Houses 7-12
In this post I will continue my thumbnail summary of the astrological houses, this time houses 7-12. These are the houses that we find above the horizon, which, in traditional thought, symbolize the realm of Spirit and the mind as opposed to the realm of Fortune and the body, which are symbolized by houses 1-6. To read my entry on the first six houses, go to the previous post.
The Seventh House
The seventh house straddles the western horizon (in whole-sign houses). Astronomically, it is the place where the sky disappears into the horizon. For this reason, the ancients connected it with death, though modern astrologers associate the eighth house more with death. The seventh house is opposite the first house of self, which gives us the meaning of the “house of the other.” And indeed, this is the house in both ancient and modern astrology that we look at to get information about one’s partners, especially the spouse. What kinds of partners do we seek out? What are our partners like? What are the qualities of our partnerships? What kinds of experiences are we likely to encounter in our committed partnerships? For answers to these questions, we first look to the seventh house.
This is arguably the most social house in the chart. It is one of the four angular houses, which are the most powerful and foundational houses in the chart. They are the chart’s anchors, and they help to answer the basic questions of “What are you like?” (1st house), “Who are you with?” (7th house), “Where are you from?” (4th house), and “What do you do?” (10th house).
People with significant seventh house placement usually have very significant dealings with a few individuals in the course of their lives. While two other houses, 3rd and 11th, are also explicitly social houses, it’s the seventh house where we see relationships that have the most impact on our lives. This is reflected in the opposition aspect that the seventh house makes to the first house of self.
The seventh-house relationships with partners, spouses, clients, and close friends also have an obvious impact on our home lives and career lives, so it’s important to look at planets in and associate with the seventh house in order to assess the nature of relationships in our lives. Mars in the seventh can show the importance of taking action within relationships, and indicate a competitive or combative approach to relationships in general. Saturn in the seventh is the classic indication of delayed marriage or marriage with a partner of a much older or younger age. Jupiter in the seventh can show a partner who is prominent or honored, who has religious leanings, or is involved with law or government. Mercury shows that constant communication will be a big part of how the person experiences relationships.
The Eighth House
The eighth house is the succedent house that follows the seventh-house angle. As the second house from the seventh, it is the reflection of the chart’s second house (which is second from the first). Just as the second house is one’s personal possessions, the eighth house is the possessions of the partner, or, more broadly speaking, the possessions of others.
One of the most useful keywords for the eighth house is debt. This is the money we owe to others, but also other kinds of debts as well. You’ll see issues with debt and taxes in the eighth house, but you also get psychological indications having to do with feelings of guilt or shame for what we owe to others (or what we think we owe).
One of the most long standing significations of the eighth house is inheritance. This signification combines the associations of death and possessions, and in traditional language this was specifically the gains we accrue through the death of someone else.
Even some astrologers find the eighth house difficult to talk about, but knowing some of these mundane significations can be helpful. And then when you begin applying more advanced techniques like analyzing house rulerships, eighth house significations can give you clear and helpful things to say about finances, investments and even work.
Some general examples might be seeing benefic planets in the eighth house of someone who gets financial support from others, or who inherits something of value. Someone with career significations related to the eighth house can show someone whose work is somehow related to death. Astrologer Chris Brennan frequently uses an example chart of a client with the ruler of the eighth house in the tenth house who is a mortician. My own brother, who is currently an ER nurse, has Saturn in the eighth house in close aspect to the ruler of his career house. He has spent most of his adult life working closely with death, first as an EMT and then as a cardiac and now an ER nurse. His example illustrates something that many astrologers have attended to: having malefic planets (e.g., Mars or Saturn) in the “bad” houses often equips the person with personal qualities to deal with those matters on a day-to-day basis. More on this when we get to the twelfth house.
The Ninth House
The ninth house is one of the four cadent houses. Except for the ninth house, the cadent houses get a bad rap — deservedly, in my opinion. The cadent houses each carry some aspect of the idea of “falling away.” This is because they are literally falling away from the prominence of the angular houses. They show places in the chart where we expend energy (often a lot of energy) just to maintain, or get back to, a normal level of functioning. Such activity is usually necessary, but we don’t usually derive much satisfaction or meaning from it. For instance, in the third house, we stay busy with the many little errands and the communications that’s required to keep us supplied with the food and resources to maintain our standard of living, but few people derive much satisfaction from these errands. In the sixth house, we are often doing the annoying work of repairing things, tending to the needs of other people or of animals, or we are recuperating from some accident, injury or illness. In the twelfth house, usually considered the worst of the bad houses, we are dealing with psychological or spiritual malaise, often anxiety or depression; or we are being hounded by worries stemming from secret or hidden activities in our lives (more on the 12th below).
However, the ninth house, despite being cadent, is one of the really good houses — in the top four or five. It is in the realm of spirit, and it makes a superior trine to the first house of self, and a supportive inferior sextile to the seventh house of partners.
The 9th house is where we work out our philosophy of life and our cosmological understanding, where we can put our existence in some context, which explains its bearing on the first house of self. This is how we can derive both religion and higher education from the 9th house. (We moderns mostly forget that universities grew out of monasteries in the Middle Ages.)
The idea of angular triads describes how the three houses at each angle can be seen in relationship to each other. That is, in numerical order the cadent house before the angular house, then the angular house itself, and finally the succeeding house after the angle. Here, it is the cadent 9th house giving the philosophical foundation that paves the way for the work one does in the tenth house of career and vocation. And indeed, we sometimes see important transits connected to the ninth house when a person is doing the work of learning that prepares them for some important phase in their careers.
The Tenth House
When working with whole-sign houses, as I do, the tenth house and the midheaven are not synonymous the way they are in quadrant house systems. In whole-sign houses, the MC can fall outside of the tenth house — either in the ninth or eleventh, usually. This simply means that tenth-house matters like career and reputation will be imported into the house where the MC falls. For example, MC in the eleventh house shows that one’s work is related in some important ways to one’s friends or with work in associations of like-minded people. The MC in the ninth can relate to careers that relate in some ways with higher education, travel, foreigners, or religious matters.
The tenth house is the first house astrologers look at when we want to know about the person’s career. As with the matters of any house, the first things to notice are the sign in that house, the planet that rules that sign, and whether there are planets there. Planets in the tenth house are very strong, and will give a lot of information about what kinds of energies one encounters in their interactions with the world at large. Planets there will show how the world sees the individual in terms of their talents, abilities, temperament, and, of course, reputation.
For example, someone with Mars in the tenth house will be perceived as being assertive and pioneering in their work. They probably tend to act quickly, and in short bursts of activity. Of course, the sign and the planet’s relationship with that sign will modify its expression. Someone with Neptune in the tenth house might carry an air of glamor around them, and other people might find them hard to define. They might also be instinctively drawn to artistic careers or activities that require idealism and unusual levels of refinement. Venus in the tenth house might show art and beauty factoring into the person’s work, while Mercury involves them with communications. The Sun might thrust them into authority positions, and Saturn might delay the career and show someone who shoulders great burdens of responsibilities at work or in life. Jupiter is also leaderly, but someone respected more for their wise judgment and counsel than their accummen with facts and figures.
This gets a little advanced, but looking at the planetary rulers of houses is especially fruitful when dealing with the angular houses. First, identify the planetary ruler of the sign in the tenth house. Then look at that planet’s position in the chart by house and then sign. Assessing the condition of that planet will tell you the relative ease that someone approaches their work life. Aspects that the planet makes to the MC and to personal planets can also give a lot of information. A tenth house ruling planet that falls in its own sign means the person finds the resources they need to carry out what they want to accomplish in their careers. A ruler in its detriment might feel like they are swimming upstream, or that they have to go about things in roundabout ways. (Detriment planets also have some interesting advantages, but that’s a discussion for another time.) A tenth house ruler in the sign of its fall can symbolize that the person experiences a literal public fall from grace at some point in their lives.
The topics of the house occupied by the planetary ruler of the tenth house will connect somehow to the person’s career. The ruler of the tenth in the fourth house of home, for example, shows that home and/or family factor into one’s career. The ruler in the fifth house brings the topic of children (probably but not necessarily one’s own) into one’s career. Ruler of the tenth house in the 6th house likely shows a career related to health, nutrition, or service.
Likewise, the topics of houses ruled by any planets that occupy the tenth house will bring those topics to bear in one’s career. The topics of the houses that 10th-house planets rule often show one’s motivation for working. For example, the ruler of the second house in the tenth house shows that one of the person’s primary motivations for working is to generate income. The third house ruler in the tenth house brings in the topics of communication, sharing information and short-distance travel into career matters, and can also connect to career with one’s sibling or relative.
The Eleventh House
The eleventh house is one of the most positive houses, and its traditional title is “the house of good spirit,” and Jupiter is said to have its joy here. Appropriately, this is the house of friends and like-minded people, as well as the house of future plans and hopes. Like the other so-called “good” houses, planets placed in the eleventh house are benefited in a similar way that they are benefited by aspects with Jupiter. For example, if the planetary ruler of the second house of income is placed in the eleventh house, your income will likely benefit because of certain people in the native’s close social circle.
The eleventh is a succedent house, which means that one of its functions is to consolidate energies into tangible forms. In the system of derived houses, it is the second house from the tenth house. This means that it relates to what we gain through our reputation: in other words, our good reputation brings us friends and allies as well as future opportunities.
Astronomically, planets in the eleventh house are moving up in the sky and are about to move into the angular position of the 10th house. In other words, they are in line for the most prominent position in the chart. This is what gives the meaning of optimism and future orientation to the eleventh house — rather than any association with the 11th sign, Aquarius. In fact, I am increasingly convinced that equating or even correlating signs with houses was and is a mistaken practice (known as the “astrological alphabet” approach), and I’m happy to see it falling out of favor. While there are some inviting parallels between some signs and houses (e.g. Cancer and the 4th house), the astrological alphabet approach has led mostly to confusion and bad delineations, and when the astrologer can unlearn it they’ll find that their astrology becomes more clear and accurate.
People for whom much of their work takes place on a stage or platform, the eleventh house can show the qualities of one’s audience. This is fitting as it is the opposite of the fifth house of creative expression. You can also derive this meaning by considering it the second from the tenth: i.e., the resources one gains through one’s actions — the people who value what you do enough to pay for it. Kurt Cobain had an exalted Jupiter conjunct the Moon in Cancer in his eleventh house, and he famously had and has one of the most loyal bases of fans some 28 years after his death. If I were doing an electional chart for a restaurant, I would want to see a strong eleventh house to help increase their chances of having a loyal customer base.
The Twelfth House
If there is one house that illustrates the fallacy of the astrological alphabet idea, it is the twelfth house. To connect the sign of Pisces, which is ruled by Jupiter and finds Venus exalted, with this house of “bad spirit” is to invite a slew of misinterpretations. I am perhaps more comfortable connecting the planet Neptune, said to be Pisces’ modern ruler, with the 12th house and its realm of delusions and secrets, though Saturn is much more fitting. And indeed, Saturn is traditionally said to have its joy in the 12th house.
The planetary joys system is a very old and very useful tool for understanding the meanings of the houses. Venus’s joy clearly gives us the fifth house’s connections with pleasures and sex. Jupiter’s joy in the eleventh shows the importance of groups to learning, and the fact that we get our more reliable counsel from our friends. The “lesser malefic,” Mars, finds his joy in the sixth house of bad fortune because that’s where things break down and are in need of some quick, remedial action. In other words, malefic Mars finds its joy in the sixth house because it can put its penchant for quick action to productive use rather than mere destruction, which is kind of Mars’ forte. Likewise with Saturn in the 12th house. Its opposite is the 6th house, the house associated with acute crises such as injuries or breakdowns of some practical nature. In terms of health, the 12th house is associated with long-term and chronic ailments, and it is Saturn’s ability to go slowly, to stoically withstand unpleasantness, to patiently work towards a distant future with consistency, that make the 12th house its place of joy. Yes, Saturn symbolizes malefic, or unpleasant, experiences, but it also shows one’s ability to withstand those same experiences with patience and even grace.
The 12th house, like other “bad” houses, makes no traditional aspect to the Ascendant, the place of self. This is why one of its titles is the “house of self-undoing.” And indeed when we see planets in the 12th house, they often have clear connections with self-defeating behaviors. In a way, we are blind to things in the 12th house, yet when a planet is there it is still driven to express itself. The 12th house shows secrets we keep, often from ourselves. Denial and addiction are classic 12th house manifestations.
Perhaps the most dire manifestation of difficult 12th house indications is severe mental illness. Addiction is just one example. It should be said here that astrologers should never diagnose clients with mental illnesses without the required medical qualifications. It can also be said that not every person with 12th house emphasis has mental illness or addiction issues. In fact, one often sees extraordinary people with strong placements in the “bad” houses, including the 12th hosue. This is because those placements often equip a person to help others going through difficulties.
I have a 12th house Venus, and I can give an example of a close friend from my adolescence who suffered from severe OCD and drug addiction in adulthood. There were a few years, later in our lives, when I was the only person he would call when he was going through relapses or psychotic episodes. It was emotionally very hard for me, and I can’t claim to be the saint in those situations (far from it), but I know I helped him to stay off of drugs and out of jail more than once.
In modern times the 12th house has become associated with spirituality, and I think there is good reason to agree. Many spiritual practices explicitly aim for “self transcendence” or “self-forgetting.” Even modern day secular teachers of mindfulness meditation use Buddhist concepts such as “piercing the illusion of self” in their instruction. These are the positive manifestations of the 12th house. But meditation teachers also warn their students of the disruptive and dissociative experiences that intensive meditation practices can induce. So even in its most positive manifestations we can still look to Saturn for support: patience, realism, persistence, and the long view can go a long way in tempering the most unpleasant 12th house experiences.
Chadwalk's Astrology 