Dignities - North/South Node

obeygravity

I've recently started dipping my toes into horary and have been studying the table of exaltation and noticed the presence of North node and South node being exalted in Gemini and Sagittarius respectively which brings me to my question - how do we take north and south nodes into consideration? I've been doing a lot of searching and the general consensus seems to be that nodes don't matter, so is the same thing to be considered when looking into exaltation?
 

Barleywine

As usual, John Frawley has some very rational observations on the Nodes:

"The Moon's Nodes do not cast aspects, nor can they have aspects cast to them. They affect planets only by conjunction. A planet conjunct the North Node is helped, strengthened or increased. A planet conjunct the South Node is harmed, weakened or decreased. Which of these meanings is relevant will be clear enough in context.

If one of the Nodes falls in a house relevant to the question, it can affect that house. The North Node falling in a house is good for the affairs of that housse, or shows the querent benefiting from that house. The South Node falling in a house harms the affairs of that house, or shows the querent losing through the affairs of that house. The effect is much more marked if the Node is close to the cusp.

Be careful to avoid dragging them into judgment unnecessarily . . . the Nodes will appear in every chart, but in most charts they have nothing to tell us. If one of them falls in a house that concerns us, we can take note of it; if the Nodes fall in houses that do not concern us, there is no need to rack our brains wondering what those houses might mean. Just ignore them."

Frawley doesn't give any exaltation to either Gemini or Sagittarius. Other writers give them as you say (but with the South Node in its fall in Sagittarius); these writers are not specializing in horary. William Lilly, on the other hand, shows both Nodes in the "Exaltation" column of his table.

(From The Horary Textbook, Apprentice Books, 2005
 

obeygravity

Barleywine - Thank you so much for clarifying that!
 

Minderwiz

As far as I can tell, the Exaltations of the Nodes are of Medieval origin. I've not come across them in Hellenistic Astrology. So they are not really native to the system of Essential Dignities.

The concept of the North Node being Benefic and the South Node being Malefic is not a universal one. As the nodes are connected directly with eclipses, being points on the ecliptic, and eclipses block out the light of either one of the two luminaries, the result can be seen as removing the power of that luminary and thus weakening its ability to (literally and metaphorically) shed light on the human condition.

There is, though a rationale for the attributes of benefic and malefic to the two Nodes in Western Astrology. The North Node is the point on the ecliptic where the Moon changes from being South of the ecliptic to being North of it. The analogy here is with the Sun being South of the equator in winter (Northern Latitudes) and North of it in Summer (Northern Latitudes). The move to the North is seen as good (Summer is better than Winter). The South Node has the Moon going South of the ecliptic and therefore moving away from the North.

The Good and Bad designations to the Nodes are again mainly a Medieval development.

Incidentally, Hellenistic Astrologers would have said that Frawley was wrong. Empty space can receive aspects, or at least the aspect can pass through it. Thus Benefics can bonify Houses in the chart simply by aspecting them, even if there is not planet there to receive the aspect. The nodes lying in the path of benefic aspects, would benefit from them, as would the space around them.
 

Barleywine

Minderwiz said:
As far as I can tell, the Exaltations of the Nodes are of Medieval origin. I've not come across them in Hellenistic Astrology. So they are not really native to the system of Essential Dignities.

The concept of the North Node being Benefic and the South Node being Malefic is not a universal one. As the nodes are connected directly with eclipses, being points on the ecliptic, and eclipses block out the light of either one of the two luminaries, the result can be seen as removing the power of that luminary and thus weakening its ability to (literally and metaphorically) shed light on the human condition.

There is, though a rationale for the attributes of benefic and malefic to the two Nodes in Western Astrology. The North Node is the point on the ecliptic where the Moon changes from being South of the ecliptic to being North of it. The analogy here is with the Sun being South of the equator in winter (Northern Latitudes) and North of it in Summer (Northern Latitudes). The move to the North is seen as good (Summer is better than Winter). The South Node has the Moon going South of the ecliptic and therefore moving away from the North.

The Good and Bad designations to the Nodes are again mainly a Medieval development.

Incidentally, Hellenistic Astrologers would have said that Frawley was wrong. Empty space can receive aspects, or at least the aspect can pass through it. Thus Benefics can bonify Houses in the chart simply by aspecting them, even if there is not planet there to receive the aspect. The nodes lying in the path of benefic aspects, would benefit from them, as would the space around them.
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I read the same thing about nodal (non)aspects in On the Heavenly Spheres by Avelar and Rubeiro, which is supposed to be a traditional astrology text (but probably not Hellenistic). They must have gotten it from the same source as Frawley. Back in the early 1980s I attended a lecture by Rob Hand, who dismissed the Nodes rather summarily; he said, "The Nodes mean 'connections,' period." He then went on to ridicule most of the asteroids as "traveling gravel." He must have been beginning to lean in a traditional direction even then.

I will note that the table I referenced from Christian Astrology is titled "A Table of Essential Dignities of the Planets According to Ptolemy," and it has the North Node exalted in Gemini and the South Node exalted in Sagittarius, with no entry in the "fall" column. In "An Introduction to Astrologie" he did acknowledge that an aspect can occur between two points. His discussion of the Nodes is interesting, because he disagrees with the "ancients" that the South Node is good when joined with "evill" planets, instead saying that "their malice or the evill intended was doubled or trebled, or extremely augmented." I must spend more time with Lilly, but I'm going to have to shelve this facsimile edition and get one I can actually read.
 

Minderwiz

There's no doubt that by Lilly's time the exaltations of the nodes were well established, by a couple of hundred years or more. My point really is that it's a medieval emphasis and shouldn't be seen as an original component of Westrrn Astrology.

Astrology, though is not set in stone, things change and some times return to nearly their original state. Ptolemy made much of the Moon's cycle, relative to the nodes, referring to 'bending points' when the Moon reaches its furthest north or south from the ecliptic (where it squares the nodes) he outlined a cycle which Dane Rudhyar echoed nearly 2,000 years later.

But very early Horoscopic Astrologers didn't make much of the nodes. Rhetorius at the end of the Hellenistic period said the Moon was always damaged by an eclipse at the North Node but at the South Node the damage was greater. So North Node is better but hardly benefic.
 
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