The 2nd House Versus The 8th House

If you’ve been following astrology for a while, you probably noticed that both the 2nd and 8th house pertain to money, amongst other themes.

What’s the difference between 2nd house and 8th house money? It’s a good question and the standard answer – mine, at least – is usually that the 8th represents other people’s money – ie: you owe or share it. Think tax, debt or the joint account your ex still won’t sign the paperwork to close.

That’s all true but more profoundly, the 2nd house is your money persona – the 8th house is your money psyche.

The 2nd house reflects your money practice, habits and values. Is your innate bias toward spending or saving? Boom or bust mentality? Adhering to a budget or just-see-if-the-card-works? If you had a sudden influx of unallocated revenue, the 2nd house shows what you’re most likely to do with it.

Anyone who knew you reasonably well would also know your 2nd house money persona, even if they didn’t describe it as such. It’s innate: Whether a child likes to count coins and hide toys to prevent their theft or smashes open the piggy bank to fund lollies, they evolve simply evolve more sophisticated versions of the strategy over time.

Eighth House Money Is Off The Books

But 8th house money is super-out-there and complex. It’s the invisible twin double of your 2nd house money persona – the less rational one. The 2nd house is what shows on your bank balance, credit card statement or an assets and liabilities statement. It’s how you’d probably describe your financial attitudes if asked by anyone other than a therapist.

Eighth house money is off the books – it’s not only the existential seethe when you’re under-paid or the money you did earn is treated like a fluke. It’s Thing Lust evoked by perusing decor or wealth porn, frozen intimacy once you out-earn your partner, slow-burn rage at a friend’s nonchalance re their debt to you or the scorn you recall from a ‘if you have to ask it, you can’t afford it’ shop snark.

It’s noticing the change in someone’s tone when they suddenly switch to an archaic slang term to describe money – ‘the readies’ – or the careful conversational calibrations of a high-net worth individual trying not to make others feel ill at ease.

But there is more…

Eighth house money is also status-quo angst or the costly dopamine hit from a high-risk play – stock-market, lotteries, strange gambits etc. If you think speculation belongs to the 5th house in classic astrology, yes it does. But the moment it’s compulsive or a ‘secret philosophy’, it’s 8th house fair and square.

If you’re not allowed – or don’t want to – talk about something, it’s an 8th house syndrome. Think classism, brilliantly portrayed in the extraordinary Stay Down advertisement/faux horror movie trailer.

Sure, it’s British but ‘egalitarian’ countries have plenty of diversity-conscious firms who nonetheless auto-reject job applications that don’t cite one of the ‘right’ schools. In the olden days they were shredded, but now there’s an algorithm.

The Great Gatsby Isn’t A Love Story

The hierarchy and current system is 10th house – your anger at it or the sting from being shunned are 8th house. The Great Gatsby isn’t a love story, it’s an 8th house money story – incidentally F.Scott Fitzgerald had his Libra Sun, Venus and Mercury lined up in the 8th.

The 2nd house is the way you’d deal with resources and revenue if left entirely to your own devices. The 8th house is the nexus where it’s you and everyone else: Shared $$$, the merging and demerging of your monetary matrix with another person, the realization that you and a partner may share compatible views on practically everything but have mutually repelling attitudes around finances, covert pressure from in-laws with money or the discovery of someone’s secret stash.

The classic 8th house association is sex work but it incorporates less obvious transactional relationships – professional attachments with sycophancy as an unmentioned extra or trophy partners with stringent pre-nups that scuttle the deal if sexual interest or a specific physique is not maintained.

Swiss Bank Dirty Money Leaks Are Pro-Level 8th House Money

The off-pattern expenditure trail that leads someone straight to the off-the-record lover? 8th house.  2nd house money is what you have but if someone swindles it from you, it’s a crime -obviously – but also an 8th house scenario.

There is the con, the underworld aspect and the psychological play that hooked you in. Your second house money persona might be the most straightforward set-up on the planet but if a peripheral character swoops in and decides they’re more entitled to inherited money than you are, bam – an 8th house money courtroom drama.

It’s also the realm of things you might hypothetically do for money – or did – but not tell anyone. At the macro level, it’s Swiss Bank dirty money leaks or billion dollar sovereign wealth fund embezzlements, you have to zoom in for the casual obfuscations that will never make the news.

When you look at your astro-chart, take in the signs on the cusp of the 2nd and 8th, the Sun, Moon or any planets in either and outer planet transits. Relationship-wise, other people’s planets in your 2nd or 8th are potent – these people will impact your $$$ one way or another.

Remember that if you’re not thinking about the 8th house stuff or you’ve deliberately relegated some factors to a vault in your subconscious, it develops its own little half-life or you let it out for a romp in weird ways.

Your money persona and psyche are ideally on speaking terms. Thoughts?