Their punishment was to grant him immortality with both parts of the past (Ketu) and future (Rahu) always being a part of him.

To make a long mythological story short, a demon wanted immortality and tricked the gods into getting it-which angered them because he was not in line to receive such powers. In Vedic astrology, the North Node is called Ratu (Dragon’s Head) and the South Node is called Ketu (Dragon’s Tail).

The nodes are also how we know what will happen to us during the eclipses, based on both our personal birth charts’ nodes and the transiting nodes that affect the collective as a whole. (The past dictates the future-if we embrace our karmic lessons. In our charts, the different placements and signs show us our past and current destiny. Every year and a half, the lunar nodes change signs. Both tell a story of fate and destiny, in this life (the North Node) and your past lives (the South Node). In astrology, the lunar nodes of the Moon are divided into two: the North Node and the South Node.

Over the course of a year and a half, the nodes transit through each axis (the nodes are always in two opposite signs-for example, if the North Node is in Leo, we will be dealing with the South Node in Aquarius at the same time). The nodes denote the spiritual paths that we should move toward and let go of as well as the type of energy we are working with. This happens a few times a year, during which we experience the astrological phenomenon known as eclipses. The lunar nodes (aka the Nodes of Destiny or the Nodes of Fate) are the points in the sky where the Moon and Sun cross paths.

Astrology chart with degrees