Here, we are talking about the overall energies when the axis of the lunar nodes lies in Sagittarius/Gemini or in the 9th/3rd houses, which absolutely need to be nuanced based on your birth chart and its various karmic factors; see also the article on the general interpretation of the Lunar nodes.
They represent a karmic axis of the highest importance, linked directly to your triangle of incarnation, and they symbolize both the innate, fundamental parts of yourself that you have mastered (the south node in the 9th House / Sagittarius) and the pathway of your development during this incarnation (the north node in the 3rd House / Gemini).
They stay in each axis of signs for about one and a half years, which is what gives them their more general, “generational” archetypal colors; their positions in houses are more meaningful in terms of giving depth to your personality, and this is what should be analyzed as a matter of priority, while the analysis of signs will clarify their mode of action.
Strength of Teaching and Transmission
The axis of the south node in Sagittarius / the north node in Gemini or of the south node in the 9th house / the north node in the 3rd house is the axis of learning, communication, and transmission, so it requires that we develop our exchanges and socialization in order to succeed in transmitting our knowledge to others, teaching our own life philosophy, and in a way moving from capacities of abstraction to conceptualization in reality and daily life.
The karmic rulers of these signs and sectors, Jupiter and Mercury, are by their nature very “cerebral,” social, and self-taught planets, but they do not express themselves in the same way!
Jupiter, which affects the innate karmic foundations of the south node, tends to represent more of an overview, a step back, and qualities related to putting things into perspective and spiritualizing things; this is the planetary function that allows us to “philosophize,” really see “the whole,” and have an approach that involves integrating into society and the collective in its entirety.
In contrast, Mercury more represents focus, detail, logic, practice, pragmatics, the interpersonal exchange that constitutes the smallest elementary brick so to speak in terms of socialization, and really just communication in its most concrete forms in everyday life, but also sometimes its lightest, most futile, most inconsistent, most insignificant, and most “superficial” forms (the notorious “talking just for the sake of talking”).
It’s almost as though these planets each had a different focus: Jupiter has a universal, absolute, transcendent perspective but is also often up in the “higher spheres” from which it is difficult to come down; and as it happens the development of the north node requires that we find more pragmatic, simple bases and manage to translate these “higher spheres” into everyday, common language, with a simplicity of dialogue that should occur through stripping things down, reducing things (condensing our framework, summarizing, simplifying), and embracing less seriousness and more spontaneity and effervescence, as well as more fulfillment of ideals and intuitions in everyday life, taking things “as they come.”
The notion of a “descent” is important to understand here, not in the sense of “debasement,” but more in relation to the need to round out our modes of communication and work on socializing with those around us, in terms of our connections with our close friends and family, not try to flee everyday socialization, even in its most “basic” instances, and just take it down a notch from those “higher spheres.”
The fundamental bases of Sagittarius may readily tend to value certain realities or certain ideals and rank things by “superiority,” looking down on that which is judged to be “inferior,” so it will be a good idea for people with this positioning to define their judgments in a different way, actually get back to those “inferior” values and the basics, understand them better, figure them out, and even use them.
In astrology, based on certain planetary rankings, Jupiter is considered to be the higher octave of Mercury, like a sort of complexified version of the Mercurian planetary function of the mind (basic “discrimination,” simplistic duality), and it is thus karmically necessary to get back to some of these original bases when connecting with other people.
And rediscovering Mercury occurs through the need to rediscover our immediate environment, get back to the basics of simple learning through listening and curiosity, and succeed in transmission and teaching.
This last point is important because it very much corresponds to the “sublimation” of these forces; Sagittarians may sometimes rather easily withdraw into their certainty and lock themselves away in their own patterns of thought, quite certain that they are “good and in the right” since they know this intuitively, but in doing so they more readily cut themselves off from others’ points of view and from evidence of these other perspectives’ veracity!
And this north node in fact requires quite directly that we take external opinions into account more and that we reason in a way that privileges exchange and where an expansion of consciousness, knowledge, and spirituality must have an end goal of sharing, perpetuating, propagating, and broadening initial certainties.
There is a quote from Jean Jacques Rousseau that I find speaks volumes metaphorically about the development of this axis of nodes:
“Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote duties in their books and neglect those that lie nearest. Such philosophers will love the Tartars to avoid loving their neighbor.”
In fact, we could say that the north node requires that we manage to let go of our books, stop looking “elsewhere,” far away from ourselves, and instead get in touch with our “neighbors,” explore our own region, country, and fellow human beings, and find some sort of important, true social utility, even if this requires calling our own values into question.
We saw with the coronavirus episode that in fact the people who were truly “valuable” in terms of making society function were those whose function translated most easily into reality: nurses, cashiers, garbage collectors, truck drivers, etc.
Knowing how to recognize our wrongs and our limits can be an important first step (especially limits on knowledge and understanding), as is opening up more to empirical knowledge: recognizing and perpetuating only that which actually stands the test of reality.
The more significant the transpersonal values in one’s birth chart are (such as Neptune and Uranus, for example), the harder it may be to face up to the concrete side of Mercury, especially if there is also a lack of earth in some way.
This axis of lunar nodes may by its nature be very prone to making people experience a duality of the “mind and spirit,” and thus the various air-related energies should be monitored (and not only Mercurian energies, with recurrences in Gemini and Virgo), as well as the 7th and 11th houses, which may give more specific details on these people’s social qualities or interpersonal fears, for example.
It is not rare to find some other karmic factors that are connected to the energies of air, such as the Black Moon, Chiron, or retrograde motion of Mercury, that attest to the existence of a germ of incarnation and a specific kind of work that needs to be done in relation to these forces.
Secondary progressions of progressed Mercury may be particularly helpful to keep an eye on when it comes to setting the rhythm for opening up to the north node and bringing it to fruition.
Writing or artistic creations may represent helpful intermediaries in connection with these karmic energies, allowing them to be translated into a tangible reality and into a situation involving other people and receptive forces.
Fraternity may also hold an important role in this incarnation, that is, the need to “get closer to our brother,” help him evolve, and make an effort to understand him (depending on the Synastry at play here: the energetic exchanges between the two people).
Celebrities with lunar nodes in the direction South Node 9th House => North Node 3rd House
Nicolas Copernicus, René Descartes, Che Guevara, Vladimir Putin, Mao Tse-tun, Sharon Stone, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Al Pacino, Elizabeth Taylor, Stephen Arroyo, Joaquin Phoenix, Tom Hanks, Tina Turner, Rudolf Steiner, Salvador Dalí, Serge Gainsbourg, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel…
Celebrities with lunar nodes in the direction South node Sagittarius => North node Gemini
Che Guevara, Keanu Reeves, Donald Trump, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liz Greene, Mark Zuckerberg, Vincent van Gogh, JK Rowling, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg, Ted Bundy, Elton John…