Psychological inheritance and the lunar nodes

I did a reading for a client the other day who had Saturn, the planet of discipline and challenging life experiences, in a square to the Nodes of the Moon.  The Nodes of the Moon represent the pathway of our soul’s evolutionary journey from the past (the South Node) to the future (the North Node).  When a planet is in a square (90 degree) aspect to the Nodes of the Moon it is sometimes called a “skipped step” (coined by astrologer Jeffrey Green), meaning that planet plays an important role in our evolution and reflects an energy that requires constant examination and perfection. I have found in client work that the skipped step often shows something that gets in the way of our evolution – a pattern or way of looking at the world that holds us back and keeps us from being able to move forward in our lives.  Like so many other ways in which astrological forces that are difficult also serve as the keys to personal growth, that same planet that holds us back is the portal to our own self-discovery. In the reading I mentioned this square of Saturn to the nodes, and the fact that often individuals with this placement come into this life with a sense that life is too hard – the force of Saturn which forces us to work hard and apply great discipline both stands in the way of our finding ease in life, but also represents a key to our progress.  After the reading she shared with me that her grandmother had always told her that she was a descendant of a notorious mass murderer, and informed her that she and her family were being punished for the sins of the ancestors. It’s often said that the family inheritance lives at the Imum Coeli or IC, the cusp of the fourth house but we limit ourselves if we look in only one location for any astrological revelations.  In this case the square from Saturn to the Nodes, which tends to bestow a sense of deep guilt and a belief that life must be hard, easily adopted the projection of the family belief system that the sins of a medieval ancestor were still visited on the family. Not all of us are so connected to our family lineage, from what I have been able to glean from my years of doing chart readings.  But when there is a psychological and soul-based connection to a family history it will often show up in the South Node. A psychological inheritance of a belief system is still just a belief – it does not become true just because it has been passed down through a family for hundreds of years.  At some point that belief system can be changed, and Saturn is just the planet to make that happen.

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