…and What They Tell Us About Our Soul’s Purpose.
During 2025, the Cosmos promises to keep bringing waves of potent change.
As with all astrological tides, how we interact with the coming changes is not pre-determined. The better situated we are — through our mental preparation, creativity, free will, intention, and openness to Spirit’s guidance — the more we’ll find ourselves able to navigate the planetary forces in life-giving ways.
In service of helping you do exactly that, below you’ll find a primer on how I approach the Lunar Nodes. Understanding these crucial points in your own astrological chart can be life-changing: providing a steady reference point at all times, even in the midst of chaos. I share a bit of how this knowledge found me and how it’s helped me personally, too. Even if you’re not new to this aspect of astrological guidance, I hope you’ll find some interesting reflection points here as well.
The reason why I “go on” about the Nodes in my work is simple: acting on their guidance delivers big results, with a very low access barrier. Anyone can look up their North and South Node online, and even by reading a short blurb about them, they’ll be pointed roughly in the right direction for their Soul’s purpose.
While a basic writeup online on our North Node sign is not going to have the granularity of a professional reading, it flags the most important themes for us to focus on.
At whatever level of depth you decide explore this topic, my hope is that as many people as possible align themselves with their Soul’s direction and intentions. Every single one of us who does so, tilts the collective balance, adding to the tally of positive transformation at a global scale.
Enter Evolutionary Astrology
The kind of astrology I practice — Evolutionary Astrology — appeared in my life in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment.
Till then, astrology was a kind of background interest that just hummed along quietly. I learned about it in drips and spurts in my spare time.
Astrology was cool. Reading the insights and forecasts of professional astrologers helped me make sense of what was going on in humanity at large at any given moment. But while I saw the value in it, it hadn’t gripped me. Yet.
Until one day, I came across a quote by Steven Forrest, on social media, from his book Yesterday’s Sky, which had my mind reeling from the implications. I could have just as easily not seen it.
The gist was that, while astrology can’t accurately tell us who we were in a past life, our natal chart (the array of planets and important points at the exact time of our birth) does, in fact, contain the primary themes, the storyline, of a past life which is most relevant, karmically, to this one. Forrest claimed there was a past-life story to be read behind, and beneath, the birth chart from this lifetime.
Although you might get no hard facts such as names and places, by piecing together these themes, you could learn who you were and what you experienced in an important past life — at least the felt essence of it.
“WHAT??? This person claims you can decode the biggest issues from a past life in your chart?!”
Astrology, suddenly, had all my attention.
I was in a period where I really needed to understand who I was at a soul level. Where had I come from? What was my soul’s identity? Did I have a mission, and if so, what was it? Could a clearer understanding of who I’d been in past lives answer these pressing questions?
I ran so fast to buy Yesterday’s Sky I must have been a smoking blur. I read it immediately and obsessively.
In the process, I found out I was going to learn hands-on how to apply this unique astrological approach, or die trying.
At least that’s how it felt at first, because my astrological knowledge wasn’t up to snuff and I was in way over my head.
Although I was working sporadically with a professional astrologer, somehow this past life discovery process felt best done solo — there was something so intimate to it. It took me a couple of months until I started to get a clear picture, and boy, it was worth it.
Some Astro-definitions
The past life story in a person’s chart is encoded, first and foremost, in the “axis of destiny”, two mathematical points diametrically opposed to each other, known as the South and North Nodes of the Moon. Like all our placements, these will fall in a zodiac sign and in a house. Knowing our Nodes’ sign and house which can already tell us plenty about what the Soul has set out to experience and learn in this lifetime.
The Nodes don’t change signs very quickly — they shift roughly every 18 months — so even if you don’t know your exact birth time, you can benefit from knowing the sign of your Nodes.
(Above you can see I’ve marked the Nodes on this birth chart. They look a bit like a pair of headphones — the right-side up ones are the North Node, the upside-down ones are the South Node.)
The South Node represents the values, motivations, and ways of being in the world which we’ve developed “to the max”, as a result of our past life experiences. We “majored” in the lessons of that sign and house last time around, and we were born experts in that particular field.
South Node approaches are second nature to us, but they’re not the way to go this time around.
The North Node shows us what qualities, behaviors and attitudes to develop instead, even if they seem counterintuitive.
In a full past life analysis, however, an evolutionary astrologer will look not only at the Nodes, but also at the planetary rulers of the nodes, and the aspects that each of these makes in the chart. Where the Nodes give us the main themes the Soul is working on, these additional data points help us flesh out the storyline in a way that’s very specific, and quite real, to the person whose chart is being decoded.
The process can seem like a cross between metaphysical archeology and detective work, reading the clues and connections to form a coherent narrative that also fits our lived experience. What we’re ultimately looking to piece together are the repeating patterns that have kept us stuck from truly grasping what this lifetime is about, where we go in circles, or find ourselves misdirecting our energy into a black hole — where no matter how hard we try, there is no happy ending — and what to do instead.
Reincarnation, and (Re)defining Karma
If we assume that reincarnation is real — the theory goes — there will be one or two (or a handful) of lifetimes directly related to this life we’re in right now, in which we grappled with certain iconic issues that left a limiting, distorting, painful or traumatic mark on our soul. This, roughly, is how I think of the idea of “karma”.
Sometimes that karmic imprint comes about through making mistakes, harming others or ourselves in the process — whether with the best intentions, or on purpose. In other cases, the issue is that we did the best possible thing in an impossible situation. Yet other times, our environment and circumstances were utterly out of our control. We had to deal with the consequences, even though there was nothing we could have done to change our fate.
In any given lifetime, our souls bring back a series of karmic themes. We try to see if we can resolve them in an empowering way, this time around; in such a way that we become more whole for it, closer to our essence; more skillful in embodying our humanity in all its glory; more connected to the sacred while on Earth. There are some tricks to all this, however.
If you were to imagine our souls as movie actors, each of our lifetimes would be like a separate film. In each one, we’ve signed up to play a specific character, with a unique story arc, persona and motivations. This is who we become in each lifetime; a soul playing a character. Eventually, we slip out of character once the production is complete and we return to Spirit.
But, as we all well know, funny things can happen to actors.
For one, they can start to become pigeonholed in a certain kind of role: maybe they’re just remarkably good for that part, and subsequent productions keep wanting encores of their performance. There are ways, too, that actors might become so convincing in their role that they start to be confused for the character — maybe by fans, by producers, or perhaps the line between their role and their identity start to blur in their own mind.
(Personally, I can’t see Hugo Weaving in any movie as anything other than Agent Smith from the Matrix. Whenever I see him in other films, it looks to me like Agent Smith pretending to be whatever other character… Sorry, Hugo.)
This phenomenon of our past lifetimes’ roles “sticking” to us is what the axis comprising the South and North Nodes is meant to help us address. Our souls don’t want to be typecast in only one kind of role, nor to become fused with the role, forgetting who we truly are outside of it.
The soul is free, creative and has infinite “acting range”. If it winds up repeating the same experiences over and over, “Groundhog Day” style (while we’re on movie metaphors) it can get rusty, rigid, and stagnant. Trapped in an existence of monotonous loops, it might forget its connection with All That Is, and its blissful, playful, creative birthright.
We can think of our astrological chart as the notes we wrote to ourselves, from Soul to embodied character, detailing where we got stuck in the past ,and where we meant to be headed this lifetime. Knowing that we would need to forget our previous lives — which is part of immersing ourselves in the acting role at hand — we came in with a list of pointers.
Understanding My Own Nodes
Back in the time when I was obsessively learning to decode my own reincarnation tale, I discovered that my North Node is in the sign of Aries, indicating a soul-mission to learn to assert my needs and develop an independent sense of self, through conflict if need be. I’m ongoingly learning to move away from being defined in terms of my relationships, and of the narratives, qualities and needs the close people in my life might project onto me.
But I learned some specifics too — things that aren’t generalizable to all Aries North Node people. These details showed where and how I’m most likely to forget that I have needs too, and that my voice and perspective matters. I uncovered the underlying pattern of some of the most painful moments in my past, which led me, at a soul level, to surrender my sovereignty when the odds were intensely stacked against me.
In other words, the past life story contained in my chart revealed how obscuring what others might have labeled the “selfish” impulses (Aries) arising within me came from a deep place of self-preservation. This was healing in its own right, an “unshaming” of my recurring stuck places, some of which I felt with an emotional intensity I couldn’t account for from this lifetime’s perspective. This is a hallmark of past-life issues: the feelings, while understandable, seem somehow out of proportion with the present experience, sometimes even beyond what an understanding of this-life trauma can account for.
Yet, before the intense exercise of using all my mental decoding powers over an extended time to shine a spotlight on these patterns, I struggled to validate them. My relational issues felt blurry — recurring cycles of dissatisfaction that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, where I was always chasing the problem at hand rather than getting at the root cause.
I certainly didn’t have a clue that including myself in a big way in the equation of my relationships was the reason I’d incarnated on Earth. At best, I felt like my struggles with human connection were a side quest, a problem that got in the way of other projects I cared about more. But since I reorganized my view of my own life’s trajectory using my Nodal story as the reference point, everything — not just my relationships, but everything-everything — began to make sense. Suddenly, I unlocked a sense of ease and clarity I’d never known before.
South Node Loops
Our South Node qualities are easy-to-access strengths: we’re just that good at embodying them. But they come at a price. We’ve not only mastered the strengths of our South Node placement, but in a past life, we also leaned heavily on its more dysfunctional side. This is where our unresolved karma comes from.
However adaptive that was for us then, we’ve reached the end of where the South Node logic can carry us, and the more we let it guide our actions — easy and obvious though it might feel — the less rewards we’ll reap. South Node guided decisions tend to carry this weird double-sided thing to them: on the one hand, we can easily get “results” from them. But those results feel hollow, or like “ehhhhhhh, yeah, good things came from this but… I’m not happy”.
At worst, letting the South Node lead us is like being under the influence. We end up in situations that seemed like a good idea at the time and yet, disaster ensues. Doors close. Things don’t go our way at all, and once we sober up, we realize the brilliant idea that started it all was the worst idea ever.
Other ways the South node unwittingly keeps us stuck:
- As we made a soul agreement to develop our North Node’s qualities before birth, our life’s “plot” doesn’t seem to move forward when we choose our habitual South Node solutions. Instead we find ourselves in eerily similar situations over and over which don’t work out in our favor.
- The South Node is an arena of life we’ve explored and integrated to the point of soul-level boredom. There’s no new spark or new information for us in that field for the time being.
- The South Node can, for some of us, represent a longing or desire that’s forever unfulfilled. The way to fulfillment will invariably come from the North Node, but if we’re trapped in the circular logic of the South Node, this path forward will be in our blindspot. In this way we might find ourselves trapped in a mental-emotional prison where what we want feels impossible to attain. This feeling, objectively speaking, isn’t reality, but it feels just as solid to us. Next time you find yourself begrudging how you can’t have what you most desire, suspect your South Node before you decide on what’s really true, possible and available!
The good news is, as we consciously focus our energies in doing things the North Node way, we will continue to express the positive qualities of our South Node, almost as a background process.
The North Node: Guiding Star
Understanding and applying our North Node placement can become our biggest “cheat code” for life. It is the missing link, the healing potion, the antidote to our South Node’s dark side, the place where our karmic resolution must come from. It’s always the opposite sign and house to our South Node, so it represents the complementary perspective in life.
But it requires a lot of change on our part: a lot of courage and willingness too, plus a healthy dose of faith in the Universe, to get us to risk taking the path least traveled, the uncharted territory it hints at for our Soul.
One way the North Node brings ease into our life is through cutting through noise. Choosing to focus on a defined series of themes in our self-development can be a real blessing for those of us who have been distracted or led astray by the myriad teachers and teachings out there. Especially, as you’ll see below, when our South Node’s gravity already tends to confuse us as to which direction to go in, and what wisdom to follow, having the North Node rather in black and white can feel clear, orienting and helpful. This is not to say we’ll abandon all complexity and variety for all time, but rather (for those of us who really need those qualities), we’ll use the North Node as an organizing principle through which to coordinate our forays into complexity and variety.
Our North Node prescription involves qualities and ways of being that we are quite unskilled at. We’re new at them, and in their newness, they open up a whole different lens to see life through, and new possibilities for our existence, even when we engage with them in small or clumsy ways. Where the South Node feels hollow, the North Node feels rewarding and satisfying, once we find ways to get past an initial resistance to it.
Typically I see two tendencies as we first set out to align with the North Node.
One, we’re totally oblivious to the North Node as a possibility in the world. We just struggle to grasp how it could even work for us to be/behave that particular way. It’s a blurry smudge in a world of sharp definition and contrast: it’s that foreign to us at a Soul level. We need a lot of hand holding, repetition and help putting the pieces together of how exactly we’ll take our next steps in the logic of the North Node, rather than defaulting to the South Node. We’re building up that feeling of contrast and definition in a place of the Universe that is truly terra incognita to us.
Two looks more like having a clear vision of what the North Node looks and feels like to us — but never giving ourselves permission to go there.
Many of my very sensitive clients have heard the tantalizing signals from their Soul, beckoning them in the right-for-them direction since they were very young. But repeatedly, people and circumstances seem to thwart them, and/or they internalize the message that, somehow, that (perfectly aligned) path is actually not right or available to them.
Sometimes, bizarrely, we experience a mixture of both these phenomena, too.
The thing is that, unlike everything else in our chart, the North Node is not a given. It’s an invitation, a question mark, left completely to our free will and agency to pursue. We won’t be rewarded internally for not following its calling; but others might mirror to us that the South Node — that thing we’re practically born good at — is what we should be putting all our attention on.
We need to actively seek the North Node out.
And because it’s rather foreign to our Soul, we might not feel comfortable at all with doing so, or we might go overboard with it in foolish ways as we learn to dial it in. So we need to stay with the process, through a period of mindful discomfort, until we start to feel how our North Node brings positive change into our life.
Let me illustrate some of this by sharing an anecdote from my teen years:
You already know my North Node is in Aries, associated with archetypes such as The Warrior and The Hunter. In the old-fashioned gender logic of Western culture, Aries is rather connected with masculinity, whereas Libra represents femininity by contrast. Well, in my early teens, my parents got it in their heads that they wanted me, a very un-physical girl, to have some martial arts training, so I could stay safe as I went out of the house alone more. An excellent idea for an Aries North Node kid! I wasn’t enthused, though.
I signed up for an Aikido class — whose underlying philosophy of peacemaking and community— definitely spoke to my Libra South Node, and helped me get over my South Node suspicion of anything to do with “fighting” enough to get in the door of the class.
Not only was the practice physically challenging, but just a few weeks after starting, I became the only girl in class, as most girls and women who had first joined disappeared not long after. As a short, skinny girl, I was surrounded by tall, grown-ass men, and class felt intimidating not just because my skill level wasn’t up to par. The men were safe, nice people, but my instincts said differently.
Life had gifted me with a chance to practice my North Node both symbolically and literally: learn to defend myself, be more physical, and more assertive in a space filled with both masculine energy and male bodies. And let me tell you, it was hell. While the weekly lessons did get me in touch with my Aries energy, in the end, it was too hard to sustain it. A few months in, after my first tournament, I quit.
I want to be clear that the experience was useful to my karmic process — even the quitting taught me something — but I was just too young to direct my soul growth in that way just yet. Perhaps, in another timeline, I got in contact with my inner Warrior and was able to channel that Aries energy in a purposeful way from such a young age.
In this timeline, I only started to connect with it more consciously in my late 20’s, as I began to learn that I had a right to my emotional needs and to being “the healthy kind of selfish” — in other words, embracing I did have a right to self-defense in a more metaphorical sense. This is a much more typical arc of soul-development — we often start to seek out our North Node after our first Saturn Return, when life “gets serious” at around age 30.
Putting The North Node in Action
We can approach our North Node on basic two fronts.
One, we can practice embodying its qualities in all of our meaningful life decisions. In my case, my main past life story was one of disempowering relationships. In this lifetime, I can dedicate myself to incorporate and apply Aries North Node assertiveness, whenever I felt uncomfortable in an interpersonal situation, for instance. Or to be much more direct and straightforward in saying what I want and don’t want. All of these are North Node skills applied to real life problems, in real moments with real consequences.
There’s another way to practice too, and that’s through a kind of play. By purposefully creating something like a sandbox for ourselves, a microcosm to experience the energies and qualities of our North Node. We can do this by mindfully engaging in the typical, (even pop-astrology stereotypical) activities associated with each sign (and/or house, but I’ll write about only signs for now for simplicity’s sake).
This is like a virtual lab, where we can play and get acquainted with the sign’s energetic signature, so we can take those qualities into ourselves and apply them elsewhere.
For a fellow Aries North Node, a sandbox experience of the could indeed be a martial arts class, like I shared above, or bungee jumping, or any sport that gets us in touch with a fiery part of ourselves.
For a Leo North Node, instead, the virtual lab might be taking a theater or improv class, where they experience being “the center of attention” on purpose, and become mindfully attuned to Leo qualities and ways of being. A Sagittarius North Node’s sandbox might be to take a trip, the farther away from home the better. And so on.
Next Steps
If you’re unfamiliar with your Nodes, go ahead and find them on Astro.com or Cafeastrology.com. A lot of the information online on the Nodes is usable information, so go on a search and see what resonates with you (with discernment, of course 🙂 ), as a starting point.
If you already know some about your Nodes, but could use some structure to help you act on what you know, I recommend the book Astrology for The Soul by Jan Spiller. I like to approach this book as a bit of a workbook. Spiller’s style of astrology does pigeon-hole a bit, which isn’t my style at all, but if you filter those parts out, there’s still plenty to work with.
I suggest reading the chapter for your North Node and asking yourself, “which are the top three issues highlighted here that I feel ready to work on?”, and then proceeding to journal and choose doable-action steps that you can track.
You can try choosing a North Node sandbox for yourself and as you engage in that container, journaling your responses, noticing what feels foreign, documenting the experience and what it brings up for you. This dialogue between yourself and the experience can inform where you need to go next with your North Node journey.
I also recommend reading Steven Forrest’s Yesterday Sky and try putting together the clues of your own most relevant past life through your chart. He has a ton of educational material and structured learning programs, so if astrology is calling your name in a bigger way, you’ll find lots to go on from his teachings.
Last but not least, having a professional evolutionary astrology reading can be very helpful, illuminating and validating! This can be a great next step if you’ve already explored your Nodes at length and would like some new perspectives to go on.
I am always delighted to offer one-off readings, but I also work with clients over longer periods of time in integrating and embodying their North Node through astrology-based coaching. That being said, you don’t have to work with me — there are many wonderful evolutionary astrologers out there. One of them is my amazing husband, Merlin Györy at Fairy Cottage Astrology. Or you can find a list of evolutionary astrologers around the world here.
If you do want to work with me to learn more about your Soul’s life plan through the lens of astrology, a good starting point is to book either a one-hour North Node reading, or a more comprenhensive 2- 2.5 hr Natal Chart Reading. Email me at hello@karineglinton.com to schedule, or if you have questions.
