I find it interesting that, a lot of the time, people ask me more about the signs associated with the lunar nodes more so than the houses. The reason why this is interesting is because the nodes change signs every year or so. They change houses every two hours.

The signs that the lunar nodes appear in are far more connected to your age group than the houses that they are in. This means that how the nodes interact with the signs they’re in change from age group to age group. In my series about the lunar nodes in the signs, I make note of that. I have only really worked with certain age groups and, so, I try my best to give an incomprehensive but somewhat comparative delineation of the nodes in the signs with patterns that I have observed.

I’m going to go through the houses and do the same. However, the nodes through the houses are not age group specific trends. They are more personal.


The first and seventh houses in astrology make up the horizon. They have to do with your being, your breath, and your aliveness. They have to do with birth. They have to do with something that the Romans called your character or morality.

The nodes are like portals. Sometimes, they make us move and grow up very, very fast. Other times, we feel bogged down or trapped within the stories that they make us tell ourselves.

What does it feel like to be trapped by birth? To be pushed to grow through being?

South Node in the First House, North Node in the Seventh House

I don’t like to look at this placement as being about needing to look to relationships to grow. I just haven’t seen a case for reading north node in the seventh house that way with all of the people that I have worked with.

The seventh house has to do with a lot more than relationships. It has to do with community, with location, and with endings. It’s a period of transition, that moment when the Sun achieves its resting at dusk. The seventh house has to do with change.

The first house is about your first breath into the world. That’s the natal placement. Houses twelve, one, and two are said to be about the first phase of life when you’re just a kid trying to learn a world that means nothing to you yet.

When the south node appears in the first house, I’ve noticed that this often has to do with family. I have met many people with south node in the first house who feel like they can’t leave their family home for whatever reason. I have met many other people with south node in the first house who feel like they must leave home for whatever reason. How you relate to your lunar nodes has to do with what planets are in relationship to them.

However, south node in the first house has to do with growing apart from what you were born to be. Many times, there are huge familial expectations here. Sometimes it’s this assumption that the child will work the same jobs that the parent worked. Other times, it’s these strong adjective used to describe someone growing up that they agonized about possibly growing into. Other times, it’s more nebulous than that—just this strong sense of being captured by the family of origin.

Sometimes, I have found, and not always, having the south node in the first house carries with it this sense of being diminished by the family of origin. Again, not always, but this can happen.

There’s this struggle to be different from the person you were supposedly born to be here, this feeling of wanting to recreate the self, move away and beyond, to find your own way of living. That’s the north node in the seventh house. It’s this deep yearning to change, to move, and to arrive at a self that wasn’t available at birth.

It’s actually fairly scary for south node in first house, north node in seventh house people to move away. It seems like there’s just so many things that get in the way. Your mom needs you to drive her places, you don’t know how to find a job or to find an apartment so that you can get a job, and you’re afraid of not knowing who you are once you leave home.

And then there’s also the excitement. You can become anymore once you leave, you think. That south node in the first is often about this struggle with the family and you’ve tasted enough of that brand of destruction to last you a lifetime. You make a clean break.

And then, you’re called back. The south node often calls you back. It reminds you that you first learned how to survive here.

South node in the first house and north node in the seventh is this tension between being born to be someone for those who birthed you and the need to rip that version of you apart so that you can begin, again, right at dusk. This is an angular placement of the nodes and the angles are always an existential place to be. They obsess over the fundamental questions, these questions of disappearance and being.

South Node in the Seventh House, North Node in the First House

South node in the seventh house with north node in the first house is just as existential as its reverse. The angles have to do with existential questions. They ask what it means to be born, they involve family, and they involve location.

There is a deep yearning for family, for belonging, here. There is a deep yearning to be acknowledged for being born. There is a deep yearning for just being allowed to be without always having to change and change through chaos and more chaos.

When the north node in the first house, the question is always why. Why is that deep yearning for family there? Often, with many people, north node in the first house is this unsettling of the family of origin. You feel like you’re chasing down your ancestors because you don’t know what kind of people they were. You’re in a completely different national and cultural context than they were. You are not given information about where your people came from.

I understand that this is a different reading of this placement than what we might commonly associate with south node in the seventh house. This placement is often said to be about what is typically called codependency and the need to be with one’s very own presence. I’m not so sure about this. There can be this brooding need to connect, to be with others, with this placement but there is always this tenacious ability to survive alone. South node in the seventh house people are very good at surviving alone. They know how to answer change with more change.

The north node in the first house is about coming to terms with the family of origin. This is very hard, to remember that your memories are your own and that change in the present or future does not mean change in the past. It is very hard to accept that new relationships do not change old ones.

A lot of the meaning of this placement is the simple acknowledgment that you can’t change the past. You can’t change the conditions that allowed you to be born.

There’s an implicit journey with having the south node in the seventh and north node in the first. It’s like you have to go very far from home in order to return there, a different version of you, to notice all the pieces that you didn’t notice before. You notice the way your grandmother treats your mother anew. You notice that there was an uncle that no one ever spoke to you about. You notice that there are entire stories that were not revealed to you until you become old.

And, so, the seventh house moves the first. The sunset moves the dawn. Your transition changes the stuff that your birth was made of.

And, there is a limit to perpetual change. Sometimes, it’s not about changing and growing and being in transition. Sometimes, it’s about holding very still and being the person who taught you how to survive what you already survived.