After having spent a year and a half in Pisces, on August 18 the Moon’s north node crossed into Aquarius. It will remain there until March 6, 2028 when it enters Capricorn. Meanwhile the south node has entered Leo and will stay in that sign until it hits Cancer on that same day.
As usual, I’m using the Mean node rather than the so-called “True” node. The distinctions are subtle, but on the relatively rare occasions when a person is born during a period of disagreement between the two forms of the nodes, I’ve found rather consistently that the Mean node seems to be the one telling the “true” story. (For reference, the True node entered Aquarius about three weeks earlier this year, on July 26. Often the gap in the timing is even smaller than that.)
THE CRUX OF THE MATTER
A deep and unabashedly metaphysical understanding of the nodal axis is the signature technical difference between evolutionary astrology and all of the other forms of our craft. As many of you reading these words already know, the south node represents limiting habits and attitudes still haunting us from the past, while the north node represents an effective remedy for them. In this branch of astrology, we generally frame “the past” in the language of reincarnation. Thus, the south node reflects our unresolved karma that has ripened – and the “ripening” means two things: first, that those issues are going to show up vividly in your present life and, second, that you have evolved to a wiser position – one in which you can deal with them in a fresh way and potentially resolve them.
The full nodal analytic process quickly grows too complex for me to cover it here. If you want to take a deep dive into the methodology, try my book, Yesterday’s Sky: Astrology and Reincarnation. Alternatively, go to forrestastrology.com and just enter “nodes” in the search bar, then press Enter and stand back. Or, if you really want to dive in as deeply as possible, sign up for FCEA-102: Yesterday’s Sky at www.forrestastrology.center. There, you’ll have a total immersion in these techniques under the expert guidance of a trained FCEA tutor.
Here’s a telling point: most calculation programs only display the north node, not the south node. The standard rationale is that the south node is always opposite the north node so there’s no need to display it. That’s technically true, but leaving out the south node is a bit like someone describing you by mentioning your favorite vegetable, but not including any reference to your personality or your place in the world. We need that south node! The deeper wisdom always begins there. For one thing, it reliably leaves a mark on a person’s present life, while the north node can almost be viewed simply as a helpful suggestion – one which you are free to ignore, to your peril.
Understanding the exact nature of each person’s karmic predicament is central to the way we counsel people in evolutionary astrology. Success there involves using all the techniques on which I just touched. What develops is a past-life story that is as unique as your fingerprints.
That’s the heart of the way we work with individuals. In this essay I want to take a broader perspective. What does this Leo passage mean for all of us, not just these children who are beginning to be born?
Some of us will be impacted more powerfully than others, and everyone will experience it in their own unique way. But throughout it all there will be certain common denominators of a Leo nature. It’s those underlying patterns that I want to explore with you now. You’ll feel them in yourself and you’ll see them in the headlines – and as always, the south node will warn you of ways you can “stay stuck,” while the north node will point to a path of liberation.
UNDERSTANDING THE LEO SOUTH NODE
Leo is famously the sign of the Lion and everyone knows that the lion is the “King of the Beasts.” It’s easy to see why – just think of what a lion’s body language reveals about its attitude toward you. Indifference? Disrespect? Go to any zoo and check it out – just like the snootiest kid in your 9th grade class, the lion probably doesn’t even bother to look at you.
Closer to home, think of those little lions with whom many of us live: house cats. They are symbolized by Leo too. In almost every house that’s blessed with a cat, the standard joke is that we are the cat’s servants. Tongue in cheek, the cat is addressed as, “Your Majesty” or some other deferential term. “The cat’s humans” may act like they’re joking, but the joke is usually on them – most cats get 24/7 concierge service just as if they were royalty.
Dogs obey; cats demand – and command. And most of us slip naturally into some kind of semi-subservient relationship with them. Weirdly, that subservience feels perfectly natural. It doesn’t cross our minds to resent it – not any more than we’d get our noses out of joint because we waited an hour to have five seconds of face time with a pop star or perhaps a political leader whom we admired. You can think of that commanding and very royal vibration as the “elixir” of pure, distilled Leo energy.
Taking Leo symbolism into the human realm, we know that just like cats and lions, some people are naturally dominant, often without even trying to be. They are the “kings” and “queens” of the world. Societies typically have leaders. There’s always someone in the spotlight. Every high school class has its supply of “cool kids.” Sometimes the status of these people derives from money or some hierarchical social structure and has nothing to do with any intrinsic worth they might have. As we all know, there has never been a shortage of scoundrels sitting on thrones. Sometimes the person is only in that position because their mommy or daddy was there before them.
Those depressing perspectives reflect a kind of low-grade Leo energy.
Sometimes a person rises to Leo status for more positive reasons, ones that are connected with some striking personal quality – they’re very beautiful, or highly intelligent, or talented in some special way. People look up to them. We have rock stars, sports stars, and movie stars – the “influencers” of the world, for good or ill. That kind of intrinsic charismatic magnetism is closer to the heart of Leo. Call it “star quality.”
All of these kinds of people – the good, the bad, and the ugly – are expressing Leo energy, at least in our collective view of them. Lamenting any of this would be like lamenting rain, hurricanes, or heat waves. As Mark Twain once put it, “everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” Obviously no one can. For all eternity, every high school cafeteria will have a table where the cool kids sit. Status games, hierarchies, people striving to “reach the top” – it’s all so human that it’s not likely to go away.
Condemning this universal social reality is not the point – it’s just that the time has now come for us to recognize its cost. We’ve arrived at a stage in our collective journey in which blindness to Leo’s pitfalls could potentially block our next evolutionary steps – steps which involve reaching the higher ground symbolized by the north node’s sign, Aquarius.
Simply said, not all Leo karma is dark, but the dark side of it is rising
Emphatically we are not aiming to shame Leo – or any of you “Leos” out there. We are just recognizing that every sign of the zodiac has a shadow dimension. That negative side is part of what the south node reveals. What does that revelation mean in this particular case? Let’s start by remembering that Leo reflects the human pattern of creating hierarchies with “kings” or “stars” on top, while everyone else is expected to languish in anonymous, forgettable mediocrity below.
Before we start lacerating anything or anyone that smells like this dark side of Leo, let’s remember that sometimes these unbalanced social structures can serve helpful psychological purposes. That’s the positive side of Leo and it’s there because the human soul needs heroes – people who embody traits we value and toward which we aspire. Personally, I owe so much to Ram Dass, Carl Jung, along with a few other mentors whose names are not so recognizable. I’m not “them,” but when I was younger they helped me find myself. You probably have people you’ve looked up to as well. Each one of them helped you move in the general direction of your best self. To follow our next analytic steps without getting stuck in some kind of Holy Inquisition, we need to remember this positive dimension of Leo. We need these role models. They are the true “stars.” They play a necessary role in maintaining the ecology of human spiritual health at the collective level.
CHOOSE YOUR POISON
There are two potential poisons inherent in this bleaker dimension of Leo energy. It’s time to become more conscious of them both and hopefully to root them out of our lives. Our ace in the hole is that we already understand the cure: it is interwoven with the higher dimensions of the north node in Aquarius.
CURING POISON NUMBER ONE:
The Shadow Side of Believing in Stars
Nobody pays much attention to the “gods on Mount Olympus” anymore – or so it seems. The truth is that we have always just reinvented them in fresh disguises. Let’s think critically about everyone we place above ourselves. Let me start with one very contemporary example. This is straight off the Internet:
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) affects nearly 2% of adolescents and is significantly more common in teenage girls than boys. Driven by digital culture, social media algorithms, and peer comparison, girls often experience obsessive thoughts about perceived flaws – such as skin texture, body fat, or facial features – leading to severe social isolation, anxiety, and depression.
Marketers create images of these “goddesses of perfection,” generally with significant digital help. Almost all of them are too perfect to actually exist in real life. Then we compare ourselves to them and weep. BDD itself isn’t really the point here – it just illustrates the point. This social pattern of shaming ourselves with comparisons to unnatural ideals is pure Leo darkness in all its self-sabotaging glory. We project illusory perfection onto certain “stars” and “influencers,” judge ourselves against the impossible standards they represent, then feel diminished, deflated, defeated, and depressed. Sometimes in a bizarre twist, we eventually waste energy hating them.
Those are the costs of succumbing to Poison Number One. The toxic message is that there is nothing we can ever do in order to be beautiful enough, sexy enough, rich enough, smart enough, spiritual enough, talented enough, pure enough, healthy enough, happy enough, and so on. The price we pay is shame, self-doubt, and a sense of hopelessness. That – or we are eaten up by envy.
What’s the cure for poison number one? That’s easy to answer. The cure for Leo problems always involves a high response to the best potentials of the sign Aquarius. What does Aquarius represent? A celebration of human individuality! From any evolutionary perspective, even a Darwinian one, diversity is Mother Nature’s greatest strength. Eternally, the affirmation of Aquarius is “I am what I am. If you like me, that’s great – and if you don’t like me, I find that amusing.”
At its best, Aquarius represents a kind of radical self-acceptance – one that’s completely independent of any external standards. It needs no one else’s approval. To Aquarius, at least when it’s at its best, your judgment of me does not interest me. In the inspiring – and very Aquarian – words of the late, great David Bowie, I am “immune to your consultations.”
Is there a potential dark dimension to that totally free-spirited attitude? Of course! Every sign has a twisted side, Aquarius included. Not all “community standards” are negative moral influences. Neither are all our heroes and role models. The point is that right now, with the south node transiting through Leo, it is the toxic side of this “king-worship” that is up for our collective reconsideration. It’s high time that we withdraw our envious projections onto our “stars” and replace them with a celebration of everyone’s human individuality, including our own.
As always as the south node passes through Leo, we’ll see a wide spectrum of responses to its possibilities. There will be people who learn nothing and go on letting poisonous heroes torture them with unreachable mirages of perfection and power. And there will be people who awaken from that nightmare. Those are the ones who will find their true, beloved, flawed hero staring right back at them – in the mirror, Aquarian-fashion.
CURING POISON NUMBER TWO
The Shadow Side of Being a Star
There are countless exceptions to what I am about to say, but why is it that when we hear of two sexy Hollywood stars getting married, we tend to glance at our watches wondering how long their marriage will last? Let’s meditate – compassionately, if possible – on that question. It will carry us to the heart of our second poison.
Staying in a healthy relationship over long periods of time requires forgiveness, compromise, and humility. Those are virtues that run in perfect counterpoint to what psychologists might call malignant narcissistic egoism – or what astrologers might call the dark side of the Sun.
Let’s remember that the Sun is the ruler of Leo, so narcissistic egoism is inseparable from our understanding of the south node in Leo – and once again, let me affirm that Leo is not inherently egocentric across the board, but the south node brings that particular negative possibility to the surface.
A dear, but rather “piquant” Italian friend of mine and I were once discussing how to get a narcissistic acquaintance of ours to show up for an event. She quipped, “Just tell him that there will be a camera there.” I laughed out loud, but I knew there was at least a cartoon-version of the truth in what she said – which brings us directly back to narcissistic egoism and those notoriously brief Hollywood marriages. Those stars literally spend a lot of time in front of cameras – which is just a metaphor for the endless, ego-fattening diet of idolatrous attention on which they are fed, often from an early age. That endless admiring scrutiny takes a toll on anyone’s humility after a while. What does it do to a human soul to have thousands of people fascinated with what you ate for breakfast this morning? What if the clothes you wear make a splash on the evening news? What if anyone who sleeps with you is eventually interviewed about the experience while thousands of people hang on that person’s every word?
The contagion of poison number two is not limited to “kings and queens.” Again, all societies are hierarchical to some extent. Obviously, not all of us are movie stars, but many of us are “stars” in some lighter, broader sense – community leaders, beautiful people, “creatives,” yoga masters, even successful astrological teachers or authors. Those are all Leo expressions too, fraught with watered-down forms of exactly the same list of spiritual pitfalls.
How well have you digested it? With the south node passing through Leo, you will soon find out. That karma is now ripening. Ask yourself what price you are paying for maintaining your place at “the cool kids’ table.” Ask yourself if it’s worth it.
Cutting to the chase . . .
If you flunk that test – or even if you only make a C+ – don’t beat yourself up for it. Do the smart thing instead: swallow a big dose of Aquarian north node energy. How? Be uncool! Dress in a dull or unflattering fashion and take a walk on the wild side. See how you look without make-up or your hair not so perfect. If people project spirituality onto you, say the f-word in front of them. If they project godlike sexual perfection onto you, be brave enough to gain a few pounds. If they envy your wealth, give your money away. Be yourself instead of being what others expect you to be, in other words. Aim to be emotionally available instead of intimidatingly impressive.
Try it. After a while, you’ll like it. It’ll feel as good as taking off tight shoes at the end of a long day.
WHAT IF 51% OF US GET THIS RIGHT?
If enough of us get past these two poisons before March 2028, humanity will take a giant step away from the “star system” that has robbed so many of us of our natural confidence and half of our innate human dignity, not to mention our faith in our own spiritual attractiveness just as we are.
Every eighteen years, the nodal axis makes a clean sweep through the entire zodiac, spending a year and a half or so in each sign. One brave way of understanding that zodiac is that it is a mandala of every human madness or vice. Name the mess, there’s a sign that symbolizes it – and an antidote in the form of the opposite sign.
Currently we’re all invited to look at the messy side of Leo. We’ve just finished with the messy side of Virgo. Next up, starting on March 6, 2028, it will be the messy side of Cancer. It’s a bit like cleaning your house – just because you did it last week doesn’t mean it won’t need to do it again next week.
Don’t let this endless repetition depress you. Earth is a planet we come to in order to learn these kinds of lessons. In each nodal cycle, some younger souls start their earthly work. Meanwhile other souls graduate. Some of those graduates stick around as spiritual teachers, while others light out for parts unknown.
If either one of these two Leo poisons is holding you back, here comes your big chance for liberation. It’s easy, at least in principle. All you have to do is be yourself.