We reach the first lunar node at 18 years, 7 months and 9 days after birth. This has typically to do with breaking away from one’s family and the surroundings of our childhood. It can be said that this is necessary for our development, to unwind ourselves from the stream of inheritance, and from parental authority or similar restrictions. This change can be regarded as the beginning of a new independence.
At this time when we have reached the first lunar node it is also the time to remove ourselves from people with whom we no longer share a common future in the sense of our birth impulse, people who can no longer contribute anything to our further development and vice-versa. School and other friendships of our youth will likely come to an end. The connection to parents loosens and should transform from a parent-child relationship to a more equal, hopefully friend-based relationship. We likely will be moved by such questions as: What is the meaning of my life? Under what life impulses did I come onto the scene? Where on earth do I find the place where I can realize those impulses which I might recognize as my pre-birth intentions?
We will likely question ourselves at this time about the right education, the right career. Even when we have already had to start a career for individual or family reasons, served an apprenticeship, say, or are already tied to a job, even then, we often ask ourselves: Am I on the right career path? Is this my calling? If these questions are not asked or, in the case of a negative answer, and no way to change is found, there likely will be grave consequences or difficulties in the future. The yearning for self-realization arises. At the time of the first lunar node, we begin to form our own personality; we begin working on ourselves. Just as a crawling baby one day stands upright, and, following the example of adults, wants to stand on her own two legs, so we also, at the age of 18 or 19, want to inwardly stand upright, develop our own ideals and values, and act upon them.
At this time when we have reached the first lunar node it is also the time to remove ourselves from people with whom we no longer share a common future in the sense of our birth impulse, people who can no longer contribute anything to our further development and vice-versa. School and other friendships of our youth will likely come to an end. The connection to parents loosens and should transform from a parent-child relationship to a more equal, hopefully friend-based relationship. We likely will be moved by such questions as: What is the meaning of my life? Under what life impulses did I come onto the scene? Where on earth do I find the place where I can realize those impulses which I might recognize as my pre-birth intentions?
We will likely question ourselves at this time about the right education, the right career. Even when we have already had to start a career for individual or family reasons, served an apprenticeship, say, or are already tied to a job, even then, we often ask ourselves: Am I on the right career path? Is this my calling? If these questions are not asked or, in the case of a negative answer, and no way to change is found, there likely will be grave consequences or difficulties in the future. The yearning for self-realization arises. At the time of the first lunar node, we begin to form our own personality; we begin working on ourselves. Just as a crawling baby one day stands upright, and, following the example of adults, wants to stand on her own two legs, so we also, at the age of 18 or 19, want to inwardly stand upright, develop our own ideals and values, and act upon them.
In this context, it is interesting that of the physical healings reported in the Gospels, an age is given only three times and two of them shed light on lunar node events. In the Gospel of Luke, a story is told of a woman who has suffered an illness for 18 years. “She was bent over and could not stand upright.” Through Jesus’ intervention, through word and deed, she could “on the spot stand upright again.” This picture is amazingly exact. At this age, we still likely will need outside help, a call from the outside, in order to seize uprightness. As a crawling baby, we had the example and encouragement of those people who stood upright before us. It was parents and siblings who helpfully held out their hands to the striving child. At 18 or 19, it is more often than not the call of a spiritual force, of destiny, that points the way to uprightness. and steps in a new direction.
Goethe’s biography shows how dramatic and forceful this directional calling can be. In June 1768, the 18-year-old law student at Leipzig suffered a life-threatening hemorrhage. The deeper meaning of this threat was explained by the poet himself. Through disharmony he had so stressed his organism “that the systems contained within it finally had to break out in a conspiracy and revolution in order to save the whole” as he describes in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). An indication by Rudolf Steiner makes clearer what the aim was. “That which lived within Goethe as his individuality was much larger than that which his organism could really take in” (Lecture, November 11, 1906). Through the illness, Goethe experienced a loosening between his etheric body and his physical body whereby he gained the ability to permeate himself with extrasensory imaginations. It was an original kind of initiation, and it had the effect that his physicality was not broken down at an early age under the immensity and force of the Goethe individuality.
A concise description of or a sort of motto for the characteristic and task of the first lunar node can be found in these words: From home into the world, now search for our own physical home. By that, it is not only the geographic location that is meant, but also our field of activity and where we can make ourselves at home. In Goethe’s case it was his earthly body itself with which he had to struggle to achieve as his home. In our modern time we often engage in traveling or also in moving to a new and quite unknown location, and it is not unusual to land up somewhere far away from ones place of birth and childhood, and in a very different environment, culture and language.
As an exercise in relation to the first lunar node which we encounter at age 18 or 19 (18 years, 7 months and 9 days after birth) ... do the following.
1. Determine your first lunar node regarding your own biography. Which year, month and day did you arrive at 18 years, 7 months and 9 days by finding this date in time. Add 18 years, 7 months and 9 days to your date of birth. For example, say you are born on May 1, 1952, your first moon node (age 18.6 or 18 years, 7 months and 9 days) will be December 9, 1970.
2. Describe your life at that time. What were the outer circumstances of your life? Where were you? What events do you remember that relate to this time in your life? Who were the people you found connecting with at this time in your life? What were the ideas and ideals that you felt drawn to during this phase in your biography?
3. Create a drawing or painting that expresses the mood and perhaps depicts an important event of that time, or expresses symbolically important aspects of that time.
More ...
Goethe’s biography shows how dramatic and forceful this directional calling can be. In June 1768, the 18-year-old law student at Leipzig suffered a life-threatening hemorrhage. The deeper meaning of this threat was explained by the poet himself. Through disharmony he had so stressed his organism “that the systems contained within it finally had to break out in a conspiracy and revolution in order to save the whole” as he describes in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth). An indication by Rudolf Steiner makes clearer what the aim was. “That which lived within Goethe as his individuality was much larger than that which his organism could really take in” (Lecture, November 11, 1906). Through the illness, Goethe experienced a loosening between his etheric body and his physical body whereby he gained the ability to permeate himself with extrasensory imaginations. It was an original kind of initiation, and it had the effect that his physicality was not broken down at an early age under the immensity and force of the Goethe individuality.
A concise description of or a sort of motto for the characteristic and task of the first lunar node can be found in these words: From home into the world, now search for our own physical home. By that, it is not only the geographic location that is meant, but also our field of activity and where we can make ourselves at home. In Goethe’s case it was his earthly body itself with which he had to struggle to achieve as his home. In our modern time we often engage in traveling or also in moving to a new and quite unknown location, and it is not unusual to land up somewhere far away from ones place of birth and childhood, and in a very different environment, culture and language.
As an exercise in relation to the first lunar node which we encounter at age 18 or 19 (18 years, 7 months and 9 days after birth) ... do the following.
1. Determine your first lunar node regarding your own biography. Which year, month and day did you arrive at 18 years, 7 months and 9 days by finding this date in time. Add 18 years, 7 months and 9 days to your date of birth. For example, say you are born on May 1, 1952, your first moon node (age 18.6 or 18 years, 7 months and 9 days) will be December 9, 1970.
2. Describe your life at that time. What were the outer circumstances of your life? Where were you? What events do you remember that relate to this time in your life? Who were the people you found connecting with at this time in your life? What were the ideas and ideals that you felt drawn to during this phase in your biography?
3. Create a drawing or painting that expresses the mood and perhaps depicts an important event of that time, or expresses symbolically important aspects of that time.
More ...
