your own decisions and standing behind them, even if you don’t always wind up getting your own way. A major part of the assignment is to learn to use your phenomenal energy to assert yourself in the world without going overboard.
With the doubled-up opportunity, the challenge side of the coin is double-thick as well. For starters, once you start to make progress, “too much of a good thing” becomes a definite possibility. Without scrupulous attention, assertiveness could cross the line to aggression; courage to foolhardiness; confidence to arrogance. In other words, it’s great to be the first to climb a real or metaphorical unclimbed mountain, but you’re not going to make it to the top if a blizzard comes along and the rest of the team has returned to the base camp. Including lots of physical activity in your life style is an extremely effective strategy with this placement. It sparks that Aries, First House energy and brings it forth, and burns off the excess that might otherwise translate to anger or pushiness or rashness.
Your karmic history provides additional help to smooth the path. Your Seventh House South Node in Libra tells us that you’ve had doubled-up opportunities to become sensitized to others and acquire skills in getting along with them. What’s more, you probably acquired a huge dollop of sociable charm as well. All of this can be really helpful now in the relationship department if you call on it. But that Libra energy is very comfortable in the House of Partnership, its own part of the chart, and that presents a real challenge. The doubled-up need for peace, harmony, and balance can make it hard for you to get started on this lifetime’s assignment of self-assertion and initiative, never mind stay the course with it.
You can rest assured that the Universe will send you plenty of signals if you go overboard in either direction. Too much Arian push of your own agenda and you’ll find yourself butting heads and locking horns with a whole bunch of in-your-face-I-want-it-my-way types. On the other hand, if too much of Libra’s graciousness and accommodation are verging on doormat behavior, you’ll find yourself surrounded by no end of wishy-washy, apathetic, sell-themselves-for-peace characters.
Check in with yourself: How you feel at the end of the day? Strong? Confident? Excited about life? Optimistic? Full of ideas? Way to go!
HOUSE 2: Values
“Go for it!” – that’s your mantra this time around. Welcome to a lifetime of using the Arian courage, energy, and sense of identity that you’re learning about to assert yourself in the pursuit of your goals and establish your sense of safety and security. It’s even okay to spend money on yourself, to go for the name-brand labels instead of the knock-offs, if wearing the name-brand labels makes you feel confident and at ease, as long as you don’t go off half-cocked and undermine your solvency – and North Node progress – with impetuous, rash spending. In this lifetime, enlightened selfishness is fine. You’re allowed to have things that are so important to you that you don’t want to share them, and you don’t have to. Let’s say your brother – the one with the bad driving record – asks to borrow your sports car just because he wants to impress a new date. Yes, he’s your brother, but that if that sports car means all the world to you, you simply don’t have to do him the favor. Just don’t forget the “enlightened” part, the part that has to do with recognizing that others have their rights to their own values and what they need to support those values. The Aries part of this nodal set-up can make this a real challenge.
Your Eighth House South Node in Libra can be of real help. It points to a karmic history where you learned about bringing balance and fairness to relationships. However, those lessons were learned through dramatic, intense, and even traumatic experiences. Unconscious memories of those situations can draw you off-course in this lifetime. In one scenario, you might fall back into patterns of losing yourself and what you want and need for the sake of the peace and security that someone else might give you. In another, you could give yourself unconscious permission to recreate the power struggles and manipulations that defined survival in the drama of the karmic past. Either way, it’s shooting yourself in the foot this time around.
Go ahead – go for it!
HOUSE 3: The Mind
For the Arian energy you're learning about, the old adage "Actions speak louder than words" holds a whole lot of truth, and it's bound to become your approach for the information-gathering part of this assignment. Not for you to head for the library cubicle and burrow down into heavy-in-weight and heavy-in-verbiage volumes on astronomy, for example, or even to sit too still too long surfing the Web for information on the planet Mars. No, if learning about a planet is what piques your interest, the best way for you to find out about it is to climb up to the nearest observatory with a decent telescope and examine it for yourself - until the first civilian passenger spaceship makes a regular stop out there, that is.
The same holds for the communication/teaching part of the assignment. Don't worry about reading from the foot-noted reference-backed treatise. Just give voice to your Arian enthusiasm and vitality about things that interest and enliven you and the audience will gather. Share the experience of what you did to learn about the object of your interest, and the information will not fall on deaf ears.
There are important caveats with this placement, though. First of all, once you start to get comfortable with that self-referential fiery Aries energy, it might become all too easy to go overboard in your enthusiasm for what you know and what you think others should do with it. Force-feeding enlightenment at any level only makes for a tougher sell. You're going to have to remind yourself that your audience doesn't necessarily resonate to the message you're delivering along your exact wavelength, and if that's true, it's you who will have to adjust. How's that for a challenging thought?
Your South Node in Libra can be of great help with its karmic legacy of acquired sensitivity and ability to adjust to others' energy, but it complicates the assignment at the same time. Over-developed skills in seeing all sides of an issue - in adjusting your world view to create relationship balance and harmony - could lead you to unconsciously compromise the authenticity of your message in the effort to please your audience. Cultivating self-awareness is the strategy here.
Do your thing. Actions speak louder than words.
HOUSE 4: Home
Welcome to a lifetime of using the courageous, self-assertive and self-sufficient Aries energy you’re learning about to connect consciously and emotionally with your family and roots, and to discovering how these connections can ground you and support you as you become your very own person, with wants and needs and a mind of your own. And welcome to the challenge of pulling all this off without upsetting the family applecart. Come on in – you’ve got lots to do.
The energy of Aries is all about individuality. Its vitality and optimism and courage are most comfortably directed toward initiatives that reflect what you want or see the need to accomplish, in the style and according to the timeline that you think is best. The energy of the Fourth House, on the other hand, is about connection. The goal is to become much your own person while staying wired into the family matrix that provides your support.
Your South Node in Libra karmic legacy can certainly help you with this assignment. Libra knows all about relationship, about the give-and-take, and diplomacy and balance that create and sustain connection. You’ll have to remind yourself to call on that Libra part of you, though, because Aries can get pretty wrapped up in its own concerns and in all the activity it stirs up. Let’s say some pals from the office want to play touch football next Sunday morning, the very day of your Aunt Helen’s annual visit. She usually comes up with some important stories from the “good old days” of growing up with your mother, and they just don’t translate well when you hear them second-hand. Those stories are real bricks in the foundations you’re looking to build, so you may want to forego the Sunday morning kick-off this one time.
Your Tenth House South Node speaks of a karmic history of worldly success that required just the kind of drive and motivation that characterizes Aries’ high-energy taste for initiative and action. This makes it even easier to repeat that history all over again without even thinking about it, and if you do, it will be to the detriment of what you came here to accomplish in this lifetime. You’re going to have to learn to say a loud and clear “No!” to opportunities to move back out into the public eye and climb another mountain to worldly success. You can count on the fact that those opportunities will come along, simply to test your resolve.
Why not invite Aunt Helen back for Thanksgiving?
HOUSE 5: Creativity
Boy, are you going to like it here (if only you’ll stay long enough to get a real feel for the place, that is.) The enthusiastic, optimistic, try-anything-and-start-anything Aries energy you’re learning about is a terrific fit for the energetic, exuberant Fifth House landscape where you’re asked to explore your own creative self-expression by simply doing exactly what you like to do; by expressing yourself in your own unique style; by falling in love. (And romantic, sexy Aries just loves being in love.) Wow! Karmic progress defined as creativity and love and self-expression. I’ll bet you just can’t wait to get going.
But slow down for a minute and listen up. It’s true that this smooth energetic fit can make for accelerated progress toward your North Node destination. However, exactly what smoothes your path North can smooth the slippery slide to excess. It might be a very good idea to go back to the “Don’t go overboard” section of Chapter 20 (The House of Creativity) in Perfect Together and commit it to memory.
The Libra energy coming at you from your South Node in the Eleventh House provides a totally different kind of challenge, one that can be especially strong at the onset of your adventure, so strong, in fact, that you might have trouble making a successful departure. Sociable, accommodating, charming Libra energy was totally at home when it came to fitting in to a group and getting accepted by friends and associates. In fact, chances are that in the karmic past you over-achieved to the point of abdicating your individuality – the essence and truth of who you were – for the sake of that approval and acceptance. The unconscious thought of losing that acceptance can make it hard for you to step out on your own in this lifetime. However, once you do get going, the Eleventh House feedback you know how to get can help you manage the “excess” issue. Things may not be as clean and clear as the Aries part of you might like, but complexity and challenge are simply part of the North Node deal.
Now get going. Don’t worry – there’s no such thing as a karmic black ball.
HOUSE 6: Service
Well, there’s no doubt that the enthusiastic, optimistic, high-energy Aries qualities that you’re learning about in this lifetime are just what are needed to make things happen around here in the House of Service, where using what you’re good at to help others along is the order of the day. Aries likes nothing more than to get things going, so we can expect that in very short order we’ll see a lot of action: outreach programs to identify needs; training programs to acquire necessary skills; service initiatives; self-improvement opportunities, exercise classes. The Sixth House pot will certainly be stirred, no question of that, so come on in and let’s get going.
There are some very real challenges with this assignment, which I’m sure will come as no surprise to you. For starters, the more you become acquainted with Arian energy, the harder it’s going to be to see one thing through to its finish before you crank up another. Getting a million things started up at once is right up your alley. But who’s going to keep them going and get them to the finish line? And what about burnout? The Arian need for constant action can lure you right into the Sixth House workaholism trap that’s hard-wired into this challenge. What’s more, it’s not easy for self-referential Aries energy to stay in tune with the needs of those you’re here to serve, especially if those needs don’t line up with your own.
Then there’s the matter of the South Node, back there in the Twelfth House. Its Libra energy can be a big help when it comes to empathizing with others and developing an awareness of their points of view, things that Aries energy needs. But the very ability to adjust to others combined with Libra’s need to keep the peace is likely to have led to self-sacrificial extremes in the name of compassion in the karmic past: too much compromise; too much ego surrender; or, alternatively, a languid surrender to endlessly drifting in the currents of Twelfth House waters, putting off decisiveness and commitment to responsibility. The unconscious pull of the South Node operates doubly strongly from the unconscious Twelfth House, so you’ll have to stay alert to its magnetism, especially at the beginning of the journey, or you may never get really underway.
Now get going, and keep going. Just make sure you’re heading in the right direction.
HOUSE 7: Partnership
Welcome to getting in touch with courageous, assertive, self-sufficient, vital, and fiery Aries energy by committing to partnership with someone just as strong and just as determined to be themselves as you are. This is a lifetime of learning how to assert yourself and your own view of reality without upsetting the relationship applecart; of becoming yourself and not giving that self away for the sake of another, even as you join your life to that other person; of looking out for yourself while you learn to share and make compromises. Welcome, in other words, to the paradoxical, exciting and phenomenally rewarding terrain of the karmic “switcheroo,” the situation where the themes of this lifetime’s assignment bear a striking resemblance to the experiences of the karmic past.
Partnership selection is hugely important for everyone with a Seventh House North Node, but even more so for you, whose assignment is infused with paradox. You’re looking for someone strong, like you’re learning to be: not a clone, but an equal when it comes to wanting relationship but not being willing to lose themselves for the sake of it; someone who needs to be mindful, as you do, not to get so busy that there’s no real time to spend in growing that relationship. And you’re looking for the kind of interaction over issues and points of view that strengthens each partner’s sense of self. Head-butting is inevitable, but the ram certainly knows about how to deal with that!
Your North Node sign of Aries is a hand-in-glove fit with the high-energy, self-assertive, self-directed qualities of the First House of Personality. But that node is placed in the Seventh House of Partnership, the piece of astrological real estate that naturally resonates with Libra’s themes of compromise, balance, and accommodation. And vice-versa. That is, the South Node, representing the karmic past, is in the relationship-oriented sign of Libra, but is staked in the First House of Personality where ego development and self-assertiveness are the order of the day. It simply won’t be easy to keep it straight; to know when and where to set up boundaries and when and where to let them down; to know if you’re moving forward to the North Node or back to the South.
Yes, this certainly is a challenging assignment, but it doesn’t have to be daunting. Just keep the most positive qualities of your North Node sign and house in the forefront of your consciousness as much as you can. You’re learning a complicated lesson. When you have the reversed sign and house situation, it’s often an indication that you’re working on an issue that takes more than a single lifetime to master, so stay with it, even when staying your own person in partnership gets to feel more like the battle of Titans than the connection between soul mates.
Stay tune into exactly who you are and where you stand. Remind yourself frequently that you have to give your partner exactly the same amount of freedom and autonomy and rights to their own values and beliefs that you want for yourself. Commit yourself with total loyalty to the relationship, and seek the same commitment from your partner: this gives you both the safe space to make a few mistakes.
The right partner is out there for you. The Universe guarantees it.
HOUSE 8: Transformation
Welcome to using the courage, confidence, and initiative of the Arian energy you’re learning about to explore the depths of the mysterious, intense Eighth House and claim the power you find there. Then, you need to go where you, and perhaps no one, has ever gone before and create something where nothing previously existed, using that power to transform and heal yourself and others. You’ve signed on for an exciting challenge, one that holds the potential for great accomplishment and contribution, so come on it and let’s get going.
We know that the Eighth House resonates strongly with relationship themes, which means that you are likely to share at least part of this journey with someone at your side, so learning to merge and blend your energies with another is fundamental to this assignment. But Aries energy is self-referential, so the more you move into it, the harder it may become to be aware that what you want and need to feel safe and secure as you plunge into the waters of life’s deepest mysteries may not be exactly what your fellow-traveler wants and needs.
The Libra energy in your South Node can be of real help with the relationship part of the challenge. It indicates that in the karmic past you learned a lot about the qualities that can help make relationship work. In fact, looking back through our darkened lens we can surmise that you over-achieved in that department, giving too much of yourself away for the peace and security that partnership could provide. This could leave you with the dilemma in this lifetime of not feeling too terribly good if you do compromise and negotiate, and not feeling too terribly good if you don’t. The Second House placement of that South Node speaks of a history where “do it yourself” was key to the successful execution of any initiative, and falling back in that direction will only add to the Arian challenge of recognizing and accommodating another’s point of view and needs.
Remember the phoenix.
HOUSE 9: Expanding Horizons
Quite a fiery match you’ve chosen for this karmic assignment, dear Arian voyager. You’re going to feel right at home here, but don’t worry, no one’s expecting you to sit still for too long. The enthusiastic, optimistic, high-energy qualities that you’re learning about in this lifetime are a hand-in-glove fit for the adventurous, wide-ranging, expansive terrain of the Ninth House. Aries loves nothing better than new beginnings, and this piece of astrological real estate asks you to continually seek out the next horizon line as you approach the one you already can see. Yes, you’re going to really like it here.
But make no mistake: this combination brings some very real challenges. For starters, consider burn-out. There’s a very real restlessness that flavors Ninth House terrain. The general modus operandi is to arrive at a destination, take everything in with the blink of an educated, wise eye, draw some quick conclusions, and take right off for the next port of call. Stir some Arian high-energy impatience into the mix, and you can wind up with the energetic equivalent of the road-runner. Just how much dot-connecting can you do at a pace faster than the speed of light? And how long can you keep it up? These are important questions to consider.
Then there’s the matter of how self-referential Aries’ point of view can be. The patterns of meaning you discover will be strongly colored by your own definite perspective on life, which is the way it’s supposed to be – to a point. But if that point is breached, as it easily could be with this combination, you can wind up with “my way or the highway” tunnel vision, something that is totally antithetical to the assignment.
Your Libra South Node legacy can be of real help. Libra excels at seeing all sides of every issue, and this can help widen your worldview. Its skills at compromise and give-and-take can help you connect with your audience and fulfill the teaching and sharing part of this assignment. But Libra is happier letting others do the heavy lifting in life, and is not very motivated to stir itself once it’s comfortable. It’s exceedingly comfortable in the “schmooze” of Third House everyday life, happily adjusting personal beliefs and opinions to keep things running smoothly and have peace prevail in the ‘hood. Slipping back to low-end South Node behaviors could mean that you never get moving at all, or that once you do, you unconsciously adapt Libra’s overly-accommodating ways and filter what you discover through a lens that’s not your own.
Now get going. The door’s open and the horizon beckons.
HOUSE 10: Authority
Welcome to a lifetime of pursuing your ambitions and actualizing them in a front-page kind of way; to taking a position of authority and responsibility, going after what you want, and creating things where nothing ever existed before. And welcome to pulling it all off in the big world where the rest of us can see you and benefit from your example.
The challenge with this placement is two-fold. First, there’s the matter of how strong you’re going to find out you are. The energy of Aries is all about individuality. Its vitality, optimism, and courage are most comfortably directed toward initiatives that reflect what you want to accomplish, in the style and according to the timeline that you think is best. The energy of the Tenth House, with its themes of achievement, ambition, and the assumption of authority and control, strongly supports those Arian qualities. So, the first challenge is about not going overboard to the point where assertion becomes aggression; where knowing what you want becomes willful imposition of those same goals on others; where self-referential attitudes and behaviors allow you to keep the blinders on when it comes to what others might feel and think and want.
Your South Node in Libra legacy can help you. It suggests that in the karmic past you learned a lot about relationship, about the give-and-take, and the diplomacy, and balance that create and sustain connection. That South Node is in the Fourth House, the piece of astrological real estate that represents home and family, and sources of security that can support you as you go forth to claim your place in the sun. Part of this lifetime’s challenge is to take your place in the big world without cutting the strands that connect you to that family matrix. But Libra energy in that Fourth House makes it hard to be the person who disrupts family harmony in any way, which means that the first “Yes” responses to opportunities to move out into the public eye might be hard to make. Let’s say you’re invited to give an important presentation at the out-of-state executive retreat on precisely the weekend of your favorite cousin Maria’s wedding shower. What will you do? You don’t need me to delineate all the possibilities and challenges of that career vs. family dilemma.
You could always take Maria out to lunch a week later and give her your gift. Think about it.
HOUSE 11: Goals & Groups
Welcome to the Eleventh House clubhouse! We’ve been waiting for you to get here. There’s no question that we can use some of the enthusiastic go-getter Aries energy that you’re learning about to stir things up and get us all moving in the direction of our goals. There’s so much we want to accomplish, and your optimism and high energy are just what we need to make it all happen, so come on in.
We do have to caution you about a couple of things though, just to get things started on the right foot. This is a North Node assignment, and that means that challenge is simply part of the deal. To begin with, the very energy that you’re moving toward could get a little raucous if left unfettered and unattended. The rest of the group may not be able – or want – to keep up with your pace. And we know how good you’re going to be at getting things started, but what is it going to take to keep you on the team until we cross the finish line? This is part of the Eleventh House give and take process, but you’ll have to do your part of the giving.
Then there’s your South Node in the creative, pleasurable Fifth House. Sociable, artistic Libra energy is hugely comfortable in there. Libra is, after all, the sign of relationship, and it’s firmly ensconced in the part of the chart that has to do with romance. If that isn’t one big alluring and seductive combination, what is? How easy can it be to break away? Not very. You’ll have to work hard at recognizing when you’re getting stuck, or you may never even get started on what you came here to do. There’s no question of it: it’s a complex, exciting and challenging adventure you’ve signed up for, but you’re going to love it.
Hit the road running. Just make sure the team is with you.
HOUSE 12: Spirit
Come on in, it’s okay. I know you might be having second thoughts about having knocked at this door. The busy, fiery Aries energy you’re learning about is bound to be a little uncomfortable with the idea of setting up housekeeping for a lifetime in the cool, nebulous waters of the Twelfth House, where intuition and feeling are what works in guiding you toward spiritual consciousness, and the ram-charging pursuit of your goals won’t take you very far. You probably already sense the paradox infusing this assignment, and you’re absolutely right, but it’s going to be just fine, and I’ll tell you why.
To begin with, Aries knows lots about getting things started and has the courage to plunge right in, no matter how challenging the situation may seem be, so although you probably would rather be living out your karmic assignment in the real-world equivalent of an action/adventure movie, if water is the order of the day, you can handle it. What’s more, the strong ego you’re developing will help you enormously with the challenge of not losing your sense of self as you seek to merge with higher consciousness and Spirit.
Your Sixth House South Node provides another measure of challenge. The Libra energy there brings a legacy of knowing about the importance of balance and harmony, and that can help you settle into languid, peaceful Twelfth House waters. But Libra can over-achieve when it comes to adjusting to others. In the Sixth House, that energy suggests drastic compromises made in the karmic past out of a sense of duty: compromises that depleted confidence and diminished vitality, leaving you at the bottom of the Sixth House self-sacrificial booby trap, feeling in this lifetime that you can never break free to become your own person.
Close your eyes, hold your nose, and jump into the pool. Don’t worry: the Universe has you covered in the water department, and the Aries part of you knows what to do once you hit it.
HOUSE 1: Personality
A double “Welcome Home” to you, dear voyager. Aries is the sign naturally associated with this part of the chart, so the message and call of your North Node is particularly loud and clear: to cultivate Arian initiative, courage, confidence, and optimism, and to integrate these qualities into the very definition of who you are. Then, using those qualities, you need to go where you, and perhaps no one, has ever gone before and create something where nothing previously existed. This is a lifetime for making