The 12 North Node signs and their South Nodes
The two nodes always sit in opposite signs, so there are only six axes, and each can be read from either end. Your South Node sign is described on the page for the opposite sign, in its South Node section.
| North Node | South Node | Share of birth dates | The North Node asks for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☊ ♒︎ Aquarius | ☋ ♌︎ Leo | 8.08% | community, ideas, friendship, detachment, originality |
| ☊ ♑︎ Capricorn | ☋ ♋︎ Cancer | 8.08% | ambition, structure, authority, discipline, responsibility |
| ☊ ♐︎ Sagittarius | ☋ ♊︎ Gemini | 8.08% | meaning, belief, travel, vision, faith |
| ☊ ♏︎ Scorpio | ☋ ♉︎ Taurus | 8.08% | depth, trust, transformation, intimacy, letting go |
| ☊ ♎︎ Libra | ☋ ♈︎ Aries | 8.08% | partnership, fairness, cooperation, diplomacy, balance |
| ☊ ♍︎ Virgo | ☋ ♓︎ Pisces | 8.08% | craft, routine, discernment, usefulness, health |
| ☊ ♌︎ Leo | ☋ ♒︎ Aquarius | 8.08% | heart, creativity, visibility, warmth, self-expression |
| ☊ ♋︎ Cancer | ☋ ♑︎ Capricorn | 8.08% | belonging, care, vulnerability, family, receptivity |
| ☊ ♊︎ Gemini | ☋ ♐︎ Sagittarius | 8.08% | curiosity, listening, learning, conversation, flexibility |
| ☊ ♉︎ Taurus | ☋ ♏︎ Scorpio | 8.56% | stability, patience, worth, simplicity, groundedness |
| ☊ ♈︎ Aries | ☋ ♎︎ Libra | 9.69% | courage, independence, initiative, self-trust, directness |
| ☊ ♓︎ Pisces | ☋ ♍︎ Virgo | 9.04% | trust, compassion, surrender, imagination, acceptance |
Rows run in the order the node moves, starting from its current sign. Shares: our count of all 35,064 birth dates from 1930 to 2025, at noon UTC, mean node. Aries, Pisces and Taurus come out ahead only because 96 years is a little more than five trips of the node around the zodiac, so these three signs got a sixth pass, or part of one, inside our date range.
North Node sign dates, 1930 to 2035
Find the row that holds your birth date. The node moves backward through the zodiac, so the signs run in reverse order, Aries after Taurus, Pisces after Aries.
| North Node · South Node | Birth dates |
|---|---|
| ☊ ♒︎ Aquarius ☋ Leo | Jul 26, 1933 to Feb 11, 1935 Mar 6, 1952 to Sep 23, 1953 Oct 17, 1970 to May 4, 1972 May 28, 1989 to Dec 15, 1990 Jan 7, 2008 to Jul 26, 2009 Aug 19, 2026 to Mar 6, 2028 (now) |
| ☊ ♑︎ Capricorn ☋ Cancer | Feb 12, 1935 to Aug 31, 1936 Sep 24, 1953 to Apr 12, 1955 May 5, 1972 to Nov 22, 1973 Dec 16, 1990 to Jul 3, 1992 Jul 27, 2009 to Feb 12, 2011 Mar 7, 2028 to Sep 24, 2029 |
| ☊ ♐︎ Sagittarius ☋ Gemini | Sep 1, 1936 to Mar 20, 1938 Apr 13, 1955 to Oct 30, 1956 Nov 23, 1973 to Jun 11, 1975 Jul 4, 1992 to Jan 21, 1994 Feb 13, 2011 to Sep 1, 2012 Sep 25, 2029 to Apr 13, 2031 |
| ☊ ♏︎ Scorpio ☋ Taurus | Mar 21, 1938 to Oct 8, 1939 Oct 31, 1956 to May 19, 1958 Jun 12, 1975 to Dec 29, 1976 Jan 22, 1994 to Aug 10, 1995 Sep 2, 2012 to Mar 22, 2014 Apr 14, 2031 to Oct 31, 2032 |
| ☊ ♎︎ Libra ☋ Aries | Oct 9, 1939 to Apr 27, 1941 May 20, 1958 to Dec 7, 1959 Dec 30, 1976 to Jul 18, 1978 Aug 11, 1995 to Feb 27, 1997 Mar 23, 2014 to Oct 9, 2015 Nov 1, 2032 to May 20, 2034 |
| ☊ ♍︎ Virgo ☋ Pisces | Apr 28, 1941 to Nov 14, 1942 Dec 8, 1959 to Jun 25, 1961 Jul 19, 1978 to Feb 5, 1980 Feb 28, 1997 to Sep 16, 1998 Oct 10, 2015 to Apr 28, 2017 May 21, 2034 to Dec 8, 2035 |
| ☊ ♌︎ Leo ☋ Aquarius | Nov 15, 1942 to Jun 3, 1944 Jun 26, 1961 to Jan 13, 1963 Feb 6, 1980 to Aug 24, 1981 Sep 17, 1998 to Apr 5, 2000 Apr 29, 2017 to Nov 15, 2018 Dec 9, 2035 to after 2035 |
| ☊ ♋︎ Cancer ☋ Capricorn | Jun 4, 1944 to Dec 21, 1945 Jan 14, 1963 to Aug 2, 1964 Aug 25, 1981 to Mar 14, 1983 Apr 6, 2000 to Oct 23, 2001 Nov 16, 2018 to Jun 4, 2020 |
| ☊ ♊︎ Gemini ☋ Sagittarius | Dec 22, 1945 to Jul 11, 1947 Aug 3, 1964 to Feb 19, 1966 Mar 15, 1983 to Sep 30, 1984 Oct 24, 2001 to May 13, 2003 Jun 5, 2020 to Dec 22, 2021 |
| ☊ ♉︎ Taurus ☋ Scorpio | before 1930 to Jun 18, 1930 Jul 12, 1947 to Jan 27, 1949 Feb 20, 1966 to Sep 9, 1967 Oct 1, 1984 to Apr 20, 1986 May 14, 2003 to Nov 29, 2004 Dec 23, 2021 to Jul 12, 2023 |
| ☊ ♈︎ Aries ☋ Libra | Jun 19, 1930 to Jan 5, 1932 Jan 28, 1949 to Aug 17, 1950 Sep 10, 1967 to Mar 28, 1969 Apr 21, 1986 to Nov 8, 1987 Nov 30, 2004 to Jun 19, 2006 Jul 13, 2023 to Jan 28, 2025 |
| ☊ ♓︎ Pisces ☋ Virgo | Jan 6, 1932 to Jul 25, 1933 Aug 18, 1950 to Mar 5, 1952 Mar 29, 1969 to Oct 16, 1970 Nov 9, 1987 to May 27, 1989 Jun 20, 2006 to Jan 6, 2008 Jan 29, 2025 to Aug 18, 2026 |
Mean node, our own calculation: the days when the node stood in the sign at noon UTC, the same dates as on each North Node sign page. A change of sign can fall on the evening before in US time zones, so if you were born on the first or last day of a range, use the calculator with your birth time. True-node tables, such as Cafe Astrology's, can list dates up to about a month away from these.
What the North Node and South Node mean
The nodes are not bodies. The Moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees to the Sun's apparent path, the ecliptic. It crosses that path at two points: the North Node, where the Moon crosses going north, and the South Node, where it crosses going south. The two are always 180 degrees apart. The line between them turns slowly backward, and one full trip around the zodiac takes 18.6 years.
Astrologers read the pair as an axis. The South Node sign describes what comes easily, the reflex you fall back on when you are tired or unsure. The sign opposite it describes the less familiar way of acting that the chart asks you to practice. The modern reading treats this as a direction to lean toward. It keeps the South Node skills as something to build on.
Some schools, evolutionary astrology among them, read the South Node as memory from past lives. That is a belief of those schools, and a chart cannot show it. In Vedic astrology the two are Rahu and Ketu. They are read with their own meanings.
How to find your North Node
A birth date is enough for the sign. The mean node drifts about three minutes of arc a day and spends around 18.6 months in a sign, so on nearly every birthday it stays in one sign from midnight to midnight. The exception is the day it changes sign, and then your birth time decides. The calculator checks your whole birthday across US time zones and tells you if you were born on one of those days.
The house needs your birth time and city, because the houses turn once a day while the node hardly moves. Our birth chart calculator puts the node in its house along with the planets. Open the birth chart calculator for it.
Mean node or true node?
There are two ways to place the node. The mean node is a formula that smooths the motion into a steady backward drift; the version we use is the one Jean Meeus gives in Astronomical Algorithms. The true node follows the Moon's orbit as it is at that moment. The orbit wobbles under the Sun's pull, so the true node rocks around the mean one and now and then moves forward for a few days.
Both are standard, and chart sites pick one or let you choose. Our sign pages and dates use the mean node. The calculator shows both, so you can see whether yours is one of the birthdays where they disagree.
- Dates where the signs differ
- 3.3 in 100
- Typical gap
- 0.96°
- Largest gap, 1930–2025
- 1.96°
Our comparison of the two nodes on all 35,064 dates from 1930 to 2025, at noon UTC. To check our true node, we compared 18 of its sign changes from 1949 to 2007 with Cafe Astrology's true-node table: 17 fell within one day of theirs.
The North Node in the houses
The two nodes always sit in opposite houses, so the houses work in six pairs: the 1st and 7th (yourself and your partner), the 2nd and 8th (what you own and what you share), the 3rd and 9th (everyday talk and far-off belief), the 4th and 10th (home and career), the 5th and 11th (your own pleasures and the group's plans), the 6th and 12th (daily duty and retreat).
Read the pair as a direction. A North Node in the 8th points toward shared money, trust and closeness, away from the 2nd-house habit of relying only on what you own. In the 12th it points toward rest, solitude and letting go, away from a 6th-house life run by lists. In the 10th it leans toward public work and leaves the 4th, the comfort of home, as the place you return to.
Your own house pair comes from the birth chart calculator; what each house covers is on our houses page.
North Node return and eclipses
The mean node goes around the zodiac in 18.6 years, so it comes back to its birth position near ages 18.6, 37.2, 55.8 and 74.4. Astrologers call this the nodal return and often tie it to a change of direction. Halfway between, near 9.3, 27.9, 46.5 and 65.1, the moving node sits on your South Node, which some astrologers call the reverse nodal return. The calculator gives your own dates.
Eclipses happen only when a New Moon or Full Moon falls near one of the nodes. The Sun passes each node about once a year, so eclipse seasons come roughly every six months, and the eclipses of any year fall in or next to the signs the nodes are moving through.
| Next eclipses | Kind | Sign | Near |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 6, 2027 annular solar | annular solar | ♒︎ Aquarius | ☊ North |
| Feb 20, 2027 penumbral lunar | penumbral lunar | ♍︎ Virgo | ☋ South |
| Jul 18, 2027 penumbral lunar | penumbral lunar | ♑︎ Capricorn | ☊ North |
| Aug 2, 2027 total solar | total solar | ♌︎ Leo | ☋ South |
| Aug 17, 2027 penumbral lunar | penumbral lunar | ♒︎ Aquarius | ☊ North |
| Jan 12, 2028 partial lunar | partial lunar | ♋︎ Cancer | ☋ South |
Eclipse dates and kinds from astronomy-engine for the date this page was built, in UTC; the sign is the Moon's at the moment of greatest eclipse. Times, visibility and what each one means for your sign: eclipses 2026–2027.
North Node and South Node symbols
☊ is the North Node and ☋ the South Node, the same shape turned upside down. Medieval astrologers called them the Dragon's Head (Caput Draconis) and the Dragon's Tail (Cauda Draconis), after the old picture of a dragon that swallows the Sun or the Moon during an eclipse. A chart may show only ☊, labeled "Node" or "NN", since the South Node is always exactly opposite.
☊North Node☋South Node
Questions about the North and South Node
What is my North Node?
It is the sign the Moon's north-crossing point was in when you were born. Enter your birth date in the calculator on this page. The South Node is the opposite sign.
How do I find my South Node?
Take the sign opposite your North Node: Aries and Libra, Taurus and Scorpio, Gemini and Sagittarius, Cancer and Capricorn, Leo and Aquarius, Virgo and Pisces. The calculator shows both.
Is the North Node karmic, or about past lives?
Some astrologers read it that way and call the nodes karmic. That is an interpretation. No measurement backs it. On this site we read it as a direction of growth, and the South Node as habits you already have.
What sign is the North Node in right now?
The box at the top of this page shows the current sign and degree for the day the page was last built, with the date the node moves into the next sign.
Is the North Node always retrograde?
The mean node always moves backward through the zodiac. The true node moves backward most of the time. For short stretches it turns forward.
Is Rahu the North Node?
Yes. In Vedic astrology Rahu is the North Node and Ketu the South. The Vedic sign is usually one sign earlier because it uses the sidereal zodiac.
Do I need my birth time?
Only if the node changed sign on your birthday, which happens on about 2 of every 1,000 days, or if you want the house. The calculator tells you when it matters.
What does it mean if my partner's planets touch my nodes?
In synastry, a partner's Sun, Moon or Venus on your North Node is read as a pull toward growth. On your South Node it is read as instant familiarity. Each node sign page has a compatibility section.
Sources
- Astronomy Engine: the open-source ephemeris library behind our planet positions, dates and statistics
- Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (Willmann-Bell, 1991): formulas for the ascendant, midheaven, mean node and mean Lilith
- How we create our readings: our own calculation of sign dates, positions and the 1930 to 2025 statistics
Other planets and calculators
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