The houses in the birth chart containing the nodes of the Moon, the South Node (SN) and the North Node (NN), describe an arc of evolutionary development explored over the course of many lifetimes.
Note that houses and signs are NOT the same. For more on this, check out a video I posted (37 mins.) to clarify things.
Emphasis in each lifetime is on the SN. The soul makes agreements with other souls to coalesce around a set of themes through which they’ll all learn as humans, and themes are symbolized by the chart holder’s SN house, sign, and aspects. This is home base, or a starting place, in many lifetimes. When a person is born, his or her root or 1st chakra is imprinted with the attitudes, energies, emotions, and patterns of the family environment surrounding him or her, and these themes are agreed to by all the souls involved. Think of it as a kind of karmic-conditioning incubator that begins each human life.
The SN, therefore, seems to the chart holder what the world is like and should be like.
The NN, on the other hand, is the opposite. It’s what’s not so familiar and what is not emphasized by family and other important conditioning environments in many lifetimes. Therefore, it is not emphasized (at least not in healthy ways), and represents ways of being and living that the chart holder has not been exposed to much in many lifetimes.
The NN mostly foreign territory, and the vast majority of people do not want to explore or integrate their NNs. That is exactly what each of us must learn to do in order to become more well-rounded, yes. But more importantly from the soul’s point of view: The human needs to learn and integrate something about life that she or he has not been shown much. For your soul, life isn’t about safety and security. It’s about growth and change (and learning to go from fear frequencies into love frequencies), and the nodes in a person’s chart are always a great illustration of this spiritual precept.
The NN, therefore, can hang as a weird and undesired potential over a person’s life until she becomes open to exploring this way of being that’s the opposite of what is so deeply familiar in many lifetimes.
Summary: The house of the natal SN tells us what parts of life have been emphasized as the norm for the chart holder over many lives. This sector of the chart is one the person will assume is central to how life is and should be, and he will return to living in it (pursuing and reinforcing activities that fit within it) when stressed, challenged, or unclear what else to do. The house of the natal NN says that the person doesn’t want to do this part of life but needs to open to it in order to grow.
1st House/7th House
SN in the 1st House/NN in the 7th House
SN in the 1st house indicates that you have many lifetimes being born to families that emphasize seeing the world through a lens of independence, leadership, going it alone, isolation, “the buck stops here”, sexuality, war, and/or conflict. You are conditioned to see the world as being about making things happen on your own, being alone, and perhaps not asking others for help. You’ve been habituated to moving quickly and relying on instinctive approaches, and you’ve had to be good in a crisis many times to rescue or save others, or to make sure that all those kittens are safely on the ground after various tree-climbing incidents. It’s likely that you have some form of a pioneering or trailblazing spirit, willing to do whatever it takes to create the outcomes you prefer for yourself.
NN in the 7th house says that you have not been shown how build bridges with others or develop joint outcomes (or, even, in extreme cases, why other people are necessary). It’s challenging–but important–for you to learn to slow down enough to engage with others, taking others’ opinions and needs into consideration. Part of this is in waiting for others to weigh in on things that affect your relationships, as they can seem to take forever to make even small decisions that it took you a nanosecond to make. You have the opportunity to allow others to see who you are and what you need, and let them get close enough to you to be of assistance and support. You have many lifetimes of being independent and to a large degree alone, and now is the time to learn to work with others, even if you have to negotiate and compromise in the spirit of developing relationship together. Part of learning what others are for is in learning more about and engaging your humanity with others: You are not only a courage machine or always an independent trailblazer–you sometimes need to receive help, support, and compassion the same as any human.
SN in the 7th House/NN in the 1st House
SN in the 7th house shows that you’ve been shown in many lifetimes that the world is and should be about relationships of various kinds. This can include deferring to others, putting others’ needs first, being there for others, picking up the slack in relationships, and being who others expect, want, need, or demand you to be. You are conditioned in many lives to adapt to the wills and desires of others, and you might have persistent beliefs that you have to agree to what others ask or need; don’t have a choice about who you are to others. This can make you an excellent listener, yet it can also lend itself toward chameleon-like behavior that you know is unhealthy. You’re likely comfortable in situations that involve making life better for others. Part of you has been trained to believe that making others happy should come first.
NN in the 1st house says that you must learn to put yourself first. Foreign to you might be recognizing your right to be independent, to make your own decisions without consulting others or, even, without enlisting others as soundboards. It’s challenging for you to go it alone and stand out, but that’s the only state in which you’re going to be able to make your life what you want it to be. If you believe you don’t know what that is, be clear that that’s because you have a protective mechanism surrounding your free will faculties to make sure you don’t disappoint or let down others who expect you to be a certain way. In some lives, your survival might depend on conforming to the expectations of others (SN in the 7th house), and that training can run deep. Your growth with this NN depends upon being willing to say “yes” to what you want to experience and “no” to what doesn’t work for you, and that includes everything–you must get into and trust the instinctive responses of your body (and so this definitely will include sexuality). It may be hard, but your job is to find and develop the courage to be independent and steer the ship of your life, answering to no one, learning what you like and trusting yourself enough to make it happen even if others don’t like it or understand.
2nd House/8th House
SN in the 2nd House/NN in the 8th House
The SN in the 2nd house in your chart says that you have been conditioned to see the world in many lifetimes through a lens that centers on self-reliance, the importance of having a clear value system, the value of time and money, and doing one thing at a time in order to build stability and ensure success. In some lifetimes, you’re being shown by families of origin how to decide what skills are worth developing, then figuring out how to turn them into money (and in some lives the opposite). In other lives, you’re surrounded by all the resources you need, while in others you are not sure where money, food, shelter, and more will come from. Quite often you’ve been modeled and taught by others that you have to make things happen on your own; you can’t rely on others. You may have a somewhat simplistic-seeming way of seeing the world, but in reality it’s that you’re pragmatic, and you’re comfortable focusing on essentials in order to set things up to work well. Whether you find it easy or hard to make, save, and keep money and other resources, you’ve seen all the best and worst of what money may and may not mean in many lifetimes. You also might have gotten overly into the habits of keeping your own counsel and running on your own rhythms, not seeing that you might benefit from others’ input. You’re capable, after all, right? Yes, but you’ve overdone being in your own bubble.
With the NN in the 8th house, you haven’t been shown in many lifetimes how to connect deeply with others and develop shared value systems. Since you’ve been so self-reliant, you haven’t yet learned enough about relying on others, and being relied upon by others. Trusting others might be a challenge that follows you around, as you’re already confident you can do things on your own and you haven’t learned why, when, and how to trust others. As intimacy is part of life in this house, you might find it uncomfortable to let down your guard and allow others to see the “real” you. If you’re alone in the 2nd house, no one can hurt you. If you’re with others in the 8th house, it’s natural that you’ll be hurt at times (whether someone else means it or not). You need to learn that all things can be healed, and that sometimes psychological, emotional, financial, and physical intimacy can get a bit messy. The more present you are with another, the more you learn about your own true nature as a human. The NN here says that you’ve been taught to avoid entangling with others because it’s messy, unsafe, and perhaps because you can’t ever really trust anyone. Your job in this life is to open to learning deeper truths about yourself that can only be learned through allowing others to affect you in the deepest ways.
SN in the 8th House/NN in the 2nd House
The SN in the 8th house is about many lifetimes of being conditioned to see the world as being about relying on and being relied upon by others, intimacy, sexuality, deep psychological dynamics, shared resources including finances, and being so entangled with another/others that you may not know where one of you begins and the other ends. Exposure to the deepest aspects of the human experience is central to your many lifetimes, including in the lives of the families into which you’re born in many lives. You (and they) have seen it all: Manipulation, betrayal, dishonesty, backstabbing, power plays when it comes to money and sex, but also how two people can bond deeply and open each other up in new ways and work together through hard times, even the hardest things people can go through. Emotional boundaries might be foreign to you, and you might respond to what others need without thinking because you care and know that you’re strong enough to handle whatever it is that other is going through. You might assume that you should always be available to another, or perceive that you always need others to be available to you.
The NN in the 2nd says that you are here to learn how to become self-reliant when it comes to the use of time, energy, money, skills, and all other resources. Yet this is truly about you developing your own value system–and living in alignment with it. With many lifetimes intertwined with others in the deepest ways (SN in the 8th house), you’re in need of some balance by stepping into your own space, choosing how you use your own time and money. It’s important that you develop patterns and structures in your life that allow you to create self-respect as you go, learning to pick yourself up when you fall and learn from your mistakes in ways that set you up for better things in the future. Your NN here is about learning to separate yourself from the money, issues, needs, and expectations of others you’re naturally inclined to be interwoven with so you can live a life that makes sense to you. Even if what you do, and why and how you do it, doesn’t make sense or doesn’t help others in the ways they’ve come to expect from you, if it helps you like and value yourself more, you must do it. Some people with this NN find themselves “pushed out of the nest” to jump-start their growth into self-reliance.
3rd House/9th House
SN in the 3rd House/NN in the 9th House
With the SN in the 3rd house, you have many lifetimes of being shown that the world is about education, communication, writing, asking questions, research and gathering data, and in general exploring new ideas on a regular basis. The families you’re born to in many lifetimes including this one have an emphasis in logic and the life of the mind, regardless of specific education levels. You might find the world full of too much stimulation that competes for your attention, and you could be someone who has exposure to many parts of life without a clear sense of why things happen the way that they do (which can push you into relying on research, data, logic, and numbers to try to explain things). If you’re often up in your head, understand that you’ve done that in more lifetimes than we can count, and you can probably think your way into trouble and, if you’re lucky, think your way out of it, too.
The NN in the 9th house is about your need to expand into developing a world view. You can think of it as a philosophy, or a framework through which you view and interpret everything. It should be one that gives you a sense of meaningfulness to what’s happening, one that gives you a sense of why. For some this can look like religion, politics, or philosophy (all are centered around some idea/ideology), while for others it’s about a long-term search for higher truth that can take them into higher education or traveling far from home to explore what others who are very different think about the world. In the end, this is about developing a willingness to believe in something, and to upgrade it when necessary. Your SN in the 3rd house has conditioned you to see people who believe things as unreasonable, blinded by their desire to believe in something, or myopic. Your task is to become willing to allow for the existence of a truth, and explore what it means to incorporate one into your life.
SN in the 9th House/NN in the 3rd House
The SN in your 9th house indicates that in many lifetimes you are conditioned to see the world through a lens of belief. Your people in multiple lives are showing and modeling for you that belief matters, and that putting your faith in something is what you should be doing with your life. You may be very intuitive and have a sense that you’ve seen it all before, as you’ve sought in many lives to understand larger pictures and get a bird’s-eye view on why things happen the way they do. You’ve been shaped by belief in important ways yet may not realize the power of your beliefs–they can hold you in place and, at times, you can feel stuck seeing the world in the same ways you’ve always seen it. Reflexive for you will be interpreting life, others, and the world (and why things happen) in terms of the beliefs you came in with, sometimes not being able to get through to others who are seeing life through a different lens.
Your NN in the 3rd house says that you need to open your mind in this life. You need to find out that your beliefs can be (and, often, are) wrong. This is a life when you’re challenged to take in new data and let it change you. Your preconceived ideas of the world can’t alone serve you any longer, and you need to learn new tricks. Ask questions, go to schools, take courses and certificate programs, read books–anything you can do to open to an influx of new data is key. As you let the new information in, you’ll notice that many things don’t seem right or true to you. Give new ideas a chance to shake you out of those old beliefs that have manifest and run your life. It’s not that you are supposed to be relativistic and ignore what feels true, but open to new sources of information and learn to think along new pathways. Part of this process will be in opening to listen to people who think in ways very different to your norms, as well as people who believe the opposite about everything than you have believed. The world is ready to open to help you broaden your knowledge so you can overcome feeling safe in the 9th-house idea that you’ve already seen it all.
4th House/10th House
SN in the 4th House/NN in the 10th House
The SN in the 4th house is about being defined in many lives by family, home, homeland, ancestry, traditions–by the people and places you come from. There’s a distinctly tribal feel to the 4th house SN, whether it’s about the religion that binds the family together, commitments that people make to each other, shared political or other ideological beliefs, or anything else. In many lives, you’re being shown that you must carry forward family traditions and contribute to the family line. At times you might find yourself acceding to the expectations, needs, and demands of loved ones, becoming someone who lives a life centered around them. You might work to keep a family or community together, as you recognize the importance of family, personal, and tribal bonds. Along the way, you might feel either warmly toward or hemmed in by your family and ancestry/traditions, but you have a strong sense of who you are and what’s possible for you given who your people have been and what’s been possible for them.
With the NN in the 10th house, in many lives you haven’t made a place for yourself in the world. No one’s taught you healthy forms of ambition, or perhaps validated the need you may feel to achieve something in the world. In a deep way, this NN is about you needing to learn to become part of your society and the world you live in. Most in astrology assume the 10th house is all about work, jobs, and career, but it’s really about public service: What do you want to see more of in the world? What do you perceive your community would benefit from? For many, this is actually about work and career, and you are in need of choosing work and career for yourself that will allow you to bring something that matters to you into the world or your community, as well as achieve, express ambition, and advance through hard work and dedication. In many lifetimes, you haven’t been able or allowed to prove what you can do, and that your contribution matters and can make a difference in the lives of others and a community. If/When feel blocked when it comes to work, ask yourself what you want to see more of in the world, and then ask yourself if you are or could through hard work become someone who could bring it. Then ask if it’s something you want. You may need to go through this set of questions a number of times to get clarity on the path you will ultimately choose.
SN in the 10th House/NN in the 4th House
With the SN in the 10th house, you’ve been defined by work, career, and jobs in many lifetimes. You’ve been in some way and to some degree a public figure, or a manager or public servant. You’re used to having the eyes and criticisms of others on you. Due to repeated multilife conditioning, you may see the world as being about hard work, being there for a community, public service, and becoming famous or infamous (whether you mean to or not, you’ll stand out in public at times). It’s likely that you will retreat to the perceived safety of work and ambition/achievement when you’re stressed, always trying to produce more to deliver to the world. You may have chosen work based on what it can get you, or who you get to be when you have a title or letters after your name that seem to confer social status and/or the respect or fear of others. You’re most comfortable figuring out how to make things happen, and it’s possible that little will stop you from achieving your work-, career-, and community-related goals.
Your NN in the 4th house is about a need to learn what makes you tick, or who you are on the inside. It’s about dealing with your emotions and needs, and also literally family. You may not marry and have children (after so many lifetimes of being defined by work and outward commitments with the 10th-house SN), but are you ready to make personal commitments to others to create the kinds of relationships that feel like family? It’s important that you take time to learn to deal with the human, emotional issues that may be unfolding within you at any given time. To do this NN, you’ll have to learn to spend more time reflecting on who you are when you’re not working, or when no one can see what you’re doing, saying, wearing, or selling. The real challenge here is to come to be at peace with your human side, accepting the way you’re wired (even with those messy emotions) and effectively, actively dealing your feelings and needs. In the end, what you do in the world and who you are for a community will be changed for the better by what you learn about yourself in the process.
5th House/11th House
SN in the 5th House/NN in the 11th House
SN in your 5th house says that in many lifetimes, you’re conditioned to see the world as being about self-expression, creativity, taking up space, having and sharing opinions, and offering your unique contribution. It’s possible that you’re born into a family in each lifetime in which one person has a very large egoic presence others orbit. It could be charming and charismatic, or narcissistic and selfish, but that person’s sense of self will be the center of everything. All the souls in your family system agree to explore the ins and outs of ego, and trying to find an opening to get a word in around someone with a strong personality. This SN involves being oriented to the present moment, and improvising and testing your luck might be old hat for you. It’s likely that you have little or no problem speaking up and telling people what you think, and you might feel good being the center of attention at times. In many lives, you’ve learned what it’s like to be fed emotionally by a group of listeners–or literally an audience–and entertain in some way.
Your NN in the 11th house is about needing to identify goals for your future and that of your community, and then finding the right people and groups to work with to bring those goals into being. In many lifetimes, no one is teaching you to choose and work toward goals, as you seem to get by on improvising, opining, and bringing your personal creativity and charisma to a situation (SN in the 5th house). You likely will not want to think about the future because it may seem to ignore what you’re thinking and feeling in the present moment, but it’s important that you think about where your life and world are headed. You might not have clarity on what goals are worth pursuing, so ask yourself what you want your life to look like in 3 months, and then in 2 years. Then think about 10 years from now. At first it might be hard to think on those scales, but give yourself a chance to do it and then find the kind of people–a tribe of your choosing–who share your values and vision of what you want your future to look like.
SN in the 11th House/NN in the 5th House
With the SN in the 11th house, in many lifetimes you’ve been defined by being part of groups, societies, revolutions, and social movements or causes. You’ve seen what happens when a group of well-meaning, smart people lose their minds together and become a mob. You’ve also seen how people banding together with a shared vision can shape and change the world they live in. The thing is that you’ve overdone being part of a group and letting social mores or expectations determine how you live. It’s critical that you leave behind all sorts of “keeping up with the Joneses”, including trying to keep up with trends, fashions, and “what’s in”. At times in some lives, you might spend a lot of energy trying to fit in, believing that you need to in order to survive or prosper. SN in the 11th also can indicate someone who is looking all over for the right tribe, perhaps not feeling in step with the family and community of origin. Some with this are forward-looking, detached, objective, and inventive, and are looking for the right people to hang out with in order to have support to make interesting, new things take shape.
Your NN in the 5th house says that you need to develop a personal way of doing things, moving away from trends, styles, and mores of the group. You need to find and bring out your unique voice, and perhaps let it ring out. This can be through what we think of as creative endeavors, but the minimum is to develop, own, and share your point of view. You need to figure out what you have to say as a discrete individual and be willing to be seen, after lifetimes of blending into the curtains with your SN in the 11th house. While there seems to be safety in numbers in many lives for you in the 11th house, in this life you are challenged to make a mark, and leave a personal thumbprint on the world around you. You’re in need of giving yourself permission to stand out and share what you’ve had to say for so long but have held back. Only you can own the power of self-expression and stand up and be counted.
6th House/12th House
SN in the 6th House/NN in the 12th House
Your SN in the 6th house is about many lives of conditioned beliefs that the world is about hard work, responsibility, obligation, being a good team player, and doing what’s necessary even if you don’t want to do it. Some with this placement have incredible work ethics but low self-esteem, as they have felt stuck in jobs that may not capitalize on their true range of skills and abilities. Sacrificing personal desire can come with this SN, as you may have felt locked into obligations to do certain work or care for others. There is a desire and skill here in being helpful to others, but many times over the Earth timeline you have not chosen what you do with your energy and time (and for work), and regarding work and helping others, it might be easy for you to feel like a servant or slave. You’re so good at making things happen with your mind and your hands that you might tend toward what others might label as “control issues”, while you might think of it just as what needs to happen in order to get long lists of tasks done.
With the NN in your 12th house, it’s important that you open to allow yourself to go with the flow more, to surrender to what is. In the 12th house, a person learns that there is a higher good that all things are unfolding to reflect and support. Sometimes this means that your personal wants and needs might not seem possible to happen or meet, and your task is to learn to identify as more than your egoic self. Through creativity, meditation, connecting with nature, or something else, it will be helpful to you to lose track of time and find out that there’s more to you than your mind and egoic personality structure. You must decide if you’re willing to allow things to happen or if you will control everything and get stressed out beyond belief. This NN says that you have the opportunity to relax and let the Universe show you what’s possible, as well as allow nudges from spirit, guides, and synchronicities to help you make certain decisions. You’re learning to give up control and see it as a good thing, not as submitting or resigning to chaos or nothingness.
SN in the 12th House/NN in the 6th House
With the SN in the 12th, you have many lifetimes of being shown that the world is about going with the flow and giving up when things get hard. When positive, this journey is trusting in life, God, the Universe, and a higher truth and more spiritual (less egoic) way of seeing the world. When negative, it’s about throwing your arms up in the air at the slightest indication of resistance in the world around you. You’ve at times in some lives learned to go limp when circumstance or the Universe brings you adversity, as you may not have gained tools in some lives to understand that it’s not always negative that something doesn’t work out for you as planned, or that you sometimes may lose something or someone who matters to you quite a lot. You may for your whole life have carried some existential anguish, despair, or even depressiveness and ennui, as you’re trying to figure out how to grieve and let go of many kinds of loss spread out over many lives.
Your NN in the 6th house is about reclaiming the ability to see that things can be changed, fixed, and improved. This house involves parts of life related to research and experimentation, as well as developing a strong work ethic. After lifetimes of feeling forced to go with the flow, you now need to get active and make minor changes daily to create major shifts in your life. Don’t feel well? Analyze what you’re eating and how well you’re sleeping, and then make changes. Frustrated because something in your house is set up in a confusing way? Reorganize or move it. You need to start making changes you can track over time and prove to yourself that things can be improved. Now, not all things might respond to you making changes, but you have to try in order to find out what can shift. While it’s a good idea to learn details about all the things that make up your day and look for chances to streamline and upgrade how things are set up and function, always remember that the main point is that you take action and develop faith that concrete changes can make your life better. You’d rather daydream, but once you begin proving to yourself that your learning and efforts matter, you’ll begin to shed some of the powerlessness and ennui that comes with your SN in the 12th house.
SN & NN Houses
SN & NN Signs (Coming soon)
Natal Aspects to the Nodes of the Moon (Coming soon)
Karmic Story Pages Main