Incarnation - The Four Angles and the Moon's Nodes

Melanie Reinhart
The various factors in the birth chart may be experienced on many different levels, both inner and
outer. This volume explores the meaning and characteristic expressions of those fundamental axes
which are concerned with our incarnation in the world - the angles and the Nodes of the Moon.
Part One, The Four Angles, looks in depth at their symbolism and meaning. The reader is taken on a
journey around the angles, considering their element, mode, and accompanying natal and transiting
planets, as well as an illuminating presentation of the astronomy involved. Traditional interpretations
are augmented by the fresh and original perspectives characteristic of Melanie's teaching style, which
focuses on evoking personal insight as much as conveying information or technique. There is also a
guided imagery exercise which can be followed by the reader, designed to further personalise and
deepen the material.
Part Two, The Moon's Nodes, invites the reader to contemplate their meaning from first principles,
considering the interrelationship of the Sun, Moon, and Earth in space. Established ideas about the
interpretation of the Nodes are reviewed and sometimes challenged, and there are several interesting
and original avenues of further exploration suggested. The imagery of the dragon is considered, along
with Draconic astrology, a fascinating case study, and an exploration of the psychological processes
connected with eclipses. The existing literature on the Nodes is not vast, and this book will doubtless
become a welcome addition, inspiring the reader with new techniques and perspectives which can
easily be applied to the chart to yield new understanding.
Review by Robin Heath - Astrological Journal 1997
To capture not only the content but also the mood and atmosphere of a productive group session within
a book is a difficult task indeed. This latest offering from the CPA Press places its readers firmly within
the ambience of a remarkable pair of seminars given on the 24th April and 24th November 1996 at
Regent's College, London. Part One of the book covers the four angles whilst part two deals with the
Moon's Nodes.
As the CPA Press themselves state at the end of this book, many of the volumes within the growing set
are produced from 'one off' presentations which are not likely to ever be repeated. They have been
transcribed and bound to enable a wider group of students to benefit from the wealth of experience and
insight held by the leading lights within our current astrological teachers/practitioners.
Melanie Reinhart is one of these leading lights - a popular speaker and best known within the
astrological world for her pioneering work on Chiron and, more recently the Centaurs. An articulate
speaker and writer, she embraces the two themes presented here with great skill and has produced a
work which can stand as definitive as well as seminal. Within the material, there are some refreshing
approaches which prevent the reader from becoming too abstracted. Melanie strikes out some new
pathways within the orthodoxy of psychological astrology books. Indeed, the book almost begins
(page12-13) with a form of 'Earthing' exercise, similar to the 'eurythmics' of Rudolph Steiner, in order
to orientate the student to the Angles, the Local Horizon, the Prime Meridian and the four Cardinal
Points of the compass. Mention is made of Sacred Space and its purpose in ritual, whence Reinhart

likens the astrological map to a two-dimensional representation of one's personal 3-D sacred space - the
time and place of one's birth.
Melanie then takes the four angles as a symbolic cross, representing our incarnation into matter, held
within the circle or sphere of spirit. This cross is equated to an altar and the concepts of what prayer in
front of such a symbol represents - all of which is rather different from the psychological astrology
books of the past which tended to keep such things well into the background. Melanie's background
naturally leads the reader to consider the metaphysical and magical components of the chart. Such an
introduction to her book does both her and the CPA Press credit. It may, of course, distance those
readers who feel that the purely rational approach to astrology is the sole way by which the subject will
ever find re-acceptance into the halls of academia. Chacun son gout. However before one criticises this
approach, it is worth noticing that Melanie has no fuzzy edges in her astronomical knowledge of the
Angles, nor in the dynamics of the Celestial Sphere. As we shall see, Part Two shows a grasp of nodal
mechanics too.
The symbolic journey from Ascendant round to the IC, then to the Descendant and thence to the MC is
shown by Melanie as usefully related to their house rulers - Mars, Moon, Venus and Saturn. The author
makes the useful point that none of these is transpersonal - the 'cross' of the angles therefore represents
incarnation. The Ascendant becomes "Who am I?", the IC, "Where did I come from?", the Descendant,
"Who are you?" and the MC, "Where am I going?". It is on this skeleton that Melanie fleshes out her
incarnation 'Owners Manual' producing some masterful astrological wisdom in the process. One always
has the feeling that Melanie is within the group sharing the material, never aloof or pretentious. Few
teachers can achieve this, yet here it is in abundance and the reader can gleam something of what it was
like to actually attend the seminar. Lively audience participation provides the anecdotal and astrological
filler to confirm each axiom in turn, not without some humour.
There is some familiar territory. Howard Sasportas' astrological chickens are still to be found pecking
and clucking their differing ways out of their shells - perhaps the best analogy of the sign on the
ascendant yet - and planets connected with the Angles are covered in detail, as is the ASC?MC
midpoint. The effects of transits to the Angles provide some of the most insightful paragraphs within
Part One - here one finds Melanie totally within her element and backed up with years of client-based
experience to share with us all.
Part One finishes with a guided imagery exercise as a way of entering into one's own personal sacred
space. The feedback session from this reinforces the value of the session. Common in Stateside
astrology books, such as Donna Cunningham's Healing Plutos Problems, guided imagery has yet to
find its place within the traditional UK astrological press. CPA Press are "boldly going" into this arena,
offering right-brain activity within their exciting curriculum.
Part Two is formed from the edited transcripts of two deliveries of a seminar on the nodes of the Moon.
By and large, western astrologers treat the nides with a rather irreverent disdain, yet their employment
within astrology is much more ancient than our comparatively modern 12-sign zodiac. Perhaps it is
because they are not a 'real' planet or object that we mumble and loosely interpret the nodes, and
because of this, Melanie takes her readers on an introductory 'nodal journey'. Her astronomy is accurate
and she takes time to ground the nodes within the relationship the Sun, Moon and Earth hold to each
other. There are no fuzzy edges here, either; Melanie is able to combine imagery with science, glyph
with magic, eclipse theory with ancient myth. I found it a minor annoyance that the astronomy of

eclipses was not covered within the corpus of material which begins this session, because mentions of
dragons (and thus capul and cauda draconis, the ancient name for the nodes) derives from ancient
attempts at eclipse prediction and, one assumes, from the time when the nodes were first postulated by
the earliest astronomers.
Melanie takes the Sun and the Moon and the Earth and gives her readers an astronomical and
astrological workout. I found it very insightful to approach the Sun, Moon and Earth her way. The
'nourishment' explanation of the Moon leads to a remarkable equating of the Moon's signs of Dignity,
Exaltation, Detriment and Fall with their traditional rulers - Cancer, Taurus, Capricorn and Scorpio.
Here, beginning with the IC, these planets take us through the same journey covered in the Part One
'round', IC, Descendant, MC and Ascendant. For the Sun, we find Sun, Mars, Saturn, Venus,