What many may sometimes miss to understand though is that our North Node path isn’t necessarily promised nor is it something to happen overnight. It takes a significant amount of consistent effort, courage of soul, integrity and moral compass, discipline and patience of rhythm; it is about remembering the forgotten art of apprenticeship. We live in a fast pace world of instant gratification, short cuts and desire for quick success and seeing results right away, but that’s not how life works, and it is certainly not how real evolution and growth happens on a spiritual and physical level.
We are often told or conditioned to believe that time is an enemy but time is your ally – and you need to make time your friend, falling into the deep appreciation, gratitude and humility of the present moment, because as you walk the path of your destiny you will need to take many steps, each one matters, each one is purposeful, and each one must be walked with time holding your hand. There is time for everything, and wisdom is often set in snow, gained in snow, and this is how flowers grow to bless us with their aroma. All in its divine timing. Just like an artist needs to learn their craft, just like a sculptor will not right away make the perfect sculpture, so we too learn along the way and refine our art.
As a spiritual astrologer I often describe the South Node as our inner monk and the North Node as our inner sculptor. Both of these however are part of one axis, so each depends on the other for inner stability and inner harmony, and spiritual development encompasses both. To move towards our North Node we must have the stability of our spine and inner faith.
The South Node is often like the comfort of your castle – a comfort, a home, that you’ve spent many lives in; while the North Node is that which you step onto when you choose to open the doorways and walk out into the wild unknown lands of a forest. Often times, the reason why we would even leave the comforts of our castle, where soul memories of our past holds us strongly, is because we would have a strong desire towards the wild unknown – and this is precisely how the North Node moves our body towards our evolution: desire.
Many of my clients when they come to my during transits of their Nodal axis say things like “I don’t know why but I feel like I am in some forest or magic dark, it feels both scary and exciting” or “It all seems out of my control but feels important and fated, but I don’t know where I’m going, I just have a strong desire to move somewhere or do something or try something new and it’s scary because it’s new.”
We often must begin our North Node path only after we say “I don’t know”; it is the “I don’t know” of our our inner monk or mystic the South Node that then allows us to move into the openness and explore something new. Only through the “I don’t know” we allow ourselves to begin our knowing; only after we choose to unlearn and unhold from all we hold, can we open our hands to experience and touch and shape something that would give us fulfillment in our soul the way it desired it. The North Node desires are soul desires – because the soul desires to evolve, so these are strong deep in our bones and core desires that will always be there pulling us.
And once we open the doors and step onto our North Node pathway, we must then have to apply virtue, discernment, patience, discipline, consistent amount of effort, courage of soul, integrity and ethics and stay aligned to a moral compass – because without these, and especially when we lack morals and integrity and self discipline, these desires and enchanted forests will lead us into obsessions and temptations that will feel like never-ending lessons from which we fall more than we rise. This is why in Vedic astrology you will hear the North Node, or Rahu, referred to as obsessions, maya, and leading you to illusions and delusions; and it’s because when people don’t have the strong spiritual core inside of them they cannot evolve spiritually as smoothly. If you don’t know how to discern, how would you know to walk the wild unknowns; if you don’t have a moral compass, how would you recognize true from false.
At its essence, the North Node evolution asks of us to develop discernment in order to come into its higher expression, and we build our spiritual core from understanding our South Node and being apprentices – to be humble, to learn, to be patient, to be respectful and disciplined. The South Node is our spine – and what keeps us grounded and straight in posture to reach further is our spirituality, faith, and what we align to as virtue and moral compass.
The North Node is a sculptor – because this is an area of life where you will be making something tangible happen. Like any sculptor you will not make it perfect right away, or even ever at once, but you will refine your craft, learn and evolve. The evolution itself is the path itself and what you were learning along the way. But this is a life thing, not an overnight thing. Your destiny isn’t a title, a job position, a destination – it is path unfolding, a path of hands, feet and your heart’s love pouring into it.
The Evolution
To understand the spiritual development of our South and North Node we must understand the phases of our life as it related to our Nodes. The first years of our life are highly karmic as they often relate to our past. And what is karma anyway? It means action – so even our breathing is karma, because we are alive, in human bodies and mind and free will to make choices. The free will of yesterday is our karma today.
It is like a river. We make a river bed, pour the waters of our consciousness and choices, and then the river begins flowing. It needs to flow. We can’t tell it half way through to change its stream and flow backwards or even pause. We can put stones into it to resist the flow, but water always find its way to twist around the stones and find another path.
We can also pour clear and pure waters in it, through our actions and purity of heart in our now; or we can pour mud, etc. Our now is what matters, and the rest is its natural flow.
And so,
our early childhood relates more to our South Node and karmic impulses, which is why we will feel strongly pulled towards certain interests, hobbies, passions, people, friends; on the playground and in kinder garden we will feel a pull and instant like towards some friends or towards others we will not want to play with, or even get into fights with. We are untangling threads.
The three main phases are first until the age of 21, and then from 21 to 42, and then onwards. Until the age of 21 we are mostly tied to the past and playing out our South Node, giving life to our past life unfulfilled desires also. It is also a karmic time and connections with people will feel powerful. Some may be great, others not so great, but we are just settling ourselves into harmony and balance.
The Saturn return, around the age of 30 will mark an important beginning or initiation towards our spiritual maturity, because Saturn is our spiritual teacher and lord of karma i.e. we learn what we desired to learn, and as the cycles of the land, Saturn will offer us the opportunities and time needed to learn all lessons our soul desired to learn and balance out whatever needed balancing, so that we can have a spiritual restart and move into our higher expression of energy and evolution path.
Around our Saturn return is when quite a few karmic things may surface to ask us to reflect on our sense of maturity, responsibility and conscious decision making. If we are able to balance out things and be spiritually guided and walk the path of self awareness we may even enter onto our North Node path in our mid 30s when Saturn matures. If not, the North Node may naturally reveal itself more clearly after the age of 42, and a new phase may begin at that time or we may see the beginnings of the fruition if we have already been working on it prior.
Between the ages of 21-42 approximately, we are in a phase of being the apprentice. As I keep mentioning, our North Node is like a sculptor, an artist, a creator of something new – and as each new thing created in life, we too need to go through a learning period. Each artist knows we may make mistakes along the way, but we are learning, evolving, and learning through our efforts. The North Node is the new we will shape in this life, but this new is intimately tied to our South Node and spiritual core also; because the South Node is something that deeply roots within us. This is why building a strong spiritual core helps our North Node also.
And after the age of 60 and our second Saturn return, we actually enter a renewed state of being and exploration yet again. Many people’s creativity sparkles and expands at that time, they begin writing the books they dreamed of, painting and creating and just doing whatever makes they joyful and full of life. It can be a really inspiring and freeing time, and we can feel attracted to things we never have felt before which will now take shape and form as our new creations; or it can be you suddenly feeling the spark for research and expanding you mind and learning about various topics; it can be a sense of freedom emotionally and you become playful.
When it comes to our North Node, many people find that suddenly when they step on their North Node they may end up doing something completely different or unexpected, though for some people it’s been something they’ve been feeling called to since childhood, so it just needed its right time to be activated. Some people may change careers completely, they may be interested in something they’ve never been interested in before, or they may finally come full circle to their childhood gut feelings and inner knowings. The North Node will reveal itself to people in its unique way depending on where it resides in their chart.
But nonetheless, the North Node is an energy, a doorway, that we can open with a lot of courage and then we need to do the work, put in the effort – which is why the apprenticeship is important, and letting go our conditioned sense of self or ego is important also, because we need to go into the wild unknown territories with our North Node.
The path to the 9th house, the spiritual body development
Regardless of where your North Node resides in your natal chart and regardless of what sign and aspects, the way to reach it is the 9th house, which is the house of dharma and our higher self – it is our spiritual body. This is why the dharma chart is the divisional 9th chart, also known as the Navamsa, which shows our higher path if we choose to step into our soul’s calling.
The 9th house is developed through our spiritual development. It is through the kind of life we live and our spiritual development and self development that we develop our spiritual body; and then, it is our spiritual body that essentially manifests our physical body and experiences. So essentially, your destiny it to evolve. Your destiny is to live a dharmic life, to be in service to others, to learn respect and humility, boundaries and generosity, discernment and do your inner world. The more you purify yourself, the more you will develop your spiritual body and your physical experiences will feel in more harmony, and the rivers will flow in more ease.
What looks at the 9th house directly is the 3rd house – which is the house of our soul’s courage, self efforts and free will. It is the house of what we do with our hands and free will. It rules weaving, writing, painting, moving, traveling – everything that moves our body. It shows our courage, discipline, intelligence and willingness to put in the work; and it also rules our talents and gifts and skills. It is the most creative house actually, and in the old days it was called the Moon’s temple of the Priestesses, into which they developed their inner worlds to reach their destiny through self development.
What this shows us is that our destiny is a mixture of fate and free will; free will is held within the hand of fate, but it is there nonetheless showing itself through our actions and what we choose to do and how we choose to do it. This is why your North Node is not a promised land nor is it guaranteed when you may get there, but the desire that it shapes through will point you in its direction; but it is up to us to put on our shoes and do our path walking. And unfortunately yes, it is true that some people do not step onto this path or they don’t evolve in the way they desired to.
Free will correlates to our self awareness level, and the more conscious and aware we are, the greater free will we have – and it’s not because we “have” more of it in a little bag we carry, but because we recognize our actions, patterns and conditioning and we choose to live in more conscious ways i.e. we use our free will potential.
The 3rd house also rules our movements and walking, so it reminds us that while the North Node points us towards a destination through its desires which pulls us forward, it is about us and our own path walking.
Your North Node is where it may call you say “I will walk with awareness and face my inner self, and make my own way with integrity, self honesty and align to a higher compass. I will take life into my hands making conscious choices and do the best I can along the way, while also accepting and trusting the divine timing and unfolding of my life, and trusting life itself also.” And yes, there will be friends and allies on your path in the forest who will give you a helping hand, there will be winds guiding you, there will be rivers whispering and tree wisdom and animals revealing answers to you, and there will also be stones and mud and thorns you will move you where you will activate your perseverance and endurance. But it’s your path and your courage of soul.
The paths of destiny, and the art of apprenticeship
We journey through life in continual moving adjustments, along the invisible secret threads, though much of them are potentials rather than predetermined designs. And yet the paths we take and weave ourselves, constantly try to align themselves to our overall life’s purpose, life’s work, soul’s calling or destiny. In other words, we can never stray too far from our what is meant for us. No matter how many twists and turns we make, the path meant to lead us towards fulfilling our calling will always reshape itself in response to the choices that we make in life.
We live in a very fast paced world where it’s all about instant validation and people are so stressed when they don’t know what their calling or purpose is. It’s the human race racing. We rarely have time to reflect, learn, research and make mistake, try again, and then mistake again … and then try again. Because there is wisdom in mistakes and each one takes us one step closer, as long as we actually learn from it. Life isn’t some “aha” moment from a Hollywood movie scene, where suddenly there are a whole bunch of sound effects and there we are, all in sparkles, finally found our calling. Okay, so what’s next?
There is wisdom set in snow, there is wisdom in the not moving, there is wisdom in the stones and rivers and ice too. There is wisdom in knowing the cycles of the land; in the knowing not to push seeds into the frozen grounds because flowers will not grow, it is just not their time yet, we’ll only hurt them and we’ll frustrate ourselves.
In tales and folklore we are often reminded of the wisdom of apprenticeship as told by our ancestors. In The Black Bull of Norroway, which I’ve written about here, the girl spends seven long years apprenticed to a blacksmith; and she had to do that on her path because she had to learn patience. And so she stepped off the path a little bit – for seven years – to learn patience through the work, and was then spiritually guided to unite with her knight, her destined spouse, and become queen with him, which was her destiny all along just as the wise fortune teller woman had told her in the beginning when she predicted her destiny. But while the girl was with the blacksmith, it was her own will and effort and decision to say “yes”; while she was lost in the forest, it was her own courage to keep moving and climb the mountain.
There are many more tales like these, and the messages are clear. Sometimes we step off, learn a few more skills, and if we learn them properly, these experiences will lead us back to where we wanted to be. There is value in the learning, in the waiting, in the thinking we are not progressing. Sometimes the greatest progress is made precisely during these quiet seemingly ordinary moments. There are clocks outside of our human made clocks. There, time is unclockable and unstrikeable by us.
Developing a vision for our life takes time, a long time, just like the dress takes time to be sewn so that we see it in its full beauty and adorned flower petals. It is an ongoing process where no little daily thing is without its meaning and purpose for the overall design. It is also about accepting failures and knowing that things take time. Sometimes obstacles are needed, so that we learn more about patience, endurance and trust; and sometimes we just need to take a time out, so that perhaps a new insight arises which is needed for our path forward. Sometimes it is because there is someone we need to yet meet on our path forward, and time is needed for our paths to cross. Whatever the case may be, whatever our path may be, it is a blending between us and the stars, it is a co-creation.
In my readings to clients I do not make predictions telling you on this date this will happen etc. Sure, I will give you insight and clarity on the path ahead and its direction and what may be going on right now and ahead for more clarity and insight, helping you untangling the threads and getting a hawk eye’s view – but – I have no intention to bind you into your limits thinking you have no free will. I want you to put on your shoes and go out, and trust yourself, trust your path, make time your ally, trust your skills and trust your higher self that you are absolutely capable in reaching and shaping your soul’s desires in this life.
Like these beautiful dancers in the cover painting by Edgar Degas, they put on their shoes, their tutu, and they dance – and they learn – and they fall – and they stand up – and it takes years to make a pirouette – and they fall again and again, but still they make beautiful movements again and again sung by their soul’s songs and following the rhythms of life itself. Perhaps they will not be the best prima ballerina in the universe, but they will dance a beautiful dance, one that is worthy of awe because it is a dance of their hands, feet and heart’s love and passion. It is a dance of life, of love, and of courage; and that’s the gift we give not only ourselves but others also, inspiring them too to dance in the way they desire to.
For personal readings with me, you are welcome to browse through my Offerings.
For more of my writings, browse through my Art of Love.
If you wish to support me and my work, you may do so by sharing it or donate some magic coins in my hat. For personal readings with me, you may visit my Offerings.
Your support means so much to me! Thank you wholeheartedly!
Cover art by Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal.
