The 8th house ? Friend or Foe?

I doubt whether any other astrological house has a reputation as lugubrious as the 8th house. Death, surgery, loss, taxes. The 8th house is difficult to talk about as we pry into matters of privacy, confidentiality and areas of life that take us to the edge and take colour of an interesting mixture of risk and trust. Sexuality. Psychology. The Occult. I often find myself explaining that the 8th house deals with our emotional exchanges and our import/export with other people and worlds beyond. It is a point of going beyond our selves. Matters represented by this house may dramatically challenge and change our conception of our selves and our sense of reality.

Words that come with the 8th house are change, transformation and correction. There is often an identity crises connected with the experience of the 8th house ? since there is something in the human nature that is either resistant or reluctant to change. Ebertin described ?Death? an occupational crises in human experience because we lacked the ability to see beyond and see the big pattern and larger journey of the soul. Words I like to use are therapy, initiation and ?the burning of bridges?. When dealing with clients these give the impression of moving ahead and being lifted up to the next level. But still the 8th house scares the living daylights of the most of us. It is the twilight zone, a place that lies between worlds and a place of surrender. With the 8th house there is a fine balance. Things may go wrong, but there could also be the case of being the right person at the right place at the right time. When dealing with charts I frequently find it difficult to distinguish between the doctor and the patient.

A client of mine recently wanted to know (horary) whether she would receive insurance money for damages incurred upon her belongings. The Moon was in the 8th house, void of course at the end of Taurus. The application of the Moon is to Gemini with Mercury in Libra, retrograde in the 11th. The 11th house is the house of relief so the querent DOES get a monetary return. The chart is affirmative. She does get a return due to Mercury?s location by house and retrograde motion, but probably not as much as she would have hoped and of an intermediate means ? also due to Mercury retrograde condition. Insurance policies are one of the great facets of the 8th house and the lord of the 8th in the 11th is a certain testimony that things get put back together again if you come off a wall (Humpty Dumpty). The 11th house gives a soft landing; expect the best of the best or the best of the worst.

Now my personal concept of the 8th house is far from complete and that?s why I think it could be a good topic for exploration and exchange of ideas. We have all been there, in the 8th, and received our lessons and insights. Does the 8th house?s ability to act as either Friend or Foe vary according to the combination of houses involved? Here are a few observations;

The lord of the 8th in the 4th could be more a definite indication of something due to be removed or terminated for either good or bad (i.e. by either loss or the act or surgery).
The lord of the 8th in the 9th would not be so dire but more apt to discovery, initiation and changes of consciousness.
The lord of the 8th in the 10th would more likely prove the specialist and person with executive powers.
Would the lord of the 8th in the 3rd ? show the making of a politician or a traffic warden? Maybe this position gives inflictions of speech or is the signature of the speech therapist?
Is the person with the Lord of the 8th in the 7th more subject to the actions of others, i.e. by accident or war.

Would anyone like to share their insights.

Well it's also other people's (and partner's) money. We only die once, but hopefully we can receive money from others more than once.

But if we receive money from others, that's a 2nd house theme. The 8th house is money belonging to 'others' (think "my loss, your gain"), and even then we are only talking about an accidental meaning of the 8th house, not its essential meaning. There is nothing complex about this house: its essential meaning is simply decline, or reduction or 'nullification' if you like. That may not be a bad thing (unless its the big one) because periodically we need to stop and think about what we have to let go of.

Curiously, I don't see the 8th as being as negative as the 12th and 6th. Death and its associates are sort of final, so you have to move on whatever. The 6th and 12th have an interminable, depressing, lack of control, quality to them which I think is worse.

But then, on reflection, (and despite an abundance of Saturn and fixed signs) I'm a change addict so perhaps I shouldn't try and generalise......

This evening's horary concerned a liver transplantion. In the turned chart: Stationary Pluto on the 4th cusp. Retrograde Mercury on the cusp of the 1st. Moon at 14GE40 in the 8th applying by trine to retrograd Jupiter at 18AQ45 intercepted in the 6th. Jupiter rules the liver. Aquarius the replacement. So the transplant will occur within 4 months or 4 weeks at the best. Scarey business - but skilled doctors are capable of administrating these calamities in our modern age.

I do get some work at this level and we all understand something about the anxiety involved for the people concerned. But it has something to do with being able to understand the matter at hand, levelling with it and then dealing with it. It has to do with facing realities.

When dealing with the lord of the 8th, if infortunes, some of my clients got clobbered with hammers, while if the lord of the 8th was a fortune - others reported of seeing angels.

Deb wrote:There is nothing complex about this house: its essential meaning is simply decline, or reduction or 'nullification' if you like.

The 8th house is in mundo with the 11th. Are they opposites? Does the 11th simply give rize or 'addition' according to the same anology? This would reason with the apparent diurnal motion or path of the Sun. In comparison to the 8th, the 11th appears to be risk-free.

while if the lord of the 8th was a fortune - others reported of seeing angels.

Obviously dead then.

QED

Andrew Bevan wrote:The 8th house is in mundo with the 11th.

What does that mean?

This is a hard one, but here I go:

There is nothing complex about this house: its essential meaning is simply decline, or reduction or 'nullification' if you like.

Yes, but, if possible, decline and reduction without movement, stagnation before the actual decline and loss. Traditionally it was known as the Idle Place. The quote above would seem to be correct, but yet the 8th carries a feeling of getting nowhere, of being weak, ineffectual, and out of control ? in advance of actual loss of power. It has more of a sense of 'Why bother doing it?' 'It's useless.' 'It's futile.' In its diurnal motion the Sun is still high in the sky and the daylight is still strong, yet it's at a turning point. The Sun still reigns supreme but the upcoming end is perceived. Conscious awareness is still active, but it loses power through its stalled and fixed gaze.

To get the full sense of the 8th I think it's important to keep in mind its traditional signification of 'fear'. Fear stops us in our tracks, keeps us from doing what we should or could do. We become 'frozen with fear', and therefore idle. That's the stagnation I'm thinking of, the loss and reduction without movement. The situation of weakness is indicated well by the aversion to the energy and drive of the Ascendant.

I'm finding death of the chart native more as a 7th and/or 4th house matter. In a person's chart the 8th seems to be more the matter, the subject, of death. A natal chart with an emphasized 8th could indicate dwelling upon or taking an interest in death, death becoming a frequent occurrence in the native's life, etc.. The death of others brings up another 8th house signification as listed on page 88 of the Epstein translation of Ibn-Ezra's 'The Beginning of Wisdom': Grief. Grief sucks the life right out of us and puts our daily activities on hold. That's a good example of 8th house limbo.

OK, I thought of another one: 'In the grip of fear'. More of the static feeling ? the paralysis ? of the 8th house.

The 8th and 6th houses are averse the ascendant. The upper hemisphere is the diurnal realm, containing the joys of diurnal Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. The 9th house, the Sun's joy and the house of religion, spirituality and philosophy, is trine the Asc. Therefore, the 8th house, being averse the Asc. would appear to specifically inhibit or deny solar will, energy, and spirit. The 8th is also the 12th house from the 9th. That would make the 8th a house of spiritual and psychological crisis closely tied to solar spiritual issues. Saturn is the traditional (so-called Chaldean?) cosignificator of the 8th, so there's a good indication of heaviness and hindrance. It looks like a good idea to spend some time considering the relationship of both the 8th and 9th houses and their relationship to the ascendant. In the 9th, trine the Asc., the Sun has its joy and Jupiter is the cosignificator. In the 8th ? averse the Asc. & the 12th place from the 9th ? Saturn is cosignificator. The 3 diurnal planets are closely involved with those 2 houses. The flights, heights and expansion of the 9th house with its influence of Sun and Jupiter sits uncomfortably next to the cold stoniness of nay-saying Saturn and the 8th.

The lower hemisphere is nocturnal and contains the joys of nocturnal Moon, Venus and Mars. The 5th house is the house which is trine the Asc. and is indicative of bodily pleasure and the body's strength through athletic competition. The 6th is the hemisphere's house which is averse the ascendant, revealing the lunar connection to the body through problems of physical health and accidents. The connection of lunar principles to the 6th house probably isn't as strong since the houses aren't derived from the Moon's diurnal motion as they are from the Sun's.

So what I'm babbling on about here is that I see the 6th house in the lunar hemisphere as related to health and the body, but the 8th more as a solar spiritual and psychological house. The 8th is traditionally associated with death, but I see it as death being the big scary monster that scares the stuff right out of us and brings awareness of limits (fear). The 8th signifies more the idea and awareness of death, and events of death that enter our life. It's also the house of of other people's money, but that's a derived signification and doesn't get to the principles underlying the house itself. Once again, the 7th and 4th look to be the most appropriate houses signifying the chart native's actual death.

8th house as friend or foe? Foe to a forward-moving solar world of will and the ruling consciousness that makes its plans and decisions. Friend to the self-empowerment workshop leaders.


[I will throw in here that talk of transformation seems premature in the 8th and can't yet take place ? I would imagine that happens at the IC, or maybe even the Asc. (I haven't put much thought into it yet).]

Andrew Bevan wrote:
The 8th house is in mundo with the 11th.

Martin Gansten wrote:
What does that mean?

In mundo - mundane aspect. My apologies if my use of the term was unexact. The 8th and the 11th are in mundane parallel, being equally distant from the Midheaven. The 11th house gives a rize to the power of the Sun where the 8th gives a fall.

Nice contribution, Kirk! I will want to give this a think.

Not sure why?

In vedic astrology- 1,2,4,7,8 houses are called "Apachaya" houses i.e decreasing houses.Planets in these houses lose strength or vitality over a period of time.The strong killer houses are 2nd and 7th !!

Hellenistic astrologer may be of some help here.

PD

Logically 7th ought to be physical death since it's opposite 1st. The thinking behind 8th as death seems to be that death is inherently negative to the native, but actually it's a neutral objective event (euthanasia would not exist otherwise). The 2nd is wealth and growth, so 8th is corruption, decay and parasitism. The association with elitism, occultism and associated intellectualism comes through Scorpio's (formerly the Serpent) association with evil. The association with sex purely for its own sake through Scorpio's association with the genitals. In the creation myths the tempter usually has some purpose as well.