Original Meaning of the Lunar Nodes (Mesopotamian)

[glaucus]

I like this article about the Original Meaning of the Lunar Nodes by Bernadette Brady.

Here are some parts of the article.




The nodes, for the astrologer-priest of Mesopotamia were the location within the map of the heavens which represented a place where the known ended and the unknown began.

Within our own maps of the heavens therefore the nodes can show us the edges of our world, the place where it ends and other worlds begin.

Thus seeing the horoscope as a complex map of our place in time, space and also the very meaning of our life, in other words a map of our personal cosmology, then the nodes become the only real contender for our map's 'edges'.



The North Node is the gate that beckons us...

The desire to colonize and move forward is a strong compulsion within the human condition and this gate, which we call the North Node, is the place on the edge of our cosmology which calls to us in an irresistible manner. We are all drawn forward in our lives to expand our world and this node informs us of what and how we seek to do that. This is the intentional way we bring new things into our world.



The South Node is the gate to a world of the unintended, stumbled upon by accident not design.

It is a place where we do not feel comfortable because we do not control it. It is the gate through which things can crash into our world, unplanned, uncontrolled, unscheduled and definitely unintentional. So the achievement or gains made in this place are by accident rather than design. It is a gateway to a territory which offers us confusion rather than adventure. Yet within those woods lie unused resources that are ours for the collecting if we are prepared to accept the unscheduled chaos that has just crashed into our world and learn skills we may not have intended to learn.



Therefore in keeping with the original use and meanings of the Moon's nodes, as assumed by the Babylonian mythology, both nodes can bring chaos into our lives but also both nodes are the way that our world can expand with new ideas, skills and concepts. One node offers us expansion of our world by focused intent and the other by accident, one by the call to adventure and the hero's quest and the other by disruption through unintentional events.


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[Deleted]

glaucus, this meaning of being in between endings and new beginnings, as in, " a place where the known ended and the unknown began" has some similarities with the notion of reincarnation. The SN would signify the state reached in the past life comprising of skills acquired and life lessons gained - it is the state of the familiar. The NN, in contrast, is new territory but one which has a path already laid, in terms of new experiences or learnings to be acquired.

Perhaps the chaos which is harboured in the SN is more due to not keeping on track with the intended plan of NN, because life will throw the lessons at you again and again until they are learnt. These forced lessons may indeed happen in a chaotic way with disruptions and unintentional events.