The Truth About 12 House Transits

The truth about 12th House transits is that they’re underrated.

They’re high magic, alt-dimensional initiation trips. But astrological literature typically talks of them in terms more evocative of Mordor or the terrifying duplicate home reality of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Hear the term “self-undoing” enough times and you’ll want to scuttle through your 12th house transit like it’s a shadowy, haunted bus station where all the clocks go backwards. Or walk through it the way you do when you realize it’s later than you think, your phone battery just died and you’re walking alongside a dark park that you can all too easily imagine as the ironic set-piece for the tabloid take on your untimely demise.

But the gloomy views on 12th House transits reflect the broad take on the house – or Soul Sector – itself. It’s an anachronism, like a standing stone carved with alien symbols surrounded by sleek, modernized, made over buildings.

12th House Transits Are High Magic

Old-style astrology linked it with self-undoing, institutions, prisons, involuntary confinement and a host of other delights because historically, everything 12th house themed was dangerous. Because of the ghosts and demons? No. Think more the Inquisition and your local dickhead mayor who thought Malleus Maleficarum was a great read.

The 12th House is daimons (as in guiding genius spirit, not the Christian view), and your memories of times before now. It’s supernatural like the 8th house but not so much into merging and intense engagement with, well, everything. It’s the astral plane, your etheric body and layers of hyper-reality that defy the hypothesis of quantum physicists and mystics alike. You can visit but who would dare map it? Here, an awareness of your dreams and synchronicity is not a luxury or “maybe later.”  It’s vital.

Living by synchronicity isn’t merely about getting messages. It is about growing the poetic consciousness that allows us to taste and touch what rhymes and resonates in the world we inhabit, and how the world behind -the faerie world – reveals itself by fluttering the veils of our consensual reality.

Robert Moss

When you are having a significant 12th house transit (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto through it) you’re dealing with an intelligence or presence known to multiple cultures across time. They have many names: Aos Si, the Fair Folk, Mimis, the Patupaiarehe, Devas, the Tuatha De Danann, the Nunnehie, Faerie & Sidhe. If you’re in Japan, you may call them Shinto. Look between the lines of any history and they’re there, everywhere.

Poetic Consciousness And Active Dreaming

And for approximately the last 2000 years, having anything to do with them was dangerous. It was the very epitome of all the scary 12th house interpretations. One hint of an interest in astral planes, astrology or the ‘other’ race and you’d be in prison or dead. The English government did not burn Jeanne d’Arc (AKA Joan of Arc) for sedition. A key charge against her was that she “adored the fairies and did show them reverence.”

If you didn’t adhere to the dominant Puritan-Christian-monotheistic system, it was only a matter of time before you were in trouble. Where ever there were “fairies,” witches were not far behind. The prosecutors saw familiars as Fae and there was a theory that witches were ‘half-reborn Faeries.’ Or, for whatever reason, they could see this other race and enjoyed a level of ‘immunity.’

I saw them from an early age, but it took years to work out what they were and that few others see such things. When your 12th House is lit up, you don’t have to visit ‘sacred places’ or conduct rituals. Just listen. You are the spell and they are the magic.

FYI, the word “faerie” comes from the Latin for fate. They’re not your Tinkerbells. The Victorians shrunk them and turned them ‘cute’ in the same way they made the primal love god Eros into a plump baby with a bow and arrow.

Even long after the inquisition ended and their dungeons turned into museums, they threw people with visions or who heard music/singing that others could not into so-called lunatic asylums. And yes, they implicated the Moon; hence, ‘lunacy.’ Or, they zombified them with lobotomies and called it a cure.

The Secret Enemies Angle Is Correct

Thankfully, in modern 1st world countries at least, people are not persecuted for their religious beliefs. In contemporary times, what are the dangers of 12th House transits?

Well, if you see the 8th house as the subconscious mind, the 12th house can be everyone’s subconscious. If you’re not mentally balanced, it’s challenging, unstable ground. And generally, drugs and the astral planes are not a good mix. Shamanic journeying is ideally conscious, not something you bumble into by mistake because you mixed tequila with Dreamweed or, a Palo Alto hipster mis-interpreted “micro dose of L.S.D.”

When an Outer Planet (or Jupiter/Saturn) is travelling through the Soul Sector, your environment becomes more liminal. You see things. It’s not so much astral travel as an astral staycation. Everything is potentially a shamanic journey.

The classic concept of 12th house transits revealing secret enemies is, however, correct. The 7th house is open enemies, who are far more simple to deal with. They’re an ex-partner turned malicious or a character whose interests are broadly and openly opposed to yours.

Check Your Psychic Privacy Settings

But the style of enmity shown up by a 12th house transit hides behind chipper matiness or avocations of loyalty. They’re hanging around because you’re paying them or they enjoy a murkier benefit that comes from knowing you but they’re fuming.

And, to go the full astral, this transit can also show up any negative etheric energy you weren’t aware of*.  As discomforting as it can be, these dynamics are better illuminated than draped in their veil of vibe-scattering fuqery.

If you think about it, they’re exactly the sorts of people who would have happily bought sandwiches along to your burning-at-the-stake. Auric hygiene and proper boundaries suddenly become super important. 12th House transits are your cue to check your psychic privacy settings.

Seclusion is another 12th House theme. If you’re freaked by your own company, it can be a difficult transit. But as high magic and alt-dimensional awareness runs counter to the conventional narrative, you’re naturally more inner-directed or alienated from friends and family with no interest or understanding in these areas. If you’re a creative, a 12th house activation is so inspirational that you’ll hole up alone to make something amazing. Again, projecting this as something bad reflects times when the mainstream distrusted artistry and condemned imagination.

As for the oft-quoted concept of self-undoing, see it in magical terms. You’re undoing your construct of identity and reimagining it with your dream identity, psychic heritage, and secret history woven in.

Thoughts?

*If you suspect such an extreme scenario is in play, please seek professional shamanic/space clearing help.