Natal Wheel › Guides › Aspects › North Node and South Node
North Node and South Node · the axis itself
North Node in aspect to South Node
The two nodes are always exactly opposite, so this is not a contact between independent bodies but the axis stated as a whole: what is practised on one side and what is unlearned on the other. It appears in a chart reading whenever the nodal story is being told directly, and it describes a tension that never resolves into one end — the point is to move along it, not to arrive. Anyone reading their chart as an instruction to abandon the South Node has misread it; the practised material is the equipment, and the direction is what it is meant to be used for.
What each body brings
| North Node | appetite, growth, direction |
|---|---|
| South Node | the familiar, what is released |
The soft aspects (trine or sextile)
The nodes cannot form a trine or a sextile to each other, so a soft aspect here belongs to a comparison between two charts, where one person's practised ground supports the other's growth. That is one of the more durable arrangements two people can have, and it is frequently the quiet reason a friendship or a working partnership lasts decades without anybody being able to say why.
The hard aspects (square or opposition)
Between charts, a square to the nodal axis is the classic sign of someone who arrives at a turning point and forces the choice. It is rarely comfortable and it is almost never neutral; the relationship tends to be remembered as a hinge. Whether it is remembered fondly depends on things the aspect itself says nothing about. What is not in doubt is that both people date something from it.
The conjunction
In one chart the nodes are an opposition by definition. Read as an axis, it says which end of a lifelong pull is being lived at any moment, and the answer usually changes several times. Most people can date the switches, and they generally correspond to something that happened rather than to something that was decided.
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.