Inaugural Post: On Lunar Nodes and Karmic Process

I almost didn’t launch this blog this week. After getting the basic site structure worked out enough to feel comfortable with posting to it, I was still experiencing a bit of perfectionist discomfort about it, which of course resulted in writer’s block for a couple of days. Thursday night I thought I’d take advantage of the Venus-Jupiter trine’s favorable environment for writing and publishing to help myself get over my nervousness. But then an old heartbreak walked back through the door, one of those fateful individuals who hits all the right spots to really wake you up and make you see what needs to change in your life, but who doesn’t want to stick around for the transformation.

That fateful feeling is like a punch in the gut every time I encounter this individual. In particular, the synastry between us triggers the axis of each person’s Lunar Nodes repeatedly, powerfully. No matter how I try to remain calm and collected in the presence of this person, that Nodal axis dynamic and the feedback loop generated by all of the planetary interactions activated by it sends me into a mental and emotional state of overdrive, not particularly conducive to writing, or at least not to writing anything coherent.

Now, like many other Cardinal signs whose lives have been turned upside down by the series of Pluto-Uranus squares grinding away at our habitual patterns and interpersonal structures since 2012, I’ve gone through a bit of turmoil over the past few years. Personal relationships, residence, livelihood, life purpose, will to live, you name it – all have gone onto Pluto’s anvil to be tempered mercilessly by the pounding hammer of Uranus. Tempered, or broken and thrown back into the fire. The desire to start this blog is part of what emerged from that process. Part of my means of putting my life back together has been intensifying my study of astrology, and exploring those studies further through my art, and part of regaining a sense of purpose has been the will to share what I am learning through this ongoing process.
Thursday night’s encounter temporarily derailed my writing, but like every such encounter it sent me deeper into my studies in a way that clarified my own karmic path along the Nodal axis in my natal chart, via the shared house placement of my South Node with my Pluto. Part of the synastry dynamic that I mentioned is a Yod created by this fateful individual’s Mars, Jupiter, and Sun having the focal point of my Pluto in the 12th house, wide-orb conjunct to this person’s Moon, which is medium-orb conjunct to my South Node. My Pluto is wide-orb opposed to my Moon and medium-orb opposed to my Mars (wide-orb conjunct to my North Node), and more closely opposed to my Chiron just below my Descendent in my 6th house, which is in medium-orb opposition to my Uranus near-conjunct to my Ascendant. And my Pluto has multiple other contacts in my natal chart as well, including my Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Neptune. So, anything that triggers my Pluto by extension triggers the majority of my planets and both of my luminaries. It sets my chart thrumming with Pluto’s compulsive energy, but from the subconscious darkness of the 12th house. So, I don’t get to consciously see what’s happening, but thanks to Chiron so close to my Descendent and in a crazy bundle of oppositions along the AC/DC line profoundly heightening my kinaesthesia (what some people describe as ESP of the body), I get to physically (and emotionally, via the Moon) feel it ALL. It’s a bit like an ongoing state of low-level electrocution, without seeing where the current is coming from. Since this other person’s planets/luminary that are activating those Plutonic compulsions are highly active, Yang-oriented forces, being in that person’s presence is like having lightning striking into the darkness of my subconscious, leaving a trail of after-images in the form of compulsive effects on my own planets and luminaries, that I can trace to their original energetic sources of action (Mars), faith (Jupiter), and ego (Sun). What I saw on Thursday night illuminated where I have hitherto failed in the karmic balancing act of my Nodal axis.

With a Libran Ascendant, the houses of my natal chart all fall into the signs opposite the signs that normally rule those houses. (Thus, the integration of opposites is an ongoing theme in my art and spiritual/intuitive practice.) So particularly with the Nodal axis, trying to determine what I’m supposed to be doing to fulfill my karmic purpose has been an exercise in contradictions. The 12th house is ruled by Pisces and the 6th by Virgo, so the typical advice for someone with the North Node in the 6th house is to learn to pay attention to the practical details of daily living and devote one’s life to the service of others – medical professionals often have active 6th houses, for example (and I’ve done my fair share of exploring medical professions). But with the North Node in Pisces, the standard advice usually runs more along the lines of learning not to get bogged down in details, learning to go with the flow, dream a bit more, cultivate one’s sensitivity and spirituality, etc., etc. Determining how to combine these lessons of opposing signs has proven daunting. All too often, when I’ve striven to tend more to day-to-day details, I fall back on familiar South Node Pluto-in-Virgo OCD tendencies, especially when trying to be in service to others (and with Mars in Pisces, the South Node in the 12th house, and asteroid Lilith in the 8th house, boy do I love devoting my energies to hard-luck cases!), and then of course feel sorry for myself when I inevitably wind up martyred to the cause. Yet doing the dreamy go-with-the-flow routine tends to result in not getting the bills paid.

This time, as the lightning flash of that fateful Yod electrified my subconscious again, the effort to resist the usual Plutonic compulsive responses led me to refocus my attention on Pluto’s 12th house cellmate: the South Node. All too often when we are challenged we fall back into the old, familiar behavior patterns of the South Node, and I’m no exception – the more that I feel challenged the more I try to impose Virgoan order on my understanding of the cosmos, tackling grandiose projects in microscopic detail, serving big causes via day-to-day organization, and getting further and further from a sense of real purpose in the process. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to serve people by falling back on my Virgoan South Node skills, rather than growing into Piscean North Node expression. I’ve consciously focused on the Virgoan 6th house path, but subconsciously have struggled with the Piscean means of walking it.

Which is where this blog post comes in. Part of what has held me up for the past few days that this site has been ready for me to post on has been an uncertainty about the usefulness of it – a Virgoan concern for the perceived lack of practicality in an astrological blog based on personal anecdotes and dreams and poems and artwork, and not a whole lot of instruction, or predictive astrology, or celebrity examples, or tidy saleable packages of natal charts delineations and synastry analysis. Not that I don’t enjoy helping people understand natal and synastry charts, because doing that is what got me excited about astrology in the first place, but for me that is more of a one-on-one interaction, face-to-face or via Skype, not a written “product” to sell. And without a clear focus on the standard trappings of the professional astrologer, up until now I was feeling very concerned about whether I would provide astrological information to readers in a useful, linear fashion. But now I think I nearly missed the point of doing this in the first place. There are plenty of astrology blogs out there, some instructive, some less so. Writing yet another blog full of predictions and linear analysis won’t fulfill my 6th house North Node calling to service. But surrendering to the Piscean stream of consciousness in this path just might.