North Node/Karma Only

You don’t have to believe in past lives in order to benefit from these interpretations. Personally, I take a psychological, growth-oriented approach to astrology. Although the term “karma” implies the issues that a soul brings into this life, one can just as well consider it to be an individual’s expectations, early life conditioning, inherited factors, and predispositions.

Prior to conception, the soul exists karma-less and free, with a dim outside awareness of the coming life. Between conception and birth, however, things change fast as ancestral and collective karmas imprint the soul, laying a foundation for the personal karmas which come later, at birth.

But there is another more basic way to learn about your karma and past life experience. It is by knowing your “rising sign,” which is also known as the “ascendant.”