The Existence Axis
Having the North and South Nodes in the 6th or 12th houses and/or in Virgo or Pisces places you on the Existence Axis. It is the body / spirit axis. It’s a mutable axis of both physical and spiritual wellbeing: you may be too focused on or too detached from your body, too impractical or too unimaginative, too structured or too undefined.
House 6 is ruled by Virgo and Mercury (though some say Vesta), which governs our mind and communication. The sixth house is the house of service: it’s where our daily work and routine take place, and where we go to take care of our bodies. Virgo is detail-oriented, analytical, and communicative; Pisces, on the other hand, likes to lay back and look at the big picture. Pisces rules House 12, a complicated house of all that is hidden - spirituality, the unconscious, secrets. It’s ruled by Neptune, planet of dreams and illusion. Virgo will fuss about the scrape on your knee and insist you need a doctor; Pisces will help you relax and remember that we all get scraped up in life. Both can be too self-sacrificing.
Your life path involves balancing being hardworking and practical with trusting the universe and accepting the ebb and flow of life. “Material versus immaterial” is a major theme of your life. Your karmic classroom is in aligning your daily routine with your spiritual beliefs and deepest dreams. The mutable axes deal with our belief systems - so becoming either rigid or directionless are signs of imbalance.
If your North Node is in the sixth house or Virgo, it means you need to develop self-discipline, attention to detail, and a daily routine. You’ve already mastered the esoteric aspects of life; you have an intuitive spiritual wisdom. However, you might get so lost in the big picture that you never take practical action toward your goals. You have to accept that you live in a material world and inhabit a physical body - and you have to do your part to take care of both. You have to accept that no one else will do it for you; you have to take responsibility. Beware of your need to merge with those around you. Whenever you have a water South Node and an earth North Node, your natural tendency is to get lost in a sea of emotion (your own or others’) at the expense of practicality and self-respect; you’ve got to learn to see emotional boundaries as part of emotional health, and allow everyone (including you) to take responsibility for their own feelings and survival. Let go of your need for self-dissolution and instead embrace a daily routine that accommodates your spirit of selfless service - without losing yourself in the process.
If your North Node is in the twelfth house or Pisces, you’ve got the opposite problem: you may be neurotic, too attached to the physical body, and too caught up in all the details that could go wrong. You need to learn to let go of what is outside your control and trust that there are benevolent forces working behind the scenes for you. They have your best interests at heart, whether you can see it or not. Beware of your fear for survival and need for control; instead, let go to let in, and embrace the interconnectedness of all life. Tend to your subconscious. Whenever you have an earth South Node and a water North Node, your natural tendency is to be too rigid and ignore feelings (your own or others’) at the expense of everyone’s emotional wellbeing; you’ve got to learn to see emotional health as equally important as physical health, and carve out the time to tend to your own emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs. Let go of perfectionism and the desire for control and instead merge into the great river of life.
Occasionally, people may have inverted nodes: this would mean you have your North Node in Virgo but in the twelfth house, or in Pisces in the sixth house. In that case, you have a much more delicate balance to strike. The priority then is to either (with a twelfth house Virgo) bring analysis and routine to your psychological health and spiritual life; or (with a sixth house Pisces) to share your compassion and spiritual wisdom in your daily life and work. In both cases, you’ve got to learn to balance self-care with compassion for others and protect yourself from being drained by others’ emotional needs.
Understanding is the central power of this axis: understanding and caring for the physical body and practical, daily affairs of life and work, as well as understanding the unity behind the illusion of separateness and the deeper spiritual truths that govern material life. You must see the truth of existence: a singularity expressed in the form of duality, so that it may know itself. This plays out especially in your body, and your physical health is an indicator of your spiritual and psychological health. Like the other mutable axis of 3/9, this is about seeing how the part fits into the whole, and how the whole supports the part. Your life lessons come through the ways you serve others, and the degree to which you understand the connection between the visible and invisible.
The Existence Axis is about physical versus spiritual and psychological health, unity versus separateness, singularity versus duality, seclusion versus participation, details versus big picture, inner world versus outer world, order versus disorder, presence versus escapism, communication versus silence, criticism versus acceptance, realism versus imagination, and doing versus being.
This axis is about managing self care with care for others. Like all astrological axes, it’s about balance - it isn’t about obsessing over the body and details or neglecting the body to lose yourself in the psychospiritual realm, but learning to meet in the middle. It means having compassion for oneself as well as others, including all living beings - but still exercising healthy emotional boundaries. It means knowing when to work and when to rest. When you master this axis, you will have a holistic approach to health, empathy with boundaries, and selfless service without self-sacrifice. Ultimately, it is about balance. Perhaps you are already on your way.