by Jan Spiller
What is happening with this dynamic is that in a past life the South Node person inadvertently damaged your sense of personal power and now “owes you” the gift of regaining confidence in your individuality and your ability to create your own destiny. So they unconsciously invalidate your style of creating results, which prevents you from relying on them and compels you to turn inward and become more aware of your own true values. Through their influence, you finally reach the point where you resolve to “be me and that’s it!”
In addition, if the South Node person is in your inner circle and also has a planet conjunct their own South Node, in a past incarnation they may have deliberately inflated your ego and encouraged false ideas for their own personal gain. This damaged your sense of personal power in ways that are still undermining you. So in this lifetime they have a contract with you to heal these specific past life injustices and help you find your strength on a deeper level than ever before. As you become consciously aware of how this person’s influence constrains you, you not only become stronger, but also begin listening to your own inner voice in making decisions and creating your own destiny.
South Node Conjunct the Moon
The energy of the Moon is a valid urge inside the human psyche. It is the longing for the “mother” and her unconditional love and acceptance. Thus the Moon represents our deepest personal urge to connect: our needs for intimacy, for nurturing and being nurtured, and for a sense of belonging.
The Moon’s placement in our chart—by house and by sign—shows those areas where we most long for these experiences. Since the Moon represents our feeling nature, its placement also indicates that area in which we are most non-verbal. As a result, in the domain where it is found we tend to expect those who care about us to instinctively be aware of our deepest needs.
The Moon’s aspects to the other planets indicate the ease or difficulty we are likely to encounter in getting these needs met. If one partner’s South Node is on the other partner’s Moon, it indicates that there is a block to the natural flow of spontaneous nurturing in the connection. This is one of the most difficult relationship aspects, yet it is frequently found between mates. However, it presents a tremendous opportunity for personal growth, since it will require heightened awareness, conscious effort, and a willingness to change from both partners in order to create a mutually satisfying bond.
If you are the SOUTH NODE person:
When your South Node is on your partner’s Moon, over time their experience is that you don’t give them what they need in order to feel secure, supported, and cared about. At the same time, your experience is that no matter how much you give them, they always need more. Until one or both of you become consciously aware of this dynamic, your relationship is likely to become a source of frustration and disappointment.
On a practical level, you may in fact be giving a great deal to your partner, but it’s not a “match” for what they actually need on a deep level. As the relationship progresses and your partner starts feeling emotionally insecure and unloved, they may subconsciously begin to retaliate by withholding what you need to feel loved. Then a negative spiral is created where neither of you are getting what you need in order to feel fulfilled and taken care of in the relationship.
In dealing with the situation, it’s helpful to understand that one way this aspect affects the Moon person is that it doesn’t occur to them to verbalize what it is they need from you. And one of the effects for you is that subconsciously, you’re not tuned in to what this person needs from you unless they tell you. However, as the South Node person you hold the power to overcome these obstacles by making a conscious effort to ask the Moon person what it is they need from you in order to feel supported and cared about. Even though this may feel awkward at first, validating their emotional needs in this way will greatly be to your advantage. When the Moon person feels deeply understood and happy, their loving energy comes back to you in ways that more than make up for your extra effort.
As your awareness grows, you may also notice that—on a deep level—your first instinct is to pull away from your partner’s need for closeness. This reaction stems from unconscious memories of many family-based past incarnations between you in which unhealthy co-dependent relationships robbed both of you of opportunities for personal growth. This knowledge allows you to avoid the pitfall of co-dependency in this lifetime by remaining separate and whole while consciously choosing to validate your partner’s feelings because of the love you feel for them.
The healthiest resolution is for you to continue to ask the Moon person what they need from you while lovingly encouraging them to verbalize their needs on an ongoing basis. They will feel grateful that you asked, and it will make them happy. The more they feel cared about in the relationship the easier it will be for them to take the important step of asking for what they need. It is also important for you to remember to ask for what you need from them as well.
If you also have a planet conjoining your own South Node, this is a payback lifetime and you have a specific contract with this person. In a previous incarnation, you may have deliberately bound this person to you in a way that caused them to lose touch with their own personal essence. Their identity became enmeshed with yours, and their security was dependent on your decisions. In this way you robbed them of their self-reliance and their ability to grow in emotionally healthy ways. As a result, they still have difficulty establishing healthy relationships. In this lifetime, it is your job to consciously help them to restore their emotional self-sufficiency without injuring their heart—to let them know they are loved and supported for who they really are without enslaving them.
If you are the MOON person:
The Moon in the birthchart reveals where we have the deepest need to feel understood, nurtured, and cared about by another. This is the area where we feel most vulnerable and experience ourselves as lacking completion. Thus we need support and encouragement from another Soul in order to gain a deep sense of satisfaction. The Moon also shows our receptive nature—where we most want to experience the feeling of “family” and be able to depend on another to care about us.
When a partner’s South Node falls on your Moon, it can bring disappointment and feelings of being unloved and unsupported. This person may not be tuned in to your emotional needs and it can seem like they never give you what you’re really longing for. This is due to their unconscious memories of many family-based past lives in which there were unhealthy co-dependent relationships between you. As a result, every time you expect this person to fulfill your needs, they unconsciously pull away in order to prevent a co-dependency from reoccuring.
Clearly you have a past history of great love for each other that continues into this lifetime, but because of the co-dependency it hasn’t been expressed in a healthy way. This incarnation brings the necessary lessons that can teach you to differentiate between being co-dependent and taking responsible action to ensure that your needs are met. Now you have the opportunity to learn to verbalize your needs so that the co-dependency dynamic isn’t triggered.
If you leave this issue on a non-verbal level and continue to assume that your partner automatically “knows” what you need, the relationship will probably become a source of dissatisfaction for both of you. With this aspect, your partner cannot know your needs unless you verbalize them. But if you make a conscious effort to tell your South Node partner what you need from them in order to feel cared about, they are very likely to respond in a way that makes you feel validated and loved.
For instance, if in order to feel cared about on a deep level you need to hear the words “I love you” on a daily basis and just assume your partner will tell you, you will be disappointed and—over time—may begin to feel that your partner doesn’t really care about you. However, if you take responsibility to tell your partner that this is what you need and they give it to you, your emotional needs will be met and validated. Then you will experience
satisfaction and also be more willing to give them what they need in order to feel cared about.
If this person is in your inner circle, and if they also have a planet conjunct their own South Node, then in a past incarnation they may have deliberately created a co-dependency with you for their own personal gain. In this case, they have a specific contract with you in this lifetime to help restore your emotional self-sufficiency. In either case, you have attracted this person into your life because on a deep level your Soul is calling for you to learn how to become more emotionally independent—the next step in your evolutionary journey.
South Node Conjunct Mercury
Mercury rules the conscious mind. The house and sign where it is found in our birthchart shows the way we think, what we think about, and our style of communication.
If you are the SOUTH NODE person:
If you do not consciously share ideas with your Mercury partner, you will likely invalidate their thoughts in areas that are important to them and become a discouraging influence in their life. To you, the way they view the world and cope with day-to-day reality usually doesn’t measure up to your standards. Your less than respectful attitude toward their opinions may discourage them.
On an unconscious level, what is happening is that the position they are coming from when they express their views is one that you operated from excessively in past lives. So when they communicate with you, you become agitated because—on an internal level—you “know” that to participate in this style of thinking in this lifetime will cause you to lose ground in terms of your own personal growth. However, it is important for you to understand that it is appropriate for the Mercury person to operate from this position.
As the South Node person, you hold the power that determined the outcome in this part of the relationship. In order to create success, pull back and become more aware of your own separate identity. Make a special point of encouraging the Mercury person to independently pursue those interests that are mentally stimulating for them. Consciously validate their view of life as correct for them—without thinking that it has to work for you. Encourage them to spend time with other friends who think as they do. In this way, their need for an exciting exchange of ideas can be satisfied without depending on you.
If you are the MERCURY person:
Your South Node partner doesn’t take your ideas seriously, and rarely respects your point of view. In past incarnations, they operated excessively from the framework within which you currently view life, and sense that it is not healthy for them to participate in this style of thinking during this lifetime. Thus, when they experience YOUR thought pattern, they tend to ignore it or invalidate it. They may love you, but they certainly don’t validate your intelligence or encourage your ability to view life in terms of the bigger picture. Rather than try to change them, a more realistic solution is to rely on other friends for the intellectual stimulation you need.
If this person also has a planet conjunct their own South Node, it is likely that you had a past life connection in which your mental bond created an imbalance that you still carry. You may at first have connected intellectually in order to achieve a mutual goal, but then became co-dependent in a way that was undermining for both of you. For example, if you were a scientist, they may have used your brilliant thinking to further their own aims. Or maybe they convinced you to use your abilities for something that was important to them at your own expense.
To clear this past life debt, the South Node person has come into your life to give you confidence in using your own thought processes and ideas without needing validation from them. They owe you the gift of mental independence, and this is why they don’t seem to “hear” you and continue to belittle your ideas. Their attitude forces you to connect with others for mental stimulation and to expand your worldview to higher levels. This person also forces you to strengthen your confidence in your own truth and in the validity of the framework within which you view life.
South Node Conjunct Venus
Venus rules love and relationships. A Venus/South Node conjunction is a contract involving love and romantic relationships that is scheduled to be reactivated and resolved. Venus also rules money, and that may be an additional factor in your connection with this Soul.
If you are the SOUTH NODE person:
When you first meet, if you feel an immediate attraction to this person it is a past life connection involving an intense, passionate, love relationship. This could be for good or ill: an unfulfilled romance that you both longed for all the rest of your lives, or an enemy from whom you robbed the passionate romantic love they desired.
One possible scenario: the two of you were seventeen years old—at the height of passion and idealism—and newly married. There’s a knock at the cottage door—it’s the army recruiting “all able-bodied men for the war.” She says: “Don’t go!” His final words are: “I’ll be back!” He dies on the battlefield, and his last thought is longing to be with her again. She waits for him her whole life, dreaming about how perfect things would have been if he had been by her side. Thus, there is a strong fantasy component to the relationship.
So now in this lifetime your wishes are being fulfilled: You have another chance to experience life together. However, when you actually live with this person, over time you may find that they are not who you imagined them to be at all. Even in the past incarnation had the relationship not been interrupted, you may have discovered after a couple of years that you didn’t even like this person. This is why—as the relationship progresses, it is important to determine if the Venus person is someone with whom you feel a true affinity. If you do, then this is a past life love connection that brought so much happiness to you both that you vowed to meet again.
However, it’s possible that when you first meet this person, your inner voice may warn of caution. In this case—especially if you also have a planet conjunct your own South Node—it may be that in a past life you deliberately prevented the Venus person from being with the person they loved for your own selfish reasons. For example, if you were the Venus person’s father in a past incarnation, you may have forced her to marry a rich, powerful husband instead of the man she truly loved. As a result, in this lifetime you may unconsciously tend to undermine the Venus person in this area of their life. However, since you owe them a specific karmic debt, it is in your best interests to make a conscious effort to support their romantic relationships.
If you are the VENUS person:
This aspect between two people shows a passionate love connection that was unresolved in a past life. Usually it was a positive relationship with idealistic expectations for a euphoric future. You were probably mates, and when death came the feelings of love between you had not been fully realized. Thus the attraction and longing for each other continued into this lifetime.
This does not necessarily mean that you are destined to again become mates, but only that there is something unfinished between you that needs resolution so you can both continue your evolutionary journey with a full heart. This conjunction does tend to “hold” in that this person may be with you this entire lifetime. However, your connection may be based in friendship and shared activities rather than as intimate partners.
One word of caution: You tend to be very permissive with this person. However, if you overlook their flaws at your own expense you could get hurt in terms of your sense of self-worth. Also, you may notice that whenever you allow your affection for the South Node person to open your heart and become fully vulnerable, they tend to push you away. This is due to your past life bond being so strong that an unhealthy co-dependency developed between you, undermining your ability to love wisely. Now this person is here to give you back that part of yourself by strengthening your independence and teaching you how to share love with another without losing yourself in the process.
Occasionally this aspect shows a past life tragedy of hatred and revenge involving a love ob
ject. If this person also has a planet conjunct their own South Node, in a past incarnation they may have deliberately kept you from the person you loved. Perhaps they were a wealthy landowner who bought a young woman to be their sexual partner. If you two were lovers, you (the Venus person in this incarnation) may have been injured by the South Node person when you tried to rescue your sweetheart. If this type of scenario occurred, then in this lifetime you will feel an automatic animosity toward the South Node person, and on an unconscious level you may tend to undermine each other’s romantic relationships. In this case, their gift to you may be releasing the prize you both fought over in the past.
South Node Conjunct Mars
Mars rules sex, initiative, courage, and aggression—the forces that motivate us to take action. The house and sign placement of Mars in the birthchart indicate in what part of our life this urge will be most energized. When this conjunction occurs, you have been brought together to resolve unfinished business from a past life in one of these areas.
If you are the SOUTH NODE person:
If this is a romantic/sexual relationship, it probably began with intense attraction and explosive passion. However, once the past life passion has played out, you may begin to feel less attracted to this partner. As the South Node person, you hold the power to maintain the physical intimacy. You need to be the one to recognize your partner’s sexual overtures and to validate and respond to them. The physical connection between you must be consciously transformed to a whole new level of mutual sexual enjoyment and intimacy in order for the relationship to succeed.