The North Node Enters Scorpio with Eros and Juno Conjunct: Attraction, Repulsion, Motivation, and Frenemies

North Node in Scorpio: August 30, 2012 - February 18, 2014

The North Node enters Scorpio August 30 for a 1.5-year stay, and things take a distinct turn for the serious. We shift from a jovial, Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius North Node to a stone cold reality-based one in Scorpio, from an expansive, optimistic guiding force to a condensed, concentrated, and gritty one.

The planets of greatest influence over our path during the next year-and-a-half are Mars and Pluto - both heavy hitters - and the movement, signs, and interactions of these bodies become keys to our successful navigation.

Mars is at home in Scorpio at the time of the nodal axis shift and will be there until October 6, the day after Saturn enters the sign. Mars changes signs about every 1.5 months. Pluto will be in Capricorn for the duration of the transit, forming squares to Uranus in Aries.

The North Node is considered indicative of our successful soul-driven navigational path forward and, in Scorpio, it indicates that the path to be carved out hinges on the proper development and application of the mad Scorpio skills: emotional, psychological, intuitive, metaphysical, and sexual.

From a previous post: "Scorpio is a healing energy. It intuitively knows where the trouble is and gets right to work, divining and digging to trigger multi-layered release points. It isn't just treating symptoms, either. Scorpio knows it's either go deep or go home, and it puts forth immense stores of energy to go to the mat for people, driving right to the root of the problems that keep them locked up, inauthentic, programmed, and less effective than they could otherwise be.

Scorpio digs the poisoned thorns out - and if it's masterful enough, it gets them all."

The South Node - an area of prior accolade and success but current stagnation and detriment - is now in Taurus, moving us away from a preoccupation with all things Taurean: Money. Dollar bills. Currency. Physical value. Accumulation. Impressive physical possessions. Maintaining tradition, security, stability, and comfort at all costs. The physical realm.

To stay encased in a South Node fortress of money, possessions, and toys at this point will bring escalating problems. Money and financial privilege as obsession/primary motivator can take people down now more than ever before.

The beneficial influence of the Taurus South Node, on the other hand, comes from channelling its strengths into the North Node path. Those strengths include: rock-solid boundaries, strong self-worth, money sense, grounding, practicality, an understanding of natural timing, and a strong sense of one's comfort level.

We aren't in a very comfortable place on this planet, and with this nodal axis, very few will be able to deny it. Where Taurus is about accumulation and physical comfort, Scorpio is about what we need to peel away, get rid of. It's about the necessity to face realities and issues that sometimes scare us or make us uncomfortable.

An intensive and relentless Scorpionic examination of power dynamics is the only way we can avoid becoming trapped and enmeshed in those power dynamics.

With the North Node (as well as Saturn by early October) in Scorpio, the tone moves to the deep, the dark, the stone cold reality-based. Things are not simple. We're rooting out, examining, and breaking deeply-ingrained detrimental patterns and power configurations, navigating periods of intense emotional and psychological stress.

The state of this planet is traumatizing, to say the least (if you're at all aware of what's going on and what has gone on). We're seeing the breakdown of people and societies under intentionally-created stress and trauma. We're seeing levels of denial being razed in one fell swoop as people realize they aren't going to have the lives they thought they were going to have - especially materially (Taurus South Node). The middle class is being demolished, and wealth becomes further concentrated at the top of the pyramid schemes.

Under this nodal axis, the most crucial and far-reaching imperatives of the soul - harsh as they often are - now rule over the imperatives of the bank account. We move into a time of stripping down, of deconstruction. Those most successful during this time period will look for directives from their own souls, from their deepest intuition and drives, rather than wasting energy trying to keep up with the Joneses down the block.

With the North Node in Scorpio/South Node in Taurus, there is a rapid re-valuing of Scorpio energy and skills. You can read more about that in this post from Scorpio season 2011: The Bodies in Scorpio Oppose Jupiter Rx in Taurus: A Conscious Re-Valuing of Soul Energy and Scorpio's Mad Skillz in the Nether-Realms

We have to be keenly aware of what makes people tick under these transits of Scorpio. We have to watch our emotional, psychological, and psychic stress levels closely and those of others, allowing for controlled releases of the tension when possible.

The North Node enters Scorpio August 30 from one end of the sign (29 degrees). Saturn enters October 5 from the other end (0 degrees). They will meet, along with Venus, just before fall equinox 2013.

There is a drawing together and consolidation of resources, energy, and catalytic potential over this upcoming year, culminating in a Saturn-Venus-North Node conjunction at 8 degrees Scorpio on September 18, 2013. People with specific metaphysical skill sets are being drawn together during this upcoming year for the purpose of deep structural change on this planet.

However, this is also a time period when joining forces and merging resources with the wrong people or in the wrong ways can take you down. Hard.

Asteroid of erotic love, Eros, and soul mate asteroid Juno are currently transiting Scorpio and come together with the North Node in a potent conjunction September 12-13, 2012 on the inky, distilled final degree of the sign.

A tone is being set here, kicking off both the North Node and Saturn transits of Scorpio, by this meeting of Eros and Juno on the 29th degree. These two asteroids have some very spicy chemistry between them, particularly in Scorpio, and things are being catalyzed in this, the most feared and hated sign of the zodiac.

(All this goes down with Uranus Rx and Pluto Rx backing into their second exact square in Aries/Capricorn September 18.)

With Eros and Juno conjunct on the last degree of Scorpio, we're picking up on threads related to love, eroticism, soul connection, commitment, sexuality, attraction, repulsion, and disgust that could take the full 2.5 years of the Saturn in Scorpio transit to unravel. We're picking up on the specific flavours of energy exchange that will be successful in the coming years, as well as those that will not be successful.

Attraction. Repulsion. Love. Hate. Desire. Disgust. Obsession. Addiction. The Hidden. The Taboo. The Sexual. The Erotic.

Scorpio is a sign, co-ruled by Mars and Pluto, that involves complex attractions. Mars is the planet of personal desire, attraction, and sexuality, while Pluto involves attractions of the soul, designed to draw us into deep (and sometimes hellish horrifying) processes of change and metamorphosis. Plutonic attractions catalyze a process that leaves us in an altered, yet ultimately stronger and more powerful, state, not the same as we once were. In Scorpio, we experience the interplay between personal will and transpersonal will, personal desire and transpersonal desire, what we want and what is wanted for and from and through us.

Plutonic attractions are often both magnetic, drawing us like moth to flame, and repulsive. One side of the magnet attracts; the other repells. With Pluto involved, we experience both. There is an intricate interplay, and it doesn't take much to turn passionate love into passionate hate and vice versa.

There is a theme with Scorpio and Pluto of being attracted to those we secretly (or not-so-secretly) hate. This attraction brings us into contact, again and again, with people and situations that disgust, horrify, and enrage...but also fascinate, titillate, and compel. We hate ourselves for being attracted, but it's difficult (though not impossible) to break away.

There is a strong sexual element related to the sign of Scorpio, and as Saturn transits Scorpio over the next 2.5 years, responsibility (Saturn) for sexual energy (Scorpio) becomes a major theme. Sexual energy is being horrifically misused and abused on this planet. Millions of people, mostly women and girls, are living in miserable hovels as sex slaves all around this planet. Women are forced to sell their bodies in dangerous and degrading circumstances around the world. It is still considered far less bad when a prostitute is murdered than an upstanding soccer Mom. "Hookers" can still be made the butt of misogynistic jokes, even in these politically correct times. And in more socially-accepted ways, women trade their sexual energy and bodies for financial privilege, physical comfort, and the insulating confines of traditional marriage.

Does any of this change the tenor of your own sexual energy and desires? Your own sexual forays and motives? Does it bring a certain seriousness and maturity to your sexual expression?

These are themes and connections we look at much more closely over the next years.

The theme of frenemies is also strong with the sign of Scorpio, particularly with Eros and Juno coming into close contact on the anaretic degree of the sign.

Do I like you, or do I hate you...or both? Do I support you, or do I undermine you...or both? Do I want to run in your crowd, or do I want to turn everyone against you...or both?

With the anaretic asteroid-based focus on the Scorpio North Node path, there's a sort of "final showdown" feeling building toward mid-September. Dynamics that have been not-quite-right for a while start to come to a head, and we have the ability to proactively clear some of the slate ahead of Saturn entering Scorpio.

Frenemies: get rid of them - or, conversely, get wise to them and use their energy to your benefit.

There's some of that Scorpionic ruthlessness we're all going to come to understand so well over the next few years.