on aries & libra & also the nodes
part 1 of a new series
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I’m officially back from my wedding & honeymoon hiatus. It was, suffice it to say, so good.
I want to say one final, enormous thank you (muchas gracias!) to everyone who donated to our honeymoon fund. As self-employed people, there is no paycheck for Meg and me if we aren’t working. Neither of us comes from money or previous high-paying careers, so suffice it to say that we live without a safety net. But y’all gave us one: enough for a 10-day trip to Spain where we genuinely did not have to worry about having the money for the occasional splurge-y dinner (although wine is so cheap there, my god, three euros a glass? For such better quality? I am broken). We marveled at Goya, Bosch, and Dürer, at the architecture of the former Al Andalus empire. We sat on dirty bar floors and in fancy dinner theaters to watch (and cry to) flamenco. I devoured more jámon ibérico than I’ve ever eaten in my life. Even though I forgot my migraine and anxiety medication, it was perfect.
I told Meg on one of our last nights that I couldn’t yet articulate what I was taking away from our honeymoon, but that I knew some deep and lasting creative seeds had been planted. Our honeymoon was the ultimate input, and I am, truly, so grateful.
This is all to say, we are resuming our regularly scheduled programming here at the newsletter, and I’ve got a bunch of fun things planned in the coming months — in addition to the week aheads and new & full moon letters, we’ve got some author interviews and publishing industry-centric essays in the pipeline. Before we get into it, a quick reminder that registration for The Grove: 6 Months of Creative Devotion closes in a week (and officially starts January 29th!), and that the schedule for that is also now live on the website.
And now: let’s kick it off with an answer (of sorts) to a wonderful question from the astrology for writers Discord about the six zodiac polarities, or pairs of signs.
Q: I’ve been really interested lately in what we can learn from polarities between signs and how working with the energy of a sign’s opposite can help us move toward healing. I’m thinking especially in terms of nodal placements but also generally. Could you talk through a little about what opposing signs can learn from each other? I have a good handle on Virgo-Pisces, Cap-Cancer, and Aries-Libra (tho would love to hear your thoughts), but Aqua-Leo, Scorpio-Taurus and esp esp Sag-Gemini are a little opaque to me still.
A: To explore the polarities of the six zodiacal pairs is to really dig into the whole of human experience.
First, though, we must dispense with the part of this question that asks about the nodes, as that has no bearing on my thoughts here. Within the Hellenistic-modern blend of astrology that I practice, I do not find nodal placement alone to be particularly significant. But I only practice one kind of astrology. Your attitude about the nodes will be very different if you are looking at them within Jyotish, or Vedic (Indian) astrology, where there is a much more formalized framework of interpretation. In Jyotish, Rahu (the North Node) is categorized as a planet, and so is accorded much more power and influence than in other astrologies.
If you’ve ever heard the nodes talked about as “karma” or “destiny points,” or as indicative of “past lives” and “what you’re moving toward,” then you implicitly have heard of Jyotish. Practically every idea about the nodes in modern western astrology can be directly traced back to India… even if the western astrologers themselves don’t acknowledge it. And this is a persistent problem in the field, especially among modern and evolutionary astrologers who have appropriated ideas outside of their vital religious and cultural context. I’m sorry, but the argument that the nodes are “karma” within a western system of interpretation simply does not make sense. But when you understand that Jyotish astrology is, in many ways, inextricable from Hinduism, in which karma and reincarnation play a central role, then we’re cooking with gas.
Learning Jyotish has been a hobby of mine for the past few years, because I think it is valuable to study different kinds of astrology. But Jyotish is not my astrological home. I am trained in and practice decidedly western, Hellenistic techniques. And so within my professional practice, I really only focus on the nodes in two situations. First, eclipse cycles — obviously. Second, in 1:1 client sessions when clients have a personal planet or point closely conjunct or square the nodes. But nodal placement alone does not even rank in my top 20 of “most important things in a client’s chart.”
So. Having dispensed with the nodes, let’s move on. There are 12 zodiac signs. Of these, there are 6 pairs of opposing signs, called “opposing” because they are 180* away from each other. The pairs always come in complementary elements (air and fire; earth and water), and they are always of the same modality (cardinal, fixed, mutable).
We each, all of us, have every sign in our birth chart. Personally, I find that the signs folks are most uncomfortable with, or critical of, are usually reflective of the part of their chart they are most uncomfortable with and critical of. Understanding the axis on which these signs reside deepens our understanding of not only the signs, but also of how the chart works together as a whole.
I had initially intended to write about every axis for this email, but the words exploded, as they tend to do, and I am instead going to make this a series, where we’ll explore each of the pairs individually over the next few weeks.
First up: