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In Wonderland:
The 12th House In Your Chart
by Dana Gerhardt
 Sometimes
I think my job as astrologer is to act as White Rabbit, bidding my clients to
fall into the wonderland of their own worlds, worlds magically described by the
houses of the chart. Some have rooms with keys too big and potions that will
shrink us; others have windows on gardens that we're forever trying to reach, or
threshold guardians like the Caterpillar who demand "Who-o-o arrre you-oo!
"These are the rooms that we'll continually revisit and reinvent whenever
we study the houses of our natal charts, or when we cycle through them via our
transits and progressions. They become our very own Wonderlands!
The Twelfth House
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The 12th house has a somewhat
unhappy reputation. This is the part of the chart where hidden enemies reside,
along with frustrations, limits, confinement, self-undoing, and loss. It's a
house of powerful consequences, but few of us are willing to put much attention
here. And that's the problem. The consequences of our 12th often fly straight
out of our blind spot -- we never see them coming. It's like the story of
the First Emperor of China.
The First Emperor of Chin was an
ambitious, cruel, and powerful man who conquered plenty of territory and greatly
expanded the Chinese empire. He was anxious to conquer death as well, and to
that end located an esoteric spiritual book that contained the secret of
everlasting life. The book, however, was written in cryptic language, and the
emperor could understand just one sentence: "The one who shall come to
destroy Chin is Fu." Thinking "Fu" referred to a tribe from
Northern China, he mobilized his entire country to build a great defensive wall.
It stretched across thousands of miles to keep the presaged invaders at bay. But
in the end, it was not the northern tribe of Fu that destroyed him -- it
was his second son, whose name was also Fu. Talk about blind spots! The danger
was in his very own home.
Most of us make a similar
mistake when reading the 12th house of our charts -- for it, too, is an
esoteric spiritual text. This is the house of invisible potencies, after all,
matrix of divine unity, our oneness with all. It is the wellspring of
archetypes, zone of the collective unconscious and of the personal subconscious,
our inner dream factory. It is also the repository of karma, the spiritual laws
of cause and effect. Yet from this rich but very cryptic place, we may first
glean just a sentence, a twinge of intuitive awareness that we may too quickly
decode as a warning of some outer danger in the visible world.
It is odd, isn't it, that the
one sentence the emperor should grasp in his great esoteric book should be such
a threatening one. But this is fairly typical of mystical entrances. Mystic
beginnings represent the start of a journey, and the spiritual world always
tests one's readiness before it offers up its goods. The 12th house has been
testing its natives for as long as charts have been calculated. Those who fail
to read it correctly will find it forbidding; they'll consult their old
astrology books and shudder. And like the emperor, they may exert a lot of
effort escaping from phantom enemies while missing the real situation.
Ultimately, the 12th-house path
is meant to transform us. Behind its darkness lies a brilliant light, but it
takes time and faith to develop our spiritual eyes. If we insist on negotiating
this world with our material values intact, we'll operate blind. We'll be beset
by secret enemies, limits, confinements, and loss. The emperor's son fits the
picture of a hidden 12th-house enemy.
But if we ask what really brought this cruel ruler down, his own
character appears the more likely cause.
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Article Source |
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Note: This article is from a 12-part
series started in the October 1994 issue of TMA (The Mountain Astrologer). See www.mountainastrologer.com
for back issue ordering information.
Recommended
book:
"The Inner Sky : The Dynamic New Astrology for Everyone"
by Steven Forrest
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book
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About The Author |
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Astrologer
Dana Gerhardt writes for The Mountain Astrologer, StarIQ and Beliefnet.com. She
also produces a unique and personalized astrology report called "Moonprints."
For more info., email dana@mooncircles.com and visit her website http://mooncircles.com/dana.html. |
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Buddha said, "We are either
our own savior or our own enemy." The foundation of the 12th house, and of
all spiritual development, is the self. So what about that first cryptic
sentence we read there, that twinge of intuitive awareness? Most likely it will
be reflective. A mirror. When the emperor learned that a force would destroy his
empire, he got a bit of truth. But it was his inclination towards
domination and force. It not only turned his second son against him; it took
root there and propagated. The emperor's story represents a classic spiritual
irony. One walls oneself off from something feared in the outer world and winds
up losing touch with the inner, where the secrets of spiritual bounty (or
self-undoing) actually reside.
So when exploring your own 12th
house, bring a healthy suspicion of blind spots. Approaching its mysterious
gates, be prepared to meet yourself, as you've possibly never seen yourself
before. You may get the chance to see the thing you've missed for years.
Actually, this is not so strange a process. Simply wait until you find yourself
talking with great passion about someone else's blind spots. Then check your
chart -- you might just be standing on a planet that's in or ruling your
12th.
Case in point: I work with two
women, Katie with Moon in the 12th, and Ingrid with Moon ruling her 12th. Each
has a similar "enemy" in the outer world. Katie's enemy is an actress
in her community theater group. I've never met this woman, but I've listened to
Katie complain about her countless times. "Maggie drives me nuts! She's
always feeling sorry for herself. She's just a high school teacher, but all you
hear about is how hard she works, how stressful her job is. She keeps bringing
homework to rehearsals and cast parties and then falling asleep on a pile of
papers. Does she think they give an Oscar for martyr of the year?!"
Meanwhile Ingrid's nemesis is
Katie, whom she talks about constantly. Her complaint is surprisingly similar.
"I just can't stand her. Listening to her is like fingernails on chalk to
me -- she's always playing the victim. Can't she ever stop whining and
feeling sorry for herself?" When I asked Ingrid why she thought Katie had
such an effect on her, she replied, "I guess it's because I've always had
it so hard. My mother was an alcoholic, you know, and I had to take care of
myself. I never got to whine like that... No one ever cared if I cried."
Er, excuse me while I get my
violin. I don't mean to be unsympathetic, but I've got a 12th-house Moon, too,
which is why I'm writing about Katie and Ingrid -- their whining about
whiners bugs me! Of course, it's not unusual to find a victim vibration in a
12th-house Moon. And Katie, Ingrid, and I are all quite tuned in. But as long as
the irritant is just "out there", one is stalled on the 12th-house
path. This is the inner world, after all. No matter how we're provoked in the
outer, transformation is an inside job.
Of course, because of her
mother's alcoholism, Ingrid was robbed of much of the emotional comforts of her
Moon. Typically, 12th-house Moons aren't allowed their neediness as children.
They learn to cope well, become masters of self-sufficiency, and are often
especially gifted at taking care of others. But repressing their neediness
doesn't make it disappear. It just slips behind the 12th-house veil. Rejected by
the ego, it is no longer recognized as a conscious aspect of personality. Like
most 12th-house planets, it operates in shadow -- which means its
immature expression will have an uncanny ability to act out just when we're not
looking.
Someone with a 12th-house Mars,
for example, isn't blessed with an anger-free psyche. Their outer personality
will be gentle and agreeable, for the most part lacking the sharp attacks of
Mars. Cross them several times, and you'll get no reaction. But one day,
someone, possibly you, will receive a full-blown Mars explosion. At that moment,
though they might technically be 35-years-old, you'd swear there was a
tantrumming two-year-old in front of you. Hidden in the 12th-house shadows,
their Mars didn't get the opportunities to develop like the planets in other
houses did. And as long as Mars sits in their blind spot, they won't even know
what hit you. The planet has to reach consciousness first.
I like to think of 12th-house
planets as energies in waiting. In some respects, this house is not so much a
place as a process, with planets here tagged for a special initiation. It begins
with a crucial deprivation. In some way, the early environment won't support the
expression of 12th-house energies. They may be stolen, denied, or shamed by our
caretakers; somehow we get the message they're unsafe to express. With Mars in
the 12th house, I may fear the expression of my competitive drive or try to deny
my selfishness. With Pluto, I may be too embarrassed to reveal my passion, my
sexuality, my personal power. With Mercury in the 12th, I may decide to keep my
mouth shut. With Uranus in the 12th, I'll cover up what makes me different and
keep my creative genius under wraps.
Continued
on the next page:
Victim Consciousness;
Loss or Sacred Rite?;
Special Quality of 12th-house Planets.
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