Karina Lafayette – April 30th 2020
As I write this, right now the world is in crisis, putting everyone into hermit mode while we await for the next chapter to begin. It’s currently April 30th 2020, at 1:10am Eastern, and a Thursday. I’m an INFJ, I live for privacy and quiet. The days have somehow blended but it’s nice to be reminded by having some structure. People have learned how to be more kind, considerate, nurturing, patient and creative. Somehow overnight the world has become like the Great Mother that is the sign of Cancer, where the North Node has been transiting for the past year and a half. The moon is currently in Cancer and won’t meet up with the North Node in that sign again for another eighteen years. The people around me are acting like my childhood: grumpy, isolated, and clingy to whatever toxic habits we need to let go of. You can feel it: things are about to launch forward, but not quite yet. Meanwhile, I’m with my eyes on the future and learning how to build my own, quite a contrast from where everyone else is at, like passing ships.
Before continuing, it’s important to mention that the North Node in your natal chart represents your path and the lessons you need to learn to grow as a person, and the house it’s in shows the area of life you’ll have those lessons. While the South Node is the opposite, it’s everything you already excel at. The nodal opposition is essentially a transit which happens at ages 8, 27, 45, 64, and 82. In short, it’s basically when the transit North Node is opposite the North Node in your chart. The purpose of it is to get you on track toward your personal growth and encourages to let go of whatever habits aren’t working for you.
Growing up as someone with the North Node in Capricorn or the tenth house is a long, stressful climb, because you were raised to be protected, coddled, and looked after thanks to your South Node (which represents your childhood and past lives). Deep down you know you’ll learn the road better alone. Your family was probably very traditional and loved routine. You were maybe even sort of spoiled, or so it looks that way, till you’re a young adult living on your own for the first time, realizing you don’t even know how to cook for yourself or take public transit alone without having a panic attack. You find yourself rejecting kindness and even love because it weirdly makes you feel weak, and big daddy Saturn needs you to be strong. This placement is about integrity, self-sufficiency, and being an entrepreneur.
Steve Jobs, Eminem, Oprah, Dwayne Johnson, and Rose McGowan are just a few famous people with North Node in Capricorn. You have an unhealthy obsession with doing things your way, even it’s the hard way, and tend to be an overachiever. On the positive side, you always have someone there for you, cheering from the sidelines. You might often push people away, but once you finally learn true interdependence, everything flourishes.
In astrology, Capricorn is classic big dick energy. It’s the sign that doesn’t give up and somehow makes the impossible happen. The often have big dreams and get accused of being too ambitious. At its lowest, they can prone to greed, we selfishness, and political corruption, but on the good side, they are resilient, generous, and can overcome anything.
With the South Node in Cancer, my childhood was filled with huge meals at my uncles, where the door was always open with a few extra seats and plates for any friends of the family who wanted to drop by last minute. My grandmother would sing and dance with me in the kitchen. Every Sunday, we would make pasta and watch cooking shows on PBS. The way she says “hello” is by asking, “Did you eat?”
For myself, I was a very sensitive child, extremely shy and reserved. I would cry easily and loved being close to family. Strangers of any kind made me suspicious. My mother was emotionally distant, but she was always there to remind me how I could never succeed without her- and despite that abuse she was my best friend. It was wonderful and painful at the same time. Then I got to a certain age where in order to follow my bliss, I literally threw myself to the wolves by moving to the big city. Quite an upgrade for a girl who hadn’t been on a plane before.
But I moved here way before my nodal opposition. One reason for my career, and the other, to escape my past- which as I learned last year, nobody can. When your nodal opposition first happens around age 8, it’s pretty uneventful: the only thing I remember from that age is that my new second grade teacher was amazing, and I had a lot of friends. The nodal opposition that happens between ages 27 and 28, on the other hand, can be even more significant than your Saturn Return, but only if you were already headed on the wrong track. It’s a transit that will come in and set you straight, by forcing you to look at what part of your past you keep running away from, old habits, ways of thinking, beliefs, and how to put all that behind you once and for all.
Did I mention that I moved here for my career AND to escape my own past? Well both confronted me in 2019. But before then in 2016, I went from doing some gigs on film sets, working as a popcorn server with the Toronto International Film Festival, not caring about guys or even dating; to getting caught up in a dark, twisted fairytale with a guy that was a lot like my grandfather. Finally we broke up, and I had a film in production. I was on the horse again. Finally, the film had to be shelved, so I got off the horse- again. Then I moved to a new neighborhood and was working full-time, not paying attention to my craft, but spending a lot of money on unnecessary shit like restaurants, shopping,and a few too many trips to the movies. I attempted to start a small business making candles. Then I became homeless and now I was not only off the horse, but way off track.
What did I do while staying at the shelter? Amazingly, I wrote a book about all of it (see here). I hadn’t written anything that long since my screenplay that I was going to direct the year before. It was like I found myself. I also made a lot of friends and had all kinds of guys after me. It felt great being popular (South Node in the eleventh, cough cough), till it didn’t, because a lot of the people in my life where like the toxic kids from school: gossip, rumours, manipulation, you name it. Not to mention the guys who wanted me were the push-pull types that like to mess around and don’t know what they want. I promised myself to never meet anyone like my exes, and they all were in some variation. Why couldn’t I just attract better connections? What was I doing wrong? Nothing, just South Node problems.
You see, one thing we learn from the South Node is that the Devil we know is usually more appealing than Angels we don’t. When people talk about stepping out of your comfort zone, they’re really telling you to look at your North Node. The South Node might be our past, but it’s not really all bad. During my nodal opposition, I’ve connected with some amazing people too and became more comfortable with being nurtured, instead of feeling like I need to do it all alone. But the codependency, not feeling good enough, putting everyone else’s needs first, and emotional blackmail- which are the darker traits of the sign of Cancer, no we can’t bask in them. And that’s why the North Node can feel like walking a tightrope, especially during the nodal opposition, because you’ll fall a bunch of times, but hey, you’ll get back up too.
Having your nodal opposition will probably be the strangest time in your life, because it’s like watching everyone else trying to figure out how to develop skills you were pretty much raised with. It also feels like a rerun of the worst parts of your childhood. It still baffles me that some people have to learn things like compassion and empathy, while I grew up feeling like my needs didn’t matter.
Now earlier this year, I got to speak about red flags in abusive relationships at an event for singles. I started incorporating Astrology readings into my candle business that I originally initiated (and almost gave up on). It’s helped me help people learn more about themselves, but most importantly, it’s given me a chance to learn about myself, and it also gives me time to remember why I moved from my hometown in the first place: to become a writer.
Sometime last summer, a Capricorn friend unsurprisingly found out I can look at charts and asked me to read a few people. While alone with him later on, we had an important conversation about my future, and now looking back, I’m pretty sure this is what he meant.
Update: Since writing this, I eventually got my own apartment and got to do social work for a year, before turning my focus toward my writing career.
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