The Nodes of the Moon are crucial points in your birth chart to understand. They are points in space that are keys to understanding and working with your incarnational destiny.
Rahu is the North Node of the Moon. Ketu is the South Node of the Moon. They are always opposite each other in the heavens.
Astronomically, the Nodes are the intersection points in space of the apparent orbits of the Sun and the Moon around the Earth. They are the eclipse points. They are so powerful they can devour the Sun or the Moon at an eclipse.
The Nodes of the Moon: Past Lives and Incarnational Life Purpose:
Basically, Ketu represent our past lives, the position we come in to at birth from our past lives.
Rahu on the other hand, is the thrust of our incarnational direction of manifestation this time.
The energy of Rahu is driven and demonic and he drives us across the chart from Ketu. If he were not so driven we wouldn’t get to our destination. But if we don’t purify our rahu, we won’t reach our destination.
Ketu is the tail and body of the celestial serpent (and so has no head). Rahu is the head of the celestial serpent (and so has no heart). This is all explained in the Myth of the ‘Churning of the Milk Ocean’ that I talk about in Pt 2 of my Ketu Blog Post (see links at the foot of this blog).
Crucially, in the war between Gods and Demons, the realisation is that both must cooperate, the churning of the ocean, for the transmutation of the poisons that are released.
Rahu: Description and Energy:
Rahu creates smoke, has a dark body, resides in forests and engenders fear. He is airy and vata in constitution.
The energy of Rahu is animal-like, insatiable and instinctual, not governed by conscious will or intelligence. It is outward rather than inward. Rahu is obsession, ambition, compulsions and insatiable desire; he can offer material success (which can be temporary).
In fact, a strong Rahu usually brings material success and worldly power (though not necessarily inner fulfillment).
And strong Rahu can bring psychic powers and mediumship (though with danger from negative forces).
Rahu can be carried away by uncanny psychic sensitivity to mass trends (though some of these can link us to positive spiritualities if we learn).
Rahu can represent self-delusion, psychosis, and insanity/mental problems (Moon-Rahu is a major indicator of insanity), negative entities, possession and imprisonment, drugs and mysterious diseases.
Rahu generates fear and paranoia.
But Rahu can be psychic and can lead through trance. He disturbs by way of doubt, lethargy, grossness and insensitivity.
He is Lord of magic. He can lead us to mastery of the occult and study of abstruse subjects. His purpose is to lead us to our true self.
He is the Outcast. There can be a strong theme of foreignness and foreign parts.
Rahu Soul Meaning:
Most importantly, Rahu Ketu are the key to unlocking the relationship of the Person with his past life and his Soul. They are vastly powerful and their influence has huge spiritual significance, and channels the influence of our karma from past lives and our spiritual potential. They churn our lives to do this, working on a psychological and event level, with both material and spiritual purpose. What is their suffering and darkness to a materialistic soul is powerful spiritual potential to a person assessing their scripts, desires and wants and seeking Moksha. They reveal the havoc of our dark sides in order to motivate us to find the light-side potential within ourself.
Rahu North Node Presentation:
Rahu North Node Journey:
More Detail About Rahu:
Rahu is about ambition for the material realms around us and about attachment, as well as about astral realms around us and the ambitions, distortions, delusions and bad associations he typifies. Rahu works by bringing both driven energy and also upheavals into our life. He can be demonic and sometimes catastrophic, but this serves its purpose in making us reflect on the nature of our goal, and the methods we use to seek to get there, and the need for purification. Thus, Vedic astrology is tantric. God underlies everything. Even in apparently negative phenomena, there is inherent vast connection to God. Out of darkness there can be light. A lotus blooms on the sunlit surface of the lake but its roots are in the muck.
So, Rahu is in fact a God. In the myth, most importantly he drank amrita or nectar. He teaches us through often negative phenomena, by highlighting those qualities within ourselves that cut us off from the light. Remember, Rahu is so powerful he swallows the Sun and the Moon when there is an eclipse. Such qualities are attachment to the world, scripts of past life originating negative karma; creation of future negative karma to be dealt with in future lives!
Rahu is Exalted in Taurus and Fallen in Scorpio. Rahu co-rules Aquarius (interpretations vary).
The Nodes are ‘better placed’ in houses that can utilize malefics: the 3rd, 6th, 10th and 11th.
Rahu usually functions best in a strong house like the 9th or the 10th.
Rahu’s nakshatras are Ardra, Swati and Shatabhishak.
Rahu and Other Planets:
If Rahu is closely conjoined to another planet, that planet can be terribly ruined, suppressed and left powerless to function, as can the houses it rules.
Or occasionally the conjoining planet can be vastly inflated and powerful in that sense, though its authenticity and heart/soul connection can be devastated.
Note, as was said above, that the Nodes’ motion is normally retrograde, but when they occasionally become stationery or direct, their effects become even more powerful.
The Nodes are the great enemies of the Sun and the Moon and give worse than usual results in their signs: Cancer and Leo.
The difference between Rahu and Ketu when in association with the other planets:
Rahu can overcome the Moon; Ketu can overcome the Sun.
Ketu has the power to overcome and darken the Sun, as in eclipse. Ketu – Sun overcomes the individual through his own contractive energies, isolation, alienation and obstinate separatism, lack of self-confidence, lack of self-worth: even these can be covered by compensatory illusory aggrandisement. Ketu can overcome the Moon by creating the devastating attacking critic and contraction in Moon-related areas such as mothering, management of Mind and balance of emotions. Ketu can make an individual narrow and self-righteous.
Rahu-Sun:
Sun obscured by Rahu portends karmic fault to be worked out. The individual is cast in spiritual darkness through excruciating psychological and psychic pain of karmic origin.
Rahu can however vastly influence magnify and inflate the power of a planet, creating vast popularity, prestige, fame and power, glitz and magnetism, but often in a speciously inflated and illusorily compensatory way. They are actually cut off from their atma and incarnational identity and are seeking to over-compensate for this. Rahu creates worldly desires that can never be fulfilled.
Rahu carries the individual away in collective expansionary energies. I have known the Rahu – Sun Dasa or Sun Dasa mark the onset of manifestation of disorders due to unwise kundalini raising. Similarly, Rahu can bring cancer and neuro-muscular disorders.
In the spiritual individual, Rahu can lead to psychic powers and mediumistic capacity, but there is also danger of drugs and alcohol.
Rahu-Moon:
With Moon afflicted by Rahu, the mind is darkened and the individual is isolated from his higher nature and so prone to emotional turmoil, even suicidal tendencies, depression and drugs, almost beyond conscious control, even psychosis, drugs, negative mental states, self-aggrandizement, psychosis and paranoia, fluctuating mental balance and obsession.
Rahu and other planets:
Rahu can ruin other planet through creation of uncritical expansion, just as Ketu ruins them through limiting contraction.
Rahu is Karaka (Indicator) for: Fear, disease, nervous psychological disturbances, collective trends and influences, mass movements, disturbance, epidemics, susceptibility to drugs, mysterious and not really diagnosed illnesses and health conditions, the Outsider, Foreigner and foreign languages, Search for self-realisation.
Professions indicated by Rahu: Politician, Astrologer, Pilot, Dealer of poisons, work with foreign connections, those who work in unconventional jobs.
Negatively: Gamblers, cheats, pleasure seekers. Jobs where materialism, power or ambition and mind get severed from heart and compassion.
Rahu in Vedic and Western Astrology:
Rahu is a powerful malefic. He can be the most powerful malefic in the chart. The Vedic astrology of the Nodes of the Moon is of vast value in understanding our lives. However, the Western understanding is also vital to include, because it depicts our psychological self and our psychological reactions to our destiny and incarnational life purpose, and also because western astrology includes the Gods of Change, the Outer Planets of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, plus Chiron the Wounded Healer.
Note that there are two measurement of the positions of the Nodes:
True Node which states the actual position of the Nodes in the heavens, which allows for Nodes’ occasional stationery and Direct periods.
Mean Node which is always shown Retrograde as it evens out the effects of the occasional Stations and retrogrades of the Nodes.
Vedic Astrology normally uses Mean Node (except for Systems Approach Vedic Astrology, which uses True Node).
Western astrology also normally uses Mean Node (except for Swiss Huber School which uses True Node).
Important: Also see background info plus Ketu presentation:
You need to also see the three-part video and Blog post on Ketu South Node:
Ketu Part 1 describes the nature of Ketu.
Ketu Part 2 describes my approach of Visionary Astrology and also the Myth and Astronomy of Rahu/Ketu, the Nodes plus the difference between the ways that western astrology and Vedic astrology handle the interpretation of the Nodes of the Moon in your birth chart and therefore in your life.
Ketu Part 3 is a study of the birth chart of Donald Trump who has a strong, fated agenda due to the position of the Nodes of the Moon in his birth chart: Rahu conjunct Sun, Ketu conjunct Moon and Kal Sarpa Yoga (all planets enclosed by the Nodal axis and so to one side of the birth chart).
If you would like a reading for yourself or family members covering your birth chart and this period ahead, Or if you would like to enrol on one of my wonderful astrology courses, with their dedicated individual attention, please contact me on my starwheel astrology website.
And see details of my earthspirituality courses and novels on:
www.druidforestschool.com
For Maggie’s healings see: www.maggiepashley.com
Blog: blog.starwheelastrology.com/
YouTube: www.youtube.com/michaelconneely
I look forward to hearing from you
Michael
