Exploring the Meaning of the Nodal Return

All planets have nodes, aside from the Sun, but in this post, we’re going to look at the Moon’s nodes. The nodes are where the Moon crosses the ecliptic – the path that the Sun appears to take as we orbit around it – with the north node ascending and the south node descending. The north node is also known as the Dragon’s Head or Rahu, while the south node is the Dragon’s Tail or Ketu.

Rahu and Ketu are described as ‘shadow planets’ that cause eclipses in Vedic astrology. Eclipses occur when the Sun, Moon and Earth align on the ecliptic (hence the name!). So the nodes don’t exist, as such. They’re sensitive points that reveal the relationship between the Sun and the Moon, or the conscious and unconscious psyche.

The Moon’s nodes are always opposite each other and the nodal axis precesses (moves retrograde) through the zodiac in a cycle that lasts 18.6 years. This cycle relates to the Saros and Metonic cycles, as well as the lunistice or lunar standstill, as recorded in many ancient stone circles, such as Stonehenge.

In the natal chart, the transiting Moon’s nodes will return to where they were when you were born every 18.6 years at the Nodal Return. They also form a half-return about 9 years or so before and after that at the Nodal Reversal, as well as squares to the nodal axis about 4.5 years before and after the returns and reversals.

There are various ways to interpret the nodes and some disagreement about what they mean which we won’t get into here. But generally speaking, the nodes represent how the soul has tried to develop itself in the past through the south node and how it might develop in the future with the north node.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the south node is bad and regressive and the north node is wholly good. Both nodes can create confusion and compulsive behaviour patterns because they represent points in space where there’s an absence of light or awareness – eclipses – and that can create problems as well as reveal hidden inspiration and new possibilities.

The South Node

The south node represents past karma and shows talents and innate gifts that you’ve developed before, as well as patterns of behaviour that might be less helpful or downright problematic. It may show things that you’re good at and skills that come naturally or easily. But you might take these for granted or be compulsive about their expression and cling to the past at the expense of the future.

The south node can also be seen as releasing seeds that go on to produce growth in the future. Your talents become gifts for others that you give away as a kind of sacrifice which may be experienced as a loss. But this also allows you to let go of the past and grow in compassion and spiritual awareness.

The North Node

The north node represents an area of growth and evolutionary change that you may feel compelled to embrace. It may show potential positive new experiences and talents that you’re drawn towards, as well as greedy or addictive behaviour patterns that create confusion and lead you astray into delusions or obsessions.

The north node tends to feel unfamiliar and awkward at first but it demands that you change in order to grow and learn new behaviours. The seeds released by the south node can help this process by feeding the growth of the north node. Whether these seeds are good or bad will depend on other factors, such as the rulers of the nodes and aspects from other natal placements.

Ideally, your goal is to balance and integrate the nodal axis by developing the positive capacities of both signs and houses. You can balance the less skilful traits of the south node by developing the positive expression of your north node. And you can use your helpful south node traits to deal with problematic north node expressions.

The best time to work on integrating your nodal axis is during your nodal returns and reversals. These represent significant turning points in your life when you can become aware of new approaches and perspectives that can help to reorient your life towards positive growth.

The Nodal Return

Nodal Returns happen every 18.6 years when the north node conjuncts your natal north node and the south node conjuncts your natal south node. These happen at about ages:

18, 37, 55, 74, and 93

These can be good times to work on integrating your nodes by exploring how you’re expressing both sides of the nodal axis and seeing what you can do to change or improve things. There may be new lessons and opportunities for change and growth, but also a feeling of confusion while any new directions come into focus over time.

During the first nodal return at age 18-19 you may be exploring your options and trying to figure out who you are and who you want to become in the future.

By the second nodal return at age 37-38 you may be more mature as you approach midlife and can now evaluate how far you’ve come and what you still want to do. You can see how much you’ve achieved or failed to do and make the necessary changes to reflect what your soul needs.

At the third nodal return at age 55-56 you’re approaching elderhood and dealing with aging and should know yourself much better by now. You can evaluate your path so far and how you want to spend the rest of your life. This may include deepening your connection to your soul and spirit which could lead to major changes in direction.

At the fourth nodal return at age 74-75 and the final one at age 93 (if you live that long!) you’re approaching the end of your life, making this an excellent time to evaluate the whole experience so far. You may be thinking about your legacy and what you’ll leave behind and how to bring your life to completion in alignment with your soul’s needs.

Integrating both sides of the nodal axis can happen at any stage if you’re conscious and choose to work with the process. But it may be easier as you get older, perhaps by your mid-50s once you’ve completed the challenges of the midlife transits. You can also work on integrating your nodes during the nodal reversals or half-returns.

The Nodal Reversal

Nodal Reversals also happen every 18.6 years but in between the Nodal Returns offset by about 9 years. They happen when the north node conjuncts your natal south node and the south node conjuncts your natal north node at about ages:

9, 27-28, 46, 64-65, and 83

These transits may provide insights and opportunities to integrate your nodes or resolve the conflict between them. Changes may come through relationships and interactions with others that help you to balance both sides of the nodal axis by changing your perspective.

You can also receive new perspectives during the nodal squares to your nodal axis which happen in between the Returns and Reversals. The square transits can trigger conflicts and events that force new choices but also help you to understand how the nodes relate to each other. Your focus can shift towards the north or the south node or find new ways to integrate them.

What happens during Nodal Returns?

Nodal Returns and Reversals don’t always coincide with major events. If they do, it may be due to other transits to your chart that are happening at the same time. Nodal transits to the nodal axis often represent a subtle inner shift or new perspective or feeling that you might not even notice until after the transit has passed. But there may be karmic events that reflect the deeper meaning of your soul path and what you’re here to learn or do or whatever.

You may experience changes in the direction of your life, including releasing old patterns that no longer work, rediscovering old gifts or reframing old skills in new ways, finding a new sense of purpose or calling, and embracing new paths, ideas and potentials that allow you to align with your soul’s purpose.

These are good times to evaluate your life in general to see how it’s going and you may need to make a choice about which direction to move in – whether to go towards the south or north node. Going towards the south node isn’t necessarily bad. You may need to reconnect with a lost gift or skill or learn to use it in a new way that helps you to move forward rather than be focused on the past.

But you may need to watch out for sliding back into old patterns that keep you stuck and going in circles. If you find yourself feeling frustrated or bored it may be a sign that you need to shake things up and realign with your purpose. If you’ve wandered off your path into the bushes or a ditch, you may be forced to take stock and get back on track by changing your approach.

Maurice Fernandez has an excellent post on how to integrate the two sides of the nodal axis here.

To get a feel for how this works let’s look at an example from my chart, including a few other transits to the nodes for context. My third nodal return happens this summer and it coincides with when Uranus in Gemini is also square the nodes in Pisces and Virgo. More on that here.

I have the north node in Pisces in my 1st house and the south node in Virgo in my 7th house conjunct the Sun in Virgo and Mars in Leo. The south node is ruled by Mercury in Virgo in the 8th house, and the north node is ruled by Jupiter and Neptune both in Scorpio. Neptune is in the 9th house and squares the nodes, while Jupiter is in the 8th house and trines the north node.

I’ve written about the Virgo/Pisces nodal axis in the Evolutionary Astrology series here. To summarise: the basic purpose of this axis is to balance the need for order and detail with the need for imagination, inspiration and surrender to transcendent truth and faith. There’s a need to integrate the practical routines of life and work while remaining open and compassionate, and provide service to others without compromising your own boundaries and health.

At my first nodal return when I was 18, I was working at the Virgin Megastore in Brighton and writing songs with a friend in my spare time. I hired a 4-track and drum machine (it was 1989!) and used them to create arrangements for the songs on my keyboard. Later we went into a studio to record the songs properly and this inspired my dream of becoming a sound engineer.

This experience integrated the nodes quite well. Putting my imagination and inspiration into practical form and working on perfecting the results. Arranging the details of the songs and recording them in a precise way and learning new skills that inspired future growth that aligned with my purpose.

Later transits to my nodes helped to bring my dream of being a sound engineer into reality. Saturn was conjunct my north node when I was 23 and doing counselling training which involved developing my compassion and empathy skills. It also inspired me to return to college later that year to make my dream real.

I graduated college and started working as a sound engineer when I was 26 and Pluto was square my nodes. This was an empowering moment and turning point in my life that made me feel more in tune with myself and ready for anything. I also started a significant relationship at the same time which lasted until another powerful transit hit my north node (see below).

But first I had my second nodal reversal when I was 28 and working part-time in admin to pay the bills because there wasn’t enough work at the recording studio. This was frustrating but it also meant I had to develop my Virgo skills in a new way and put them to practical use in service to others.

A couple of years later Saturn squared my nodes when I was 30 and I got a better job recording a talking newspaper. This was an ideal balance between the need to focus on details while using imagination to provide a service to the blind and partially sighted listeners. The relationship I was in also continued to work well during that time.

However, when Uranus was conjunct my north node a few years later a massive change occurred that totally transformed my view of reality and shifted my focus onto the spiritual path more intensely. The relationship I was in ended and this allowed me to turn inwards without the usual feelings of guilt. I experienced my first satori and then suddenly started writing screenplays – both of these were unexpected and shunted my life onto a new track.

My second nodal return happened when I was 37 and working at the talking newspaper and writing screenplays in my spare time. I had a regular spiritual practice but was also still very stuck in my head and overthinking everything, although aware that this was a problem. During this transit I attended an inspirational talk with my writing group that clarified the situation. This was how I summarised it for other members of the group:

“Don’t get hung up on the words because they’re not reality. Words are a tool to point to a deeper truth/reality. … I’m reading a book at the moment by Antonio Damasio called ‘The Feeling of What Happens’. It occurred to me…that [this] is what a film is… And the difficulty in the script is to capture that in words. I find words remove me from my feelings, from a deeper, intuitive understanding or knowing of reality. As soon as you start thinking about what you’re feeling you lose touch with what you’re actually feeling.”

A perfect description of the conflict between Virgo and Pisces!

At this point my ego was still too invested in what I was doing – trying to ‘be someone’ by ‘becoming a writer’. When I was 39 Jupiter was conjunct my north node when I was trying to sell a screenplay and not getting anywhere and also writing my first novel. This transit may have boosted my self-confidence as well as my self-deception.

Over the next several years that confidence was slowly eroded, first by Chiron conjunct my north node when I was 40-41. During this transit I lost my job and my health fell apart, forcing a change in direction. I had to learn to surrender and spend more time healing so I could figure out who I wanted to become within the limits of my new situation.

This continued when Neptune was conjunct my north node when I was 41-43 and still pursuing my dream of getting published. During this transit I completed my first novel (which nobody wanted to publish) and decided to go self-employed despite earning practically nothing from writing. It was a leap of faith. I self-published my novel Addled shortly after this transit ended.

By my third nodal reversal when I was 46, I had self-published Free Your Pen and was trying to finish my second novel and getting frustrated. I felt very confused about what I was doing and that I wasn’t expressing myself clearly. This was when I started writing more astrology stuff – a good way to balance this nodal axis – as well as more spiritual writing, including the excellent Handless Maiden series. So I may’ve been confused about my confusion too!

It turns out I can write perfectly adequately if I stop worrying about it and let the words flow. 😎

And that brings us to my third nodal return which happens in June while Uranus is also square my nodes. It will be interesting to see if anything specific happens. There are lots of other transits happening at the same time so I’ll have to revisit this later when the dust has settled.

It’s clear that my main problem is an overactive mind and not enough faith. Recent events (driven by Pluto square my Jupiter) have made me sick of listening to myself going on and on inside my own head and intensified my desire for peace. There’s a strong feeling of defeat and exhaustion but also a sense that there’s something deeper at work guiding this process.

I no longer want to ‘be someone’ and recently got a new job which requires total service – there’s nothing for my ego to get its mitts on. It’s highly detailed work at a genetics lab (doing admin) and I have to focus 100% on what I’m doing because the cost of mistakes is too high. Getting anxious about it doesn’t help so I have to let go of my internal jibber-jabber and trust my innate ability to get the details right.

On a personal level there’s nothing left to accomplish except the healing of my various auto-immune health issues which have now become a spiritual crisis – perhaps a shamanic illness or zen sickness that only faith will heal. I’ve tried everything else. I need to learn to use my Virgo energy in a more positive way and discard the negative thinking and self-doubt that has blighted my life and driven me half-mad. 🤪

The only way out is to surrender…