iVillage

I had been studying astrology for some number of years before I understood what a node was, for example the Ascendant or Rising Sign that all astrologers mean when they ask: “What is your rising sign?”

Back then, my rising sign in Sagittarius, was to me just that: a point in the zodiac, in my case in the sign Sagittarius. It was not until much later that I understood that all nodes are intersections of two independent systems of one kind or another. In the case of my Ascendant, the zodiac was one system, but I had to research to find out the other, which turned out to be the Local Horizon.