Transiting Venus In Gemini: The Challenge: to create a new mind, based in the Heart.

The North Node~Your Soul Messenger

"The North Node is the single most important
point in the chart...it describes what your Soul wants to learn and
experience in this life. It is a Soul Messenger."

Have you ever wondered what life-lessons and experiences
your Soul wants to have in this life? Do you know what you truly yearn for?

Unique insights into these questions are found by using the ancient
astrological technique of examining the North and South Nodes of your astrological chart. Soul purpose and life direction questions are profoundly significant, and the Nodes in your chart address those questions from the perspective of your Soul---instead of your rational mind and ego.

The re-incarnational theory behind this is simply that your
Soul chose to be born at a certain time and place so that it would carry over
the gifts and challenges from previous lives, and that your chart reflects the
original Soul intention on coming into this world.

The great psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that the time of birth was not a coincidence

but was a mysterious synchronicity that reveals a great deal. He used astrology in his
practice with his clients, and found that it simply worked. So what may seem
unimportant to you--your birthday, time, and place is actually a profound tool;
an oracle. And what may look like a mystery to you, is not a mystery to the
astrologer who can read the meaning contained in the chart.

Lets see how this works. There are three pivotal key-points
in solving the mystery: the Sun, the North Node, and the South Node. . When an
astrologer looks at your chart, these pointsthese clues--are described in some
detail by their sign, house and aspect positions. But we don't need to get
complicated, lets look at it briefly:

Your Sun sign, reads like a personality description
presenting all the positive and negative ways you can "play out" your
Sun sign. For example, as a Gemini Sun, you can play out the flirty, fickle,
uncommitted aspects of the sign or you can use your great breath of knowledge
to live a very full life in which you make wise and helpful decisions. You are
the communicator of the zodiac. From the Souls perspective you chose to be born
a Gemini in order to play out the highest octave of the sign. Thats the first
clue to the mystery: look to the highest possible use and talents in your Sun
sign. Almost any astrology book can help you with this.

The second clue is the North Node. Many astrologers today
believe it is the single most important point in the chart. It is unique to
each person and describes what your Soul wants to learn and experience in this
life. It is a Soul Messenger, describing the evolutionary needs of your Soul.
When we act out the qualities of this Node we heal and nurture ourselves.
It tells us in what area of life we need to bring emphasis, and some of the
ways to do it. The North Node has a sign, a house position, and aspects, and is
an excellent suggestion---similar to the idea of a personal guiding North Star.

By contrast, the South Node describes the qualities brought
over from our previous life, and describes how we lived when we were young. Our
deeply habitual ways of being and thinking are shown here, and as we mature we
tend to act out the qualities of our South Node less. It shows both the
unhelpful and negative qualities that our Soul wishes to move away from, as
well as containing what Carl Jung talked about as the "gold in the
shadow". This gold is the unconscious unrecognized talents and
abilities that we bring over from a former life or that are simply latent or
repressed qualities. It is wise to uncover and use the gold in the South Node,
while leaving the negative old patterns behind, and to move in the direction of
the North Node.

Most astrologers would agree that the South Node reflects
karmic qualities of our previous life, describing the unfinished business
and things that we didn't 'get quite right.' Although there are gifts and
talents shown there, it is the North Node that points to the qualities our Soul
wants to use and acquire in this life. So when you have a chart reading, take a
long look at what your North Node tells you, even if it feels a little
unfamiliar and challenging. It offers a potent suggestion.

So how does this all work together in a chart? Lets look at
my chart as an example. My Sun is in Libra, North Node in Taurus in the 2nd
house, and South Node in Scorpio in the 8th house. "Houses" are the
areas of life where things get acted out, and the Nodes are each in different
houses. In many ways I acted out my South Node till my Saturn Return at age 28.
I have tended to learn things the hard way, to be ungrounded and to go to
excesses when I was young. It has taken me a long time to live into my true
profession as an astrologer. I married late, and after 20 years of marriage was
divorced for five years, and then I remarried my first husband. We've been
married now since 2001, and continue to do the wonderful/horrible work that
soul mates do with each other---we help each other grow. His independence and
my desire 'to merge' are not comfortable together, yet I can see how he
naturally pushes me to live out the independence and grounded values of my
Taurus North Node. I encourage and stimulate the curiosity and expansiveness of
his North Node in Gemini. There's grace and grit here; a true marriage.

My South Node in Scorpio suggests that my Soul purpose is,
in part, to move away from hurtful melodramas and to ground myself in my own
talents and resources. It speaks of the desire for serenity and to move away
from the dramatic reactivity and the excesses of my earlier years and former
life. Ive needed to take on the qualities of loyalty and persistence of the
Taurus North Node and to find the sacred in the commonplace, which is a
beautiful quality of that sign.

The "gold" in my Scorpio shadow-South Node is my intuitive ability and emotional intensity.
One could speculate that with my South Node in Scorpio (conjuncting Jupiter, the planet of expansion and privilege) I may have been the 'power behind the throne' to someone of importance, and was used to enjoying the largesse of another person and a more dramatic life. That is not the case in this lifeI need to use my own resources and power based on that
grounded Taurus in the 2nd house of personal values and resources. The Universe gives me strong hints whenever I move into territory that is not
my own to claim anymore.

My Sun sign in Libra wants serenity, harmony and beauty. Yet
it thinks in terms of opposing ideas, and about the paradoxical nature of life.
I can get easily stressed, yet look poised. The North Node points to the
necessity of creating calmness and living off my own values and resources. It's
also significant that I have no earth signs in my chartexcept the North Node in
Taurus, and yet I was unconsciously drawn to compensate for that (the pull of
the North Node) as I make pottery as well as do astrology. For many years I
lived in a stone house, and married an earth sign, Virgo. Jungian psychologists
would call this the unconscious compensation of my inferior function; the
sensate.

An astrologer sees a chart like my mine and says this is an
air and fire sign personality, whereas a Jungian therapist would say I was an
intuitive-thinking type. This is labeling, and just the beginning of a deeper
discussion, but its still useful.

The movement towards the North Node is a continuous
process, not just one decision you make. For me, I needed to get lost, and
found, many times--- I divorced and remarried the same man. I write and do
astrological counseling, which is my true vocation, but I have followed several
gods home. I continually need to recommit to ever deeper levels of grounding
and persistence in my work and life. Serenity and home life is very important.
I know I survived a difficult family karmic inheritance, yet I strive to act
out the highest octave of the Libra Sun which pulls me towards tactfulness and
deep thinking. And that South Node in Scorpio still tries to seduce me in every
way you can imagine.

So, I come back to the chart and to the astrological work
again and again as a spiritual practice. It helps me remember my commitment to
the work of being a healer; an intuitive astrologer who is grounded and
practical. Astrology reflects the internal dialog between the different
parts of oneself, but at least now I know who to listen to and why. I am
grateful to have this divinatory tool that helps make conscious what is
unconscious in the psyche, and I delight in sharing the gifts of this Soul
Messenger to whoever asks.

ElizabethSpring, MA, is a counseling astrologer and
therapist who has studied astrology and the psychology of Carl Jung since 1969.
She has studied and taught in England, Switzerland, and California, and has
been a professional astrologer since 1992. She specializes in relationship,
career, and soul direction and life purpose issues. Consultations are done by
phone or at her office in Wickford, RI. Other articles can be read on http://www.elizabethspring.com/

Excerpt from "Saturn Returns" : Chapter Thirteen

“I live my life in growing orbits, which move out over the things of the world, perhaps I can never achieve the last, but that will be my attempt. I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”

“Do you think that’s the German writer, Rilke?" I asked. "It sounds more like ...John O’Donahue to me, do you know him, Peter—the Irish writer?”

“I don't no....I guess I’m a bit ‘parched’ spiritually, eh?” Peter pursed his lips. “We’re drinking up the goodness here Isabelle, but don’t get too enchanted here—this place, this Lindisfarne-- is the place that almost took Sophie’s life.

"I know. I’m trying to understand why she came here, but we won’t get that, Peter, if we can’t get beyond our ideas of right and wrong, of what is true, and what is not."

Peter winced. “I can feel myself holding back—I have too many old ideas about Christianity. I’m trying to see what is good here now, not what they did wrong in the past….yet the past is everywhere, seeping out of the walls and rocks. And some of it is as quaint and sweet as this lichen and moss on this stone wall—and some of it—well, it will show itself, I think.”

And it did.

New Book released on Amazon.com~Saturn Returns; The Private Papers of a Reluctant Astrologer

New Book

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The Saturn Return, Part Two

     How do we survive, thrive, and reinvent ourself during the Saturn Return? Saturn is the instinct to commit. Ask yourself this: “If I do nothing else in my entire life, what would be most important for me to make an effort at doing or being?” What would that look like? Would it be creating a better family than the one you were raised in? Inspiring others in a way you wish you had been inspired? Financially, emotionally, or spiritually finding peace or success?



Imagine that you could make a phone call to the “oldest wisest part of yourself” and ask this question. What would you want to build? What do you need to do to get there? Are you doing it yet? The good news is that despite Saturn’s connection with plain hard work and self-questioning, it’s also a time when opportunities present themselves to be thoughtfully examined Procrastination now seems like a bad idea, but quick change isn’t in the air either. Things must be taken slowly and old ways and habits may be having their “death and rebirth” and we need to be patient with ourselves as we move through the process of rebirthing and reinventing ourselves.


Maybe the old lover has finally committed “the last straw” and you know you must end the relationship. You make the difficult break, and then accept an invitation to go out on a date. New possibilities are in the making but the grieving process may take longer than you wish, and your heart slows you down. Or you’ve landed the new job, but the learning curve on it sends you home in tears for the first two weeks. But you hang in there. Or you’re finally pregnant, but you’re so sick you can’t enjoy it. Patience and endurance…hallmarks of Saturn.

 That’s the feeling of the Saturn Returns, but look what’s coming! If you follow through with your new vision, you’ve taken the first steps towards a true new beginning. Saturn likes to create forms and structures and new beginnings, but not without strong foundations. Old unfinished business—your psychological baggage--will stand in the way before your new birth takes place. Real change and self-reinvention calls for you to trust the process as it unfolds.


The Saturn Returns are marked by these kinds of personal milestones. We move, marry, divorce, go back to school, have a baby, leave a job or pick up on an old dream we’ve forgotten about. We do something different. The navigational tools are twofold: we must take a chance now, and we must give it all we can. When we are willing to do that, we are be rewarded.


Saturn asks us “Whose movie am I in?”” and then challenges us to be the director and author. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could just read some “manual to life” and have the ghost of “Christmas Future” come to us to show the way? Instead, we are called to become our own best “author-ity,” to truly become the author of our life.


We’re being asked now to re-write our personal life script with our own spiritual muscle. Not always so easy, especially when our life drama is full of people who no longer reflect who we really are and what we are becoming. “Letting go” is another key concept for this time


The human unconscious has ways of conjuring up people, events, and situations that challenge us to the bone. Psychologists sometimes call it projection, and we feel it as the remarkable synchronicity between what’s happening in our inner lives with what’s happening to us in the outer landscape—I don’t think it’s just an uncanny coincidence. At times it’s as if we’ve conjured up whoever or whatever we most wanted to avoid—or attract—in our lives. It’s as if the unconscious “hires” other people to play out parts of our life stories—this one is the boss, this one the victim, this one the unfaithful lover.


At the Saturn Returns you’ve probably “had it” with some of these people and situations and it’s time to write them out of the script of your life drama. At each Saturn Return we are challenged to take back our projections and to look at the drama of our life as our responsibility. It’s too late to blame anyone anymore.


The Second Saturn Return, in the late fifties, is also a time that calls for concrete actions in the real world, but it can be more subtle and occasionally more insidious. If we don’t do what needs to be done now, we might not be given a second chance. If we put off our yearly physical exam or don’t stop the spread of some nasty growth, it may be too late later. If we take a stiff upper lip attitude and deny the fact that “the job is killing me” it may indeed kill you. We need to find ways to “fall upwards” rather than “falling downwards.” We don’t measure our life by the same standards as we did the first half of life: Carl Jung said that when he warned us not to measure the afternoon of our life by the same expectations and attitudes as we did in the “morning of our life.”



As the body ages, depression and physical difficulties inevitably arise, yet as the body becomes less an object of vanity it’s a chance for the Spirit to rise. This is also the time when we may feel an uprising of irritability as a few old habits or attitudes have the chance to rear their nasty heads again. This is because now is the time to cut them off—to be done once and for all with them. You may ask yourself: why am I dealing with these same issues again? The answer is: because you’ve almost resolved them. And the last straw can be the hardest. The hallmark of the second Saturn Return is that as you deal with the old pockets of unfinished business, you gain a new life as well as the sense that you are truly coming into yourself with more integrity than ever before. But it’s a process that involves choices—and when you make good choices, you can be “born again” spiritually—not necessarily in religious sense—but in the wider meaning of that metaphor.


And how do you do that? Priorities need to be clearer, and metaphorical closets and basements cleaned. There is a need to look at what we feel disillusioned about and let the illusions go, lest these old ghosts feed on us and make us bitter. It’s time to slow down and allow more sweetness and companionship into our lives, and to let the wild dogs of ambitious willfulness fight elsewhere. © Elizabeth Spring  Please ask permission before reprinting to: elizabethspring@aol.com  Homepage: www.elizabethspring.com For more information about Saturn Returns: http://thesaturnreturns.blogspot.com/  



 

The Saturn Returns, Part One

“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.” C.G. Jung


The Saturn Returns at ages twenty-nine and fifty-nine are times of great change and opportunity. And so, they can also be times of crisis. What do you think of when you hear the words: “Know Thyself” and “Nothing in Excess”? These were the words inscribed above the sacred oracular temple at Delphi, Greece. One might think that by understanding and trying to live by those wise words one might avoid the great troubles in life. Perhaps they help. Our understanding of these words changes as we age, but life often plays some nasty tricks on us in the meantime. Perhaps this is why folks who understand “just a little” astrology view the coming of the Saturn Returns, at 29 years old and 59 years old with deep sighs. But then, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.



Saturn is a “symbolic planet” that asks us to reinvent ourselves and our ways of living. Not so bad! However in ancient times, when people have fewer choices, Saturn was seen as the “old malefic” and its passage was viewed with some suspicion. “Saturnian” times can feel serious, with occasional bouts of melancholy or delay, but Saturn’s purpose is to re-structure our lives—not to make us miserable. If we don’t resist its call to change, restructure and reinvent ourselves, we will reap its rewards. Saturn transits have a way of slowing us down long enough so that we take a cold hard look at the realities we’ve built up in our lives and find new ways to become the true author—the authority—in our life. We are finally having another chance to become who we really are.


Saturn, in mythology, relates to the harvest, rewarding those who have “worked” for the effort it takes. It brings a good harvest if we’re willing to wait, work and endure. Saturn, acting as the “stern taskmaster” likes nothing better than asking us to take out the garbage (psychological as well as physical) and to dig into the soil (of our psyche) before we plant the new seeds (of new intentions/new life). Its passage in our life—especially at these times of the Saturn Returns, is when we have a chance for real change and life-renewing rewards. How fascinating it is that astrologers today are beginning to see that it is Saturn, not Jupiter, that is truly the planet of luck and opportunity!



There are two Saturn Returns that happen to everybody: the first is between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty, and the second, between the ages of fifty-eight and sixty. Basically the Saturn Return permeates the whole time period. So if you’re around 29 years old, or 59 years old, you’re in it! And as Saturn makes its rounds in our charts (and lives) roughly every seven years, it will be particularly strong if it aspects a major planet in your chart as it returns to its natal position. (Here’s where you do need to see your chart.) So, all Saturn transits give us times of renewal, but these two times are often the strongest.


Astrologically speaking, the first Saturn return is when we truly come into our Self, as before age 29 we’ve been more reacting to what we were born into, than acting out of our true Self. And the second Saturn return is when we get a chance again to reinvent our lives as we move into our wisest Self. Ideally at 29 we would stop doing the same things as we were doing during our twenties, and do something different. Reinvent yourself! And the same is true of the Second Saturn Return at 59--the ways we’ve been living up till now, don’t feel as good—it’s time to take a different route to re-invent yourself. Wouldn’t it be ideal if people could “retire” from their work at this point? But even without retiring, we can start being “pregnant” with our new Self at this time. The Self that will blossom in our sixties.

 So even though our culture sees the age of twenty-one as the time of becoming an adult—it is not so for the astrologically minded--for us it’s twenty-nine. And you may get your Social Security at sixty-five, but it’s at fifty-nine, at the second Saturn Return, that your true personal and social security comes up for review. Saturn Returns can be times of rough passage, or harvest, and they’re usually a bit of both. © Elizabeth Spring This is Part One of three…the rest of the article is on: http://thesaturnreturns.blogspot.com/  Please ask permission to reprint: elizabethspring@aol.com  Or for personal readings: http://www.elizabethspring.com/