The Astrological Twelfth House

In the Eleventh House, you are ready to share your ideals, beliefs and hopes with other people and the wider community. This is one of the reasons that this House is associated with groups, friends and politics.

As we move from the Eleventh House into the Twelfth the focus shifts from the world in a mundane sense onto the unseen aspects of life. This can be likened to a blind spot that is uncomfortable or difficult to try and maneuver yourself to look at, but can be done with a bit of effort!

The Twelfth House is traditionally associated with behind the scenes activities; sacrificial service; deception or secrets; hidden enemies; and places of confinement, e.g., prisons, hospitals, health retreats, etc. Symbolically, this is also the House where you are your own worst enemy... hence the blind spot we all carry as mentioned previously. Sometimes our own unconscious attitudes and behaviour can cause us more problems than our known enemies can.

This is probably one of the most confusing Houses of all for the average person to gain an understanding of. There are a few ways of starting to look at it, and one is to look at the Twelfth House in the context of it being the one before the First.

Since the First House represents the moment of birth it is reasonable to think about the Twelfth as representing the time before birth. Therefore I see this House representing the gestation period, and even past lives.

As just mentioned, the Twelfth House represents the period before we become physical entities so it can also represent the place we come from before we are born into the reality we are in now. If you have a lot of planetary activity in this House you are likely to have a strong link to the unseen elements of life through dreams, meditation and psychic abilities.

The Sixth House can also be examined to gain meaning for this House. The Sixth House symbolises the everyday chores we have to attend to so that our lives run smoothly and our bodies work so we can function on a mundane level.

Keeping in mind that the Twelfth House is the Sixth's opposite, we can say that since the Sixth represents mundane, physical reality then the Twelfth can represent the unseen elements of life that affect our well being, and also the aspects of our life that transcend our mundane existence. The Sixth/Twelfth Houses form a polarity and need to be balanced out... mundane reality vs. unseen elements of existence.