By Len Wallick
It’s been a long time comin’ / It’s goin’ to be a long time gone.”
–David Crosby and friends
The ascending, or “North” lunar node finally begins a dance of a conjunction with Pluto and Charon in Capricorn today. It truly has been a long time coming.
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Breaking it down is entirely in order. The apparent path of the Sun across the constellations of the zodiac is in fact the path of the Earth around the Sun. The rotation and tilt of our planet and your position on the globe is factored in. If we were able to pull back and see the solar system from the outside, we would note that our orbit around the Sun consistently traces out a plane that is more or less the same year after year. It is also very close to the orbital plane of most of the major planets. The apparent path (our terrestrial point of view) and the orbital plane (the detached, imaginary point of view) are both referred to as the ecliptic.
The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not in the ecliptic. If it were, every New Moon would be a solar eclipse and every Full Moon would be a lunar eclipse. Instead, the lunar orbit is inclined to the ecliptic by about five degrees. There are two points of intersection. Where Luna rises above the ecliptic is the ascending node, also somewhat arbitrarily referred to as “North”. Ancient astrological texts from the western world use the term ‘dragon’s head’. The Vedic astrologers use the word ‘Rahu’.
But wait, there’s more. The Moon’s path exhibits a complex but predictable ‘wobble’. To get a feel for it, think ‘elastic’. Because of that wobble, there are actually two ascending nodes. The ‘true node’, where it is for a moment and the ‘mean node’ where the wobble is averaged out. Then, on top of that, the apparent motion of the nodes can appear to be either direct or retrograde. In the course of a month, they can oscillate back and forth a handful of times. Over time however, the net result is retrograde motion.
Combine the inclination to the ecliptic with the wobble and the to-and-fro and that makes any conjunction with any lunar node, be it ascending, descending, true or mean, one crazy dance. The ascending node entered Capricorn through the back door well over a year ago and has been doing the Ginger Rogers thing ever since. Pluto first entered Capricorn in 2008 and has been doing some dancing of its own.