This article originally appeared on my blog, The Pisces Chronicles, on Jan. 13, 2007.

Apparently, we have committed an astrological faux pas. We’ve shared information with each other about our Lunar Nodes.

Michael Lutin, who has just written a book about nodes cleverly disguised as a book about Sun signs, says you should never tell anyone your node. “It’s way too personal,” he said, and we all know that “intimacy is dangerous.”

I trekked for three hours through the snow and ice on Thursday evening to hear Michael speak in Seattle. I wish I could make this article as funny as his talk, but unfortunately, the subject is dead serious, and if I could make it as funny as he does, I’d be him.

Among professionals, Sun sign astrology is scorned as not real astrology. We cringe when we think of the horoscopes in the daily newspapers and the damage they do to the reputation of astrology overall. But after hearing Michael speak, I not only have a new respect for Sun sign astrology, but I realize how brilliant this guy really is.

Speaking to a small group that included some well-known professional astrologers, Michael explained that the astrological symbol for the Sun – the circle with dot at the center – represents “the fertilized potential of a human being.” He went on to describe the human fertilization process, how that one lucky sperm finds his way to the egg, and what happens when they unite.

The Sun in your chart, he says, is the core of everything that makes you healthy, and while he didn’t get into the specifics, he said that the Sun by house represents everything you want to do and be (maybe that will be the subject of his next book?). However, according to his theory, we develop a hard crust around this core early in life, and so our natural wellness gets hidden behind defenses and neuroses.

And this is where he sees the nodes as being extremely revealing and instructive.

“The nodal axis represents where we need to rise above infantile behavior toward fulfillment,” he said.

Interestingly enough, he devotes more attention to the South Node than the North Node, as he believes it’s key to understanding how we keep tripping ourselves up and not living up to our full potential. He asked how many of us have heard that the South Node represents everything you accomplished in your past incarnation and are done with – every hand went up – and then said that the South Node represents what you would have done in that past incarnation if you’d have five more minutes to live!

What’s so brilliant about his approach is that he puts his finger on exactly how each of us continues to try to get fulfillment through things that will never make us happy, and he identifies the source of our obsessions and addictions. The antidote is the North Node, but to do that, we have to grow up. What’s even more brilliant is that he’s able to deliver the harsh reality in a way that makes us laugh. This puts us more at ease so that we can hear the truth. The defenses come down, and then we’re able to see what needs to change and to change it.

So what’s this got to do with Sun sign astrology?

Simply put, his book looks at the nodes by solar chart – in other words, by Sun sign. The way this works is that if you’re a Scorpio with the North Node in Cancer, your nodal axis is the third and ninth houses in your solar chart. According to the ingenious number system he devised to avoid having to write the word “node,” you become a number three, and his book explains what kinds of childhood trauma threes typically need to get over.

Of course, as astrologers, we immediately recognize that these are third-house issues, which he never mentions in the book. In fact, I was right in a previous posting that he never even mentions the word “node,” except in a parenthetical insert he slid in after the book had been edited to let his astrologer friends know that this was the “node book” he’d been working on for years. To get it published for the mainstream, he had to find a way to disguise the astro-babble.

One of the many things that I found truly inspiring about his talk is that he uses the nodes to empower people.

“People come to us because they’ve lost their confidence and their belief in themselves,” he said. “Our job as astrologers is to restore it to them.”

Astrology helps make people strong again by validating them in ways they’ve never been validated, he added.

I can’t tell you the effect his book had on me when I read it back in July, because he’s right – it’s way too personal. All I can say is that he gave me a brand new perspective, and it’s enabled me to do some powerful healing. If I could do that for all of my clients, it would be worth more to me than all the diamonds in South Africa.

As for himself, he quipped, “I’ve had both my nodes removed.”