For more context on Astrogeography, read now here.
I moved to Istanbul in June 2014, I was 21, I was young but I believed in making it alone.
Living on my North Node meridian
The North Node in Astrology is a point that refers to the angles of the moon when you were born, those poles’s angles change every 18 months, and create an axis between the North & South.
This axis is understood as the trajectory of our life : in this existence, we understand the South Node’s components because it’s where we come from (a past life’s experiences, a knowing, a sensing, an early life environment).
In our existence’s journey, we’ll be responding with our know-how from the South Node but what makes us grow (and ultimately isn’t the comfort zone) is delving in it with the North Node’s characteristics - what it aspects.
For ie: My SN is in Gemini, I’m super good at having a thousand opinions and a rich context in all matters (in my head - not in my self-expression) - but what makes me coil back is the Sagittarian archetype: sharing my one-sided truth, travelling, living my independent life choice.
Obviously, everything leads to me learning this - and I can’t resist the pull (despite the uneasiness) to express my perspective. To myself, to others, publicly.
What says the most with the least words is this astrology understanding of axis: l refer to this by https://twitter.com/orfray
Today we are talking about the meridian of the North Node - especially the one that squares the IC (the Imum Coeli).
The IC is the point of our origin, our roots, where we feel at home.
Now I don’t have a past life in Turkey that I remember of (writing these words... is something).
As mentioned in this post :
« When I turned 21, I had graduated from university in London - and returned for an internship in Paris. I eventually moved in at my dad’s which I had never done in my whole life. I learned how to live in a family setting - two parents, my brothers and sisters 24/7.
I couldn’t find a job in my industry —- journalism in the early 2010s....
So I followed a string of events that led me to live in Istanbul, Turkey on my own.
I never questioned it: I sent an application for a job for an english bimonthly magazine and hopped on a plane. Turkey is my North Node line, aka my destiny. At the time, I didn’t know anything about neither Istanbul nor the North Node, or Astrogeography for that matter. »
What was interesting was that I had been mentioning and grabbing informations about Istanbul a year prior. I remembered all thah much later.
Anyways - I have now been in Istanbul for nearly 5 years.
It doesn’t make sense, but it’s been glorious - and hardcore af.
(Mentioning terrorism and surviving the 2016 military coup - somehow).
It’s been free-wheeling agent time - working independently, changing swiftly careers every year or so, building structures, leaving them. It’s still unfolding... obviously.
Having been there gave me ambition - most of the turks my age have already built their companies, have an independent success defined by their interests. This inspired me, freed me from the squares and molds of my home country.
The energy of living day to day on that line is:
A lot of future planning, giving sense to your past etc
I highly recommend that as a check up once a year - but on a life basis, it’s difficult to constantly reassert your choices, question your motives, be between free will - and the hope of a defined destiny handed to me by the gods of Fortune.
(Still hoping, heya fellas in the skies).
My journey with being there is not understanding destiny as something we create - and hoping for a worded message from the Heavens telling me « this here is what you need to do, without questions » - I hoped hoped hoped for clarity, an epiphany that would withstand every possible question. They came in and left with another day’s stimulation. I never got that map filled with clear itineraries and a sense of purpose that would emanate from a higher power.
God knows that someone in me is still waiting for that. Which totally correlates with the past years introspective months and astrological inner research. This very energy of the North Node, of having a destiny, led me to understand every esoteric science under the Sun: Human Design, Astrology, Astrocsrtography, Progressions, Interceptions, Moon Void, Incarnation Cross, Gene Keys - I wanted a wide perspective on the reason for my existence. Again - capitalism (as mentioned in this experiment with an apatite crystal) leads you to convert your existence not for a purpose that outlives your karma and a ride to enjoy for life - but as something we can create for society, a product, a message, a humanitarian ideal. (None of those are wrong - but let’s bring in balance, shall we?)
So I waited and I never got it until I made shifts that lasted a few days, a few weeks, a few months.
I got closer to my destiny without realizing it -
Because all of it - the confusion, the doubts, riding the waves of healing etc were all part of the destiny.
Destiny isn’t a handed / god given path, nor is it a straight path that stands out against the weeds and the rocks on the side.
Destiny is a very thin algorithm that enmeshes with confusion, karma, free will, glimpses behind the veil, clarity, moving forward, backward.
Destiny is asking the questions - doubting the following chapter, wishing for another storyline - one that fits the moulds, one that « makes sense ».
Destiny doesn’t always connect the dots. All that you have learned and experienced makes you you - but it doesn’t mean they all converge towards making a clear and explainable path to take on.
We aren’t in some magazine intro to our life’s interview - not everything has a practical sense and a radical meaning.
We are messy.
We are moving.
We are experiencing life - not following a script, a build up, a recap on our past that delivers for our future.
And while I plan on staying a little bit longer under this meridian, I thank all of Turkey for being what it is, as messy as multi-cultured, multi-faiths, multi-ecosystems as it is. We are living on land that has seen humanity organize in communities, we are the Golden Triangle where the first settlements of hunter-gatherers learned how to organize collectively within the chaos of our psyche and human nature. From animal to human.
I stand on land that has seen the first religions, the first collections of organizing the stars into a language - astrology - and the birth place of the Sabian symbols is also here.
We are between the modernism of a country running after technology and the ruins of multiple empires. Everything is chaos really - but it doesn’t need to be viewed with a negative lens. This chaos is beauty. It is a reflection of my inner state, of my past and future.
It doesn’t make sense for me to be here - I’m a french girl. But it resonated, it still does, until it doesn’t.
