The 8th House.

The 8th House.

“No more the victory of spirit over matter and definitely not the victory of matter over spirit – the next stage is not one overcoming the other, but a merge.”

— Frederick Nietzsche

Shrouded in mystery, the 8th house continues to riddle those who refuse to consciously plunge into it’s depths. This house belongs to scorpio and pluto, who take no prisoners. This is the area between life and death, the transcendental void where all possibilities exist. The 8th house contains within it, hidden treasures and guarded secrets of the occult mysteries. Those who superficially seek it’s riches for power are lured into it’s dark waters where they are led to a spiritual imprisonment of their own demise. The knowledge attained here is sacred and those who happen to stumble upon such information without first establishing proper spiritual maturation and discernment are forewarned. Prematurely eating from the fruit can come with a high cost and dissolution of the “veil of ignorance” must not be rushed by the ego. This house is not concerned with affairs of the flesh but rather total dissolution, purification, and transformation. Natives with heavy 8th house placements are learning lessons of surrender and the proper use of power. It’s only through facing ones darkest, innermost demons that the shadows of the past are finally brought into the light of awareness and the shackles that have bound us to these unforgiving cycles are finally released. Through sacrifice and dedication, those who brave the unforged path to self mastery are awarded the ultimate gift of spiritual liberation. True wisdom is only attained through experience.

Feeling Powerless in the 8th House?

Power is a strange thing. At first, it provokes the images of government, corporates, police, institutions, leaders in mind. On a personal level, it provokes images of parents, partner, inter-human relationships, schools, and even social media. Likes, reblogs, followers, public engagement give a sense of "power".

Power is not even a bad thing. It gives you competence, strength to get things done, self defence, self preservation and to live in society, you need power. Power is the child of socialization, how else will you get things done? How else will one survive in this world?

But where we do feel powerless is in the 8th house. "You are not in control of your life", this sentence alone is enough to create crisis in mind. That your relationships, goals, desires, personality, actions, intentions, thoughts, looks, luck, life story, fortune and misfortune, nothing is your own is a scary thing to realize. I cannot even afford to lose this tumblr account, let alone lose my identity, possessions and ego, then how can I happily surrender my power to the forces of the 8th house? If I don't have any power then I am as good as a dead body.

Ego v/s Powerlessness

8th house is like the reverse of everything you have been told by the society. Ever since my confrontation with this house, I feel like everything that is visible, written, told is a lie and only that is truth which is invisible, unwritten and untold. As soon as something is brought outside in the surface, it loses its truthfulness. No amount of spirituality and mysticism can explain the truth because it will not remain truth if it is brought to the surface. Everything that is brought to the surface is immediately influenced by the ego, vanity, narcissism, arrogance of the outside word. Bring a fish out of the ocean and it immediately dies. Its real place is inside the ocean. What belongs to the ocean be left in its original place. Then how do we know that the fish exist? We know because we "feel". 8th house is one of intuition (gut feelings and hunches) and feelings (that thing in your body that eats you alive). We "feel" love but as soon as try to describe that love it loses its truthfulness. You are now looking for the words, language, sentences to express your love and then you look for appreciation, acknowledgement, reciprocation and acceptance of your love. All this is vanity in a micro level.

Humility and Detachment

Okay guys, I am a humble person because I am self aware and talk about humility, so I am a down to earth and nice person, ok? But isn't it .... self-contradictory? 8th house teaches you real humility, the real thing that is not about self expression and preaching, it is about hiding yourself in the closet because you are really feeling humble. Ironically, we are a society that thrives on goals, aspirations and advancement then the 8th house is like the party pooper that tries to make you humble when all the other kids are being cool and dancing around. Not fair, sir, I hate such schools that don't treat all students equally and fairly. But 8th house is the teacher that chooses few students and teaches them real humility and brings them back to the track every time they go astray. This humility is strange because it is not in the words or performance or poetries; real humility is a thing that you know inside and then keep your lips closed because those who know don't need understanding and preaching, while those who are not there yet look for all kind of guidance and tuition. 8th house chooses its own students and they don't even know they are the chosen ones because there are no regular classes. Some days, everything seems normal, life is fine and then 8th house will summon you for emergency classes because you let something go to your head, you were vain and dishonest, you were selfish and acted against your conscience, so the teacher will call you back to the classroom and teach you real humility once again. 8th also has no notes and lessons, you are your own teacher, you will be just made to face your feelings, memories, behaviours, sometimes in isolation all alone for days or weeks, until you understand the pattern and interconnectedness of everything and change your behaviours for the future.

A Nobody in Nowhere

Even in the occult community, we have people who are egoistic, narcissists and vain, so why call out "others" when it is the humanity itself that is deeply entangled in the dirt of vanity. The other end of vanity is that you are a nobody in nowhere. If I completely surrender all my vanity then I close this account and never share my opinion on anything because conversations are impossible without some layers of ego. When two people sit and talk, they see each other's ego. Every time they open their mouths, it is their ego that speaks. It is just impossible to live a life without some ego, even if a thin layer of it. Writing this post is "my" assertion of "my" ego. And the silliest thing is that this enlightenment comes and goes, one minute one feels like they are finally enlightened and the next minute they are again confused. I think it is because there are 12 houses in a birth chart and there is more to life than what happens in 8th house alone. Whereas your 8th house may want you to surrender your ego, but your 1st house placements may want you to become a poster boy in your workplace. Two conflicting desires - To be somebody and To not be somebody. This is why self awareness and deep insights into your feelings will keep you sane here. It is a scary house when you are a newbie, but with enough training and understanding, it becomes the door to even greater understanding of 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th houses. These are the houses of the collective, greater, bigger than life and larger than an individual.

Still Feeling Powerless?

Me too. But I guess this is the challenge, to find a personal power deep within and to preserve it. Perhaps this is the reason why these natives sometimes get really spiritual, celibate and mystical. Because they preserve and protect their personal power against the world. To stand in the face of uncertainty and yet trust the patterns. To stare into the darkness and yet have scotopic vision. To get things done and yet surrender your power attitude. 8th house is like living in the dark nights when you were accustomed to living in the bright mornings and sunny afternoons. The only problem is to let go of the bitterness, resentment and frustration that comes with seeing other people still consumed in their illusions. But if we are to accept our own ignorance then we have to be tolerant with others as well, because knowledge itself is ignorance as they say. Perhaps the language of the unconscious is "silence" because the moment we start speaking all the demons and dangers of mind are summoned.

The journey to this realization comes in many ways. For me, it came from healing my childhood traumas and family inheritances of behaviours, thoughts, attitudes and emotions. "Dysfunctional family" but it turns out that there was this deeper meaning underneath all the dysfunction. Perhaps there is no such thing as "functional and healthy". Of course I am not romanticizing abuse at all. But it is surprising to see how healing childhood trauma leads to the point of spiritual path, it leads you to realize that the society as a whole is pretty dysfunctional and the only functional place is the underworld.

I’m an eighth house sun and I rarely find any celebrities with that placement because it’s fundamentally incompatible with a public life. Charli D’Amelio is confirmed to have her sun in the eighth and it’s pretty obvious she is uncomfortable with fame.

8th houser celebs in Public Eye

Charli D'Amelio

1 May 2004. 5:54 PM. Norwalk, CT, USA.

Moon in Virgo, Virgo rising, Sun in 8h Aries, Venus in 9h, Mars in 10h Gemini, Jupiter in 12h Leo.

Kylie Jenner

10 August 1997. 17:25 PM. LA, CA.

Sagittarius rising, Jupiter in capricorn 2h, sun in cancer 8h, mercury, venus and rahu in 9th house, moon and mars in 11th house libra.

Kendall Jenner

3 November 1995. 15:38 PM. LA, CA.

Pisces rising with moon in 1h, sun, mercury and rahu in 8th house libra, venus, mars and jupiter in 9th house scorpio.

Why Hide?

The reason why 8th house placements are hidden from public eye may be that

1. They are intuitively capable of knowing other people's intentions and motivations.

2. There is a sense of disgust and contempt of vanity in others.

3. They unlearn the behaviours and build themselves up many times.

4. Sun in 8th house has tendency to give self sabotage and self destruction.

5. They tend to hide from people because it seems fake to be putting up a persona especially one that is incompatible with their actual emotions. They are the ones to be be as authentic as they can get.

Fame

Although these celebs are 8th housers, they also have 9th house placements which is indicator of self referential, strong beliefs. All 3 have Venus in 9th house. 1-5-9 houses deal with Dharma and especially 9th is the fortune, destiny, auspicious storehouse of energy. I wonder if their 9th house overrides the negative twirl of 8th Sun?

Kylie and Kendall have ruler of 10h (Public image) in 9h. I also wonder if they are exceptionally lucky or is it that they were born in a league, hierarchy, class that is normal for them to achieve? Are they the "upper middle classes" of their industry. I mean, how many of us are born in education or working class or service class or business class families but able to achieve extraordinary success that is not expected for these classes? There is a sort of upper limit in how far you can go in education sector or service sector but media is the boundless industry with large impact. Even scientists have to collaborate with TV shows to be able to discuss concepts with large masses that is not possible if they just sit in their labs and office

Kylie has moon and mars in 11h libra. 11h deals with large connectivity and knowing people to get things done

Charli has Mars and Saturn in 10h Gemini. Career is focus in her life despite the emotional turmoil

Contradiction?

It may be that their public image is a marketing strategy while they live an authentic life off camera. Perhaps they bottle up their emotions around vanity which is quite contradictory to their profession that revolves around superficial attributes of beauty and fame though

Kylie is known for her cosmetic surgeries (8h).

8h is also about ancestral blessings that are inherited. Looking at their lives, they have been quite lucky with their blessings since a young age.

It may also be that they have already learned to handle the turmoils of 8h or they go to psychotherapy behind the scenes.

After all, being famous is their career and perhaps they practice their expressions, body language and style so they don't appear nervous in public

Whether or not they have faced life altering crisis/meeting people who detour their lives/undergo complete rebirth - only they know because 8h is also something that the native hides and deals with by herself alone

The rest of their chart supports their value system. Also, their public image is handled by their team, it is a character that we know. Beware of survivorship bias, their lives are oddly too stable for their 8th house Sun though 🥴

Ego battles for Sun in 7h

While it is fruitful to have Sun in 10h/11h for career and public life, the public perception and how you appear in workplace; it is, at the same time, detrimental to have Sun in 7h for relationships both romantic and otherwise.

From 7h, Sun also aspects the 1h, thus giving a personality where the native is ego sensitive, demands a lot of respect and authority. These natives are always looking for respect whether it is their personal relationship or professional, they are insecure if not being given a lot of importance by people in their surroundings.

At the same time, they may have a lot of "self-respect" which is a double edged sword -- 1. on one hand, self respect means that you have standards for how you ought to be treated by others, that you do not tolerate insults and teasing from others even as a joke and 2. on the other hand, it means that you are too egoistic to take help from anyone, you want to do everything yourself and seeking help from anyone feels like incompetence.

This applies to both Sun in 1h and 7h but mostly for 7th housers the problem is that ego works everywhere except in relationships. Whether it is your parents or partner, ego ruins relationships. These are the people who matter to you regardless of their shortcomings, they stand with you through thick and thin. So, we adjust our egos to better settle with the egos of our important people.

In the same way, according to the principle "like attracts like" that I like to use in astro relationships, the partners they attract have similar demands for authority, respect, pride and self-respect. If 7th houser is not consciously aware of their egoistic expectations, it is definitely going to cause problems for the people. So, here the choice is to adjust the need to be "I am right" or "respect me unconditionally" and to understand that it is your expectation that is too high. People cannot respect you all the damn time like you are some royalty. Even if you are a royalty, there will be people who gossip about you behind your backs, can you control them?

Moreover, where does this demand for excessive respect come from? If we explore this demand deeply, we find its roots in the relation to our father which is also indicated by Sun in astrology. In relation to father being excessively hero type or being too cold, we are either too demanding of respect overtly or covertly. For sun in 1h, they act too much like their father who himself was a grandiose type personality who liked to be in limelight. For sun in 7h, they are covertly demanding the limelight, father was likely a figure to be feared and intimidating authority. In any case, the personality of 1st houser and 7th houser Sun are similar.

Difference lies in the area of life; whereas the 1st houser will focus on self image but the 7th houser will focus on other image. The goal is to find respect and recognition.

"You cannot live without getting into trouble, cannot think, cannot feel; you can do nothing without getting into trouble. For trouble is what we are all looking for; we all hate it—we want to be perfectly nice and frank—but we are looking for trouble."

— Carl Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra

Death

Death belongs to the realm of faith.

You are right to believe you will die.

It sustains you.

If you didn't believe it, could you bear the life you have?

If we could not totally rely on the certainty that it will end, how could you bear all this?

Nevertheless, it is only a matter of faith.

And the worst thing about it is that you are not sure.