Stationary True Lunar Nodes in Solar Returns

The Moon’s nodes come in two varieties: true nodes and “mean” or average nodes. Traditionally the mean nodes were used because astronomers did not have instruments capable of measuring the subtle movements on the Moon on its orbit around the Earth. The mean lunar nodes, being average positions, are always in retrograde motion. Nowadays the positions of the true nodes are also available, and as a result we can identify days on which the true nodes become stationary and turn direct or retrograde.

In Hindu astrology the nodes are given names and regarded as “shadow” planets. The North Node is Rahu and the South Node, Ketu. The myth is that Lord Vishnu suddenly and unexpectedly decapitated the celestial serpent, whose severed parts became Rahu and Ketu, when the Sun and Moon turned him in for his deception in trying to steal the Elixer of immortality.

[image error]Vishnu severs the serpent’s head, creating Rahu and Keu.

The Nodes are associated with sudden and often disruptive events. One site gives the following description (bold mine):

“Purāṇic stories (sacred lore of India) reference Rāhu and Ketu, conveying eternal themes of ambition, pursuit of a desire, purpose, addiction, insatiability, illusion, leveling the playing field, immortality, revolution, donning disguises, trickery, manipulation, social unrest, going against the grain, instability, innovation, suddenness, unforeseen consequences, mystery and disruption of the status quo, relating with foreign cultures-lands-religions, technology (especially that which disrupts the status quo), magic and slight of hand.” 

I have noticed repeatedly that when the true lunar nodes are stationary in solar returns, the native’s year is usually marked by periods of disruption and instability, often with crises that confront us with our own mortality. With this in mind, when I come across a biography with such events, I like to check the solar return for the year of the crisis. One such case is the following.

Garry Hoy, a Canadian lawyer, was born in Toronto on 1 Jan 1955 and he fell to his death at age 38 on 9 July 1993. Because of his unusual death, Hoy was awarded the Darwin Award in 1996. The story, according to the site Find a Grave, goes as follows:

“Garry Hoy was a lawyer for the law firm of Holden Day Wilson in Toronto who became notorious for the circumstances of his death. In an attempt to prove to a group of prospective articulating students that the glass windows of the Toronto-Dominion Centre were unbreakable, Hoy threw himself at a glass wall on the 24th floor. The glass did not break, but the window frame gave way and he fell to his death.”

Hoy’s time of birth is unknown so I cast a sunrise chart for his date and place of birth, and a solar return based on this chart for the date of his demise. It is noteworthy that he has the true lunar nodes stationary at birth and again stationary in the solar return for the year of his death.

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