The Encounter Axis
Having the North and South Nodes in the 1st or 7th houses and/or in Aries or Libra places you on the Encounter Axis. It is the ascendant (self) / descendant (partner) axis. It’s a cardinal axis of willpower and boundaries: you may be self-motivated or self-sacrificing, insightful or ambitious.
House 1 is ruled by Aries and Mars, the planet of war. Aries represents I, the ego, the infant just brought into the world, screaming its needs; House 7 is ruled by Venus and Libra, which represents the other, the partner, the self-conscious adolescent starting to consider sex and partnership. Aries is the bold, authentic person who says what they mean and means what they say, walking over others as they beeline toward their goals; Libra is the self-effacing diplomat - the one who sugarcoats the truth, gets walked on, and struggles with indecision, but always brings peace and harmony to the situation.
Your life path involves balancing the self and others, being both the solo star and the best supporting actor. “Me versus we” is a major theme of your life. Your karmic classroom is in your relationships. Both cardinal axes - 1/7 and 4/10 - deal with balancing responsibility for oneself and for others, but both can also become controlling and manipulative if we are not careful. The cardinal axes deal with power and projection - so power plays and/or projecting one’s shadow onto others are signs of imbalance.
If your North Node is in the first house or Aries, it means you need to learn to prioritize yourself and your own needs because your tendency is to sacrifice too much in relationships (all kinds, not only romantic ones) - you need to learn independence and the importance of your own unique perspective. Air internalizes things intellectually; fire asserts itself outwardly. Whenever you have an air South Node and a fire North Node, your natural tendency is to avoid conflict at the expense of your own self-respect; you’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself. Let go of codependent tendencies and embrace emotional independence and objectivity.
If your North Node is in the seventh house or Libra, you’ve got the opposite problem: a healthy sense of self-respect, but possibly too much ego. You need to learn to pause and consider others’ needs and feelings before forging ahead with what you want or making yourself the emotional center. With Libra, you have to learn to see things more objectively. Fire asserts itself outwardly; air internalizes and intellectualizes. Whenever you have a fire South Node and an air North Node, your natural tendency is to get stuck in an ego-survival mode at the expense of your relationships; you’ve got to learn to pause, stop seeing everything as a personal attack, and put yourself in other people’s shoes. Let go of your egoic insecurities and learn to see others’ desires as being just as important as your own, not as a threat.
Occasionally, people may have inverted nodes: this would mean you have your North Node in Libra but in the first house, or in Aries in the seventh house. In that case, you have a much more delicate balance to strike. The priority then is to either (with a first house Libra) bring principles of diplomacy, justice, and harmony to your self and self-image; or (with a seventh house Aries) to assert yourself in relationships, whether business or romantic or otherwise.
Love is the central power of this axis: unconditional self-love and unconditional love for another. You must see the truth of dependent-arising: that what is good for me is good for you, but what is good for you is also good for me. This is about the self and its projection out into the world, and the adjustments we must make in facing and relating to other people. Your life lessons come through your interpersonal relationships and the degree to which you either assert yourself and your needs or compromise for the sake of harmony and fairness.
The Encounter Axis is about creating versus refining, leading versus following, “winning” versus compromising, giving versus taking, how you see yourself versus how others see you, and self-awareness versus awareness of others.
Every axis is about balance, but especially this one. It isn’t about becoming entirely selfless or entirely selfish, but learning to meet in the middle. It means having self-respect as well as respect for others, including all living beings. It means knowing when to take initiative and when to wait. When you master this axis, you will have a healthy sense of self-respect, confidence without egotism, and humility without self-deprecation. Ultimately, it is about balance. Perhaps you are already on your way.
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