The Lunar Nodes at Cross Quarters

This header image is based on a photo of Main Street in Old City Dubrovnik

by Alex Proimos of Sydney, Australia (July 2011)

Pretzels. That’s what first came to mind when I started thinking about the nodes moving backwards through fifteen degrees of Scorpio and Taurus. After all, the normal astro-celestial movement is forward and the idea of the zodiac’s cross-quarter points is of the infamously famous ‘move on’ sort.

(Or if you want to be more benign and Zen about it, ‘walk on’.)

Occurring at 15 degrees of each of the zodiac’s fixed signs (or on a more esoteric level, at the half-way mark in houses 2, 5, 8 and 11), the cross-quarter points are where gathering information and learning about something shifts into ‘doing it’ gear.

Or at least ‘trying it’ gear.

And yes…if you have some planet, node or axis positioned at 15 degrees of any of the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius), this may explain why – in terms of whatever that symbol is – you’re always struggling with the ‘do I know enough?’ or ‘do I HAVE to?’ or 'are they going to like/approve of me (or what I do)?' issues.

Or maybe you’re just hesitant (read: reluctant) when it comes to getting started, with once you’re in gear being a whole other thing.

Taurus and Scorpio being signs which are natively 1st quadrant and 3rd quadrant in the zodiacal sense, the stakes here are pitting the ‘learning how’ and ‘learning about how my life works’ first quadrant process against the 3rd quadrant ‘what works?’ with others, or in terms of who (or what sort of company or organization) you should be dealing with.

Basically, the first-against-third quadrants are more ‘who am I and how do I operate’ where the second-against-forth quadrants are more about what we do and whether the world likes what we do: one-three is directly personal and two-four is a bit ‘offshore,’ if you will.

That doesn’t mean we won’t get offended if someone sneers at us, obviously, but there’s a difference between someone saying ‘you baked a lousy cake’ (or you hired a lousy employee) and ‘you’re a lousy so-and-so.’

Of course there are some cross-collateralizations here, I will freely admit. Maybe you’ve noticed this and maybe you haven’t, but people who are born under 2nd or 4th quadrant signs (Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces) seem to have a bit of a harder time separating themselves from what they do. And when you add in not just Sun but also Moon, then take where each falls in the natal chart it all gets a bit complicated and everybody has sensitive spots.

But then, we are humans. And humans, it seems, were born to get real and realer as time goes along by having their soft spots poked, prodded and otherwise stimulated.

(No, don’t go there. Google/Blogger has rules, don’t you know!)

Into all this comes the Nodes of the Moon. Defined as that place where the Moon’s path around Earth intersects Earth’s path around the Sun, the nodes are the ‘intersection’ of our very personal world (the Moon) with the greater life around us (the Sun). And thus they are about how and where we interact with the world and with other people.

So now we have the North Node (the “should do” end of the nodal axis) entering 15 Scorpio as the South Node (the “what I like to do”) side of the equation is entering 15 Taurus, an event which starts on June 23rd (this Sunday, UT/+0 time) and continues on into July 8th.

June 23rd happens to be the date of a Full Moon, so we know this Nodal shift begins in a celestial 'spotlight.' It's also just days shy of Mercury going retrograde, so things, and the thought processes of various folks are going to be set on 'high' - and with Jupiter at 29 Gemini about to move into Cancer, things are likely to be pretty intense, to say the least!

Ergo...depending on how well we each do with adjusting our outlook, this will probably be a time to enjoy...or for struggling through.

And why would that be? Well just to begin with, there is that ‘fixed sign’ thing. Being that the Taurus Challenge is all about how secure we are with ourselves, anything that tends to make us feel invalidated or ‘less than perfect’ in our own eyes rouses the bullish snort and much pawing of tender ground. And since the Scorpio Challenge is all about how well we are able to negotiate with others in a give-and-take sort of manner so that we can all join forces and depend on each other as we move ahead and towards our goals, with the South Node in the “don’t invalidate me, bro!” Taurus end and the North Node in the Scorpio “we should get along, which optimally means you should agree with me” end of things, the past year and something (or so) has felt like something of a cosmic set-up which brings the worst out in everyone.

Why this is so difficult for us is all about the fact the Nodes are a continuum. It’s a lot easier (not to mention more convenient) to think of them as separate things, but they’re not. So when we do what we want or like to do (embracing the South Node of it all), if – or to the degree that we ignore or don’t pay any attention to the necessity of the situation (the North Node getting along with others) we fall afoul of our own ‘but I want to see it MY way!’ sort of thing.

There are of course, places and times in life when it’s simply ducky to say ‘we agree to disagree.’ And hopefully we’ve done that rather than resorting to launching WWIII (or IV…or V…or XXVII) because someone doesn’t agree with us.

But that doesn’t always happen. I had a raucously bad week(plus) this past April when an astrologer I know just couldn’t accept that I wasn’t into their particular area of expertise and wasn’t buying into their rationale(s). No matter how many times I said ‘I’m sure there are many on your wavelength, I’m just not on the list - but I wish you entirely well with your studies…’ this person snarled, snorted, barked and snapped.

Evidently they hadn’t taken their daily does of Node Tonic. For some reason it was very important to this person that I should validate their thoughts and choices, and they aren’t the only one I know of going through this cycle. I’ve seen all sorts of people either wanting validation or getting all snarky because their choices didn’t get someone’s endorsement.

But wait…isn’t the idea to be secure in our own choices? If we are, when we are, where we are secure others thinking differently becomes interesting instead of threatening.

So if we go to war because someone is different, is that about them – or us? War is a Scorpio reaction which at it’s most basic metaphysical level says ‘my sense of safety requires that I exert force in order to restore control at a level I think of as safe.’

Question: does that define what is safe? Or does that define one’s sense of vulnerability?

That would seem to be the general lesson of the Nodes passing through Scorpio (North) and Taurus (South): learning to work with others without feeling you need to control others (or dictate terms of control to them) in order to feel secure or ‘good’ about yourself. And as with all things astrological, if we don’t do the work…or to the degree that we aren’t willing to challenge ourselves, life will bring on the situations and interactions which will promote or provoke those tests and testy situations.

It’s not about ‘them,’ it’s about us – but the human thing is (sure as shootin’, so to speak) that we’ll blame others first.

And this is where Nodal motion makes this whole idea really all the more interesting. Usually, objects moving through the zodiac go from zero to twenty-nine degrees of any given sign. With the Nodes, it’s from twenty-nine back down through the sign TO zero. So where we’re used to the ‘personal and private’ giving way to the ‘emotionally challenging and interactive’ to the worldly ‘public’ sort of process, what the Nodes represent is a different sort of life process which starts “out there” and which through the emotional process “brings things home to us.”

And that's what made me think of pretzels. It was the quirk of the twist, the way life is engineered to move us forward as part of the process of making things more elemental which got me.

(And yes, I like pretzels. Also yes, I think life is crispy and often salty!)

Since the Nodes are calculated points, they don’t have “mass” (like planets and asteroids do). So this idea, this ‘function’ is more esoteric, more nebulous in nature than other things. I always say that if the symbol has mass, we can “retrain” ourselves and eventually form a positive habit. That doesn’t seem to be true where calculated points like Ascendants, Descendants, Midheavens, ICs, the Part of Fortune (any of the Arabic Parts, really), Black Moon Lilith and the Nodes are concerned.

All such ‘calculations’ are just what the word implies: they are ideas and concepts which we calculate the effect of and which we are right or wrong about by turns…which leads (hopefully!) to learning through both our mistakes and triumphs.

In moving over 15 Scorpio and Taurus, the Nodes are moving out of the ‘operational’ part of the 3rd and 1st quadrants into their 'provocatively personal' realms. That will ‘bring home’ results of what we have or haven’t learned through what was promoted or provoked in the world around us.

And again…this is something of an esoteric experience, for all it may have a real-time manifestation such as the getting or losing of a job, the forming or loss of relationships, business successes or disasters, and so on. All around us we’re seeing folks dealing with what their opinion of ‘right’ is against what the world’s opinion of ‘right’ is and the repercussions of same.

During the days ahead…the actual processing of the two opposing cross-quarter degrees by the Nodes, we can expect a linking of very different ideas. The North Node in 15 Scorpio speaks to guilt and where some people should feel guilty but don’t. It’s sort of a psychosocial checkpoint all about the need to deal with reality, not just what we want life (or others) to be. Meanwhile, the South Node at 15 Taurus can point to a moment of realization and recognition, when we ‘listen’ to our Self and others and realize that there is an actual growth opportunity, a process we can take advantage of.

Those who make changes now will relax and open up. They’ll be able to say ‘I understand’ and begin to remember that others may have a different point of view and that that’s not a disaster.

Far from it – they may actually have something valuable to say.

Those who make the shift will become more ‘operative’ and less about ‘digging in and holding their ground’ going forward. Those who don’t make the shift will continue attacking, sniping, being defensive and otherwise stirring up contentious confrontations where nothing of the sort needs to exist. They’ll look childish – even desperate – to some folks, and eventually (as the Nodes reach the end of their current Scorpio/Taurus traverse), they’ll peter out and be left either empty-handed or without much more to say.

Or folks who want to listen to them say it.

But that’s yet to come - next year when the Nodes cross into Libra-and-Aries. Our 'now,' is a next few weeks of the Nodes lingering at cross-quarters. And that's a time which is likely to be enlightening, even inspiring on one hand…and maybe filled with regrets and ‘why does it have to be this way?’ (or ‘why do they have to act that way?’) in the dim, even darker momentsr.

Providing we remember that the difficulties or challenges which we feel are ours – not theirs - and how their difficulties and challenges are theirs, not ours, all goes well. Or reasonably well, give or take the fact that life isn't perfect. The perfection (the theoretical 'perfectly human' part) comes in when we realize that our Nodal education - in the end - is about learning where ou responsibility ends and ‘their’ responsibility for who they are (and what ‘they’ earn or get saddled with) begins.

Is it easy? No. But it is important, especially if we want our lives to be-and-become more and more intrinsically ours and less-and-less something we feel 'mucked' with by others. So in that light...after we chew through all the reluctance will dawn the understanding that we are here to support each other, not live symbiotic live or a life in contentious alienation or isolation. We are indeed stronger together, but that relies on the unique abilities of each person to be brought to the fore.

If I love you, then I love you for being you. I don’t expect you to be me. I don’t expect you to think like I think and I don’t expect you’ll agree with all my pleasures, my treasures or my preferences. Nor do I expect myself to adore all your pleasures, your treasures or your preferences.

But if I love you…or even like you…or like the idea of getting along with you…or even just living with you on the same planet, then I have to accept that those variations and our differences have merit – an intrinsic merit and one through which I learn a measure of acceptance, the value of discordant experience and ultimately, tolerance.
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