“What is a placement in your birth chart that scared you or confused you when you first started learning about astrology?
Kirah Tabourn, a brilliant and generous astrologer you should all be following, posed this question during a recent Zoom gathering for members of The Eleventh House, her virtual astrology community. My answer was automatic: From the moment I first got my hands on my birth chart, I was equally fascinated and terrified by my Sun in Gemini in the 12th House.
In hindsight, this reaction was absolutely prompted by the fact that I resonated with the first 12th House significations I found via Google search. Reader, they were not cute. I’m talking everything from mental health issues, self-sabotage, imprisonment, confinement, exile. I’ve experienced many a mental health struggle. I’ve also been in a toxic relationship that rendered me quite literally trapped. The 12th House is called a “dark house” because it is in the blind spot of the Ascendant/1st House, which represents you in your birth chart. I’m no Meredith Grey, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider myself dark and twisty.
If I was born with my Sun — my intellect, my conscious self, my core sense of identity — in the 12th House, was I doomed to a life defined by all the shitty stuff that has happened to me? Because that was definitely the vibe I was getting from profile photo-less astro-bloggers with too-good SEO skills.
Journaling, meditating, and studying astrology from actual books, not Google search results, have deepened my understanding of what it means to have my Sun in the 12th House. Is it a dark house that deals with uncomfortable topics? Yes. But importantly, it is also a site of daily rebirth. When the sun rises each morning, it surfaces over the eastern horizon into the 12th House. (The motion of the sun in the sky is called diurnal rotation, not to be confused with zodiacal rotation, which is the movements of the planets through the 12 signs of the zodiac. If you pull up a birth chart, diurnal rotation moves clockwise, whereas zodiacal rotation moves counterclockwise. This episode of The Astrology Podcast explains it really well.) This transition from night to dawn is stark, not unlike some of the more jarring themes associated with the 12th House. We can think of this symbolically as becoming incarnate, tangible. Visible, even.
Diana Rose Harper, another fantastic astrologer and fellow 12th Houser, describes it as “the time between waking up and drinking your necessary morning coffee.” I’m citing this analogy because a) we’ve all been there and b) it wonderfully encapsulates the disorientation I’ve experienced navigating the world as someone with my Sun in the 12th House. Being embodied is hard, y’all. I sometimes feel like a floating head completely disconnected from my body. Because my thoughts are so loud, I need profuse amounts of alone time to function well. I also wrestle constantly with wanting to feel seen and validated, only to anxiously spiral and toss my phone across the room when someone actually does see me for who I am. But the further I delve into the depths of the 12th House, the better I understand myself, and the more adept I become at working with my “scary” placement instead of against it.
I write to make others feel less alone (I know, I know…tell me you’re a Cancer rising with a Pisces Midheaven without telling me). It’s an intention that has steered my writing for almost a decade, from my Tumblr days as a closeted 16-year-old to my current career as a multimedia journalist. By launching this newsletter, which will hit your inbox every other week, I aim to continue doing this through my musings on astrology.
Indulging my astro-curiosity and studying this ancient practice is the best gift I have ever given myself. I am gentler and more patient with my brain, and the flesh vessel that houses it, because I understand my innate gifts and challenges. I hope I can share some of that solace with you.
I also promise to never astro-fear monger. The truth is, everybody has a “scary” placement in their birth chart. But the spooky stuff is what makes us interesting.