Dena DeCastro is a professional astrologer, writer, and teacher. She offers individual astrology readings and mentors those who wish to take their astrological knowledge to the next level.

Dena teaches us what our north and south nodes can tell us about our karmic lessons and our life purpose.

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Dena:

So, when I was young in the '70s, my parents were both kind of hippie, you know, Bohemian, interested in all of that stuff. My dad actually read tarot cards, not for a living, but just as a hobby. My mom had a close friend who was an astrologer and they would sit at the dining room table and look at charts and dish on men and I was just fascinated, always.

I would browse the books in the bookshelf. I was kind of an early reader, so I would just kind of nerd out on all the astrology books that my parents had. And so I just immediately, you know, I came from somewhere. I have a feeling I came from a past-life, probably. But this innate interest in astrology and the planets and even space and stars, was something that was just there when I was very little. I would say, starting at about 5.

So I went on, throughout my teenage years, read a lot of the usual books. You know, Linda Goodman's 'Sun Signs' was one of them. That was like my bible when I was in junior high and I grew to be able to read charts, more about late high school age, college age, and I would practice on my friends and family.

It just grew and it was always with me.

Interesting side note, during that time when I was about 8 or 9, my mom became a born-again Christian, so she eschewed all of that. You know, tarot, astrology, all of that was out. And it was looked at as, you know, she said it's the dark arts. I don't think she used that word. That's more of a Harry Potter term actually. The Dark Arts.

It was forbidden in our house and so I had to do it surreptitiously for awhile. But then she eventually switched back and became more open to, I would say, early New Age ideas or occult ideas. So there was a few years in there where it was like, on the sly, I had to do my astrology stuff.

And then when I got into my late 20s, I had a friend of mine that suggested, 'You COULD do this for a living!'

Could I? Could I really?

So I put out my shingle and started charging for readings when I was right at my Saturn return, which is 28, 29 years old. And have been doing that ever since!

Slade:

Wow.

So I have to ask you, you started way before we had computer software to do this stuff.

Dena:

Yeah.

Slade:

So at what point in your career did the technology come in and play a part? Or does it, at all?

Dena:

It did. Like, in the '90s, there were ways that you could order charts on, via the internet or mail order. That was kind of the way you did it. It's kind of funny.

I learned to cast charts by hand in the late '90s finally. I had always had charts given to me so that was how I did it in the early days, like in my teenage years. Like, somebody already had a chart and I'd look at it.

Slade:

Oh, okay!

Alright. So you're much more about the interpretation than the castings, even at that early age.

Dena:

Yes, right.

Slade:

Okay! I can relate to that. That would be true for me as well. I NEVER learned to cast a chart by hand, just for the record.

Dena:

It takes so long. It really is an onerous process. I know how to do it. If you had me do it today, gosh it's been maybe 18 years since I've actually cast a chart by hand. So it would be a tricky but it's good I think for astrologers to at least learn how to do. At least once. To get a sense of viscerally what's going on.

Because the thing with technology now is that it detaches us from what the actual mechanics are of the solar system and the planets in relation to the earth. And for some reason, when you learn to cast a chart, you get more of a sense of, okay, the ascendant, for example, the rising sign, is the rising sign. Because that's what's actually rising on the Eastern horizon. So there's an example of that. That it's rooted to the physical world.

With software, we can forget that sometimes and it just becomes a piece of paper in front of us. It's like, that's the glyph of Venus, but oh, there's a Venus in the sky as well. So that's a difference.

But I think for time and for efficiency, you can't beat technology, for sure.

Slade:

No, definitely not.

And I'm mostly just interested in, like if somebody can give me a list of what their planets are in and what houses everything's in, that's enough for me to work on.

Dena:

Yeah!

Slade:

I will say though, that I love the natal chart graphic - the cool geometric thing, and I think everybody's a little bit in love with that, right? There's a mystique about it.

Dena:

Yeah, certainly! The glyphs, the symbols, they're very beautiful. They're just aesthetically pleasing and it looks like something from the Renaissance, or it just has that kind of ancient feel and evokes that. So I do think there's the appeal of it.

And I can, like you, if I just know somebody's birthday and they don't even have a time, I can look in ephemeris and say, 'Here's where all your planets were.' Maybe excepting the moon because it moves very fast but everything else I can pretty much know, that's where it was. Even with that I can get so much information.

But having the visual of the chart works better for me. Just being able to see it laid out.

Slade:

That is so cool.

I was very fascinated by that as a child. I had an aunt in the '70s who was friends with Jean Dickson.

Dena:

Oh wow!

Slade:

Do you remember her?

Dena:

Yeah, I do!

Slade:

She had - It's so funny when you were talking about your childhood experience of kind of going through the books in your parents' library. I used to go through HER books when I would visit. She lived in Florida. And when we would go down to visit, she had this library of '70s new age, feminist everything. And some of her books were astrology books that were autographed by Jean Dickson. And I always thought that was the most glamourous thing in the whole world, right?

Dena:

Very glamourous, for sure.

She's probably one of THE most famous astrologers, at least from that era. She's a name that everybody knows.

Slade:

Right.

And Linda Goodman's books. I remember those as well.

So one of the things I'm really excited to talk to you about is kind of your niche of astrology, which is the connection between astrology and past lives. And also how the nodes play into that, and karmic patterns in the chart.

I just would love to open up the floor and hear you talk about these relationships.

Dena:

You know, I'll start by saying, when I started practicing astrology, which was the late 1998, 1999, I really was doing the typical descriptive astrology. For example, your sun is in Aries. You are fiery, spontaneous, brash and bold. You know, something like that.

That started to feel a little limiting to me.

So I was searching... A few years into doing it, around 2002, 2001, 2002, I started to search for what more can I learn? I just felt this impulse that I needed to find a different approach, or another layer to my system. And so I went to an astrology conference here in the Northwest called NORWAC. It's the Northwest Astrology Conference.

Steven Forrest was speaking there and he and Jeffrey Wolf Green are two astrologers that really founded this school of thought within astrology called Evolutionary Astrology. It's called 'evolutionary' because it is based on the premise that our souls do reincarnate and they move from lifetime to lifetime, learning lessons and evolving. The intention is evolution.

And with that, the nodes, the south node represents the past life or karmic patterns, and north node represents what we are here to learn to become or to embrace. And the whole point of it is evolution. The whole point of it is growth and change. And it made so much more sense to me than the idea that we're just static. That we're born with this chart and that's just who we are for the rest of our lives.

And the other main component, or the foundational belief in this type of astrology is the idea of free will. And that we make choices in our lifetimes that impact where we're going, the lessons we have to learn, and how we respond to those lessons with our free will really determines how we move along our path. How we move toward our Soul Purpose.

So this all resonated with me.

I had always believed in reincarnation. It's one of those beliefs that you can't really explain. It was a knowing. I just felt a knowing about it.

I will say that, it's not that there isn't proof for reincarnation. There's a lot of good case studies out there and proof for reincarnation. But it is one of those things that people take on faith, and some people have a strong reaction one way or the other to that idea.

But reincarnation is very much inherent in this niche of astrology that I practice. It's a foundational piece of it.

That all being said, I went to study with Steven Forrest at his apprenticeship program. I did that for a few years and embraced this path within astrology, because it really resonated with what I already had felt and believed for most of my life.

What it is that I think this kind of astrology offers that's a little different to some branches is the south node karmic patterns can point out: Here are the things in a past life that you experienced, and also that vexed you, or that upset you, or that's left unresolved at the time you left that life. And then when you came into this life as a soul, you carry some of that baggage with you. We call that 'karma', and that's a memory. An emotional memory of what went on. But we don't consciously remember that.

So in this life, our work is to learn to release those old patterns and not to get stuck in repeating those karmic situations. But we're inclined to want to do so because we tend, as humans, to want to repeat what we've done before and what's comfortable. Even if it's painful. It can feel comfortable because it's familiar.

So the north node points to, well what's the medicine for that? What can we do?

That's where free will comes in. What can we do in THIS life to pull ourselves out of those old stuck patterns of the past? And the north node offers the medicine, the way, for us to move away from staying stuck and stagnant.

So remember that the key point is growth. The key point is evolution. All of us, if we're born, we have karma. If we're born, we're also a living thing that needs to grow and evolve. If we stop doing that, if we stagnate on a soul level, we feel unfulfilled and bored and unhappy.

So when clients come to me, what they're often looking for is, I'm kind of stuck. Or I'm in a place in my life where I'm trying to make a transition and I feel like I'm scared and I can't. What's blocking me? Or they're just, they have that general malaise. I just don't have the joy for life. I'm feeling like I'm not on my path but I can't really figure out what to do to get on it, or to get back to it.

And so the nodes are very powerful to look at that and say, Okay, well here's what's in your way. Here's the karmic patterns of the past. Here is where you can get stuck very easily, repeating these patterns. And then here, the north node is what you're here to learn and to embrace. And the more you move TO that, even if it's scary, even if it feels challenging, which it will, the more you move toward that, the more you make choices in that direction, the more fulfillment and peace and joy for life you can gain back.

So that's the overview with how I see it.

Slade:

So if I tell you what my north node is, can you tell me... Since I'm the one that's here talking to you, we'll use my chart as an example.

Dena:

Absolutely!

Slade:

I have a north node in Pisces. What can you tell me about that?

Dena:

Yes!

Well I can speak to that because so do I!

Slade:

Oh, interesting!

Dena:

So let me just say about that too. The nodes go to a new sign about every year and a half. So you can know that if you're born within a close time frame to someone, that you very likely have the same nodes. They're are like these mini generations. 1.5 years of the same. And that pattern repeats every 18, 19 years. They will come back around to the same nodes.

So yeah. So we have the same ones. I think we're both born in '69, right?

Slade:

Yes! July 23rd.

Dena:

Oh, gosh! Same month! Ohmygoodness.

Slade:

Wow.

Dena:

I'm July 8th.

Slade:

Okay.

Dena:

So I can speak to this pretty well.

But just because we have the same nodes doesn't mean like I know everything about this, because I'm working with the same struggles, right?

Slade:

Okay.

Dena:

So if you have the north node in Pisces, that means you have the south node in Virgo. The nodes are always opposite signs to each other, always at 180 degrees. So once you know one, you can figure out the other.

Let's start with the past-life karmic pattern for you.

South node in Virgo is really attached in past lives to doing things perfectly because you may ha