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©2009 by Guest Blogger, Elizabeth Spring

 Donna says:  I met Elizabeth Spring, a Jungian astrologer and psychologist,  several years back when I wrote her a fan letter about an article she published in The Mountain Astrologer.  I remain a fan, impressed by the high quality of her insights and her first book, North Node Astrology: Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose. You can see an earlier post of hers on this blog at Taming Transiting Saturn–Guest Blogger Elizabeth Spring. Now Elizabeth has a new blog and book in process: “South Node Astrology; How Love Sabotages and Saves Us.”  She permitted me to reprint this post.

 From the point of view of evolutionary astrology, the sign of your South Node describes your default pattern in life. It describes a way of being in the world which doesn’t work well for you anymore. It represents something you are comfortable with, because earlier in this life or in a previous life (if you believe in reincarnation) it was your habitual pattern and where you failed to live up to all you could be. So now, the Soul longs to move away from this and towards the potential and possibilities of your North Node.

The South Node represents an easy way out for us—our addictive tendencies, our unresolved conflicts and negative personality traits, and the limitations and failures from the past which can interfere with our ability to be all we can be. In looking at the sign of the South Node, one needs to look at what the lower octave, or less pleasant side of the sign and house position is all about. Because the South Node represents what we didn’t get right, or was troublesome either earlier in this life or in a former life, then we really understand quite a lot about ourselves if we can understand what this is all about.

It’s important to remember the paradoxical nature of the signs and planets, and to keep reaching for the highest expression of them. All these signs can be played out in a higher, or wiser way, and a lower, or less conscious way. And although we don’t want to keep falling back on what we know or what our default pattern is, it’s helpful to remember that Carl Jung always said to watch for the “gold in the shadow.”  That shadow is the South Node!

We would be wise to think of the South Node territory as a potentially slippery slope. We need to be fully grounded before digging for the gold there–or what we may find could be just fool’s gold. Illusion and disillusion dwell there, and it takes discernment to know what is real and what isn’t real. Or, as the pryite nugget above suggests, we may be dealing with the illusory qualities of the mythological Neptune, God of the Sea. Inspiration and spirituality is the high road for Neptune–it’s the true gold, but so often we get swept away by the illusion of what we want, rather than what is real.

 One of my hopes for my blog and book about South Node Astrology is to explore how reframing our understanding of love and relationship can help us bring in more of its saving quality and less of its sabotaging—and ultimately to explore how it’s truly an “inside job” which is much less dependent on others than we may realize. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and certainly don’t have perfect relationships, but I’m moved to delve into this territory.

Love itself may be perfect—as the high expression of Neptune itself is perfect mystical love. But humans live primarily “Venus” love or “Moon” love—and it’s messy, confusing and imperfect. I believe it’s imprinted with the past life patterns of the South Node, in a similar way to how DNA is imprinted.  The strongest pattern to understand then may be the South Node in your birth chart. In Evolutionary Astrology, one is advised to “read” the South Node negatively; that is to understand it primarily as what we didn’t get right in the past. This past could be earlier in this life, or in former lives, or even what we didn’t get right yesterday.

It is the “Moon’s memory” not the Mercurial/linear memory, that is carried over from life to life. It is this memory that does not concern itself with facts, or details or stories, but holds simply the emotional impact—the drama and trauma of the Soul. We forget the stories of past lives, but something remains like a forgotten dream—and this “emotional hangover” is called the South Node of the Moon.

As you may know, the Nodes are mathematical points rather than planets, and are calculated by the intersecting orbits between the Earth, Sun, and Moon. Throughout the history of astrology these points have pointed to our re-incarnational history, for they describe where we’ve been (South Node) and where we’re going (North Node.) Like the compass that points North, or the astrolabe with the arrow shooting through the globe, these Nodes hold the “emotional memory” and trajectory of our lives.

As in dreams, and in all unconscious content, there is “gold” in these South Node patterns as well, and we carry over positive attributes, talents and inclinations as well as our default reactive patterns. It’s also been said in Vedic astrology that we give to others from the South Node what we know innately in our bones and psyche, and yet we feed and nurture ourselves from the soul wisdom of the North Node. This was the content of my first book, “North Node Astrology; Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose.”

Let’s acknowledge the importance of both our early life attachments to our parents as well as our past life default patterns of behavior. These two contribute heavily to how we think and feel and act on love in our life right now. But always the good news is that we can choose to continue to reframe our stories with understanding and compassion. We can make new choices based on new insights.

See Elizabeth’s earlier article here: Taming Transiting Saturn–Guest Blogger Elizabeth Spring

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Spring has an MA in counseling psychology with a focus on the work of Carl Jung. She’s been a full time astrologer since 1992 and has written the book: “North Node Astrology: Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose.” This book is available on amazon.com or through her website.  Articles on the North and South Node are posted on both blogs: http://NorthNodeAstrology.blogspot.com  and http://SouthNodeAstrology.blogspot.com  Elizabeth does astrological counseling by phone, world-wide. You can find out how to arrange a reading/session, or for more bio information by going to her homepage at: www.elizabethspring.com.

Art Credits:  Photos from Wikimedia Commons.  Panning for gold picture by Official Webpage of the County ; pyrite nugget by Dave Dyet http://www.shutterstone.com http://www.dyet.com

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