New Workshop Opportunity: You Can Always Call Mom!

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YOU CAN ALWAYS CALL MOM: An Intro to Mary for Modern Seekers

Wednesday, March 13th, 2024, 6-8PM Eastern via Zoom

In this moment of planetary crisis, many of us are searching for a guiding star, a wellspring of comfort and strength, a vessel that can hold our deep grief and our deep longing. The good news is that you can always call Mom. In this introductory talk, I invite spiritual seekers from all backgrounds and faith traditions to discover the protecting presence of the Divine Mother as embodied in Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

Mary represents the universal figure of Mother—offering solace, understanding, and an unfathomable depth of love. But she is also a real human mother. She stands as a testament to the power of witness, courage, and inexhaustible love in the face of suffering—both personal and planetary. 

Mary’s role extends beyond her earthly existence; she is the gateway to embodying the divine qualities of mercy, justice, humility and love. She leads us in practicing these qualities in solidarity with all who are suffering. Together we’ll learn to connect with Mary’s spirit, drawing upon her strength and compassion to navigate the challenges of the modern world.

In this introductory talk, we’ll:

  • Reflect on the meaning of Mary as “divine mother” and as a historical woman
  • Consider the role Mary plays as an archetype, icon, and advocate in this moment in history
  • Lay the groundwork for deeper exploration of Mary’s images and titles
  • Learn a simple ritual to connect with Mary’s presence
  • Explore first steps in Marian devotional practice by diving into the Hail Mary prayer

“You Can Always Call Mom” is more than a one-off talk. My hope is that it serves as an invitation to a transformative relationship with Our Lady, a journey towards becoming a clear pane of glass through which love can illuminate the world. Whether you’re seeking healing, guidance, or a deeper sense of belonging, this class offers a welcoming space to explore the mysteries of Marian devotion and its potential to inspire change, both within and around us.

A suggested donation of $27 is recommended; a portion of the proceeds will go to the SHARE Center of Battle Creek, Michigan. All my classes and talks strive to be queer-affirming, antiracist, interspiritual settings.

Register here!

New Workshop Opportunity: Reading by Heart

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I’m pleased to announce my next upcoming workshop, Reading by Heart!

Join me on June 26th at 3:00PM EDT to learn a centuries-old contemplative technique to unlock the subtle and transformative magic of any text that speaks to your heart.

The centuries-old Western meditative technique of Lectio Divina, or divine reading, has enjoyed newfound popularity in recent decades among spiritual seekers of all faiths. Long hailed as a tool for opening one’s innermost depths to divine presence, lectio divina has untapped potential as a tool for astrological remediation and as a magical practice in its own right.

Only recently did I realize the impact that this methodology of contemplative reading has had on my ability to read astrological charts and bring them to life in that subtle world of inner experience where the currents of my own being intersect with the imaginal. It’s been the single most important thing in helping me to break through plateaus and barriers in my astrological practice, and I suspect this can help you get unstuck, too.

I’ve had this intuition for a while, and I even sketched out the idea for a model of contemplative reading as a tool for bringing the chart to life in the last chapter of my book (which you can buy here!)

But it’s taken until now for me to have the necessary roadmaps, both Western and Eastern, to describe the why and how of contemplative reading: why it works, how it works, and how it changes the way we perceive reality.

It’s also taken me this long to distill the necessary personal experience in working with the technique, both in my own reading of my traditions’ sacred texts and in reading the arcana of astrological charts and texts.

Not only will this help you as a reader of charts, it’ll also help you crack Valens or Manilius or Lilly or Parāśara or the Orphic Hymns or whatever other text you’re working with. Whether you have a teacher or not. Whether you’ve been at this for three months or three decades. Any sacred text can be opened more deeply with lectio divina, and my definition of “sacred text” is fairly broad at that.

When I talk about contemplative reading, I’m talking reading for depth, but not just that. I’m talking reading from a Wisdom perspective, with the thinking, feeling, and sensing centers of knowing. It’s not just having a deep cognitive understanding of the text; it’s about allowing the text to become part of your imaginal being, part of your causal body, from which it shapes how you see and show up in the world. It’s about fully digesting the text, with all the impressions and archetypes it carries.

I guarantee that if you work with your chosen text in this way on a regular basis, it will shift your reality. I’d love the privilege of sharing what I know with you and giving you a powerful tool to see reality, both physical and imaginal, more clearly and intimately.

This workshop will introduce newcomers to the method and mechanics of lectio divina with emphasis on the experiential dimension of the technique. We will also explore the ways it can be applied to practical magic and to remediating adverse combinations in the natal chart. Lectio divina as a technology can be used by any person with any text to bring it to life in new ways that can reshape one’s reality, regardless of faith tradition or spiritual practice.

Recordings and handouts will be available to all participants. A donation of $44 is suggested; a portion of the proceeds will be given to VOCES of Battle Creek, Michigan.

Register here!

Why Sidereal Astrology?

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I suppose the easiest way to start this is simply by saying that I’m doing sidereal astrology now.

Starting on the first of this year, I transitioned to using the sidereal zodiac exclusively for my work with natal charts and revolutions. (My teacher, if he’s reading this, can rest assured that I’m still using tropical for horary—and I think that there’s a solid rationale behind the apparent dichotomy, but that’s for a different article). The truth is that I initially started drafting this article in February of 2021, and I’m only now, in October, getting around to posting it.

Well, there it is. It feels a little bit like coming out; it’s certainly got the psychic feeling of “taking a stand,” even though I’m actively not taking a stand or identifying with the technique here.

Please note that I have not said, “I am now a sidereal astrologer.” There’s much to be said about the use of “I am” statements when describing our techniques of choice in the greater astrological project of deriving meaning from celestial data. I also want to be completely up front that a huge inspiration for me in following this path has been the work of Dayna Lynn Nuckols, a brilliant colleague and friend who has been bootstrapping sidereal astrology in a Western context through her unique, intersectional, liberation-oriented lens, and I am grateful for the work she’s done. Please go check out her work here.

So what am I trying to do here? Perhaps a better question to start with is what am I not trying to do here: I am not trying to prove anything. Nor am I at all interested in a debate over which zodiac is “right.” My only purpose is to share my reasoning and explore some of the lines of thought on which I ferried myself to this shore. I think telling the story is more interesting than proving a point, anyway. I’m simply choosing to use a different lens. And that’s really the point of this article, as a public update to my readers, and to my clients, that this is what you can expect when working with me now.

(Oh, by the way, I still do horary from a tropical, quadrant house perspective, since that is the lineage I was trained in.)

Tropical and Sidereal, Together at Last

For those who aren’t familiar with the tropical-sidereal distinction, many astrologers have treated that topic in sufficient measure such that to rehash the whole thing here will be a waste of everyone’s time. It would also be a waste of everyone’s time, I think, to go through all the reasons for why one is better than the other. We humans are pretty skilled at finding data that supports our biases, whatever they may be.

But, for the sake of context, the tropical zodiac sets 0° Aries as being the point where the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator as it is increasing in longitude, viz., the vernal equinox. The sidereal zodiac sets 0° Aries differently based on the fixed stars, at the beginning of the constellation of Aries (and there are a number of ways to determine this, too).

The difference between the vernal equinox and the beginning of Aries in the sidereal reference frame is called the “ayanamsa,” a compound word in Sanskrit roughly translated as “equinoctial difference.” This difference is generated by the earth’s slow wobble on its axis, a motion that is only perceptible over generations, such that every 72 years or so, the difference between the vernal equinox and the beginning of Aries increases by one degree of longitude.

The difference these days is about 24° degrees, and that “about” is important because there are different astronomical means of identifying the starting point for Aries.

Aries itself is much more than just a “constellation,” of course; the Sanskrit word rāśi, meaning “pile” or “heap” of something, describes not just the vanilla “sign” of Aries but everything it contains—individual degrees, Nakshatras (though that’s not quite accurate, as the nakshatras are properly a lunar zodiac, but… they get tossed in the pile with the others), harmonic divisions (which give us “divisional charts” in jyotisha, as well as the dodecatemoria of Hellenistic practice), particular fixed stars, even on down to individual degrees with different qualities like “bright,” “smoky,” “pitted,” and so on.

The problem with having begun my learning of astrology with a tropical framework is this: the fixed stars and the sky-as-it-is-observed have always been my primary muses, ever since the days of my youth. I learned constellations first, as a child; I knew where to find Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio in the late twilight of spring and summer, as well as the constellations wheeling around the pole star. Those images and myths took root in my imagination. Even though I learned to work within the tropical framework as a dutiful student (and that framework is still immediately valid and descriptive of reality), the older way of simply seeing continued to exert a gravitational pull on my reasoning. My nascent training in astrology, at least from a contemporary Western perspective, had created a tendency in me to smooth out all the delicate intricacies and splendid variations to be found in each of the constellations into a kind of generic “sign.” But that wasn’t working for me; the “signs” had ceased to come alive for me in my imagination as I prepared charts.

And so I asked, and meditated, and journeyed, on questions that emerged out of this tension: for instance, why is the very heart of the Lion no longer tied to the imaginal gestalt that generated the mythos of Leo in the first place? For nowadays, the Lion’s Heart, Regulus, is within the sign of Mercury’s exaltation, not the Sun’s domicile. That’s just an example of the particular kinds of questions that this tension generates. I don’t believe the solution is necessarily to try to shoehorn one reality into the other, either.

Several things occurred in 2020 to move this further down the road, and the rest of this series of posts will speak to each of these experiences. Among them include my newfound love of Jyotisha, the tradition of astrology as a limb of Vedic knowledge, which I have been studying in the Sri Acyutanānda Parāmparā (lineage) since autumn of 2020 with Freedom Cole. I also spent time learning primary directions from Martin Gansten‘s work, adopting his framework as my own for the sake of learning and finding, to my chagrin, that primary directions of the hylegiacal points through the terms, using the sidereal zodiac (Lahiri ayanāṁśa), described moments of transition, turmoil, and transformation in my own life and the lives of my clients with a remarkable degree of precision and fidelity.

But what really sealed the deal was a series of mystical experiences that occurred to me while observing the fixed stars in an altered state of consciousness under the skies of rural Kentucky and on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean over a period of several years, each one calling me deeper to this expression. There is a gnosis, a Wisdom, that can only be distilled from the crucible of direct encounter with a Living Presence making itself known to the Heart, that seat of spiritual perception, which is staggeringly difficult to put into linear arguments. But I will say it like this: when thinking sidereally and approaching the chart from a tuned-in, open-hearted posture, the rāśis and the planets come alive for me on the imaginal level of consciousness in a way that they never have in the tropical perspective, following these experiences. It is on this level of my being that these experiences have ground-truthed the “rightness for me” of a sidereal perspective.

On Living Images

I’d like to go a little more into some of the thought process that I’m working with as I navigate this sea change. The late Hellenistic astrologer Alan White, in his flip-chart lecture which Chris Brennan shared on his podcast last year, made a point of articulating something that I feel is lost when we’re discussing this today: the zoidia themselves, the living images themselves, are the ones who grant domicile to the planets—including the Sun, who is granted domicile by the living image of the Lion.

I do not actually believe that there is a great Lion out there that has given the Sun domicile. I mean, maybe there is, but if there is, it is not within the realm of physical manifestation; it is an imaginal process, even a causal one, that was part and parcel of the arising of consciousness here on this planet. Our ancestors looked to the stars themselves and saw there a beast, a bird, a hero, a harp, what have you; and it is those imaginal realities that take on a life of their own. Those images come to life, and specifically those images, for it is within them that the Sun, the seat of consciousness and the spark of life itself, spins his golden thread. They become zoidia. They become “living images.”

When I say “stellar images,” I literally mean the stars themselves as viewed and mythologized within human awareness. You cannot see tropical Scorpio. But, the gift of apophenia—a feature, not a bug, at least as far as the eye of the heart is concerned!—readily gives us a Scorpion, a Lion, and so forth.

The very word “zodiac” derives from the Greek term zodiakos kyklos, “the wheel of living images.” And the word “image” here is a rich one—it can certainly speak to the imaginal reality of, for instance, the tropical sign of Sagittarius, associated as it is with pre-Christmas prodigality. Yes, there is something there that is key to the psycho-social experience of embodied humans, something which I believe is tied directly to the Sun itself—archetypal image of consciousness though it may be—defining the beginning of this frame of reference.

So I keep returning to the idea of these images themselves. The great Lion. The Scorpion. The Bull. These stellar images seem to have an archetypal Realness within the human psyche that one cannot necessarily be separate from entirely no matter how far the vernal equinox has precessed. Stellar images such as these exist within the inherited ancestral and cultural stories of a great deal of the world. These same living stellar images have shaped not only Western culture but Eastern cultures as well as they have been carried along the Silk Road and inculturated in various forms throughout central and south Asia on through the Mediterranean basin.

These living stellar images that have taken on a life of their own within the human consciousness. (I happen to believe that conscious observation and interpretation of celestial phenomena is actually the mechanism through which astrology works, but that’s another article). When we remember that, in the cultures which gave us horoscopic astrology, the Sun is not just emblematic of life itself, but is also symbolically entangled with the concept of nous, with mind, with conscious awareness, the conversation really gets gravel under the tires.

I believe that the gestalt of these images have their own kind of archetypal force that functions differently from the divisions of that same golden line of sunlight when the Sun himself becomes their author and finisher. In other words, one might say that Pisces, for example, is oceanic, watery, benefic, sattvic, all of these things, in either zodiac, but the locus or dimension of reality in which those qualities take form might be different depending on the subtle lens through which the interpreter is viewing this one Reality.

My way of looking at it is like this: the frame-of-reference articulated by the Sun itself (0° Aries at the vernal equinox) will readily give us insight into localized issues of psychology and will, which gives the tropical framework remarkable utility in exploring the human person, especially the human person as understood through the cultural consciousness that has developed as the West has moved into the perspectival and mental structure of consciousness—a structure of consciousness which is now in the crisis of giving birth to aperspectival consciousness. (For more on this, please see Cynthia Bourgeault’s wonderful blog series accompanying a reading of Jeremy Johnson’s Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness.)

But the stars are the Sun’s peers—and, in many cases, his superiors, if we’re to mythologize the Sun’s exceeding ordinariness among all the stars of our local neighborhood—and I think that those Living Images themselves, which burst forth in the fecund ocean of human consciousness, after thousands of years of our species’ observing them and weaving our narrative experience around them over millennia of our common life, are part of the package when it comes to analyzing reality.

If you need me to say it this way, here you go: I believe the tropical and sidereal zodiacs function as two lenses upon the same reality, two lenses with which one may answer different questions. My opinion (and it’s exactly that!) is that the sidereal zodiac describes reality on the causal level of consciousness, and the tropical zodiac describes the realities we create for ourselves in our mind on the subtle level of consciousness—teasing those levels out is beyond the scope of this article, but I am working with a version of the gross-subtle-causal-nondual cosmologies of the Eastern traditions as articulated in large part by the work of G. I. Gurdjieff and described for the average reader in Cynthia Bourgeault’s wonderful book on the imaginal realm, The Eye of the Heart. 

Anyway! I’ve always wanted to use the fixed stars as my principal reference frame for astrological reasoning. And now I finally am.

But I don’t believe that’s actually the endgame of this process of developing aperspectival consciousness through astrological practice: ideally, the practitioner should be able to see through the world, through all perspectives. And when aperspectival consciousness has fully saturated the ordinary waking state of our awareness, the question of “which zodiac is the right one!?” (or the question of which house system is right, or any of these other dialectical entanglements we clothesline ourselves with) takes on a dimension of freedom and joy that our hungry ghosts of Western culture’s need to find the One True Perspective™ over the last 600 years continually threaten to take from us.

But that, my friends, is for another article.

By the way: I am in the final stages of completing my first year training with Freedom Cole in jyotisha, and I would like to do practice readings for you at a significantly discounted rate from my usual fee. If you’re interested in a jyotisha reading, you may schedule one here!

Featured image by Manouchehr Hejazi via Unsplash

How to Understand the Planets in Astrology, Part 1

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Time for a new series of posts! This time around, we’re going to be taking a look at the planets in astrology.

Each of the posts in this series is excerpted from my 2019 book, Charted Territory, and reflects my understanding of the planets at that time. The reality (as any student of astrology will be quick to affirm) is that you never stop learning about the planets. So, the posts in this series represent where I stood in 2019, and as part of the series, I’ll be gleefully correcting myself the whole time just to show how these understandings shift and change over time.

The first thing to keep in mind when lifting the hood on the astrological engine is this: planets are the most important part of astrology. Without planets, there is no astrology.

So, what is a planet, anyway?

Yes, they’re the “wandering stars” that accompany our Sun and our fragile planet through our voyage through the cosmos. Symbolically, they’re the entities whose connection to space and time gets baked into our stories. Their principles and purposes craft our plot beats and come into manifestation through the way we live our lives.

Planetary natures, desires, preferences, and power get impressed on the slices of the zodiac that they rule, and their ability to carry out their role is where the meat of this language of symbols lies. Their interactions with one another in time and space correspond with (notice I did not say cause)* the unfolding of events here in our earth-bound layer of existence.

*[In 2021, I have the language to distinguish between layers of causality now, thanks to Integral Theory and my deepening engagement with Vedic philosophy, so… yeah, some salt needed here.]

Without planets, astrology falls apart; there are ways of doing astrology without signs, houses, or even aspects, but there’s no astrologer that I’m aware of today that omits planets from the equation. Planets are the most important part of astrology.

Each planet is more than just a data point in the chart: it’s like a data nexus. A bundle of energies touching different aspects of life. Including the outer, invisible planets, we have ten centers of narrative gravity to keep track of, each with their own personalities and predilections. Each of them carries layers of myth and magic, accrued like sediment over millennia.

Meanwhile, skeptics holler from the sidelines that planets cannot possibly influence human existence—much less have natures, desires, wants, needs, personalities, and so on.

But they do. Too bad.

Planets imbue the signs that they rule with their meaning, not the other way around.** If someone is born in early December, their Sun is in Sagittarius. As a result, there’s a solid chance that they have a taste for adventure and love to accrue insider information wherever they go. That’s not because Sagittarius the sign is essentially about adventure and fun. In this example, Sagittarius receives its significations (the astrology jargon for “meanings”) from its ruling planet, which is Jupiter.

[**I actually believe that each individual sign is its own living causal entity on the highest levels of manifest reality, or to put it in the language of the tradition of Jyotisha I am studying right now, a “jyotir-linga” delineated by the coming-together of the Sun and the Moon as Shiva and Shakti, but… that’s for another series.]

The popular American astrologer Christopher Renstrom uses the evocative turn of phrase “a child of…” to describe the nature of a person with a peculiar tie to a sign, vis-à-vis the Sun. So, a person with a Sagittarius Sun is a “child of Jupiter.” The Sun, which represents conscious purpose and essential desire—that is, what one wants out of life—inherits its expression from Jupiter’s rulership of Sagittarius.

In the traditional astrological literature, each sign was described as being one of the planet’s “homes” or “domiciles.” A planet manages that pocket of celestial real estate and has final say over everything that happens within. Mars’ signs are decorated in leather and rivets with heavy metal blasting from towering speaker racks that shake your very bones. Jupiter’s signs are rich with feasting and frankincense. They fly upward from a banquet hall in soaring arches and towering statuary to draw your attention to what lies beyond the mortal coil. The Sun’s sign is gilt and mirrored from ceiling to floor so that wherever he goes he can see and be seen in his royal splendor.

A Leo is not performative or ego-centric simply because they are a Leo, but because they are a child of the Sun, and the Sun is at home in his palace in Leo (which looks an awful lot like Versailles, built by the Sun King himself—who, ironically, was actually a Virgo.***)

***[Another big difference between my practice in 2019 and my practice as it is today is that I’m now using the sidereal zodiac for natal astrology almost exclusively, which is the subject of a forthcoming essay. That said, Louis XIV, the Sun King, was definitely a sidereal Leo.]

Coming back to our example of the Sun in Sagittarius, the Sun finds himself in the towering halls of Jupiter’s cathedral of wisdom, carried aloft by legend and liturgy and curls of incense smoke wafting through the air. Through the cathedral’s windows, uncharted landscapes unfold before him, and the beauty of new experiences latches on to him. What the Sun wants in this instance is to continue his upward journey, to gain perspective, to behold everything, to escape the confines of the limits with which others have shackled him and soar into a brilliant, transcendent vision of the world not as it is but as it could be. That’s what it means for the Sun to be in Sagittarius.

So, it is with each planet when it visits a sign ruled by another planet. Each planet is a character in an endless drama. They have plans and priorities, and the specific expression of their plans and priorities is determined by the environment in which they find themselves. But what does a planet want, essentially?

The starting point for understanding the character of a planet is the idea of sect.

A planet’s sect is a simple idea. Almost offensively simple. But understanding it well allows one to draw out all the subtle nuances in their birth chart.

Think of any team sport. Now, even though I’m a flagrant homosexual I still know something about athletics. In most games that I’m aware of, there are two opposing teams competing against one another to see who can, well, do sports the best. In astrology, these teams are called the “sects.”

The word “sect” itself comes from the Greek word hairesis. That word gives us the English word “heresy,” but in Greek it simply connotes “the team that you’re on.” In this case, the two teams are the day team (“diurnal sect”) and the night team (“nocturnal sect”). The two team captains are the Sun and the Moon—it should be obvious to which team each captain belongs.

The Sun leads the day sect, and the Moon leads the night sect, of course.

Either sect has a different play style, too. The day team focuses on identity, public image, maturity, and creating cohesive narratives out of specific information. The day team plays through wisdom and strategy refined over years and years of play. Their play style is rational, heady, far-seeing, strategic.

The night team’s focus is everything that is instinctual, subconscious, and nuanced; they play by faith, not by sight, in other words. They move more quickly and don’t get too caught up in strategizing; their play style is intuitive, exciting, and tied to emotional drive as they make their way across the court.

The Sun leads Jupiter and Saturn on the field, while the Moon captains Venus and Mars. Each of the teams has a good cop and a bad cop, or in classical terms, a “benefic” and a “malefic.” Some publishers in the 1980s wouldn’t even let astrologers use those words, by the way. From a marketing standpoint, using such strong language was bad for business. “Bad stuff doesn’t happen—that’s too negative! We want our readers to focus on growth and empowerment,” went the reasoning. (Sweetie, bad stuff happens sometimes.) The day team’s benefic is Jupiter, and its malefic is Saturn; meanwhile, the night team’s benefic is Venus, and its malefic is Mars.

Mercury, however, is a special case. This planet can be either on the day team or the night team, and he (or she) is neither essentially benefic or malefic. Mercury is also gender-fluid in terms of expression. That said, we’ll address this special case when we get to him.

I haven’t mentioned the three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto, none of which are visible to the naked eye. As astronomers discovered these planets, astrologers worked to try to figure out what to do with them. One approach was to include them in the line-up of the visible planets but considering that it took significant technological advances and centuries of observation to figure out that they were even there, it doesn’t seem like they should work the same way as the visible planets we can see in the night sky.

In my opinion, the outer planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto function more like referees in the game. They don’t serve either team. Rather, they adjust the rules of engagement according to their peculiar concerns and impact the obstacles that either team must navigate in striving toward their goal.

One of the other important facets of classical astrology is the role of fixed stars. Most folks know at least a handful of them—stars like Polaris, the pole star in the northern hemisphere, or Sirius, the brightest fixed star in the sky, called the “dog star.” Because they’ve got such a rich history of myth and magic but aren’t as crucial to understanding the game at play between the planets, we won’t do a deep dive into them in this [series]. This is just something to keep in a back pocket for later: the fixed stars work more like individual players’ corporate sponsors, the teams’ owners, or the international conglomerate with their name on the arena where the teams play.

Next up: The Sun.

How to Interpret Houses in Astrology — Part 13: The Twelfth House

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At long last, we’re to the end of this journey through interpreting the houses in Western astrology.

The twelfth house is a tough one to crack.

It’s one of the four dark houses. It’s cadent. And it’s the joy of Saturn, who delights in isolation, restriction, and loneliness. For many writers in the classical Western tradition of astrology, the twelfth house was the worst of the twelve houses, and for good reason.

But just as every life must have encounters with misfortune, or encounters with forces beyond our control, so every life runs up against feelings of loss, retreat, and surrender. That said, every life also has opportunity to find gifts wreathed in shadow.

The twelfth house in astrology is the house of shadow, of enemy, of self-undoing, of isolation, of sorrow. As the joy of Saturn, the twelfth house is associated with those parts of life that limit us and bind us, those aspects of life that seem always to stand in the way of our best interests—or rather, what we perceive to be in our best interests. From an external perspective, the twelfth house is the house of unseen enemies, people who might work against us without our knowledge to prevent us from succeeding in our endeavors.

Where do the meanings of the twelfth house come from?

The twelfth house derives its meanings from three primary sources: first, it is the joy of Saturn, the Greater Malefic. Second, it’s a cadent house, meaning that planets there are moving away from an effective and powerful location on the ascendant. Third, it’s astronomically a difficult house to observe, and it’s what’s called a “dark house,” meaning that planets in the first house can’t see into it, and so the whole house lies wreathed in shadow.

As the joy of Saturn, the twelfth house inherits the full extent of Saturn’s significations (refer back to my discussion on the 3rd house and planetary joys if you need a refresher on how this works).

So as Saturn rules restrictions, harshness, coldness, limitations, people at the margins of society, boundaries, and the word “no,” so all of those slices of life become the stuff from which the twelfth house derives its meanings. Because the twelfth house is cadent, planets there are ineffective at doing their jobs, which doubles up on the “limitation” idea, too.

We must also consider the visual flavor of the twelfth house: even though planets here are rising above the horizon and are visible, atmospheric distortion prevents the observer from being able to see a planet in its true appearance.

Think of the way the Moon looks when she is full and rising over the eastern horizon at night, just as the Sun sets: huge, swollen, red, not too far off from the color she takes on during an eclipse. And consider too that tree lines and mountain ridges obstruct a clear view of the horizon. From a visual standpoint, the twelfth house is a house of distortion and shadow, even if the rising of a planet at the ascendant promises power as the planet transitions from the underworld to the heavens once again.

People and places attached to these shadowy themes become twelfth house topics, too: grief, prisons, hospitals, psychiatric units, and the concept of mental health in general (we might say “unconscious” because the twelfth house is both figuratively and literally outside the gaze of the conscious observer).

One of the names given to the twelfth house was “the bad daimon.” If you remember what I said about the eleventh house in the last post in this series, think of the opposite of “the good daimon.” This house is the part of the chart that represents all of those factors—whether internal, like the Shadow, or external, like unseen enemies—that seek to do us ill.

Meeting the Shadow

I was recently introduced to Ursula K. LeGuin’s monumental fantasy series, A Wizard of Earthsea. The story follows that of a young, dark-skinned wizard named Ged. He was the OG boy wizard of 20th century fantasy literature. Young, prodigious, curious, naive, bright. But Ged is also proud.

In one of his early lessons, he’s discussing magic with the Master Changer, a wizard who specializes in transforming objects from one appearance to another. What the Master Changer teaches Ged is useful, but it is illusory; only appearances change, not actual substance.

Ged, who is ever bright, ever curious, ever proud, presses his teacher: when are we going to learn some real magic? When are we going to turn rocks into real diamonds? The Master Changer replies, holding a pebble in his hand,

“To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world… You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow from that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power…It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”

Not too long after this exchange, Ged’s talent and his pride lead him, in a moment of unhinged anger, to challenge a rival student, someone he has come to hate, to a display of magical prowess. Ged boasts that he will summon the spirit of a legendary person from centuries past, and in the darkness of night he does. Blinding light sunders the world, as Ged’s classmates look on, terrified.

But to light a candle is to cast a shadow. Out from the brilliant rift between the worlds, Ged’s own Shadow—his hubris, his intoxication with his own excellence, his anger—leaps out, claws bared, and mauls him. Ged barely escapes with his life.

And from that moment, until a climactic confrontation in the final pages of the book, Ged and his Shadow chase one another, each seeking to master the other.

The brightest flames cast the darkest shadows. Those shadows, like Ged’s hubris and pride, most often lie hidden in the twelfth house, where they escape our notice until they have fermented and festered into a darkening cloud that looms over our actions. When a person whose shadow possesses them utterly acts, those actions can tend towards destruction, towards restriction, towards domination.

It’s not a place where we want to spend a lot of time, but one must look at what lies there, lest shadow loom too large.

And even though bright lights cast dark shadows, the deepest shadows in the world still have luminous treasure hidden within, if we can be so brave as to master our shadows by naming them. The treasure here is not riches or pleasure: the boon of the twelfth house is depth of experience and a deepened sense of meaning.

How to interpret the twelfth house in your natal chart

When you begin to interpret the twelfth house in your natal chart, you’re dealing with these kinds of questions:

  • What parts of my life would I rather leave unnoticed?
  • What parts of my life have the greatest potential for developing depth and meaning?
  • Where in my life do I experience distance, isolation, and sorrow?
  • How do I transmute my Shadow into a Gift?

To begin, we’ll look at two planets in particular: first, the planet that rules the twelfth house, and second, any planets placed within the twelfth house. We’ll consider the nature of the planets in question, and we’ll think about how well they’re able to do their job.

Let’s take the twelfth house ruler as our starting point.

Wherever that planet lands by house will describe places in the native’s life where they encounter misfortune and sorrow, but also where they might find depth and meaning in their life’s story. The condition of that planet will determine whether that story is one that a person can tell with ease and grace or one that requires strife and struggle (and therapy).

One important note: the planet that rules the twelfth house becomes what we call a “functional malefic.” This is because the twelfth house’s topics are generally negative, and so that planet has to be the bearer of bad news, even if it’s normally a benefic planet like Jupiter or Venus.

The questions we ask with the twelfth house ruler are, “what kind of shadow do I cast?” and “where does that shadow fall?” The planet ruling the twelfth house answers the first question. The house placement of the twelfth house ruler answers the second.

Now we move on to planets placed in the twelfth house.

A metaphor I frequently use with the twelfth house is this (I can’t remember the source, but I know it’s from somewhere—please tell me if you know!): imagine, if you will, an old Gothic cathedral, with stained glass windows on every wall facing the outside. If you pass by that cathedral during the daytime, the glass looks uninteresting. Sure, there’s some dull color, some shape, but you can’t really tell what’s going on there.

Now, drive by that same cathedral at 11:00PM on Christmas Eve, right as midnight mass is beginning: all the lights in the building are on, filling the windows with splendor and warmth. You can see all of the intricate details in the stained glass now, in full color. The building seems to pulse with life.

Planets—especially the Sun and the Moon—placed in the twelfth house have the ability to illuminate the intricate details that lie hidden in that house with uncanny insight. Planets placed in the twelfth house become very important this way, but because they are cadent, they remain outside of a person’s notice until circumstance (usually tough circumstances at that) brings those planets and their stories to the fore.

A planet placed in the twelfth house will utilize the twelfth house—restriction, isolation, sorrow, distance, margins, contemplation, and hidden enemies—to work out its purposes within the native’s life, and those purposes are, of course, determined by the house that planet rules.

It’s also important to note that any planets placed in your twelfth house were planets that were most likely in the ascendant as your mother’s labor was coming to a climax right before your birth. Because of that, planets placed in the twelfth house often describe perinatal conditions.

One example I’m very familiar with has Saturn in Libra exalted in the twelfth house. The native’s head was too big to get through her mother’s hip bones, and so after 58 hours of labor (!!!) the native had to be delivered by Cesarean section. The pressure from attempted delivery was so great that the native was severely jaundiced for the first two weeks of her life. Saturn, of course, rules both bones and pressure.

One other pattern I’ve noticed in working with clients: the twelfth house connotes distance (because it implies isolation). I’ve seen a number of charts where the fourth ruler or natural ruler of one of the parents in the chart was in the twelfth, and the native came from a household where the parents divorced while they were a child, with one of the parents remaining more distant than the other. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s something to consider when thinking about planets placed in the twelfth.

Which planet is your Shadow? What luminous gift does it bear? Where does your Shadow live?

As a means of interpreting these, I’m going to have recourse to the good ol’ seven deadly sins, and their counterparts, the seven cardinal virtues. This is a platform-agnostic way of looking at our shadows and their gifts, even though this is drawn from the Christian tradition (and the Pagan traditions that flow into it). Because each planet can be the ruler of the twelfth house and therefore the ruler of our Shadow, each planet presents a unique opportunity for ruin. But each planet also presents a unique luminous gift, if you, like Ged, can take your Shadow by the hand and name it with your own True Name.

Saturn as twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of acedia (translated as “sloth,” but that’s not quite what it is): fear, depression, self-abasement, and restriction in general, but he can be a powerful ally if he is strong and placed in the twelfth house too. The luminous gift of Saturn is industria: persistence, effort, and ethical action, empowered by the steel Saturn puts in our spines when we come into right relationship with him.

Jupiter as twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of gula (“gluttony”): an insatiable need to have more, to consume, to fill a void that cannot be filled, at the detriment of one’s health and wellness. The luminous gift of Jupiter is temperantia (“temperance”): humanity, equanimity, and balance in consumption and contribution, a bold and generous giver who invites everyone to his table of plenty, regardless of their ability to pay.

Mars as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of ira (“wrath): violence, anger, rage without a constructive direction, that picks fights just to have something to do. The luminous gift of Mars is patientia (“patience”): forgiveness, mercy, and steadfast endurance against the storms of life. Mars made luminous is a champion for those who have none to fight for them.

The Sun as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of superbia (“pride”): being enamored with own’s excellence and self-aggrandizement. The luminous gift of the Sun is humilitas (“humility”), which is not false modesty but rather an honest and objective understanding of one’s own position and the bravery and reverence for all life-ways that emerge from such a firm footing.

Venus as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of luxuria (“lust”): viewing others as objects for the gratification of one’s own desires, to the diminishment of other people. The luminous gift of Venus is castitas (“chastity”): far from being sexless or joyless, a sex-positive “chastity” allows one to view their partners not as objects to be mastered for their own pleasure but as a Subject with freedom, agency, and ability to contribute to a mutually-enriching garden of delight.

Mercury as the twelfth house ruler casts the shadow of invidia (“envy”): constantly searching for the missing piece that will make one finally feel complete and whole, but never finding it, for such a missing piece is but a myth. The luminous gift of Mercury is humanitas (“kindness” or “humanity”): not only does Mercury rule two of the humane signs (and is triplicity ruler of all the air signs), Mercury allows one to experience shared thought and shared feeling that moves one to compassion.

The Moon as the twelfth ruler casts the shadow of avaritia (“greed”): as the Moon gathers things and people together in one place, she seldom releases them, and a shadowy Moon utilizes other people to fill an insatiable need to acquire. But the luminous gift of the Moon is caritas (“charity” or “lovingkindness”), a selfless love that is wholly devoted to the wellbeing of others and manifests in generosity and sacrifice.

And of course, we remember the overall content of the twelve houses, now that our journey is complete, to show us where our Shadow—and its luminous gifts—live in our lives.

  • Twelfth house ruler in the first house: the shadow lives in the body, in our relationship with our appearance and our physical circumstances.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the second house: the Shadow lives in our bank account and our relationship with income and expenditure.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the third house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to our peers, siblings, and day-to-day environment, as well as our relationship to communal gathering spaces.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the fourth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to our parents, ancestors, home, and the land on which we live.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the fifth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to creativity, procreation, enjoyment, delight, aesthetics, and feasting.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the sixth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship to labor, sickness, and responsibility to others.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the seventh house: the Shadow lives in our one-to-one relationships with other people, whether romantic, contractual, or inimical.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the eighth house: the Shadow lives in our fears about powerlessness and our need to feel some sense of control over forces that we ultimately cannot control.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the ninth house: the Shadow lives in our relationship with spirituality, learning, and enlightenment.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the tenth house: the Shadow lives in our professional undertakings and our public status.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the eleventh house: the Shadow lives among the company we keep, often preventing us from feeling truly included with those who consider us a friend.
  • Twelfth house ruler in the twelfth house: the Shadow lives right where it is supposed to, and presents its luminous gifts to us readily and handily, so long as we are paying attention to it.

So, I want to know: what kind of shadow does your life cast? Where does it live? And how are you working on manifesting its luminous gifts? I’d love to hear from you!