The North Node and South Node serve as the soul’s silent archivists—one whispering of the past, the other beckoning toward the unknown future.

Unlike the visible planets that illuminate personality, the lunar nodes operate in shadow and destiny, offering insight into the unconscious currents that shape our incarnation. To the ancients, they were the Dragon’s Head and Tail, serpentine forces of fate and hunger, revealing karmic residue from previous lifetimes and the uncharted path of spiritual evolution.

The mythological underpinning of the nodes carries echoes from diverse spiritual traditions. In Hindu cosmology, the demon Rahu and Ketu were once a singular entity that sought immortality, only to be severed in two by Vishnu’s divine sword—an eternal reminder of the divided self, forever seeking reunion. The Norse spoke of Jörmungandr, the world-serpent encircling the earth, mirroring the cyclical nature of karma and reincarnation. And in the esoteric traditions of the West, the Ouroboros—the serpent consuming its own tail—symbolizes the perpetual motion of the soul’s journey, ever-consuming, ever-renewing, ever-transforming.

To truly grasp the lunar nodes is to step into the great cosmic paradox: we are both bound to fate and endowed with the free will to navigate it. The South Node is the inheritance of our past lives, encoded with talents and wounds, triumphs and failures. It is the magnetic pull of what is known, the lull of familiarity. Yet the North Node is the star that beckons us forward—a guide toward the unknown, toward the path of highest evolution, though it may be strewn with the discomfort of growth.

The challenge of the nodes is one of sacred alchemy. To ignore the South Node entirely is to lose touch with one’s gifts, to sever the roots from which wisdom springs. But to linger there too long is to stagnate, to repeat lifetimes of unfinished stories. The North Node demands we move beyond inertia, beyond safety, into the uncharted realms of the soul’s potential.The nodes, like the Sphinx’s riddle, are not easily answered, but rather lived. They are a dialogue between destiny and agency, past and future, the known and the unknowable. They ask us: Will you heed the call? Will you dare to step forward, even as the dragon coils behind you?

The South Node of the Lunar Nodes: The Burden of the Past

The South Node, the severed tail of the cosmic dragon, carries the imprint of lives already lived. In Vedic astrology, it is Ketu, the headless sage who seeks liberation from worldly entanglements. In Hellenistic tradition, it is the mark of what we have already mastered yet must transcend. It represents the habits, talents, and instincts that come naturally but also the well-worn patterns that no longer serve us.

Here lies the residue of past incarnations—echoes of triumphs and wounds, comfort and stagnation. While the South Node offers a place of familiarity, it is also a point of dissolution. Those who linger too long in its domain often feel trapped in repetition—circles of relationships that mirror past karmic entanglements, fears born of ancient wounds, and talents that, if overindulged, become hindrances to true evolution.

To linger in the South Node is to remain in the halls of past existence, where one’s actions are driven not by conscious will but by reflexive instinct. This is the domain of the ghost-self, the aspects of you that repeat and repeat, unaware that they are echoes rather than living breath. It is the priest who once held divine power but clings to old dogma in an age that requires new revelation; the warrior who, though long past the battlefield, still reaches for the sword at every moment of perceived threat.

Yet, we are not meant to abandon our South Node but rather alchemize it, taking its gifts forward while discarding its chains. The sculptor does not throw away the clay; rather, she reshapes it into something new. The past is not a prison but a resource—one that must be carefully wielded. The greatest spiritual initiates of every age have walked this path: they recognize what they have mastered, but they do not allow mastery to fossilize into stagnation. The wisdom of the past is a torch, not an anchor.

The art of navigating the South Node requires discernment. What instincts serve as foundations for new evolution, and which ones are simply remnants of a time that no longer exists? What fears have been carried across lifetimes, morphing into limiting beliefs that whisper, “You cannot go beyond this point?” The South Node is the temple of both skill and illusion, and the seeker must determine what is sacred knowledge and what is simply old dust that must be blown away.

There is an essential paradox here: the South Node represents what we have already been, and yet the temptation to cling to it is often strong. The most challenging aspect of soul evolution is trusting the North Node, the direction of the unknown, the wilderness beyond the temple gates.

The North Node of the Lunar Nodes: The Soul’s Compass

The North Node is a hunger. A pulling, gnawing ache in the bones of our existence—unrelenting, insatiable. It is also Rahu, the devouring dragon’s head, forever consuming, never sated. It is the thread that winds through our lifetime, calling us forward into the unknown. But it does not call softly. It demands.

Unlike the South Node, which feels like second nature, the North Node is clumsy, foreign, and often unwelcome. We resist it. We flinch from its summons because it asks us to become something beyond the sum of what we’ve been. The North Node is the doorway into a life we do not yet understand, an invitation into initiatory fire. And like all initiations, it requires sacrifice—the willingness to step away from the comfort of the past and into the disquiet of transformation.

Think of Persephone, seized from the safety of her mother’s embrace and dragged into Hades’ domain. She did not choose the underworld, not at first. But myth rarely concerns itself with what we want—it tells the truth of what we need. And so Persephone, the innocent maiden, is forced into sovereignty. The North Node works the same way. It is the path we avoid, yet the only road that leads to the throne of our becoming.

The old life, the South Node, is a warm familiarity, like the scent of a childhood home. It is the instinctual way we move through the world, the skills and comforts we have carried over lifetimes. And yet, if we linger there too long, something stagnates. The South Node, left unchecked, becomes a well-worn groove, a rut, a past life that tightens around the present. We must pry ourselves loose from it.

And that is where the North Node comes in—awkward, demanding, relentless. It does not allow us to remain in the places we have already mastered. It asks us to fumble, to stretch, to walk roads where our footing is unsteady. This is why its lessons feel so unnatural. It is not because we are incapable, but because we have not yet built the muscles to carry this particular fate.

Most people resist their North Node for years, sometimes a lifetime. The path is too uncertain, the lessons too raw. We would rather cling to what we know than risk what we do not. But the North Node is patient. It waits, watching, biding its time. And when we ignore it for too long, life has a way of shoving us towards it—disruptions, breakdowns, unexpected upheavals. The universe whispers first, then it shouts.

To follow the North Node is to step into the labyrinth without a map. It is to be both seeker and initiate, to be humbled by how little we know and still move forward. And when we do, something extraordinary happens. We become. Not all at once, not without effort. But piece by piece, year by year, we grow into the shape of what we were always meant to be.

This is the work of a lifetime. The North Node is not an endpoint but a process, a promise of evolution that unfolds in slow, persistent waves. We chase it, we resist it, we surrender to it, and in the end, we realize—it was never leading us somewhere outside of ourselves. It was always pulling us home.

Locate Your Nodes: The Soul’s Compass

Every birth chart holds a story—a tension between the past and the future, between what was and what longs to be. The lunar nodes carve this story across the sky, eternally opposing one another, tethered by an invisible thread. The South Node marks the inheritance of the soul, the well of past experience, while the North Node, its mirror opposite, beckons with an unsettling urgency. They are never found alone; one cannot exist without the other.

Your North Node is always in a sign and house that feels unnatural at first, like speaking a language you were never taught. And yet, this is the dialect of your becoming. The houses they occupy tell of where this great unfolding takes place—whether in the realm of relationships, career, solitude, community, or inner transformation. This axis is your mythic journey, your personal Iliad and Odyssey. You are both hero and cartographer, mapping out terrain you have never seen and yet somehow, in the marrow of your bones, recognize.

If you’re called to dive deeper into your own nodes and how they shape your path, I highly recommend Astrology for the Soul by Jan Spiller (available here). Her insights on the North and South Node have served as a guiding light for countless seekers navigating their personal evolution.

Honor the Past, but Do Not Dwell

We are not meant to abandon the South Node. It is rich with memory, a repository of gifts cultivated long before this lifetime. To disregard it would be to sever ourselves from our own wisdom. But to live within it, to mistake it for a final destination, is to allow the past to dictate the terms of the present.

Think of an old scholar, buried in books, refusing to step outside and speak his knowledge into the world. Or a warrior who has fought a hundred battles and knows only how to fight, even in times of peace. The South Node is a place of comfort, but comfort is not the same as growth. The past can teach, but it cannot lead.

We must sift through what we have carried. Some of it is treasure; some of it is dead weight. The work is in knowing which is which.

Walk Toward the Unfamiliar

The North Node is a strange land. And like all strange lands, it unsettles before it awakens. You will not feel prepared for it. You will not feel capable of it. This is the great trick of the soul’s evolution—it does not hand you certainty. It hands you the invitation to grow.

There will be resistance. The North Node requires you to abandon the illusion of mastery, to be a beginner again. It will ask you to stumble, to sit with discomfort, to reach beyond what feels natural. But there will also be moments—small, fleeting at first—when something inside you recognizes this path as your own. When you take a step forward and feel, deep in your bones, that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

This is the way the North Node works. It does not rush. It does not demand. It calls. And we either listen or we don’t.

Embrace the Tension of the Opposites

We do not move toward the North Node by rejecting the South. The goal is not to erase the past, but to integrate it. To take what was useful and apply it to what is new. The old ways must become stepping stones, not anchors.

There will always be a temptation to swing between extremes—to retreat fully into the safety of what we know or to rush headlong into the North Node without respecting the foundation we came from. But wisdom lies in balance. The most powerful growth occurs when we let these opposing forces shape one another.

This is the alchemy of the lunar nodes: the transformation of history into destiny.

A Journey Without End

The movement between past and future is not a straight line. It is a spiral.

We return to the same lessons again and again, each time with new eyes, deeper understanding, greater resilience. We are never done with our nodes. They unfold in layers, revealing themselves over years, over decades. What we struggle to embrace now will, in time, become second nature. What feels foreign will one day feel like home.

If the lunar nodes interests you, I also invite you to explore Moon’s progressions in astrology as they reveal how we emotionally process and integrate these karmic shifts. If you’d like to explore how your Progressed Moon affects your emotional landscape and soul growth, read my guide here: Charting Emotional Nourishment with Moon Progressions.