One may even be excused for believing that planets, so nearly linked up with the destinies of our earth, may have a direct action of a subtle kind upon our lives and thought. But the idea that the Moon’s Nodes may have such an influence is beyond all saving, at least so think our modern astrologers. Yet this was an ancient belief, and it survives at this day in India and other parts of the world. But then, you will argue, they are not bodies at all but mere points. So is the actual centre of the Sun on which the universe revolves. Your point is nothing—or everything, as you will. I am not looking at the bodies themselves but what they signify to us. I am looking at the Universe as Symbol, I am trying to get at its meaning. If the planets may be regarded as symbols, so may the Moon’s Nodes. They tried to give them a real existence as the head and tail of the Dragon, the devourer of the Sun and Moon. But this was for the popular fancy, as one might put off a child with a fairy tale rather than afflict him with a lecture on astronomy. They who calculated the positions of the Sun and Moon and predicted eclipses, knew how to bring the Dragon to heel, and they knew his feeding times. They used that knowledge to enslave a whole people, and haply the same knowledge may help to set them free. Nevertheless, they ascribed to the Moon’s Nodes a specific influence in human life, or more correctly a special signification. One could have affirmed from a mere knowledge of this significance that astronomy was first studied in northern latitudes, for we see that the ascending node, that point at which the Moon crosses the ecliptic in its upward course, was regarded as fortunate, while the descending node was unfortunate. And what they knew of the southern climes was evidently not much, for they called them Patala and Avitchi, and figured the descent of the soul into the depths of a great despair from the circumstance of the Moon’s southern course. But all this was a symbolism not invented by man, for he regulates neither the Moon’s orbit nor its Nodes, and had no hand in the making of eclipses. It was there for him to read, and that is how he read it. Some astrologers say that they were wrong. Others are more cautious. They seem to have observed that certain periods in their lives coincided with the transits of these Nodes over the places of the luminaries, the Mid-heaven and the Ascendant of their horoscopes, and they have made due note of the fact, leaving the uninitiated to decide for themselves by experience as to which is the right way to hang up a horse-shoe for luck. Yet among those who say it should be one way and those who say the other, there are few indeed who are aware of the fact that they are using the ancient symbol of the Moon’s Nodes ☊ and ☋.