Natal Wheel › Guides › Aspects › Mars and North Node
Mars and North Node · growth requires the risk
Mars in aspect to North Node
Mars supplies the willingness to act and the North Node supplies the unfamiliar direction to act in. Where they touch, progress is not contemplative: it is made by doing the frightening thing before feeling ready. The pairing rewards initiative and punishes waiting, and people who have it usually know this about themselves long before they act on it reliably. Readiness is not withheld as a test; it simply does not arrive in advance under this configuration, and waiting for it wastes the decade in which the thing would have been easiest.
What each body brings
| Mars | drive, desire, conflict |
|---|---|
| North Node | appetite, growth, direction |
The soft aspects (trine or sextile)
Trine or sextile, courage is available when it is needed and does not have to be manufactured. Openings are taken without much deliberation, and the results justify it often enough to build confidence. Over time the person acquires a track record that makes the next risk cheaper, which is the compounding this configuration is for. Confidence here is a record rather than a temperament.
The hard aspects (square or opposition)
Square or opposition, effort keeps being spent in the old direction. Energy goes into defending what has already been won, or anger arrives at the point where a step forward is required and gets aimed at whoever is nearest. Choosing the uncomfortable option once, deliberately, tends to move more than any amount of resolve — and the anger, examined rather than discharged, usually turns out to be pointing straight at the thing that needs doing.
The conjunction
Conjunct, drive and direction fuse into someone who moves fast toward something they cannot fully explain. It is a productive arrangement and an impatient one, and the impatience is generally aimed at people who are not moving. Colleagues experience this as pressure whether or not any is intended, and the person is often the last to learn that their ordinary pace reads to others as urgency.
Reading it in a chart
The orb settles how strongly this shows: a contact within a degree is a defining feature of a chart, one at the edge of the orb is a colouring. The signs the two planets occupy change the manner, the houses change the arena, and a third planet touching either of them can change the reading entirely.