Ocean’s Hunger, Earth’s Fecundity: The Nodes in Virgo and Pisces
by Andrew B. Watt
Lurking within the heart of astrology is an invisible dragon, stretched across the Zodiac from one side to the other — the axis of the Moon’s Nodes. As with any voracious reptile, one end imposes itself on the world with insatiable hunger; the other end defecates a less-than-tidy turd upon the earth. The North Node, or the Dragon’s Head, must be fed — and the other end, the Tail of the Dragon or the South Node, will do its business where it wills. The teeth devour, and the tail swings… and both do damage in their wake.
Describing something as dangerous as a dragon, though, doesn’t convey what’s actually going on. The Nodes are invisible positions in the sky, which are the orbital-mechanics artifacts of how the orbits of the Moon and Sun interact. As the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth-Moon pair orbits the Sun, the Nodes represent the places where the solar and lunar orbits cross one another… and from the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Nodes are the places where eclipses occur. When the Moon slides in front of the Sun, we get a solar eclipse; when the Earth slides between the Sun and the Moon, we get a lunar eclipse. These two positions are naturally opposite one another in the sky, which is why a lunar and a solar eclipse will always occur in pairs about two weeks apart. However, the Nodes are not static. As the Earth and Moon go around the Sun, the position of the Nodes gradually alters, changing degrees about every week— changing signs in reverse order about every 18 months — and going once around the Zodiac roughly every 18 years.
One of these reverse-order changes will occur in January 2025, as the North Node goes into Pisces, and the South Node retrogrades into Virgo. These are where many of the eclipses of the next year will occur. On 11 January 2025, this axis will shift from Aries and Libra to Virgo and Pisces. The North Node will turn its fiery breath from setting off sparks in Aries to submerging into the tidal waters of 29° Pisces, and then eat fish and birds until 26 July 2026, when the Nodes will transition again, this time to Aquarius and Leo. Meanwhile, the South Node — the anus of the dragon — will be in Virgo for the same January-to-July era, before trotting on to Leo.
Remember that Pisces represents water, and particularly the mutable waters, like tidal places where the fresh river, the briny marsh, and the salt sea meet. Here is where the North Node will linger for the next eighteen months, clawing at mud banks filled with oysters and crabs, and mussels, tearing out beach plum and wild roses, and destroying the nests of piping plovers as it digs through the dunes in its hunger. Much will survive — life always does — but it will not go unchanged.
On the other side of the Zodiac, Virgo is the field ready for harvest, rich with waving grain. It is the orchard filled with the aromas of pears, sticky sweet, and laden with juice. It is the vine heavy with grapes. Virgo is sunlight shining on red ripe tomatoes — and here stands the farmer and the gardener, with scythe and with shears, ready to make plants into food. But here is where the South Node will roost, like a flock of Canada geese who will eat the crops and deposit their toxic guano onto rich and well-tended soil. The farm will recover, eventually, but it may be a lean year for many.
If we were to encapsulate this transition of the Nodes in a single sentence, it might be,
“The waters are stronger and stormier now — and this guano is too hot for the garden.”
This sounds terrible — but it’s important to remember that for any astrological transit, there are always going to be some absolute winners and some total losers, as well as a middle group for whom it will be a little bit up in some ways, a little bit down in others. Eighteen months is enough time for some to pass through a hospice program, and go out the other side in a pine box… But it’s also enough time for a drug rehab program to do its job and help someone else get clean at last. It’s the time between the “Will you marry me?” and the "I Do’s” at the altar. Judges and lawyers can take eighteen months to declare someone guilty or not. You can plan a divorce and still reconcile in 18 months, or convince your parents it’s time for a nursing home. You might spend pleasant weeks trying to make a baby… and then deal with ten months of difficult pregnancy that create a temporary flesh-and-blood home for an eternal soul.
And that’s what we should remember. The Nodes are a low, thrumming rumbling in the world, making profound changes and churning out longer stories that take time to tell effectively. More often than not, they are stories of difficulty and suffering — but that suffering is genuinely a byproduct of the kinds of lives we live, and the kinds of experiences we want to have in that life. The Nodes wouldn’t have any effect on our lives if we did not want things that take time: our parents to live a little while longer, our first business to make a profit, for a dear sister to survive the trials of cancer treatment, or for a lover to become first a wife and then a mother.
On January 11, 2025, the Lunar Nodes will finish their roughly 18-month-long journey through the signs of Aries and Libra, and change to begin another 18-month trip through the signs of Pisces and Virgo. The Lunar Nodes will cycle out of Virgo and Pisces on July 31, 2026 — and enter Leo and Aquarius.
About the Author
Andrew B. Watt writes an astrology column every ten days tied to the decans at http://andrewbwatt.com/ He's been a practicing magician and teacher since the late 1990s, but started offering consultations based in astrology in 2017. In his spare time he makes art and crafts in wood, paper and textiles. He lives in western Massachusetts on a mountaintop with his wife and an Egyptian deity masquerading as a cat.
Website: Andrewbwatt.com
Youtube: ABWatt
Twitter: @andrewbwatt
Patreon: ABWatt