houses. In many ways I acted out my South Node till my Saturn Return at age 28. I have tended to learn things the hard way, to be ungrounded and to go to excesses when I was young. It has taken me a long time to live into my true profession as an astrologer. I married late, and after 20 years of marriage was divorced for five years, and then I remarried my first husband. We've been married now since 2001, and continue to do the wonderful/horrible work that soul mates do with each other---we help each other grow. His independence and my desire 'to merge' are not comfortable together, yet I can see how he naturally pushes me to live out the independence and grounded values of my Taurus North Node. I encourage and stimulate the curiosity and expansiveness of his North Node in Gemini. There's grace and grit here; a true marriage.

My South Node in Scorpio suggests that my Soul purpose is, in part, to move away from hurtful melodramas and to ground myself in my own talents and resources. It speaks of the desire for serenity and to move away from the dramatic reactivity and the excesses of my earlier years and former life. I’ve needed to take on the qualities of loyalty and persistence of the Taurus North Node and to find the sacred in the commonplace, which is a beautiful quality of that sign. The “gold” in my Scorpio shadow-South Node is my intuitive ability and emotional intensity.

One could speculate that with my South Node in Scorpio (conjuncting Jupiter, the planet of expansion and privilege) I may have been the 'power behind the throne' to someone of importance, and was used to enjoying the largesse of another person and a more dramatic life. That is not the case in this life–I need to use my own resources and power based on that grounded Taurus in the 2nd house of personal values and resources. The Universe gives me strong hints whenever I move into territory that is not my own to claim anymore.

My Sun sign in Libra wants serenity, harmony and beauty. Yet it thinks in terms of opposing ideas, and about the paradoxical nature of life. I can get easily stressed, yet look poised. The North Node points to the necessity of creating calmness and living off my own values and resources. It's also significant that I have no earth signs in my chart—except the North Node in Taurus, and yet I was unconsciously drawn to compensate for that (the pull of the North Node) as I make pottery as well as do astrology. For many years I lived in a stone house, and married an earth sign, Virgo. Jungian psychologists would call this the unconscious compensation of my inferior function; the sensate.

An astrologer sees a chart like my mine and says this is an air and fire sign personality, whereas a Jungian therapist would say I was an intuitive-thinking type. This is labeling, and just the beginning of a deeper discussion, but it’s still useful.

The movement towards the North Node is a continuous process, not just one decision you make. For me, I needed to get lost, and found, many times--- I divorced and remarried the same man. I write and do astrological counseling, which is my true vocation, but I have ‘followed several gods home’. I continually need to recommit to ever deeper levels of grounding and persistence in my work and life. Serenity and home life is very important. I know I survived a difficult family karmic inheritance, yet I strive to act out the highest octave of the Libra Sun which pulls me towards tactfulness and deep thinking. And that South Node in Scorpio still tries to seduce me in every way you can imagine.

So, I come back to the chart and to the astrological work again and again as a spiritual practice. It helps me remember my commitment to the work of being a healer; an intuitive astrologer who is grounded and practical. Astrology reflects the internal dialog between the different parts of oneself, but at least now I know who to listen to and why. I am grateful to have this divinatory tool that helps make conscious what is unconscious in the psyche, and I delight in sharing the gifts of this Soul Messenger to whoever asks. ~Elizabeth