Paola Pierpaoli

Your signs will find you out
by Paola Pierpaoli

Nowadays one hears more and more talk of karma, but just as often there’s an ignorance of what it means. What does this term actually mean? It derives from the sanskrit Karman, action, which, in the Indian religious context signifies the effect of perpetrated actions and the deriving consequences that will be expressed in later lives. Thus karmic law brings to mind the law of cause and effect: human destiny is forged by previously completed actions; each life is the exact consequence of the preceding one. Since one makes various mistakes in life, will we be condemned to repeat them perpetually without breaking this chain? Absolutely not, because if karma exists, then dharma also exists: the possibility given to us by our free will to express our personal creative potential to the maximum, to develop our inner selves, to widen our awareness, to make a qualitative leap for our conscience and life style.
In spiritual astrology the path from karma to dharma is expressed by lunar nodes, which are of great importance, while yet not physical entities like planets, but rather two fictitious points on the trajectory of the moon. Indeed it is the southern node that reveals karmic tendencies, while the northern node – the means to overcome them. To achieve dharma, however, it’s necessary to reach a balance, a meeting point between the two nodes, seeing that they are always in opposing signs. For example those who have the northern node in Libra and the southern node in Aries, have to learn to work together with others, in the spirit of Libra, and not to exaggerate in imposing their own will and personality, traits typical of Aries. But in exceeding in their effort to put into practice the meanings of the northern node, forgetting themselves for the sake of others, they wouldn’t be able to completely attain fulfilment.
The path from the southern to the northern node, from karma to dharma, is a spiritual one, in that according to the Divine Project each of us has a task on Earth. Destiny exists, but it is of a creative nature: within the task assigned to us, we may choose to involve ourselves ten or a hundred per cent, and in the latter case we will realize our dharma to the full.
At times on the journey from karma to dharma various kinds of psychic or physical obstacles may appear: indeed, for no one is it easy to abandon the habits we have from the southern node, which for how negative they can be they’re reassuring because we know them. Even though the northern node attracts us deeply, it always represents the unknown, the exploration of which demands courage. On the other hand often it’s enough to just overcome the obstacle to have a sense of more vitality and achievement, and find happiness.

Northern node in Aries and southern node in Libra

Karma. You have the tendency to let others hinder you and you fear that your every action may break the equilibrium with your environment; as a result you often prefer not to make a move. In a former life your excessive urge to create harmony may have made you easy prey to people unable to stand on their own feet, and now you tend to relive the same experiences, since it’s never easy for you to affirm your need for personal space. In this way an excessively jealous husband or wife, a mom who has always some ailment, a pushy sister or girl friend, the boss find you indispensible and make you work overtime and take advantage of you.

Dharma. In contrast with what, by instinct, you tend to do, you should fully affirm yourself, realizing yourself without forgetting everyone else of course. In other words, your task is to become a little more “selfish”.

Northern node in Taurus and southern node in Scorpio

Karma You tend to be a bit closed, too much slave of your passions, slightly manipulative. You don’t know how to direct your energy that is, you either waste it or over do it in things, quickly exhausting yourself. Some of you may be a little wary, diffident of esoteric practices, the world of mystery; most probably due to unlucky experiences in past lives.

Dharma You need to learn how to be more constructive, become more simple, open and natural. For you it’s important to go from the dark to the light, allowing yourselves life’s pleasures: contact with nature, art, sensuality, and good food. Esoteric studies and psychology could be satisfying, since in these fields you probably have undiscovered talents, that you must have developed in former lives. So pull them out of the bag.

Northern node in Gemini and southern node in Sagittarius

Karma You are wild horses intolerant of any rules. For this reason you may be not nice to others without wanting to, maybe perhaps you don’t dream of paying any attention to their possibly wise advice, or, because you forget to cancel an appointment to which you had no intention of going. In other lives you’ve perhaps been priests or in any case seekers of spiritual truths: your profundity of thought is in fact immense, but you shouldn’t think you are right all the time and have this conviction weigh on those surrounding you.

Dharma With time you should learn to fit in and accept, in good part, social conventions, which often are not only useless formalities, but imply respect for others. Furthermore you should learn to share your knowledge, opinions with greater politeness so that they are more willingly accepted.

Northern node in Cancer and southern node in Capricorn

Karma Probably in a previous life you held a position of power of which you still maintain a memory. For this reason you tend to give too much importance to social prestige and the outside world. You know how to conceal your feelings and often you hide them even from yourself. You expect everyone to recognize your superiority, with the result of seeming supercilious, if not arrogant.

Dharma Your task is to learn to develop the feminine and maternal side of life (the same goes for men too): to be receptive, to listen to others, but also to the diverse needs that the different situations of life present, without wanting to “command” even the course of events. It’s important too, that you dedicate yourself more to your intimate relationships, the family, the home, self-knowledge, and less to social and professional life.

Northern node in Leo and southern node in Aquarius

Karma In a past life you probably lived in a highly developed society, in terms of an endeavour for the common good, like that of the American Indians. Endowed with a strong social conscience, you however have difficulty in revealing your personality outside of your group, in the sense of your social or professional environment, or the couple. You’re afraid that because of personal initiative you could damage others and so you try to act as part of a group. It’s a fear maybe instilled in you from your childhood.

Dharma Learn to share with others through the creative expression of yourself. You must therefore discover your personal talent and not be afraid of letting it shine. Better still; take stock of the fact that your “group” needs just you, and your uniqueness. So express it to the full.

Northern node in Virgo and southern node in Pisces

Karma You tend to let an excessive emotionality overwhelm you and you’d like to escape reality, which is too incumbent for you. You’re generous, understanding, you’d really like to help people, but you can’t manage to, due to your lack of organisation. You’d like to lean on someone to help you sort out the practicalities of life, but you’ll end up realizing that exactly the ones you hoped to count on, are leaning on you. In a previous life you probably weren’t able to express your mediumistic qualities.

Dharma Your task is to learn to manage daily life better and above all sort out the chaotic world of your emotions, understanding that helping others is your noblest task. Work on yourself, what’s more, so as to let possible mediumistic powers emerge.

Northern node in Libra and southern node in Aries

Karma You tend to put your demands before those of people around you and you sweep away obstacles without considering the victims you might strew around you. You shut yourself in your own world especially when you don’t like the one outside, leaving no room for mediation or understanding. A little selfish, egocentric, certainly very impulsive, you don’t take advice. In a past life you might have been used to fighting your battles alone. In this life too, you’re a bit of a warrior.

Dharma Above all learn to develop the skill of doing things with others, whether it be your partner or work colleagues, and to listen to the motivation and needs of others and blend them with your own. In this way you’ll get over your tendency to believe that what you do and think is better than what others do.

Northern node in Scorpio and southern node in Taurus

Karma In general you cling too much to your habits, you’re too attached to those dear to you and material things. Novelty and change scare you because “routine” is a source of security. If you don’t free yourself from your many ties, which are above all inner, perhaps it will be the events of fate that give you a lesson in detachment, perhaps a little sharply. So teach yourself a little ahead of time, so that you’re ready. Indeed this way maybe you’ll stop these events happening.

Dharma After several lives in which you’ve probably clung tight to possessions and affections, now the time has come to let energy flow more freely, so that everything that has no motive to exist anymore goes away to be replaced by new things. With the northern node in Scorpio you are probably interested in the esoteric or psychology. Devoting yourself to the study and practice of them will reveal itself as a moment of growth, a stimulus, besides being therapeutical.

Northern node in Sagittarius and southern node in Gemini

Karma You let yourself be led astray by others and your own curiosity, which urges you to take an interest in everything without going into anything in depth. Probably too, the practicalities of everyday life absorb you a lot and distract you from the aims to which the northern node drives you, amongst which there is that of developing your spirituality. The southern node in Gemini, on the other hand, sets you in self- conflict, continually creating doubts and demanding rational answers where only a swoop of the heart is needed.

Dharma Dedicate yourself to something you really like and stay at it with constancy and continuity. Read, study, travel, broaden your knowledge of the world: this way you’ll find your own answers in spiritual matters. Don’t let others, or daily life, take you away from this task of growth.

Northern node in Capricorn and southern node in Cancer

Karma Generally you’re lazy and tend to close in on yourselves or in your tight circle of friends, whereas you should open yourself up more to social life. Very emotional, you happily take refuge in a world of dreams and memories, often preferring to stay in the shelter of your house, gardening, cooking dinners for few intimate friends and writing poems you’ll never let anyone read.

Dharma In past lives you probably lived in a more inner than exterior sphere, somehow managing to avoid social engagements. But now the time has come to come out of your shell to create works of public interest and utility. You could start with something small, like getting elected representative of the parents in your child’s school, to then go on to more important ventures such as opening a medical, sport, or beauty centre, not for making money but with the aim of helping others. Come on, the world’s waiting for your help.

Northern node in Aquarius and southern node in Leo

Karma Bolstered by the regality of the Leo sign you’re amazed that people don’t bow as you pass. Probably in past lives you were used to being obeyed, and so are not ready to collaborate or share power. You get extremely irritated if individuals who have absolutely no idea of being in the presence of such an important personage question your unchallengeable claim to sovereignty.

Dharma Your task is to develop the sense of friendship and working in a group. Should you decide to write a book, for example, it would be good for you to do it with other people and accept your name not appearing on the cover on its own. This doesn’t mean that you can never act alone, but that more often you should operate with others. Learning to forget oneself a little will be a source of much joy and warmth in your life, thanks to the many human relationships you’ll be able to set up.

Northern node in Pisces and southern node in Virgo

Karma You’re very rational, a little rigid, and tend to keep everything under control: situations and people. You can have a breakdown if you notice that something in your life is not going how you planned, simply because it follows its own course and not the one you thought it should. Your fear of untidiness is in contrast with the strong irrepressible attraction to a more fluid, creative, natural existence represented by the northern node in Pisces.

Dharma After several lives spent in a prison of your own construction you can now finally let yourself go, to flow in harmony with the natural flux of events, to accept that one cannot direct life, because it continually escapes our control. Since unconsciously the dimension of the medium and mysticism probably attracts you, dedicating time and energy to this side of life will help you to be in better harmony with the flux of existence. It will also lead you to discover a whole new wonderful world, the existence of which you couldn’t even imagine.

TABLE FOR CALCULATING NORTH LUNAR NODE

From Astra magazine June 1999

Astrology and Spirituality: from karma to dharma
by Paola Pierpaoli

Paolo Coelho, in his novel “The Alchemist” speaks of a Personal Legend and World Spirit. A young shepherd has dreamt for two nights running that he’ll find a treasure trove next to the Pyramids in Egypt. So he decides to set off, selling all his sheep and heading towards the unknown. In this way he enters his own Personal Legend, which will bring him to face many adventures but also to find his own particular treasure. At one point he makes the acquaintance of an old sage, and this encounter will be decisive for his departure. From the novel ”The Alchemist”:
The boy didn’t even know what the Personal Legend was.
“One’s Personal Legend is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. “At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”
The old man’s words didn’t make much sense to the boy, who still wanted to know what were those mysterious forces; the merchant’s daughter’s jaw would have dropped.
“They are the forces that seem negative but in reality they teach you to show your Personal Legend. They prepare your spirit and your will because there is a great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth”
“Even if it’s only to travel? Or to marry a cloth merchant’s daughter?” “Or hunt for treasure. The Soul of the Earth is alimented by mans’ happiness; or by his unhappiness, envy, jealousy. Making one’s Personal Legend come true is man’s sole duty. Everything is just one thing. And when you desire something, all the universe conspires so you can make your dream come true.”
The Personal Legend corresponds to dharma, the fulfilling of our real mission on earth, wanted by God, the Divine Principle, the Soul of the World, and the forces that seem to want to keep us apart from the fulfilment of the Personal Legend are the karmic obstacles which we can let block us or which we can surmount. Illnesses are often of the soul that, unable to decide whether to stay attached to karmic habits, often not pleasurable, but more reassuring because familiar, or to enter into the unknown following a dream, like the shepherd in “The Alchemist”. The dream is not just any dream, but corresponds to the role each of us should play in the universe according to the Divine Plan. Despite fears we feel the pull of that dream. Understanding the purpose of our presence on earth and entering into contact with the creative potential which each of us has for the fulfilment of his task means to be closer to God. As Osho Rajneesh, the spiritual leader would say, “creativity brings us closer to God, because God is creation”.
Sometimes the loss of something that is very important to us may become stimulating through pain. A while ago a friend of mine, a yoga teacher, who had lost her husband at a very young age in a car accident, said to me she would never had encountered yoga if she hadn’t lost her partner. Twenty years later she could say that with all serenity. This is an example of the path from karma to dharma and of working with the Divine Plan. The trials we must face in life don’t come by chance; no one is against us. It’s that sometimes it is necessary to leave something behind which we’re very attached to, before setting out on our real path. Staying anchored in ones’ karma would have meant for my friend falling into despair or looking for a new substitute partner for fear of staying alone; accepting dharma was encountering yoga and later teaching it.
In astrology lunar nodes express the path from karma (the southern node) to dharma (the northern node). The lunar nodes are not something physical, but two points on the trajectory of the Moon. Since the Moon represents the incarnated soul, one may understand why its nodes are connected to the destiny of the soul on earth. In particular in the southern node we find karmic habits and in the northern node the means of overcoming them. All the same it is in the equilibrium between the two lunar nodes (which are always in opposition, for example southern node in Aries, northern node in Libra) that we may fulfil dharma, more specifically via the mode shown by the four angles of the chart (Ascendant and Descendent, Mid Heaven and Lower Heaven) or from those that I call configurations of healing (harmonic aspects of the planets). Along this almost never easy path, energy blockages and illnesses may form. For example dharma, or to use an expression from the “Alchemist”, the Personal Legend, of who has the northern node in Leo or the 5th house (the 5th house is in analogy with Leo) and therefore the southern node in Aquarius or the 11th house, one sums up with these words “sharing of one personal creative expression”. The southern node in Aquarius (or 11th house) indicates a type of karma in which one tends to put off the expression of one’s creative side for fear of offending the group one belongs to (family or social group) by individual action. Northern node in Leo (or 5th house) by contrast means full self-expression. People with these nodes often have problems with the third chakra (organs of digestion) and the fifth chakra (throat, thyroid). The psychic function of the third chakra is in fact, the awareness of one’s own role in the universe, and the fifth is the expression of creativity in society. The difficulties encountered in the move from Aquarius to Leo and in the re-balancing of these energies as regards sharing one’s creativity, may manifest themselves in an illness involving the organs that best express the conflict itself.
In other cases the illness itself may be functional to the achievement of dharma. For example one may have a physical handicap in order to develop the humility to get oneself treated or ask for help, or a possible paralysis may force us into using our time to study or write a book. In the first hypothesis the dharma consists in accepting to be humble, in the second making a commitment. Spiritual healing allows however even in these cases to avoid developing further illnesses in the physical body.
The reading of a natal chart from a medical point of view by a valid expert of the field makes it possible to detect energy blockages, that generate illness, which are created each time the soul meets obstacles which it sees as insurmountable in its spiritual growth. If the way out of the impasse is not found, the soul gets ill in the physical body, in the organs that are constitutionally weaker or that are connected energetically to the problem being faced. Through a correct reading of the chart it’s possible to define the strong points on which the soul, and thus the person may make leverage to grow spiritually and operate a healing process; and at the same time it’s possible to establish the most suitable therapy for the person so that the spiritual and physical healing blend and support each other. Sometimes a course of therapy does not work, not because the doctor wasn’t good, but because the person should have been treated by acupuncture or rather by homeopathy, for example. In other cases the remedy is not efficient because the soul needs to enter into greater contact with its dharma.
If a good expert in the field gave a medical reading of the birth chart of a woman with many elements in Capricorn, with Moon-Sagittarius and above all Neptune-Scorpio aspects, she/he’d be able to predict osteoporosis after menopause and advise prevention. If one wanted to heal the person psychically one would have to work on what the planet Saturn represents in her karma and transform it so as to give it a positive function in the accomplishment of dharma.
To conclude, I am convinced all my work as an astrologist goes in this direction, more than in a materialistic view of the psyche; indeed only the recognition that the psyche and the soul are one and the same, may bring about deep, lasting healing because the only true healing is that of the spirit.

Published in “Armonia” February-March issue 1999