You know that drawer, or closet, or back room where you throw all the crap you don’t want to throw away, but don’t want in your regular living space, but don’t really have another place for? When I was growing up, it was the junk drawer. In my grown-up house, it’s mysteriously called the studio.
You know what I’m talking about. You avoid that space at all costs, and when you find you need something from there, you throw up a lot of resistance before going in.
Maybe you try to find a substitute for the serving dish that’s in there that you’d like to use for the party tonight. Or maybe you hope against hope that you haven’t really put it in there after all – maybe it’s just wedged behind a tray in the much-cleaner kitchen cupboard. But it’s not, and you know it, and finally you just hold your nose and open the door to the mess.
In Jungian psychology, that room might be called the “shadow.” It’s the part of you that has all the stuff you really don’t want to acknowledge, much less look at, deal with, dust off or throw out once and for all. You walk around life all day long as if your thoughts and words and consciously-chosen actions are all that exist of your psyche.
But then every once in a while you burst out in anger, much to everyone’s surprise. Or you hole up, encased in depression, not really sure why. Or you manage only a shallow little chuckle when you’d really like to bellow out with a belly laugh with the rest of the crowd. Or you’re tongue-tied when someone asks about your mother.
These unintended, often under-the-radar reactions belie a deeper part of the psyche that’s hinted at in a traditional astrology reading – but revealed much more fully in the Huber nodal chart.
If you’ve had only your natal chart read, you’re in for a surprise with a nodal chart reading. Though the shadow reveals itself through other means, such as dreams, complexes, addictions and obsessions, I don’t know of another way to look at the full shadow head-on, to get a sense of its shape and purpose, to understand how its structure fits into the structure of your psyche. Where your conscious mind balks, the shadow may go ahead full-boar. Where you think your choosing west, your shadow may choose east. It can really screw you up if you’re not aware of it. Seeing it laid out graphically can help you bring it to consciousness, manage it better and be more in control of the choices you make.
The natal chart and the nodal chart intersect at two critical times in each person’s life: once in the first 36 years of life, then again in the next 36 years. The Hubers liken these times to “going through the eye of the needle,” times of transformation that may be exceedingly difficult but – if survived – can lead to a more conscious, grounded and successful way of life. Knowing when those times are coming can help us build an ark so we can survive it. Knowing when they’ve occurred in the past can give us new perspective on what might have seemed a random string of bad luck, or incompetence, or frustration.
Instead of allowing the shadow to overcome us, we can look at difficult, frustrating and frightening times of life as times when the junk drawer really needs a good, careful cleaning. A nodal chart reading can help you know where, and how, to begin.
Photo: Guillermo Esteves
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