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Each of the six complementary houses in an astrological chart–1 and 7, 2 and 8, 4 and 10, 5 and 11, 6 and 12 and the two that are the subject of this essay 3 and 9 indicate departments of life experience. The lower numbers represent the more subjective outlook we have toward our experience, while the higher numbers indicate what happens when that experience is to some degree objectified through relationship, first with one other person (7 and 8) then with a group of people (9, 10 and 11) and finally with extra-dimensional forces (house 12.)

In a sense, all of the houses are subject to extra-dimensional forces, however, this only becomes obvious to any of us when we consciously move into house twelve, the last house of the chart. It is then that we can become aware of what we refer to as the unconscious, the part of life that is usually invisible to human perception. Consciousness must first break through the barriers of its own ego defences for this to happen. As long as there is an experience of separation, a person is not able to enter this space.

The process of consciously experiencing the unconscious begins in the third house and is objectified in the ninth house. The key word for these two houses is perception

It is as if we are all watching the story of our lives on the screen of our reality in a universal theatre. The theatre is the Planet Earth; the screen is the part of the planet we are observing. When our awareness is centered in a space of consciousness represented by the third house, we sit close to the screen. We watch the projected film by noticing as many details as possible and our perceptions are fuelled by our personal wants and needs. When we move into a third house space, perception is both localized and fragmented.

When our awareness is in a ninth house space of consciousness, we move away from the screen and view the story from a distance. We are up in the balcony looking at the screen of reality from an elevated vantage point. The vertical vision that this perspective affords us alters our experience of the story we are watching. We are more detached from what is happening and thus no longer as personally involved. Disentangled from all the stories that have defined our lives up to this point, we can expand our minds and encompasses a more spacious and extensive understanding of the events taking place on the screen of reality. The ninth house perspective, which obviously occurs after we reach maturity, is not what is true; it represents what could be and most probably would be true if all of us embraced a bigger picture of life.

Everyone has both a third house and a ninth house in their astrological chart, yet some have more planetary energy to tap into in one than in the other while other charts do not put an emphasis on either house.

For those whose perception focuses more in the third house arena, the immediate environment is the main event and the popular culture receives the majority of their attention. They may be at odds with society, dependent upon their inherent nature, yet they keep up with the latest developments nonetheless and their information is usually in step with the times. These are the folks who shine whenever and wherever people meet to exchange what is happening around the planet at present. They have a plethora of opinions and ideas, they never seem to run out of things to say and they are quick to alter their views as soon as the occasion warrants it.

For those whose charts emphasize the ninth house arena, the everyday world and the culture that emerges from it is far less interesting than the framework that supports it. While perceptions in the third house are anchored in solid realities, perceptions in the ninth are enlarged and elevated through philosophical inquiry. The concepts based on the current physical condition of events are stretched out by the ninth house mind and converted into abstractions. Crystallized facts, considered by most societies to be the mainstay of average intelligence, yields to a more speculative flavour of thought in house nine.

While third house mental processing seeks to describe the facts of the matter, ninth house mental processes are concerned with explanations. An individual enters a third house space when working with the cognitive mind–the mind that wants to know–and a ninth house space with the aspiring mind-the mind that wants to comprehend the reason why. In the third house the aim is pinpoint analysis, while the ninth house traveller seeks to blend everything on hand into a dynamic synthesis.

Practical knowledge, an outgrowth of the third house, is valued above all else by the general public, for it leads to the production of things that are useful in material life. Gaining a greater understanding of what life is all about, however, is often viewed by the modern mind as an exercise in futility. “Do not ask why”, said the self-help guru at an Insight Seminar in Los Angeles that I was invited to over twenty years ago. “There is no why”, the workshop facilitator confidently declared.

To individuals who spend much of their time navigating through the ninth house space of consciousness, however, why is the most important question one could ask.
Can there be an answer to a question that seeks out the reason behind an event? For instance, can any of us know what our purpose is for coming here to the Earth?
No group or organization knows why any individual has chosen to be here and participate in the creative living process we call life; it is up to each person to arrive at the true answer on their own. One by one, individuals have the potential to discover their unique purpose for being because life continues informing all of us with every breath we take. Regardless of how our astrological chart is patterned, the truth of our lives wills itself out in every thought that flows through our mind, in every feeling that pours out from our heart, in every deed that we set into motion and in every interaction that we have with others.

Moment after moment, as we imbibe the breath of life, the truth speaks to us from all the living things of the Earth, as well as all the things in heaven. Still, one has to listen to and hear that truth rather than continually become distracted by the ego-driven creations of a three dimensional illusion that successfully markets itself as the real deal.

Third house perception takes place when a person is seeking the truth in the moment. The result of this truth-seeking may well be the very tool that is needed to take the next step and move from point A to point B. If the show must go on, the momentary truth must be grasped or else the energy flow will stop and lose its momentum.

Ninth house perception kicks in when a person leaves their familiar surroundings and ventures forth into foreign locales. This journey is filled with the spirit of unprecedented adventure and one’s mind must keep growing in order to process and internalize experiences for which it has no previous frame of reference. In order to tap into truths that are universally meaningful, a person must travel to different places around the world, interact with many people and listen to what each one of them has to say.

Individuals whose chart puts emphasis on the ninth house often go through life unnoticed by the general public. Some circumstance of their existence tends to keep both them and their evolving wisdom outside of the popular culture. Years, decades and even centuries may pass before their ideas filter into mainstream thinking. Like many artists, they must leave the Earth before they can be appreciated by the culture, as the truth they channel into the world is what is important, not their personalities.

As with all the complementary houses, the third and the ninth house represent the summation of human knowledge from the beginning of time to the present and into the future. These two houses offer all of us the potential to both know and understand the lives we are living while, at the same time, reminding us that what we know and what we believe we understand is but a drop in the bucket that holds the answers to the riddle of our existence.

Written by Paul Six (with the Sun conjunct Jupiter in the Ninth House in his chart)
October 18, 2009 London, England (en route to Bali)

The first six houses of the zodiac wheel represent the space on the planet’s track (the ecliptic) that was below the Earth. Thus, this space was invisible to you and to anyone living at your birthplace when you took your first breath as an independent being.

The first six houses signify arenas of potential experience in the astrological blueprint in which an individual is working toward creating a personality. Self-development is the focus here.

A specific value is given to every individual by the universe when a newborn comes into the world and takes the first breath of life. The first six houses provide the psychic substance that enables each person to develop the value they carry and learn to channel it into the world as a contribution that in some way can improve current conditions here on Earth.

The seventh house in the chart represents the beginning of the part of space that was visible in the sky when and where you were born. It indicates the arena of life experience where you become aware that there are other people who carry other value and that some of them are willing to make an exchange with you. Individuals meet one another in the seventh house and then merge in the eighth.

An eighth house merger signifies an important relationship-one that seems to have a fated quality. There are some connections that a person cannot possibly avoid for the mirror the relationship holds up is the mirror of truth and it offers a reflection that is not to be taken lightly. In fact, nothing that the eighth house contains in terms of potential experience could ever be taken lightly. This is the place where the road turns and the pathway is either all the way up to the top or all the way down to the bottom. Historically this is the house that some astrologers start to shudder at, as soon as they see a chart laden with planets in this domain. It indicates the place one consciously enters to take a roller coaster ride through forbidden territory, meaning the areas of life that many people are uncomfortable talking about to strangers and even to friends.

Whenever you join forces at a deep level with another person, you are on eighth house terrain. This includes any sexual relationship, any business partnership where joint resources are a focal point and any association where the partners involved are struggling to maintain a give and take arrangement that can satisfy both of them.

Only the strong at heart need to sign up for a lengthy eighth house excursion. If you do not know who you are, the complex energies you are subjected to in this part of the chart might destroy your identity. That is why this house is called the house of death. How interesting that the place where sexual relations and financial transactions between two parties is played out is also the house where ultimately every one of us is played out.

One word sums up all the experience buried in house eight and the word is transformation. To the well travelled soul who has built up sufficient personal substance and who is passionately committed to plunge into the underworld to learn the mysterious secrets of existence, the eighth house is waiting with open arms. Nevertheless, while overly optimistic or just plain naive individuals can easily slide beyond their depths here, they can also rise above their pain for there is no better place in which to heal one-self.

Do not expect to stay in your comfort zone as you navigate the perilous landscape of house eight for the road leads to spine tingling and hair raising experiences. In this arena, everything you think you are is stripped away, as you are exposed to your own vulnerability and humbled in the presence of a force that is entirely beyond your control. Think of any experience you have ever had where you felt utterly powerless, such as lying on an operating table in a hospital while a team of doctors cut you open. Imagine what it would have been like to be a prisoner in a concentration camp where every single day, death stared you in the face until life became so unbearable that you welcomed death. Visualize being homeless and penniless and out on the cold, wet streets not knowing what would happen next, yet fearing that any moment something horrible would.

Despite the nightmare scenario the eighth house brings into our reality, it can also lead to results that turn out to be blessings in disguise. If you did not know who you were before, a journey through this environment could inform you, but you need courage to pass through the initiation. Once you have completed the tour, you are sure to be a stronger, sharper and more self-possessed person than you were prior to your descent. At first it may seem as if the whole world has turned against you and no one cares whether you live or die. Then all of a sudden the power and the awareness that intense sexual experiences and ego-busting relationships opened up for you initially takes you to higher and higher levels. No wonder the phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its own dead ashes, is a prime symbol of the metamorphosis that takes place here.

The eighth house is also suggestive of the kundalini energy that rises from the root to the crown and paves the way for cosmic consciousness in the house to follow (house nine.) Eighth house trials provide you with an undeniable sense of just how much there is to you. You begin to penetrate into one of the universes ‘cosmic jokes’ and come to realize that every person that has gravitated into your orbit was, one by one, showing you the depth of the consciousness that you have been invested with (and the unrelenting power at your command to use it to transform yourself and and everyone that you contact.)

Heaven and hell have been presented in the past as places one goes to, according to the cosmic report card you are handed upon exiting the Earth plane. More likely, religious tradition aside, they are states of consciousness and one does not need to leave the Earth to experience them. Individuals who play on the eighth house field are inclined to delve into areas that nice, polite people avoid like the plague. Here murky and tempestuous emotions surface between people; emotions such as jealousy, resentment and rage and they inevitably lead to a shattering denouement that rocks the world of the participants. The eighth house is obviously not about love, but it is about desire.

“It is desire that brought you here,” said the East Indian sage Sri Chimnoy, “and it is desire that will bring you back.”

What individuals desire is what often trips them up. Desire urges a person to abandon caution, so that a richer and more powerful experience becomes theirs for the taking. One leaves the soothing cosiness found in the opposite house-house two-and dares to dice with death for the thrill of it all. The darkest of human emotion, the most gruelling of human experience and then the final chapter when the spirit is extricated from the physical body are all contained in this arena. It is no wonder that the eighth house voyager becomes well-versed in human psychology.

Some event in a person’s life opens up a channel that is shut down in most of the human race at this time. This channel allows for feats of wizardry that startle the minds of those accustomed to a more typical form of mental processing. As you enter this dimension, all filters and covers are blasted off and mind reading is definitely on the menu. Prepare to have your secrets laid bare for there is more lurking in the corners of house eight than the physical senses could ever capture.

For those who only feel secure with things they can put in a box and slap a label on, this atmosphere ought to ‘give them the creeps.’ No wonder that a lot of eighth house inhabitants end up in therapy or become therapists themselves. They are dealing with emotions that are deep and dark-emotions that they have dragged out of the soul soup so that they could eventually be cleared up for the good of the world.

A successful passage through house eight is a victory of epic proportions and its repercussions are profound. An analogy to describe the process is one in which swamp waters finally find an outlet to the sea and begin to flow after being mired for ages. Something stagnant that had lost most of its vital force is now empowered to overcome whatever has blocked its value from being successfully shared with the world. Something or someone that the world seemed to give up on is by some miracle regenerated and renewed and with this added strength, the world has one more force to help raise the vibration of the planet.

In reducing this house to its most basic meaning, it is about sheer survival-not so much on a physical level but more on a psychological one. On its highest level, it is about connecting with the invisible world even though its activities seem highly visible. For sex, death and transformation are still a mystery to most of us. They are likely to remain so until the vibrations we resonate to accelerate and become rapid enough to take us into a dimension where nothing is separate from anything else and nothing really dies. Then we will all know the truth-that the experience we call death is the real life, only you have to choose to be embodied and go through the eighth house before you can realize who you really are.

Paul Six October 4, 2009 Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

The astrological blueprint is divided into twelve sectors called houses. The houses represent arenas of life experience in the astrological map of consciousness. The following keywords encapsulate their meanings– 1) Self, 2) Possessions, 3)Knowledge, 4) Private life, 5) Creativity, 6) Practicalities, 7) Relationships, 8) Transformation, 9) Philosophical growth, 10) Public achievements, 11) Friendship and Community and then the end of the line–the twelfth house.

So much has been written about house twelve, yet its meaning remains mostly a mystery up to now, as it pertains to experiences that have no visible frame of reference.

The prime lesson of house twelve is one of acceptance. That is to say that wherever one lands in life at any time turns out to be the perfect place for the lesson of acceptance to be learned.

Much that has been written about the twelfth house in astrological literature is unduly negative. Some astrologers warn you that if a planet is transiting (moving) into the twelfth house of your chart–beware–especially if the planet has a nefarious (if unwarranted) reputation, such as Saturn or Pluto.

The planets, however, do not do anything, either to you or to anyone else. They are simply indicators. Just like hands on a clock, their position in the sky informs us about the quality of the subtle energies that are prevailing at any particular time.

The ultimate lesson of the twelfth house is that no one is ‘out there’–it is all us. In the first house, it appears as if each person is alone. As we travel in our consciousness around the astrological wheel, more energy comes into our space and then it seems, it is not just our space anymore. The further along we travel, the bigger our space becomes so that more energy and information is able to be there to share our space with us.

House twelve at the end of the line represents the limits of human experience on the earth plane. Were we to go beyond those limits, it would be as if we were to send electric current through a conductor that could not accommodate the voltage being transmitted. Did you ever hear the true story about the woman who put her pet in a microwave oven to dry it off after giving the dog a bath? The poor thing exploded. So would we if we attempted to move outside of the boundaries of our reality. Of course, some boundary lines are drawn to extend farther out than others and some individuals are constituted to be able to channel higher frequency energies.

The twelfth house is associated with asylums, prisons and monasteries, as well as anyplace where individuals are stashed away because they cannot or do not want to integrate into mainstream society. House twelve can seem to be a lonely place to inhabit.

Still, there is another side to the meaning of this house. Once you have worked through much of your karma and fulfilled most of your dharma, the twelfth house is the place where your dreams come true. In allowing life to deliver its teachings to you with unreserved acceptance, the love in your heart opens up a space of conscious awareness within that had previously been hidden from you. Some might call this space a cosmic connection; others would say it is an encounter with the Divine. In this space of consciousness, there is scarcely any difference between the experience of pain and the experience of joy. Mystics know the feeling for they have removed their awareness from the cares and concerns of mundane existence (the space of practicalities, which the sixth house on the opposite side of the astrological wheel represents.)

One enters the twelfth house to transcend the ego-mind with its insatiable desire to create satisfaction amidst the seductive illusions of the material world. In this high and holy space, a soul surrenders the need to be somebody and dissolves the urge to shine brighter than its fellow earth travellers. Freed-up from the ego’s greedy demands; released from angry and hateful feelings and cleansed of all cravings for something that simply is not there and never will be, the soul has come full circle. All that was there for the soul to experience has taken place and what remains is love.

True love allows everything and everyone to be exactly what it is. Pass it by if you choose but let it be and let someone take your place who can fill its space with love and make it all right.

Dreams come true once an individual arrives at and resides in a state of grace. It is this experience that is the gift of the twelfth house. One does not have to be perfect to move beyond all fears and open up to one`s true and loving nature in a state of grace. Grace is a currency, one that cannot be bought or sold. It is different than the coin of the realm we use for the purchase of food, clothing and shelter (or anything material we might consider necessary), yet it can enrich one`s life in ways that words cannot describe. It is a quiet experience that in its humble and unassuming way is of greater value than anything that has a price tag on it because unlike all things material; it is not subject to the law of entropy. Its existence is eternal and its value keeps on growing.

When we consciously move into the twelfth house of experience, though we may seem to be as alone as when we started in house one, there could not be more support for us than there is in this place. For it is here that we cultivate the willingness to do what we promised from the start. Instead of asking what we think we want from life, we consider what is the most that we can give to life.

What happens in the twelfth house operates through indiscernible means and yet twelfth house events are the most unfeigned and definitive spiritual experiences that a human being can have. They are experiences that bring spirit into matter and enable a physical entity to realize in the most solid and substantial way the wholeness of being and the realization of total union with the universe.