Ladies and Gentlemen.....A Miraculous, Magnificent, Stupendous, Once in a lifetime thrill ....The Nodes of the Moon!

I was up with the big bad moon
That 'ol sun came up too soon,
He said, "Get down, get down, get down, you lazy moon"....
There's no room up here, for me and you.

The battle is on between the sun and the moon,
The battle is on between me and you
I don't mind, I don't mind, I don't mind, 'cause I won't lose
You're gonna share that sky, that's what you're gonna do.

Divorce...A story from Tago, West Africa

Sun and moon married and had many, many children. You could count them all if it were possible to count all the stars. But Sun and Moon could not agree on anything; what to call the children, how to bring them up, which crops to grow, or where to sleep, how many pails of rain to spill on the Earth below, or where to go swimming in the evening sea.
So Sun and Moon parted, he to live at one end of the sky, she to live at the other, and now they do the best to avoid each other.

This is the age-old story. The battle between Sun-centered and Moon-centered religions, mythologies, and systems of belief. Western astrology, of course, uses the Sun as the dominant element in the person, but my experience has led me to view the Moon as equal in importance. As the Sun circles in the sky, the orbiting moon crosses this path in two places. These are the nodes of the Moon, and I believe, the answer to this age-old puzzle. Where these paths cross is the integration of our disparate selves. This one opposition exists in every chart, and is the clearest place of decision making I've found.

The South Node represents all that we have mastered and are ready to leave behind. Job done. Some astrologers believe that it reaches back to past lifetimes and contains the soul memory of many lessons already learned about this function in the personality.
The North Node contains all the lessons of the person's future, and is a guide to personal fulfillment in the current lifetime. I've studied these nodes for many years and have found them to be the most accurate indicator of the problems in a person's life. The big puzzle. The paradox. The clue to destiny.

Some say that we can integrate the two nodes and live a good life. Some say we must choose one or the other. I am of the opinion that we have to learn to relinquish the grip on the South Node. It is the most addictive spot in the psyche, and where we go whenever we are insecure, because it is so deeply familiar. Most people want to drag this node with them as they merrily go to the North for happiness, but I haven't seen it work this way. The reason I think we need to leave this point is because it requires no effort whatsoever to effect this behavior. It's entirely automatic. Habitual. It needs no more cultivation. No more energy. It will continue to act without our effort.

Until we can disengage from this habitual behavior, I think it is almost impossible to reach the full potential written in our charts. It IS virtually impossible to get there, as strong as the lure to the safe and familiar is. But the end is always disappointing at the South Node. There is no growth. Nothing new. An empty safety that isolates and shortchanges. Satisfaction is missing. So the South often dominates and keeps us in the ancient self that wants to move ahead to the unknown.
In a sense, I think the North promises another birth. The inability to see what's ahead is the fear.

Invariably, the South Node indicates the family patterns that the person has inherited, even to the point of being recognized personally. The North can also be represented by family members but less attention is paid as the struggles with the South take precedence in these early stages. Fortunately, I think the positive attributes enter by osmosis and fill the bank for later use.

It's easy. Wherever the South Node is.....don't do it. But, of course, life is never really that simple. Depending on other factors, the difficulty of actually breaking the habit varies from person to person, although I see struggle in every case.
As we go through each node, you will see this, plus get a good glimpse of the orchestration of the horoscope in general, as we look at chart examples. I'll start with the South Node and then synthesize it with the North.

South Node in Aries first!