The 12th House in Astrology

House of the Unconscious

The 12^th house is sometimes referred to as the unconscious or subconscious house. The state of being unconscious can help result in your success as well as help you in coping with your failures. Failure versus success: do you confront your life unconsciously or do you sweep things under the rug subconsciously?

It is on our behalf that our subconscious works hard, making attempts to figure out our lives. This is a shadow play that is long and slow. Plus, it is quite often filled with pain and fear. It is in a context such as this that your secrets, suffering and sorry confronts you, these things which we keep from others and ourselves. Ultimately, our fate confronts us as well: our karma. It is in this circumstance in which everything you have done in your life confronts you. This puts an even further focus on repressed restraint and agenda. What have you done with your life? This is the twelfth house’s key question. People tend to deal with questions like these both unconsciously and consciously. Will the answers cause you to be compelled to be reborn or transformed? This is another 12^th house cornerstone. The manner in which you keep moving forward is what this last astrological house is all about.

The Unconscious

As a general rule, you can learn a lot about your unconscious. It its manifestations most noble, you get prompted to be quite charitable. You learn from both present and past lessons and are also equipped better to keep going forward. People are compelled by the 12^th House to seek spiritual closer as a way towards growing positively.

Feeling Stuck

This last zodiac house also makes recognition that in life, people can become bound, confined and simply put, stuck. Because of this, the 12^th house rules asylums, institutions, hospitals and jails as well as any space where freedom is inhibited. In this house, more gloominess comes in the form of clandestine affairs, secret enemies and danger. Be Cautious!

Garbage Bin

Some have called this last zodiac house as its garbage in. This is really a term which is unfair. This house is ultimately the champion of positive transformation. It is at this point that you need to stand on the precipices and determine how to proceed. Through meeting with the past and by paying a visit to your unconscious mind, you can get a glimpse with what the future brings. This house is ruled by the planets Neptune and Jupiter and by Pisces.

Hidden Strength

It is in this house that your hidden weaknesses as well as hidden strengths are shown. This house shows limitations, suffering, sorrow, seclusions, secrets and handicaps. Here are shown places of confinement such as places where one is hidden away like rest homes and hospices, institutions like hospitals, prisons, such as the biggest prison in town and other similar establishments. Asking yourself questions such as where you hold yourself back and having a look at the twelfth house for clues can indicate a fear of failure just as much as it is able to reveal a fear of success! Progressions and transits towards this house will bring things you swept under the rug to the surface. It can bring every skeleton you have ever had out of the closet. It gives you a clue about your own guardian angels as well.

Looking for Clues

After you ask yourself where you happen to be holding back in any way, you might want to check this house for clues for it is here where the fear of either failure or success is indicated. In the twelfth house, where there is progressions or transits things you deny or have put aside so as not to think about it are revealed.

Face Your Fear

No matter how trivial they are, sooner or later you need to face things you are dwelling upon. The thing that most people forget is that sooner or later stuff you fail to acknowledge or that you have ignored will surface from the abyss or the deep. When you confront your neurotic tendencies, phobias and fears, as well as your delusions, compulsions and aversions, you set yourself free. This is due mainly to the fact that when you confront or face your fear you find your strength within and whether or not you effectively use this is a matter of having formed patterns and habits that have been built over more than a few lifetimes and which can be hard to break.

Secret Visions

Here in the twelfth house are your secret visions, strength or helpers for a much better future. What is interesting is that people that you have hindered or helped in days that have gone by come up and begin surfacing in this house. Remember that it is those we harm and have been harmed by as well as those we have assisted and have assisted us in the past are people we tend to attract. Essentially, it would be an understatement to say that this house is one of the most complicated ones. Being the house of disappointments and setbacks, you might want to check where you have limited or set up boundaries for yourself. Keep in mind it is YOU that sets limits and not anybody else. This house wants you to let go of past things you are dependent upon and make a future commitment even if there are no signs that are very clear as to what exactly the future will be bringing. One way to think about this is to realize that it is the house before the 1^st house and so, it is not unlike a Mother’s womb that is submerged or connected to the universe that awaits your being born and at the same time waits for a severing with the consciousness of the universe. This is a thought that could be scary but as you are alive, you survive and now it is up to you to go about living life in the light rather than in the dark.

You can think of it this way: Not all people who are in a monastery, ashram or place or retreat seek enlightenment. Not everyone in in institutions are there due to being mentally dangerous or unstable, not all folks in a hospital are there due to being sick and not everyone in prison is there for paying for their misdeeds, but instead, paying for being caught!

House of Karma

Being the subconscious mind’s house, this house is of accumulated experiences of the emotions and is referred to by some as the House of Karma. You need to be cautious about giving way to pain avoidance technique, pleasure seeking or automatic responses. This includes drugs and alcohol. Keeping a backlog in your mind such as memories of an experience you had previously as well as experiences that are emotional can lead to excuse making and self-pity. Instead of getting on with life each and every day, you get stuck in a rut. It is in this way that you become your own worst enemy so look to this house and find out where you tend to keep shooting yourself in your feet. Since Pisces rules the feet, having a Piscean flavor may be needed now and then to keep your mouth shut rather than put your foot in your mouth, so to speak. Since this is the 12^th house of sacrifice, it is better if you enter the world of sacrifices voluntarily instead of being forced into having to endure them.