Astrological Houses

12th House Planets: How to Interpret?

By astrologyplace April 11, 2016

Question: How to interpret 12th house planets? Buy a Ouija board! The mysterious, strange house is filled with mystique and it is the area of the chart thought to rule the unconscious forces at work. In this realm, there is something beyond the ordinary trivialities of life, where we sense there is more than what reality presents to us.

The 12th house acts as a workshop for shaping, storing, and incubating our inner-selves. It’s where we hold images, memories and everything in the unconscious that often appears to us in dreams. This part of the chart contains deep intuitive insights that mysteriously arrive by way of an unknown sender. Planets here are like ghosts knocking about in the background. Some of the planetary issues will seem to haunt us continuously or lurk back in the shadows of our mind for decades, but they always seek some form of expression.

There’s always someone haunting someone-haunting someone. And you know who I am. Though I never leave my name or number. I’m locked inside of you. – Carly Simon, Haunting

The 12th house rules the collective unconscious at work, governs the family spirits of the past, and contains more mysteries than could be properly explained. Individuals with planets here find that the only way to channel such overwhelming energy is by doing something which connects to a power beyond themselves. This is both an emotional and spiritual imperative, for it is the inner world, rather than the outer world, which provides their most transformative sources. In a giant flood of human inspiration, they tap into lost memories, dreams, and visions and transform it all into writing, theatre, poems, art, or cinema, and so forth.

Planets in the 12th house are mediumistic. By this I don’t mean seance-type mediumship. When something is in the 12th, it is receptive to the deeper levels of the collective psyche. The innate urge which the planet represents cannot be expressed without bringing everyone else with it. The individual with the Sun in the 12th may find it hard to express individuality, because he or she is so attuned to the collective psyche, including the family past. The “purpose” is not to avoid developing individuality, but to develop it as a devotion to that larger psyche. That is why service and spiritual commitment are so often the themes of the 12th. So is the artist’s inspiration, which draws on deeper and older sources than mere personal experience. Planets in the 12th need to reflect what the collective unconscious requires. They serve a greater whole. Liz Greene