Once you have learned about the all-important lights and then the personal planets, you can begin to look at your chart in more sophisticated ways. Everything you have learned so far has been specific to the day you were born. Everybody born the same day as you, will most likely have all the planets in the same signs. One or two planets could change signs during the 24 hour periods, but it would be surprising if it was many more than that. Aspects between planets will be shifting as well, but for the most part, charts from the same day would be very similar, as far as the planets and aspects go. The Ascendant is what really personalizes our charts.
Astrology is old, and carries a bit of our old world view with it. The astrology chart is drawn up as if you are the center of the universe, with everything revolving around you.
Ascendant/Descendant and the Medium Coeli/Imum Coeli axises have been called the cross of matter. The lights and personal planets are the glowing energies that make our being, and the cross portions the chart out and sets it in this earth life, pinning the soul like a butterfly.
Even during the day, when we can’t see our universe, the earth is still turning you slowly around to face different portions of our skies. Still the constellations dance, though you cannot see them. So the constellation, or portion of the sky named after those constellations, rising in the east at the moment you were born, becomes your rising sign and sets the frame of your chart. From there the houses of the chart are portioned out. The Ascendant of the chart shows the exact degree of the sign that was coming up on the eastern horizon the moment you were being born. From the calculations deriving from that moment, all the angles of the chart are set.
Your Sun sign describes the day you were born, the Ascendant or Rising sign, describes the time of day you were born, hopefully down to the minute. The Ascendant/Descendant axis is the horizon of your chart, your own personal sunrise and sunset.
If you look at your chart, you can see what time of day it was by where the Sun is in the chart. If the Sun is in the upper left hand side of the chart, you were born in the morning, when the sun was still rising. Those with the Sun in the tenth or ninth houses, up on the top near the M.C., were born around noon. If your Sun is in the upper right hand section of the chart, you were born in the later after noon, or evening. But not last evening, am I right? Those with the Sun in their charts below the Ascendant/Descendant axis were born at night, after the Sun set or before is rose again. It’s all sensible.
You can look at Marlyn Monroe’s chart, and see that she was born at 9:30AM in early June. At that time of year, even though it’s early in the day, the Sun has risen up pretty high, and it’s just getting into the tenth house. It’s almost at zenith for the day, just a few hours before noon. The constellation Leo is halfway up over the horizon.
Our ascendant connects us to life. It describes how we style our persona, and what our instinctive reaction to life is. It’s our knee-jerk reactions to life. This part of the chart seems really intractable and hard to shift.
We might not like this part of ourselves, the way we “are” about things, but it seems impossible to change. The ascendant is strange. To me it seems like it’s made out of past life lessons or priorities. It’s just so deep seated, this style of reacting. I have a soft rising sign, and often wish I was a little more confrontational. Even though I’m unconventional, any sort of social discord is extremely uncomfortable for me. Wish I was a little tougher and more badass, you know, in my reactions, but it is not to be. I am yielding and polite unfailingly. I’m a Libra rising and I can’t change it. You just have to work with your own strengths, and forgive your weaknesses.
I like to save the Ascendant for last when I’m delineating a chart. Because the Ascendant is how we approach life, I feel like it’s better to just start figuring out all the aspects of the self through studying the planets in the chart and how that’s all operating, before heading out into the world through the Ascendant.
Each astrology sign has a planet connected with it. If you find the planet that rules the sign on the Ascendant, then you have your chart ruler. Another reason I like to look at the Ascendant last, is that I find the chart ruling planet is a good summary tool. It seems to describe something we really enjoy in life, what gives us the most ‘flow’. By using the term ‘flow’, I mean the desirable psychological state wherein you are engaged in a satisfying activity that you are doing perfectly and can remain engaged in for a long time. The chart ruler shows where and how you are likely to achieve this state. It shows how you do you.
In contrast to this, the Nodes and the Node Rulers let you know what your fate is. The North Node shows you what life is forcing you to understand or achieve. The South Node shows where you are comfortable, but have a tendency to stagnate. This is your homework from the universe, you might be turning it in late, but you will complete the assignment. The chart ruler is a lot more fun.
You can look at Marlyn Monroe’s chart and see that she is a Leo rising. Totally makes sense for her, people gathered round to bask in the heat and light she exuded, the Queen of slightly tipsy good times. Being a Leo rising makes the Sun her chart ruler. We see the Sun in Gemini up near the top of her chart, just streaking up into the 10th house. It’s actually right on the 11th house cusp, so I would read it for both houses. Her career was important to her, but what she really loved was a witty and clever group of people to talk to and be around. Her Gemini Sun, conjunct Mercury would have loved chatting it up with a bright crowd. From what we know of her life, we know this to be true, she married playwright Arthur Miller because she loved hanging out with him and his friends so much.
This is why it’s so fun to find that chart ruler. It brings pleasure.
There’s lot of information on the internet about our Ascendant or Rising signs. If you don’t have an exact time of birth, you might want to read the descriptions of the rising signs ahead and behind the one you think is right. The description of your rising sign should make sense to you, if it doesn’t something is wrong. So trust your instincts, you might have to play around with your birth time a bit to get the right fit, if you aren’t positive about your exact time of birth.
Once you have figured out your Rising sign, and explored how it describes your style of coming on to the world, you can look at the aspects to the Ascendant to see how awkward you are about it. I always look for planets conjuncting the Rising sign. This is a place were those outer planets are a really big deal, Pluto or Saturn in particular will have a big effect on your whole orientation to life.
It you look at the little pyramid of knowledge there below Marlyn’s chart, you can see the aspects to the Ascendant listed. Right at the bottom of the pyramid is the AC and the MC categories, and you can look across and see what aspects you might have to these sensitive points in your chart. I figured that she would have some, because her image was so important. She’s a bit mysterious in fact, it almost seems she was all persona, and the real Norma Jean is just always evaporating into the air.
And in fact the Sun is sextile her Ascendant, and also her Moon Opposes. She was able to project the warmth of the Sun to people, brightened to a blinding gloss with Gemini slickness. With the Moon opposite Ascendant, she would have been able to make people feel intimate and close to her, even though she was somehow so far away. These aren’t really strong aspects, but I find it most interesting, the light conjunction to Neptune. There’s Neptune in Leo about 10 degrees below the Ascendant. That’s a pretty wide aspect, but I think it was pretty impactful. That Moon that’s opposite the Ascendant is opposite Neptune as well. That’s some sort of magic she was using on everyone. Neptune adds magic sparkle and a mysterious reflectiveness. Our fantasies catch on her image. She uses the mirror of Neptune to show a little glimpse of cool Aquarius Moon, anyone can be apart of her slow-moving, breezy beautiful world. She had the magic power of making a glamour. Anyone could project onto her.
But all her magic couldn’t save her. The Ascendant described some of her abilities, but the Nodes show your fate. Ms. Monroe’s South Node is in Capricorn in the 6th house. In her past, she was very responsible in her daily routine and always got all her tasks perfectly done. The ruler of the South Node is Saturn, which is in Scorpio in the 4th house. She might have been all perfect and status conscious because of some disturbing family secret that she was trying to distance herself from.
Her North Node is in Cancer in the 12th house. Here is a mysterious signature, and without delving into her chart in depth, it would be hard to know that is required. The sign, Cancer is straightforward. In the past, she’s been too responsible, dry and hard working, and now she needs to come closer to family, to giving and receiving emotional nourishment, and be in intimacy. Hmmm….sounds like that would be hard for a Gemini Sun, Aquarius Moon, Leo Rising. Anyways, the 12th house is the whole world…but it’s like the whole world sleeping. It’s a void that things go into. Her intended family is everyone and no-one. In the practical sense, the 12th house rules institutions, like hospitals, prisons and orphanages. The ruler of the Cancer North Node is the Moon in Aquarius in the 7th house. The way to “do” Cancer North Node in the 12th house is to treat all her parters as equals. Everyone should be peers in the rooms of her heart. She would have made a bang-up orphanage proprietress, with this 12th house Cancer North Node.
I would say from looking at her chart, that the shame over her background represents a karmic struggle ongoing though a series of lifetimes. Neptune opposes Moon. Her very being is sacrificed in the fight to hide her roots. Both of these planets square Saturn in Scorpio in the 4th, the ruler of the South Node. She has designed her whole psyche around this struggle with shame. She struggled throughout her life with her mother’s mental illness. Treating her partners well would have been the way our for her, but it seems like she struggled to move her emanate maturity to that portion of her life.
If you are making an astrology binder, you can include a section for the Ascendant, it’s sign, and it’s ruling planet. Then you can collect all the aspects to your Ascendant, and understand better how you come off to people.
The other side of the Ascendant is the Descendant. The Descendant is the cusp of the 7th house. As the Ascendent is about ourselves, the Descendant describes who we attract and how we deal with them once we’ve collected these poor innocent fools.
The descendant is a bit odd, seeming to describe two things at once. It not only describes our own behavior in partnerships, it describes the people we tend to attract. The keywords for the sign on your descendant could describe your dating “type”. But if there are planetary conjunction or strong aspects to the Descendant, it could explain the unfortunate ways you tend to act in company.
It’s named for the constellation that was descending, or setting at the moment you were born, of course it will be the opposite of the sign of the Ascendant. Opposites attract!
To continue to use Marlyn as an example, she’s a merry and strong Leo Rising. Fun and loud at parties, she would oddly enjoy the company of tall, skinny nerdy weirdos with big thick dark glasses who talk about principles and Important Things all the time. She tried the jock type, when she married famous baseball player Joe Diamagio, but ended up dumping him for famous playwright Arthur Miller. She has the Moon somewhat conjunct the Descendant, which is an odd signature. The Moon is a hungry item, it’s not the most comfortable in Aquarius. I have watched Moon Aquarius people struggle to operate the emotional portion of themselves, because they aren’t the most sensitive to all the little feels that give clues to how people are feeling in general. Even their own feelings they might not notice! It’s a paradox because the feelings are such a part of us. But the Moon is hungry, and just because she wasn’t aware wouldn’t stop her from heavily taking the parent or child role in the relationship. One moment the needy mother, the next the needy child. The Moon also gives us ups and downs, as the tide goes in and out, her relationships might have been drowning in the strong currents of her ever changing moods.
Study the Descendant and it’s aspects if you want to find out about who you’re going to click with and how you might behave when you get them.
The M.C., Medium Coli or Midheaven is the “high noon” of the chart, said to be the describer of our status in the the world. It’s where the world can see us. At the M.C., all the world’s a stage.
The M.C. and the planets in our ninth and tenth houses describe how we go about crafting our place in the world, and whether we are easily capable of worldly success, or are afflicted in some way. The M.C. and it’s aspects seem to take time to develop. Though it can describe our behavior amongst a group of children, some of the planets there seem to be sleepers, things we come into as we approach our involvement with the world on our own terms. We grow into or come-to-be our placements there. Or maybe our planets there are fated things, until you grow up and realize you’re the one doing it.
Marlyn has a Taurus M.C. This immediately makes sense, although she isn’t a snob, she projects an image of richness. She is valuable, and rates the thick furs and cool diamonds she’s drapped with. Her fabulous dress. The ruler of Taurus M.C. is Venus, which is right there in Aries in the 9th house.
Venus is lightly conjunct the M.C., appropriate for someone considered a beauty. With the ruler of the M.C. right there, she’s really invested a lot in her worldly status. Venus is in Aries in the 9th house. That means she’s always ready to move forward, she will never stop moving forward with that Venus. Venus in Aries makes her delightfully impulsive and bold. She’ll never miss an opportunity to catch someone’s eye.
But even closer to the M.C. than Venus is deadly painful astroid Chiron. Although she has her incredible strength closing tight like a fist, with Saturn in Scorpio in the fourth house, in the end, she couldn’t contain her pain. Our image of her is tainted by her painful death. She tried to hide the lonely little girl inside of her, but soul isn’t like that. Soul conquers all things.
If you want to understand more about how you take your place in the world, study the sign on the M.C. and the aspects to that part of your chart.
The Nadir point of our chart, the Imum Coeli, is the midnight of our chart. Imum Coeli is latin for “the bottom of the sky”. The I.C. describes our childhood, our innermost being, and supposedly how our life will be in old age. It’s been described as representing our subconscious mind. I usually take note of it if it has a planet nearby. A planet conjunction the I.C. will describe a deep inner power the person has, that is either hard to access or disguised as a curse.
Marlyn Monroe has Scorpio on the I.C. Inside herself she had depth and intensity, which from all reports she frantically tried staying up above. She wanted to live in the sunshine, but we’re more complex creatures than that. The ruler of Scorpio is Pluto. It’s interesting that Pluto is on the cusp of the 12th house. That same mysterious house which contains the North Node. The source of her strength was in that uninhabited land. By denying her connections to the underworld, she sapped her own strength. She had a hard time sustaining an adulthood.
You can really go crazy with house rulerships if you want to. The chart ruler is one of the most powerful planets in the chart. But you can find out more about how your life is structured by going through and looking at the planetary ruler for the cusp of each of the 12 houses. This is when you know you’re really nerding out with some astrology. But the connections can be really amazing. I once sat down for the afternoon with Marion March’s “The Only Way To Learn Astrology, Vol. 3” and traced out all the house rulerships for me and my families charts and it was really fascinating. I forget it all now, except both my husband and my son have the ruler of the 7th house in the 8th house, which basically means they’re sexy and it makes people want to get married. It’s true, they’re cute. Funny.
I’m starting to feel like you could throw the rest of astrology away, and just know your Nodes, and that would be enough. The more I learn about astrology, the more I find that these weird little invisible points, they’re more like locations, offer us the best benefit, out of anything else in the chart.
The first thing about the Nodes of the Moon, is that they implicate past lives. If you don’t believe in past lives, you can sub in early life as a way to understand what the chart is telling you.
I find the evidence in the chart of past lives compelling. We already have so much developed coming into life, it seems hard to image a person as a totally new creation. At least, I haven’t yet seen a chart that made me think that. Everyone seems to come in with their own blend of elements, their own powers and complicated weaknesses. How could people be born with problems already intact if they have no life experience? Life’s experiences are a big source of problems for people.
Charts do seem to have different levels of organization or messiness. People seem to be at all different levels of development. Some charts are highly organized and sophisticated. Others seem more primitive, with many energies clumped together, or a lack of interconnected aspects that can form energy circuits. Although people with unformed charts seem to have problems defining their life, it’s the truly complicated charts that seem to belong to people with behavioral issues. I believe this occurs when people go for a long time without confronting or sorting out their problems with life. Instead of learning, they adapt to their problems, and then accrue more and more problems that they continuously don’t deal with. These ongoing unsolved life problems seem represented by heavy aspects in their birth charts. People who are truly good have simple but organized charts. They’re just plain, and not messing around. So I do see some more primitive charts, but not any new ones so far. I include the complicated charts with the lumpy or unformed, as more primitive, because being evil is stupid, and I think souls learn and grow out of it over time. One thing that is true of all of here, is that we are always learning, whether we want to or not.
It really seems as if we are all little saplings growing up with different environmental conditions and in different times, each becoming a more a more unique individual over time. Over a very long, long period of time.
It’s worth it to collect some information about your Nodes.
You can look up your Nodes in just seconds. The Nodes are two urn shaped items that should be exactly opposite each other in your chart. One way to remember which is which is which is the North Node is turned down, it’s empty. That’s the direction that you want to go it. Or something wants you to go it. It’s not always the most comfortable, and you don’t have much experience in that direction. The South Node is an upward facing urn. That cup is full. Here is where you are most experienced, and this is your comfort zone, also where you store your empire of stagnation.
The Nodes are not planets they are mysterious points in space where the Moon crosses the Earth’s elliptic. Where the Moon breaks across the Earth’s belly-line. Like so much of astrology, I do not understand how to why it works. Many it’s the Moon that wrangles our soul back and forth across the lines separating worlds. The Nodes tell us the direction of our fates by house and by sign. You can get more information by looking at the planets that rule signs and houses the Nodes are in.
Astrological signs demonstrate polarity. They are laid out and discussed as twelves signs, but really there are six sets of signs. Each pair of opposed signs contends with one issue, yin and yang. For example, the Pisces/Virgo axis deals with issues of faith or management. The Aries/Libra axis deals with independent action versus cooperative action.
The Nodal sign tells you how you’re supposed to be. Scorpio should be more intense, Taurus needs to create stability. Capricorn needs to be responsible for itself, and everything, and Cancer needs to turn inward, taking the family in its arms. According to the Nodal signs, you’ve been way too much of one side, and not enough of another.
I know the signs seem like pretty vague, broad categories. It’s one of the things that amazes and fascinates me about astrology. Each time I look at a new chart, I see a new itineration of how these categories can manifest in people’s lives and themselves. These archetypes truly show their infinite variety through our lives.
Knowing the house your North Node is in can really help narrow down the focus of concern. Knowing the Nodal houses will show you what area of life you need to work on. If your North Node is in the first house, you need to assume your identity. If it’s in the 10th house you need to go tackle the world and deal with it. In the 6th house you need to be able to be organized and functional in your daily life. In the 4th or 8th house you would need to work yourself into being with family or having close, intimate relationships.
If you combine the sign and the house, you get pretty good instructions. If you have Capricorn North Node in the 8th house, it means you need to be more responsible in intimate relationships and with shared resources. That would give you a Cancer South Node in the 2nd house, which means in the past, family took a very supportive role in your material wealth and personal resources. It would seem the universe wants you to build your empire with your own partner, instead of with your birth family. Because Saturn rules Capricorn, you could see where Saturn is in your chart to find more information about how you can be responsible and hardworking in your intimate relationships.
The Nodes are so important. There is something in life that is really determined for us to develop in wholeness. In our adult lives, we will be repeatedly repelled away from our comfort zone, and pushed towards a new direction, the new direction what will balance out our previous experience.
I think leaving the South Node is a really, really big issue with some people. They just cannot bring themselves to let it go. You really see that in someone who’s live is just a really big wreck, time after time. They just keep trying so hard to make things go the way they want, and their efforts peak in these big disasters. They’re running from something and bringing it with them everywhere they go.
It can be really, really hard for people to change. I have seen that people who are willing to change are usually richly rewarded by life, which does not love stagnation of the soul. There seems to be something paradoxical about how the Nodes operate in our lives. If you do take interest and start to develop in the direction indicated by the North Node, you seem to “receive” the South Node. You can gauge your success this way.
For example, Let’s say someone has their South Node in Leo, and their North Node in Aquarius. South Node in Leo would love to have some people gather around their light and warmth, but for some reason, they just seem do over-reach and turn people off. Say they take up their Aquarius North Node, and develop their own unique path, always taking a fresh approach and taking pains to make their forward approach accessible to others. After a time they can become an unforgettable iconoclast that gets to lead the way. By taking the Aquarian path, they can get back from life the best of what’s in their Leo South Node.
Once you start working with your North Node, it starts to feel really good. It should fell fresh, right and stimulating across your whole life.
I have found that this process of developing towards the North Node really kicks in after the Saturn return. The Saturn return happens about the ages of 28-30, when the planet Saturn returns to the same degree of the same sign of Saturn in the natal chart. This is a big old deal. You can wander around and do what you want when you’re young, but once you hit your thirties, you’re an adult whether you like it or not. And then forces kick in that begin driving you in the direction that the North Node and its ruling planet indicate. If you attempt to remain with the South Node, which is pretty common, that life in the comfort zone which you built will be destroyed again and again. If this is true what I have observed, it makes a compelling reason to find out about the North Node.
In your binder, you can collect information about the Ascendant and its ruler. And then you would also want a section for your Nodes and their rulers. The ruler of the Ascendant tells you how you do you, and the ruler of the North Node shows you the only way you can go to be truly functional. It sounds complicated, but really you can use the planets, signs and houses as keywords to build sentences that describe your life and get really personalized information. Let’s see an example.
This is the chart of brilliant but trouble musician/performer Nina Simone. Though beloved by many for her amazing performances, her wild behavior had her living a tumultuous life. She fascinated people with the contrast between her elegant musical stylings and her violent and unpredictable wildness. She once fired a gun at a record producer who owed her money. She moved frequently throughout her life, living amongst friends and fans that tried to caretake her. She was unable to maintain long term close relationships with partners, managers or family members. She had a hard time managing her career and money and would get into troubles and have to move on. I’m sure like all of us, she had moments of joy and wonder, and moments of rage and despair.
I got to see her perform in Seattle once, and she was a fabulous goddess. A beautifully dressed young black man escorted her out onto the stage, and every time she wanted to move around the stage he would come out and take her arm and walk her to her microphone, or back to the piano. So elegant.
I like to look at the South Node first. Problems first! Then solutions.
Her South Node is in Virgo in the 7th house. Right away I notice that it’s conjunct Neptune. Neptune is the ruler of the North Node. This is confusing. It must mean she is learning something subtle and complex, or it’s a lesson that she’s refusing to get on with in some way.
If her South Node is Virgo, it means she’s been too exacting in a past life, she’s too worried about the details. We could see this in her behavior when she performed. She had very high standards for her audience. If they weren’t attentive or appreciative enough, she would leave the stage, and that was that. She probably carried this behavior into her personal relationships. It’s good for couples to treat each other well, but in real life, it’s hard for another person to treat you perfectly every moment.
It’s a complex signature. The ruler of the South Node, Mercury, is in Pisces conjunct the North Node. This echoes the ruler of the North Node being conjunct the South Node. I’ve never seen this before, how interesting….
With the ruler of the South Node in the first house, it could mean, although South Node is in the 7th house, in her past lives she was too independent or self centered. People think of Mercury in Pisces as being silly or whish-washy, but Pisces is actually pretty independent. Who just suspends the rules of normality, and declares that reality doesn’t apply to them? Pisces, that’s who. Combine the facile mobility of Mercury with the endless volume of Pisces and you have a sweet, wild signature. So, I take from all this that she expected a lot from her partners. She expected them to be perfectly attentive, and to take care of all the boring little details for her, so she could go on being an amazing wonder child with no cares.
Alas, life never seems to let us have that much fun. Her North Node is in the first house in Pisces. I would think that Pisces in the 1st house would mean that she was supposed to be developing a more easy going way of taking life, and being herself. More go-with-the-flow, and less worried about herself. Pisces can be easy going, but it also has to do with sacrifice. In the first house, it would mean sacrificing herself, her feelings or her pride. They’re wanting her to be a little nicer and more compassionate about things.
Her earliest style of relating to her audience was informed by her training in classical music. She was cool, pearly and distant. But after a career of playing in clubs and bars, she relaxed quite a bit, and began to play with her audiences, telling them stories from her crazy life and telling jokes.
The ruler of Pisces North Node is Neptune, which is back in Virgo conjunct the South Node. I would say then that the way she would go about becoming more “go-with-the-flow” is to be meticulous in her partnership and take pains to notice the little details of her relationships, and learn to be more practical in her partnerships. Neptune there could mean that she needed to cast her spells and work her magic, with, or for the benefit of, her partners.
To create key word sentences of out these placements, I would start with the South Node. South Node in Virgo in the 7th house. In the past, she was too focused on managing details in her partnerships. South Node ruler is in Pisces in the 1st house. She focused the management of details on her partnerships by being the whimsical youth. You can go ahead and use negative keywords for South Node, it’s a problem area.
To leave past behavioral issues, and to develop further, she would need to attend to her North Node. North Node is in Pisces in the 1st house. Its conjunct Pisces Sun. To move forward she would need to be the heart and soul of sacrifice and empathy. With the Sun right there, it emphasizes that she would express this empathy and compassion with her creativity and as her personal essence.
This is interesting to me, because the ruler of the South Node, Mercury, is right there below the Sun and North Node in the 1st house. Lot’s of first house action, Nina is supposed to be a big deal. But to me, this almost makes me wonder if reaching for authentic wasn’t part of her journey. Certainly, I’ve never myself questioned her authenticity, “Mississippi Goddamn” is firm on my playlist. I agree with the sentiment, but of course it was a controversial song to release. Apparently it ruined her music career, and there’s nothing more authentic than that. But being an artist is about that journey, always reaching forward with the self. Maybe here the powerful woman is being asked to lean forward and bare her heart to the world.
The ruler of Pisces North Node is Neptune, which is this case is in Virgo in the 7th house. The way for her to move forward being the essence of creativity is by making sacrifices in her partnerships.
With all the Pisces and Neptune influence, it’s easy to see how music is an important part of her past, and remains her destiny in the future.
This is how we delineate the Nodes. To capture and work through this important information, I would create a section in my astrology binder to gather information about each Node, and it’s sign and house. Then I would study the astrological ruler of each Node. You can get really detailed here, and even consider all the aspects to the ruler of the Nodes, and really trace out where you’re coming from and where you need to go. I feel like it’s really important to learn about that North Node, especially if it seems like your life keeps getting attacked by Godzilla.
In summation I like to compare the chart ruler with the condition of the North Node and it’s ruler. Some people have it harder than others when it comes to who they are verses where they need to go.
Nina is an Aquarius Rising. She would project an air of independent coolness and great surety, knowing exactly what direction she wanted to go.
The ruler of Aquarius is Uranus and we find Uranus in bold in excitable Aries in the second house. Uranus can be progressive, but it’s energy is electric and like a powerful charge, it can be dangerous. The second house is where our personal resources are. This is the storehouse, and stubborn things grow here. This chart ruler says Nina was in flow when she was being bold, original, wild and shocking. This makes sense for her. She became an ardent civil rights activists. Malcom X was actually a neighbor of hers in New York, and she embraced his violent ethos. After the bombing in 1963 of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, powerful civil rights messages were present in all her performances. She was unconcerned with having a successful recording career and was only interested in expressing herself and learning classical music.
That is a bit of an odd mix with the Pisces North Node, which sounds so healing and compassionate. But she did have that kind of range. Compare the smokey, snaky tenderness in “Plain Gold Ring” or “Don’t Smoke In Bed with the bold, showy anthem, “Feeling Good”. You can hear the compassion in her voice in such songs as, “I Loves You Porgy,” or “Another Spring”.
Still, Aquarius doesn’t like all that messy, soppy Pisces bizz. So, it would have been a bit difficult for her to assimilate her Pisces North Node direction and her electric and bold Uranus in Aries chart ruler which represents what she would have felt her personal style to be. Making sacrifices in her relationships would have anchored her in her right path. That big Moon and Pluto opposition in her chart tells me that she had some bad and hurt feelings that were pretty powerful. Maybe she had to be free to live some of that out. Later in her life she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and received treatment for it. Though her life was tumultuous, her final years seemed to be happy and peaceful, with people to care about her, and of course we remember her and love today. I’ll bet she made some progress with her North Node. But who can truly judge where another is on their path? That is between them and their gods.
The one other thing the Nodes are great for is understanding your children better.
There is so much advice you could give children about life, and so much you have to teach them. If you know their North Node sign, you can really personalize that advice. For example, I know that my son has a Pisces South Node, and a Virgo North Node. Understanding that, I can see that he has a tendency to be whiny and confused. He seems be easily trapped in victimhood, with endless suffering and no solutions. We try and help him by encouraging Virgo type behavior. We have him organize his room and try and think things through. Emphasizing practical solutions to problems. We tell him not to let the other kids push him around, that’s not right, he’s in charge of himself. Kids are bossy! Of course, I give him other advise as well, and of course it would be beneficial to teach any child to be less whiny and more practical. But this approach really seems satisfying to him, instead of shrugging me off, he seizes on the Virgo behavior with relief. It seems to really help him get out of the little emotional box he was stuck in. I feel like knowing my kids North Node helps me parent better.
I do not want to imply that there is a punitive outcome that comes from resisting the North Node direction. The gods I see in the cards have no interest in punishing us. They find punishment pointless. They are trying really hard to inspire us to have realizations, and then accept them. The gods are just tryin to help us learn. Before it’s too late.
At the bottom of this post I listed some books to help explore the Ascendant and it’s ruling planet, and the Nodes and their ruling planets.
I learned everything I know about astrology from reading awesome astrology books. Here are a few of my favorites.
To read about the Rising Signs, read “The Twelves Houses” by Howards Sasportas. “The Only Way To Learn Astrology, Vol.3” by Marion March delineates all the house rulerships, including the first house. It usefully gives descriptions of the chart ruler in each of the houses. If you really get into delineating house rulers, “The House Connection” by Karen Hammer-Zondag gives a more complex look at the house rulers in your chart. Karen is deep and complex, but filled with amazing subtly and wisdom.
The most thorough and easy to understand book on the Nodes has to be “Astrology For The Soul,” by Jan Spiller. She takes your hand and leads you on a gentle exploration of what your Nodal sign really means in practice. It’s a classic. “SunShines” by Michael Lutin is an interesting book where he interprets Nodal signs through the Sun sign. It’s a cookbook type where you can go through and look up your entry just using your birthdate. Borrow it from the library for an astrology/collage party. “The Complete Node Book” Kevin Burk is a somewhat bland but useful cookbook that allows you to look up your Nodal signs in each of the houses. It can be a great start to help you start thinking about how to combine the message of your Nodal sign and house.
My favorite book about past lives is “Journey of Souls” by Michael Newton. It’s a comforting, offering a system that makes sense of our chaotic lives, much like astrology proposes to do. It’s full of interesting stories.
To learn more about the signs themselves, read “Astrology for Lovers,” by Liz Greene, this was one of the first astrology books I read that really helped me get the essence of each sign in my mind. I also learned a lot from “The Pulse of Life” with Dane Rudhyar. His writing style is dense and mystical, and I don’t have the patience to read many of his books. But I did like “The Pulse of Life” he explained how sign flows from the one before and that the signs represent cycles of being always growing in complexity and then collapsing back into simplicity over and over.
Keywords can help you break down complicated astrological signatures. You have to watch out looking for books about astrology keywords, because you can end up with information about rulerships, like what planet rules what items in our world. This information is used for predictive, horary astrology. “Keywords for Astrology” by Anna Haebler and Hajo Banzhaf is a good one.
The Twelve Houses: Exploring the Houses of the Zodiac Howard Sasportas LSA/Flare 2009
The Only Way to Learn Astrology Vol.3 Marion March and Joan McEvers Astro Communications Services 1984
The House Connection: How to Read the Houses in an Astrological Chart Karen Hamaker-Zondag Weiser Books 1994
Astrology for the Soul Jan Spiller Bantam 1997
Sunshines: The Astrology of Being Happy Michael Lutin Atria Books 2006
The Complete Node Book: Understanding Your Life’s Purpose Kevin Burke Llewellyn Publications 2003
Journey of Souls Michael Newton Llewellyn Publications 1994
Astrology For Lovers Liz Greene Weiser Books 2009
Astrological Signs:The Pulse of Life Dane Rudhyar Shambhala Publications 1974
Keywords for Astrology: The Essential Guide to Correspondences and Interpretation of Planets, Signs, Houses and Aspects Anna Haebler & Hajo Banzhaf Weiser Books 1996/2024