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North Node
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The North Node is not a body but a crossing point. The Moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees to the ecliptic, the Sun's apparent path, so twice a month the Moon crosses it: going north at the North Node, going south at the South Node. The two nodes always lie exactly opposite each other, and they are where eclipses happen — a New Moon or Full Moon near the nodes darkens the Sun or the Moon.
True and mean node
The nodes drift backwards through the zodiac, completing a full circle in about 18.6 years and spending roughly eighteen months in each sign. The mean node smooths that motion into a steady backward step of about three minutes of arc a day, so it is always retrograde. The true node follows the Moon's real, wobbling orbit and occasionally appears to stand still or move forward for a few days. The charts here use the true node; the two are rarely more than a degree and a half apart.
In the tradition
Older astrologers called the North Node the Dragon's Head. Lilly describes it as of the nature of Jupiter and Venus — a point of increase that enlarges whatever it touches — and the South Node, the Dragon's Tail, as of the nature of Saturn and Mars, diminishing. A planet conjunct the Head was thought to gain in strength or prominence. The nodes hold no domicile and rule no sign; they cast no aspects of their own, and in the traditional dignity scheme they have no standing. A few later authors proposed exaltations for them, but these were never part of the core system.
How it is read
Modern astrology reads the nodes as an axis. The North Node's sign and house describe what a person is drawn toward and grows by — often unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfortable, but nourishing — while the South Node opposite describes what comes easily and is already known. Many astrologers frame this as a direction of development across a life; others, closer to the tradition, read the North Node simply as a place where things gather and increase. Either way it inclines rather than assigns: it suggests where effort tends to feel worth it.
A North Node in the 10th, for example, inclines toward public life and responsibility, with the South Node in the 4th pointing to the comfort of home and family to be balanced against it.
In transit
As the nodal axis moves through a sign over about a year and a half, it marks the season of eclipses in those signs. When it crosses a natal planet or angle, that planet's themes are often emphasised, through people met and circumstances that seem to arrive of their own accord. The return of the nodes to their natal place, about every 18½ years, is often read as a turning point.