Western astrology reads the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the Sun's path as a life direction: the south node is what you already know how to do, the north node is what you are supposed to learn.

They are always exactly opposite each other and they move backwards, taking 18.6 years to circle the chart — the same cycle that governs eclipse seasons. The past-life framing is twentieth-century and largely Theosophical; the nodes themselves have been in charts since Hellenistic astrology, where they were read as eclipse points and nothing gentler.