Awh Gemini, baby. I love me some Gemini, but these past 18 months with Gemini South Node have been… confusing, to say the least. Gemini revels in opinion, information, and the shadow side (which the South Node represents) dissipates itself with too much talking and thinking, not enough consideration before action, and too many ideas lacking big picture perspective. Having Gemini SN around has been like living in Opinion-nation with a lot of talking heads – everyone has a voice, and a personal opinion, and a Facebook page, and we’ve spent hours thumbing through those opinions on Facebook and Twitter. Personally, with this nodal axis transiting my Ninth (Gem) and Third (Sag) houses, my self-questioning and wheel spinning has been at an all-time high.  Check out this brilliant “idea”: I started a book without an outline, which turned into a book that was a whopping 400 pages (trust me, no one wants a book this big) and spent about a year and a half in alternating states of confusion and brilliance, depending on who was at the keyboard that day. About half my work has now been chopped like broccoli. The book idea was great (and I was going to write it anyhow given that I have Saturn in Gemini, and I’m an author) but I wasted so much mental energy. However, I have been learning – and that’s what these two signs are all about.

For those who don’t know much about the nodes, they travel in pairs, and we each have a pair in one of the twelve signs in our natal chart. Astronomically, the nodes of the Moon change signs about every 18 months when they move backwards into the previous sign. In natal Evolutionary Astrology we typically refer to your South Node sign behaviors as your “path of least resistance” and your North Node sign behaviors as a fruitful growth point for you. Now when forecasting general trends, as I am now, it’s not exactly the same the same principal but it bears out in a way. Instead of one person’s lifetime, imagine humanity as a continuum in time and space constantly attempting to grow in consciousness. Like you, imagine humanity wants to grow up (symbolized by the North Node). But there are things that sidetrack us, that grow us down and are easy to get pulled into. Like Facebook ideology spats, wheel-spinning, duality, confusion. Imagine the South Node as a habit that eventually causes dissipation. The part of us that says “if I eat this double decker burger today, I’ll make up for it tomorrow.”

Speaking of food, the South Node enters the sign of Taurus (and the Mean North Node enters Scorpio) on September 2. Now, our Taurus behaviors, collectively, have grown into problems. Like over-eating… or fear of change. The shadow of Taurus is keeping everything so stable and predictable that nothing gets to truly transform, an over concern with financial stability, and a dangerous conservatism born of financial, sexual, personal insecurity. Imagine a person so concerned with being happy in their partnership that nothing ever gets honestly addressed. Or a person who is so afraid of losing financial stability, that despite being called to do differently, they never take that leap into a life that would truly speak to them. Or someone who refuses to be penetrated by others, or to deeply look within and investigate their thoughts, actions, emotions – their very Self.

One of my favorite clients has Scorpio North Node/Taurus South Node. She came to me at a time Neptune was squaring her nodal axis. Rita* had been a key player in building a business so lucrative that any of you reading this would recognise the name. However, now she was being called to abandon everything –to sell her possessions, move from her house in Ojai, CA to follow a guru in a land that was in all honesty, a little dangerous. Where nebulous Neptune is involved, as you know, it’s tricky to advise someone to sell her possessions and follow a spiritual guru, and it was one of those moments as an astrologer where I had to trust my gut. From all accounts, her whole life she had been living her stable, predictable materialistic Taurus South Node. When I explained the symbolism of Scorpio North Node, the archetype of relinquishment, risk, the total and utter transformation, her eyes lit up with fire. She did it, took that Scorpio path, sold all of her possessions, embraced her soul’s desire to experience this radical leap into the fire, and turned her back on material security with absolutely no regrets. Now, I love seeing her Facebook status updates from foreign lands, both her and her husband’s sunny faces. They’re still together.

Not everyone will need to make such a leap, but we can learn from Rita’s story. The risk of Taurus South Node is: fear of change. A naïve moralism, a sort of easy addiction to the pleasures of physical, material and emotional security. Ultimately, the area of life Taurus South Node transits is an area we are most afraid to change, but where we may be “paying too much” for our personal security; the house Scorpio North Node transits asks us to leap into the fire, to totally relinquish what is no longer true for us, and to reinvent our self in an area of life. Always, the South Node is a path of least resistance and its rewards are empty, while the promise of diving into the risky, psychological Scorpio North Node is having a more complex & whole relationship to our self, to shadow, others, life. The way to work with this in your natal chart is to deeply examine and let go of anything you can eliminate in the house Taurus South Node transits. Look to the house your North Node transits as an area you will be strongly pulled by the force of magnetism to investigate, transform and change your relationship to entirely. Psychological work, deep relationships and hidden work factors big here -as do acts of, and meetings with, “fate” and “destiny”. New York Astrologer Anne Ortelee says, “You will be pulling Scorpios into your life, especially in the house that the North Node is passing through. Scorpio rules occult, hidden, and psychological things. The Scorpios arrive in your life to help you transform or change. They ask you to trust the process and go for it.”

Of course, what you can’t let go of or yet see, the Taurus/Scorpio eclipses (the first one on November 15) will help harry along. Remember, the nodes are the devilish points that rule the powerfully transformative and eye-opening eclipse cycles.

For those wondering about Saturn (as of October 5), also in Scorpio, and how that will affect this pair, the transformative risks we’re called to make, in intimacy, sexuality, financial (and don’t forget to look where Saturn transits in your chart), will require patience, honesty and maturity. I’ll save the subject of Saturn entering Scorpio for another post, however, to reach the North Node we’ll either be called (or forced) to look more deeply, diligently, honestly into our resistance and dark crevices, to be stripped of our naive insecurities and operate from a newfound place of security- the psychological knowingness of our Self.

The last time the South Node was in Taurus was Feb 1994- July 1995.

For those who want to know: “what might the North Node transiting my (blank) house mean?” read my article: Eclipses by House and Sign.

image source: twistedlamb.com