Post by Kimberanne on Sept 18, 2005 18:40:17 GMT -5
Kim: interesting take on the 12th house and issues surrounding it.
www.innerself.com/Astrology/12th_house.htm
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
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.
Article Source
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
Info/Order book
About The Author
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 mooncircles.com/dana.html.
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.
www.innerself.com/Astrology/12th_house.htm
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
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.
Article Source
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
Info/Order book
About The Author
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 mooncircles.com/dana.html.
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.