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Astrologer's Notes:
Thinking Magically and Critically: Contemporary Astrology
and What It Can Do For You:
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The Water Houses:
The Ancestral Eyes Of The Soul
part 3 of 3
by Erin Sullivan |
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The Eighth House: The Ancestral Legacy - memento mori
If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you might as well make it dance’.
George Bernard Shaw
In the eighth house we find the inheritance we have been left by our ancestors. Collecting that inheritance has stringent rules. As with all points of law, one can only receive one’s due process by applying through the right system. As with the previous watery domains, the twelfth and fourth houses, this house speaks of our family lineage, but does so through symbols, ciphers and metaphor. All the water houses are particularly cryptic, but none so dedicated to the use of synchronicities, images, messages, ciphers and so forth as the eighth. We do connect deeply to the archetypal collective symbology in the twelfth house of dreams, but in the eighth we are one with our personal ancestry.
The ancestors come through in many voices, many languages and have become an aggregate of the complex of family archetypes. Periodically, one will individuate enough to speak lucidly, with specific messages and meaningful intent, however, it is mostly a cacophony of residual tones from our personal ancestral history that resound in the eighth house.
The eighth house is the pontifex maximus - the big bridge - between the ancestors and the deeper Self and ego. In the catholic religion, the Pope is considered to be the pontifex, (pontifx maximus) and the Pharaoh’s of Egypt the same - they were the personal representatives of god, and thus had special dispensation for interpreting the messages or the logoi of god. In actual fact, we all are this to some degree, but strongly eighth house individuals, people with planets in the eighth, are specifically both blessed or cursed with this bridge-making role.
None of the water houses are rational, no state of synthesis is achieved through reason. And to reconcile the dead with the living, symbols are used. Symbols connect one half with another. The word derives from the Greek word sumbolon which was an object such as a bone or stick, which would be broken in two, and each half given to two people, such as members of the same secret order or society, who could then identify each other by fitting both halves together. This fitting of the two halves brought about a meeting in which mysteries known only to them and their higher order could be shared. They would then speak in the secret code, bringing together the necessary components to create communication.
Obviously the holders of each half knew themselves to be ‘true’, that their own piece was true, but only when the two pieces were fitted perfectly would each then know their opposite was true also. It is in the meeting that recognition occurs. Carl Jung felt that the two extreme moral poles of good and evil were capable of reconciliation - that by suffering the tension of opposites in full consciousness could bring about transcendence of both - in the mysterium conjunction a marriage of opposites brought about fullness and wholeness. Reconciliation of opposites occurs in the eighth house. The transcendent function is achieved symbolically through sustaining this tension of opposites, which generates the problem of the split between the ego and the Self to a higher order where conflict is resolved. Good is reconciled with evil, and a state of renewed synthesis follows thus between consciousness and unconsciousness.
When life meets with death, a symbol arises. The symbols we employ to resurrect the dead: pictures, talismans, heirlooms, mementos, icons, totems, and so forth are not sentimental, but sacramental. The use of such materials for religious and spiritual purposes bring about a change in consciousness. In the eighth house, we can ritualize our daily lives and live in accord with a long line of our progenitors, thus creating an inner sense of social harmony. Because Pluto and Scorpio are associated with the eighth house, it is a memento mori - a reminder that we will meet the end, the terminus, and thus need to live in harmony with that reality.
The eighth house is the place in-between. It’s position lies between the initial contact of oneself with others (seventh house) and the divine realm of the gods (ninth house). In the in-between world, there is access to the haunting of personal and cultural ancestors. Cultural ancestors do enter in through individuals - why do we have affinity with some cultures not our own and not with others? Some people are drawn to the Maya, others to India, some to China, yet others to the equatorial or other ‘foreign’ aboriginal cultures. The eighth house connects us to not just our own cultural ancestors who appear on our family tree, but occasionally to specific ancestors from other cultures who have found us to be a channel or cross-connection to the corporeal world.
People who are dedicated to the helping and supporting of cultures other than their own of origin, are likely called to this work through ancestral voices coming through them. Perhaps they have the means and the skills as well as some deep link to them. Most people have no rational source, but usually a deeply emotional or spiritual feeling for their dedication to helping indigenous or persecuted cultures outside their culture-of-origin. It then leads directly to the twelfth - not only is it the house ‘in-between’ others and god, but it is the house in-between the personal, family-of-origin ancestral line and the archetypal collective realm of all humanity. The eighth house links us in myriad ways from our home to our cosmos. The eighth house is the meeting place of the sumbolon where the personal and the collective meet and match.
Those ancestors who do settle in our souls and want individuation through us can only use the ancient ritual of symbols and signs to do so. We might find ourselves performing little rituals without knowing why. They are also earthing routines, little acts which in their repetitiveness assure us of our existence. Freud would have termed this experience death anxiety - that compulsive, repetitive habits were a process by which we staved off death (or the consciousness of it, that is). This adherence to ritual can so easily become neurotic, indeed it is a particular type of psychosis when carried beyond consciousness. Jung tells of a man who had a peculiar hand gesture, a tic which flung his hand to and fro. When asked why he was doing it, the man replied that if he didn’t the planets would stop revolving around the sun. Pathological obsessive-compulsive disorders are ritual observers in extremis.
Heavily eighth house people are highly ritualistic and are always on the lookout for signs and symbols. They are exceptionally susceptible to being taken over by the ancestors and thus are looking for ways to protect themselves from being absorbed by their unconscious. And, they tend to be very observant of ritual and are usually called into professions where a high level of order and procedure with historical lineage attached.
This necessity for ritual can manifest in a fondness for all sorts of work in the world from banking and economics with its secret codes and order of procedure, to law and its cryptic language, high ritual, due process and adherence to precedent, or medicine with its arcane history and its magical properties or even linguistics if the mystery of communications in other cultural orders is a strong pull. Adept Jungian analysts are eighth house Plutonians, and astrologers, too, are favoured through the eighth house because theirs is a world of symbol and their work the translation of the word of the stars - the labour of the astrologos is to find truth in the heavens by interpreting ciphers.
In this vein, eighth-house people are always probing the far-inner regions, being dangerously susceptible to total ego loss or high-inflation resulting from having dallied too long at the threshold between the upper-air and the nether- world. Traversing the limen of these worlds is fraught with peril. When Aeneas sought entry into the underworld, he solicited the advice of the oracle. The Sibyl warned Aeneas of the hazards lying ahead of him in his impending descent into Avernus, (the Roman Hades, which literally means ‘Birdless’):
facilis decensus Averni,
noctes atque dies paret atri ianua Ditis
sed revocare gradum superasque
evadere ad aurus,
hoc opus, hic labor est.
The descent into Avernus is easy,
Pluto’s door is open, all the day and night
But, to recall the steps, to escape to the upper air -
This is the work, that is the labour!
To bring back the knowledge of the ancestors is the hero’s quest - always it was Hermes, the psychopompos, who took them to Pluto’s underworld realm to speak to their ancestors, to receive their orders or clarify something necessary to continue with their task or life-purpose. Mystery religions are eighth house - where death is enacted in life to prepare for the inexorable great crossing. We use symbols to connect us to the ancestors to hear what they have to say.
The image of peeling back layers of the personal unconscious to get to the core of family complexes is fitting, here as well. We might apply that process to the various levels of atmosphere in which dwell our personal ancestral spirits, between which are veils preventing transmission except by passing through first one, then another, and so on. Each of these strata become increasingly rarefied the more removed the ancestral being is from life, itself.
On the psychological level, we can become neurotic and fixate on one of these levels. Neurotic complexes are often fundamentally very creative - they give us a nucleus of energy which allows us to revolve around it, orbit it, so to speak, and develop strong ideas and theories. This house of ritualistic behaviour stems directly from the fourth house of family origins and the habits which were inculcated in childhood, but become deeply rooted in the subconscious as our own.
Thus, we are only able to contact the ancestors through various rituals, designed to help us communicate beyond the veils; the boundaries between personal relationship and divine relationship. The eighth house is the first house of true merging of self and others, and leads toward the house of ‘the higher mind’, the ninth house, where we formulate strong beliefs and receive dogma about spiritual, religious matters. It is the eighth house where we dwell in the mystery of union of body and soul. The eighth house is a place for communing with the ancestors - use of chant, prayer and trance and analysis (breaking whole down into parts for reassembly) of symbols in dreams, for example, all prepare the ego for a relationship with the Self, which in turn finds contact with one’s familiars.
The eighth house is territorial and guarded by various dæmonion - these are both lethal and benign. These chthonic beings are sacred and have taxes that they extort. As one pays the ferryman, Charon, crossing the river Styx into Hades, so we must pay a price for traversing the threshold of the ancestors. The price is usually precisely what we have in our pocket, or in our home, or in our legacy from our ancestors. It is a matter of discovering just what exactly is the right object, talisman, icon or memento that will allow safe passage and encourage relationship with our guide and guardian.
Planets in the eighth house signal special duties assigned by our ancestral spirits, the more planets in there, the more necessary the contact with them. Certain talents that have been highly specialized and overdeveloped, or have never been fully manifest in families, can come through an intensely eighth house person, as if there is an unlived aspect of a spirit making itself alive in the person.
The Sun and the Moon are signals that there is a direct link to the ancestral realm which will surface periodically in one’s life. The Sun speaks of a paternal legacy which likely has lost its brilliance and suffered an amputation from its source, or roots somewhere along the line, and it is up to the individual to reconnect this bond - to be the sumbolon. The father may well have lost his ‘inheritance’, or leaves no continuation of his family line. Whereas, with the Moon in the eighth, we are seeing the maternal link being associated with earth-mysteries and religions that pre-date the sky-gods. One’s emotional root is planted in darkness, in the ancestral womb, and the emotions and feelings are profoundly deep, complex, volcanic and very, very intense. Feelings arise apparently from no-where. By doing family-work, this is much less tiring and compulsive and people with these placements are liberated through there family- work.
Hermes - the astrological Mercury - is quite at home here, his guise as psychopompos - soul guide - being dominant in the eighth house. Hermetic people are always flitting to and fro the threshold of the conscious and unconscious. This is not always comfortable, nor is it safe, however, they have a facility for translating ancestral knowledge into some form of art or work, it is a gift. The family history is rich in mystery, and the search for the ancestral roots productive. They think about death a lot, and often work with it productively.
Venus can find love in the darkest places, but love is a form of ritual for them. Love should bring one closer to one’s primal self. The sexual and reproductive urge is deep and instinctual and, to be fulfilled, often crosses cultural, social and religious bars. Venus is amoral here, she listens only to the call of the whole person, which can be socially awkward. There is also a love and fascination with the mysteries of life, a capacity to guide others toward their own deeper self, and a compassion for lost souls. There are long bouts of sexual abstinence, celibacy. It is also a placement symbolizing the Vestal Virgins, those holy women who enjoyed ritual sex, but never gave their soul to a man, never married.
Mars is the warrior - in the eighth finds most difficulty in interpreting anger. There is often a maverick rage without focus, anger with no outlet and can be mistaken for personal anger. In fact, this is a place for the spiritual warrior, one who can use anger to appease the restless spirits. However, the person with this has to take care not to go rushing about in areas of the spiritual realm in which he or she might find danger! This is a high-risk placement at the best of times, and one in which the only real thrill in life is to stand on the abyss and look over. A friend of mine with Mars in Pisces in the eighth house was forever, all his life, thrilled by the underground. When he was in his early teens, he spent hours walking the train lines in the deepest tunnels in the New York subway, plucking out the ultra-violet light bulbs, and giving them to friends. These ‘light’ bulbs had the property of sucking light out of a room - and he called himself ‘Johnny Appleseed of Darkness’.
Jupiter protects the individual from himself - there is a fascination with why people do things and why cultures develop the way they do. There can be a strong calling to work with people who are at the terminus of their lives, to help them cross over the threshold to death. One of Jupiter/Zeus’ epithets was ‘Zeus Chthonius’ - he was the god who took Oedipos from his tortured existence to the underworld - a rare activity for the Olympian sky-god, but Oedipos was a tragic victim of dynastic pollution, of the family fate, the transformer of the cursed house of Laius. Jupiter protects and guides those who atone personally for the sins of the ancestors.
Saturn in the eighth house is difficult - there can be such a strong barrier between the day world and the night world that the night world achieves a numinosity and power that it does not fully deserve. Fears and anxieties about death and the dark can prevent one from making the most of his or her ancestral legacy or literal inheritance. It could be taken away, restricted or unavailable. It can also mean that one’s ego, the boundary between the deeper Self and the transcendent self, must undergo a complete dissolve at some stage in life before one is allowed, or allows oneself rather, to acknowledge the depth of power which lies in the realm of the ancestors. It is the mark of a skeptic.
Uranus in the eighth house specifically requires that the person use the mysteries to free him or herself from the grips of obsession and employ the collective and the ancestral realm to individuate. They will be called repeatedly to the gateway of life and death, heaven and hell to mediate between the two realms, and to use this experience to modify their own life and behaviour as well as to help others and their own ancestral line. This is a very anxious place for Uranus, for as the god of the heavens, he is deeply uncomfortable in the realm of the Furies. This placement is one which requires tremendous consciousness and good-will to work toward a positive end.
Someone many years ago told me Neptune in the eighth house meant ‘fear of drowning’. Perhaps this is a symbol thrown across from the twelfth house to the eighth - a message to the individual to distinguish personal anxiety from collective angst. To differentiate between one’s own individual fears stemming from personal history, and the collective fear of losing personal identity in mass integration. Especially since the Uranus/Neptune conjunction in Capricorn, there has been much confusion over who is doing what to whom and how.
That is, the individual has been made increasingly aware of his or her involvement with the collective experience, and has gained increasing independence but lost a certain amount of ego significance in the Big Picture. People with eighth house Neptune’s tend to be acutely aware of their insignificance as individuals, but can turn this into a healing gift. One man I know, a priest cum Jungian analyst, works with AIDS patients as analysands, and takes groups to Lourdes.
Pluto in his domain - lord of the eighth house - this is the most mysterious harbour. If Hades today is a state of mind, but archetypally remains a place, then what and where is this place? I have known people with Pluto here who have had near-death experiences and retained clear recollection of the journey. They did not die, so they do not know death, but they have seen the way to the gate. This does not mean that if you have Pluto in the eighth, or your child does, that a near-mortal experience will happen! However, it does mean that there may not be a clear route to the ancestral legacy - whether that is through inheritance of money, land or life-force. It can sometimes mean being cut-off from it, removed or relieved from the responsibility.
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Erin Sullivan,
Astrologer
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Erin Sullivan is one of the brightest lights in contemporary astrology.
She has been integral to the growth of today's astrology, having founded many groups, run symposia, taught for over thirty years and presented at international conferences around the world.
She is Canadian born, and has lived in many cultures - in 1989 she moved to London England where she took on the position of Series Editor for Penguin, Arkana's prestigious Contemporary Astrology Series. Her tutoring for the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London gave birth to two of her books: Where in the World?Astro*Carto*Graphy and Relocation, and Venus and Jupiter: Bridging the Ideal and the Real.
Erin returned to North America in 1998, and continued to teach, write and consult with clientele from all nations. Her three other books are published by Samuel Weiser (now RedWheel/Weiser Publications):
The Astrology of Family Dynamics (a best seller)
Saturn in Transit: Boundaris of Mind Body and Soul,
and her masterpiece, Retrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape.
Her company, "Southwest Contemporary Astrology" publishes unique personalized astrology profiles - reports - available online on her website's secure shopper!
She now lives and practices and writes in her Rio Grande riverside home in Northern New Mexico.
Erin Sullivan
SOUTHWEST CONTEMPORARY ASTROLOGY
Reports online at:
www.ErinSullivan.com
"As the World Turns: Your Personal Solar Return Profile" - a 60+ page booklet with predictive timing and trends for your solar year - fully illustrated with calendars, beautifully written.
"Your Personal Heroic Journey" - a 70 page
booklet, illustrated with full interpretations for a lifetime of Saturn Transits - your cycles of growth and development.
1008 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, #255
TAOS, New Mexico,
87571-6412 USA
Tel: ( 1 ) 505-758-1931
Ext. 1 for SCA
Fax: ( 1 ) 505-751-1353
www.ErinSullivan.com
for Southwest Contemporary Astrology
Erin Sullivan
erinsullivan@newmex.com
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Astrologer's Notes:
Thinking Magically and Critically: Contemporary Astrology
and What It Can Do For You:
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The Water Houses:
The Ancestral Eyes Of The Soul
part 3 of 3
by Erin Sullivan |
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The Eighth House: The Ancestral Legacy - memento mori
If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you might as well make it dance’.
George Bernard Shaw
In the eighth house we find the inheritance we have been left by our ancestors. Collecting that inheritance has stringent rules. As with all points of law, one can only receive one’s due process by applying through the right system. As with the previous watery domains, the twelfth and fourth houses, this house speaks of our family lineage, but does so through symbols, ciphers and metaphor. All the water houses are particularly cryptic, but none so dedicated to the use of synchronicities, images, messages, ciphers and so forth as the eighth. We do connect deeply to the archetypal collective symbology in the twelfth house of dreams, but in the eighth we are one with our personal ancestry.
The ancestors come through in many voices, many languages and have become an aggregate of the complex of family archetypes. Periodically, one will individuate enough to speak lucidly, with specific messages and meaningful intent, however, it is mostly a cacophony of residual tones from our personal ancestral history that resound in the eighth house.
The eighth house is the pontifex maximus - the big bridge - between the ancestors and the deeper Self and ego. In the catholic religion, the Pope is considered to be the pontifex, (pontifx maximus) and the Pharaoh’s of Egypt the same - they were the personal representatives of god, and thus had special dispensation for interpreting the messages or the logoi of god. In actual fact, we all are this to some degree, but strongly eighth house individuals, people with planets in the eighth, are specifically both blessed or cursed with this bridge-making role.
None of the water houses are rational, no state of synthesis is achieved through reason. And to reconcile the dead with the living, symbols are used. Symbols connect one half with another. The word derives from the Greek word sumbolon which was an object such as a bone or stick, which would be broken in two, and each half given to two people, such as members of the same secret order or society, who could then identify each other by fitting both halves together. This fitting of the two halves brought about a meeting in which mysteries known only to them and their higher order could be shared. They would then speak in the secret code, bringing together the necessary components to create communication.
Obviously the holders of each half knew themselves to be ‘true’, that their own piece was true, but only when the two pieces were fitted perfectly would each then know their opposite was true also. It is in the meeting that recognition occurs. Carl Jung felt that the two extreme moral poles of good and evil were capable of reconciliation - that by suffering the tension of opposites in full consciousness could bring about transcendence of both - in the mysterium conjunction a marriage of opposites brought about fullness and wholeness. Reconciliation of opposites occurs in the eighth house. The transcendent function is achieved symbolically through sustaining this tension of opposites, which generates the problem of the split between the ego and the Self to a higher order where conflict is resolved. Good is reconciled with evil, and a state of renewed synthesis follows thus between consciousness and unconsciousness.
When life meets with death, a symbol arises. The symbols we employ to resurrect the dead: pictures, talismans, heirlooms, mementos, icons, totems, and so forth are not sentimental, but sacramental. The use of such materials for religious and spiritual purposes bring about a change in consciousness. In the eighth house, we can ritualize our daily lives and live in accord with a long line of our progenitors, thus creating an inner sense of social harmony. Because Pluto and Scorpio are associated with the eighth house, it is a memento mori - a reminder that we will meet the end, the terminus, and thus need to live in harmony with that reality.
The eighth house is the place in-between. It’s position lies between the initial contact of oneself with others (seventh house) and the divine realm of the gods (ninth house). In the in-between world, there is access to the haunting of personal and cultural ancestors. Cultural ancestors do enter in through individuals - why do we have affinity with some cultures not our own and not with others? Some people are drawn to the Maya, others to India, some to China, yet others to the equatorial or other ‘foreign’ aboriginal cultures. The eighth house connects us to not just our own cultural ancestors who appear on our family tree, but occasionally to specific ancestors from other cultures who have found us to be a channel or cross-connection to the corporeal world.
People who are dedicated to the helping and supporting of cultures other than their own of origin, are likely called to this work through ancestral voices coming through them. Perhaps they have the means and the skills as well as some deep link to them. Most people have no rational source, but usually a deeply emotional or spiritual feeling for their dedication to helping indigenous or persecuted cultures outside their culture-of-origin. It then leads directly to the twelfth - not only is it the house ‘in-between’ others and god, but it is the house in-between the personal, family-of-origin ancestral line and the archetypal collective realm of all humanity. The eighth house links us in myriad ways from our home to our cosmos. The eighth house is the meeting place of the sumbolon where the personal and the collective meet and match.
Those ancestors who do settle in our souls and want individuation through us can only use the ancient ritual of symbols and signs to do so. We might find ourselves performing little rituals without knowing why. They are also earthing routines, little acts which in their repetitiveness assure us of our existence. Freud would have termed this experience death anxiety - that compulsive, repetitive habits were a process by which we staved off death (or the consciousness of it, that is). This adherence to ritual can so easily become neurotic, indeed it is a particular type of psychosis when carried beyond consciousness. Jung tells of a man who had a peculiar hand gesture, a tic which flung his hand to and fro. When asked why he was doing it, the man replied that if he didn’t the planets would stop revolving around the sun. Pathological obsessive-compulsive disorders are ritual observers in extremis.
Heavily eighth house people are highly ritualistic and are always on the lookout for signs and symbols. They are exceptionally susceptible to being taken over by the ancestors and thus are looking for ways to protect themselves from being absorbed by their unconscious. And, they tend to be very observant of ritual and are usually called into professions where a high level of order and procedure with historical lineage attached.
This necessity for ritual can manifest in a fondness for all sorts of work in the world from banking and economics with its secret codes and order of procedure, to law and its cryptic language, high ritual, due process and adherence to precedent, or medicine with its arcane history and its magical properties or even linguistics if the mystery of communications in other cultural orders is a strong pull. Adept Jungian analysts are eighth house Plutonians, and astrologers, too, are favoured through the eighth house because theirs is a world of symbol and their work the translation of the word of the stars - the labour of the astrologos is to find truth in the heavens by interpreting ciphers.
In this vein, eighth-house people are always probing the far-inner regions, being dangerously susceptible to total ego loss or high-inflation resulting from having dallied too long at the threshold between the upper-air and the nether- world. Traversing the limen of these worlds is fraught with peril. When Aeneas sought entry into the underworld, he solicited the advice of the oracle. The Sibyl warned Aeneas of the hazards lying ahead of him in his impending descent into Avernus, (the Roman Hades, which literally means ‘Birdless’):
facilis decensus Averni,
noctes atque dies paret atri ianua Ditis
sed revocare gradum superasque
evadere ad aurus,
hoc opus, hic labor est.
The descent into Avernus is easy,
Pluto’s door is open, all the day and night
But, to recall the steps, to escape to the upper air -
This is the work, that is the labour!
To bring back the knowledge of the ancestors is the hero’s quest - always it was Hermes, the psychopompos, who took them to Pluto’s underworld realm to speak to their ancestors, to receive their orders or clarify something necessary to continue with their task or life-purpose. Mystery religions are eighth house - where death is enacted in life to prepare for the inexorable great crossing. We use symbols to connect us to the ancestors to hear what they have to say.
The image of peeling back layers of the personal unconscious to get to the core of family complexes is fitting, here as well. We might apply that process to the various levels of atmosphere in which dwell our personal ancestral spirits, between which are veils preventing transmission except by passing through first one, then another, and so on. Each of these strata become increasingly rarefied the more removed the ancestral being is from life, itself.
On the psychological level, we can become neurotic and fixate on one of these levels. Neurotic complexes are often fundamentally very creative - they give us a nucleus of energy which allows us to revolve around it, orbit it, so to speak, and develop strong ideas and theories. This house of ritualistic behaviour stems directly from the fourth house of family origins and the habits which were inculcated in childhood, but become deeply rooted in the subconscious as our own.
Thus, we are only able to contact the ancestors through various rituals, designed to help us communicate beyond the veils; the boundaries between personal relationship and divine relationship. The eighth house is the first house of true merging of self and others, and leads toward the house of ‘the higher mind’, the ninth house, where we formulate strong beliefs and receive dogma about spiritual, religious matters. It is the eighth house where we dwell in the mystery of union of body and soul. The eighth house is a place for communing with the ancestors - use of chant, prayer and trance and analysis (breaking whole down into parts for reassembly) of symbols in dreams, for example, all prepare the ego for a relationship with the Self, which in turn finds contact with one’s familiars.
The eighth house is territorial and guarded by various dæmonion - these are both lethal and benign. These chthonic beings are sacred and have taxes that they extort. As one pays the ferryman, Charon, crossing the river Styx into Hades, so we must pay a price for traversing the threshold of the ancestors. The price is usually precisely what we have in our pocket, or in our home, or in our legacy from our ancestors. It is a matter of discovering just what exactly is the right object, talisman, icon or memento that will allow safe passage and encourage relationship with our guide and guardian.
Planets in the eighth house signal special duties assigned by our ancestral spirits, the more planets in there, the more necessary the contact with them. Certain talents that have been highly specialized and overdeveloped, or have never been fully manifest in families, can come through an intensely eighth house person, as if there is an unlived aspect of a spirit making itself alive in the person.
The Sun and the Moon are signals that there is a direct link to the ancestral realm which will surface periodically in one’s life. The Sun speaks of a paternal legacy which likely has lost its brilliance and suffered an amputation from its source, or roots somewhere along the line, and it is up to the individual to reconnect this bond - to be the sumbolon. The father may well have lost his ‘inheritance’, or leaves no continuation of his family line. Whereas, with the Moon in the eighth, we are seeing the maternal link being associated with earth-mysteries and religions that pre-date the sky-gods. One’s emotional root is planted in darkness, in the ancestral womb, and the emotions and feelings are profoundly deep, complex, volcanic and very, very intense. Feelings arise apparently from no-where. By doing family-work, this is much less tiring and compulsive and people with these placements are liberated through there family- work.
Hermes - the astrological Mercury - is quite at home here, his guise as psychopompos - soul guide - being dominant in the eighth house. Hermetic people are always flitting to and fro the threshold of the conscious and unconscious. This is not always comfortable, nor is it safe, however, they have a facility for translating ancestral knowledge into some form of art or work, it is a gift. The family history is rich in mystery, and the search for the ancestral roots productive. They think about death a lot, and often work with it productively.
Venus can find love in the darkest places, but love is a form of ritual for them. Love should bring one closer to one’s primal self. The sexual and reproductive urge is deep and instinctual and, to be fulfilled, often crosses cultural, social and religious bars. Venus is amoral here, she listens only to the call of the whole person, which can be socially awkward. There is also a love and fascination with the mysteries of life, a capacity to guide others toward their own deeper self, and a compassion for lost souls. There are long bouts of sexual abstinence, celibacy. It is also a placement symbolizing the Vestal Virgins, those holy women who enjoyed ritual sex, but never gave their soul to a man, never married.
Mars is the warrior - in the eighth finds most difficulty in interpreting anger. There is often a maverick rage without focus, anger with no outlet and can be mistaken for personal anger. In fact, this is a place for the spiritual warrior, one who can use anger to appease the restless spirits. However, the person with this has to take care not to go rushing about in areas of the spiritual realm in which he or she might find danger! This is a high-risk placement at the best of times, and one in which the only real thrill in life is to stand on the abyss and look over. A friend of mine with Mars in Pisces in the eighth house was forever, all his life, thrilled by the underground. When he was in his early teens, he spent hours walking the train lines in the deepest tunnels in the New York subway, plucking out the ultra-violet light bulbs, and giving them to friends. These ‘light’ bulbs had the property of sucking light out of a room - and he called himself ‘Johnny Appleseed of Darkness’.
Jupiter protects the individual from himself - there is a fascination with why people do things and why cultures develop the way they do. There can be a strong calling to work with people who are at the terminus of their lives, to help them cross over the threshold to death. One of Jupiter/Zeus’ epithets was ‘Zeus Chthonius’ - he was the god who took Oedipos from his tortured existence to the underworld - a rare activity for the Olympian sky-god, but Oedipos was a tragic victim of dynastic pollution, of the family fate, the transformer of the cursed house of Laius. Jupiter protects and guides those who atone personally for the sins of the ancestors.
Saturn in the eighth house is difficult - there can be such a strong barrier between the day world and the night world that the night world achieves a numinosity and power that it does not fully deserve. Fears and anxieties about death and the dark can prevent one from making the most of his or her ancestral legacy or literal inheritance. It could be taken away, restricted or unavailable. It can also mean that one’s ego, the boundary between the deeper Self and the transcendent self, must undergo a complete dissolve at some stage in life before one is allowed, or allows oneself rather, to acknowledge the depth of power which lies in the realm of the ancestors. It is the mark of a skeptic.
Uranus in the eighth house specifically requires that the person use the mysteries to free him or herself from the grips of obsession and employ the collective and the ancestral realm to individuate. They will be called repeatedly to the gateway of life and death, heaven and hell to mediate between the two realms, and to use this experience to modify their own life and behaviour as well as to help others and their own ancestral line. This is a very anxious place for Uranus, for as the god of the heavens, he is deeply uncomfortable in the realm of the Furies. This placement is one which requires tremendous consciousness and good-will to work toward a positive end.
Someone many years ago told me Neptune in the eighth house meant ‘fear of drowning’. Perhaps this is a symbol thrown across from the twelfth house to the eighth - a message to the individual to distinguish personal anxiety from collective angst. To differentiate between one’s own individual fears stemming from personal history, and the collective fear of losing personal identity in mass integration. Especially since the Uranus/Neptune conjunction in Capricorn, there has been much confusion over who is doing what to whom and how.
That is, the individual has been made increasingly aware of his or her involvement with the collective experience, and has gained increasing independence but lost a certain amount of ego significance in the Big Picture. People with eighth house Neptune’s tend to be acutely aware of their insignificance as individuals, but can turn this into a healing gift. One man I know, a priest cum Jungian analyst, works with AIDS patients as analysands, and takes groups to Lourdes.
Pluto in his domain - lord of the eighth house - this is the most mysterious harbour. If Hades today is a state of mind, but archetypally remains a place, then what and where is this place? I have known people with Pluto here who have had near-death experiences and retained clear recollection of the journey. They did not die, so they do not know death, but they have seen the way to the gate. This does not mean that if you have Pluto in the eighth, or your child does, that a near-mortal experience will happen! However, it does mean that there may not be a clear route to the ancestral legacy - whether that is through inheritance of money, land or life-force. It can sometimes mean being cut-off from it, removed or relieved from the responsibility.
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Erin Sullivan,
Astrologer
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Erin Sullivan is one of the brightest lights in contemporary astrology.
She has been integral to the growth of today's astrology, having founded many groups, run symposia, taught for over thirty years and presented at international conferences around the world.
She is Canadian born, and has lived in many cultures - in 1989 she moved to London England where she took on the position of Series Editor for Penguin, Arkana's prestigious Contemporary Astrology Series. Her tutoring for the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London gave birth to two of her books: Where in the World?Astro*Carto*Graphy and Relocation, and Venus and Jupiter: Bridging the Ideal and the Real.
Erin returned to North America in 1998, and continued to teach, write and consult with clientele from all nations. Her three other books are published by Samuel Weiser (now RedWheel/Weiser Publications):
The Astrology of Family Dynamics (a best seller)
Saturn in Transit: Boundaris of Mind Body and Soul,
and her masterpiece, Retrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape.
Her company, "Southwest Contemporary Astrology" publishes unique personalized astrology profiles - reports - available online on her website's secure shopper!
She now lives and practices and writes in her Rio Grande riverside home in Northern New Mexico.
Erin Sullivan
SOUTHWEST CONTEMPORARY ASTROLOGY
Reports online at:
www.ErinSullivan.com
"As the World Turns: Your Personal Solar Return Profile" - a 60+ page booklet with predictive timing and trends for your solar year - fully illustrated with calendars, beautifully written.
"Your Personal Heroic Journey" - a 70 page
booklet, illustrated with full interpretations for a lifetime of Saturn Transits - your cycles of growth and development.
1008 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, #255
TAOS, New Mexico,
87571-6412 USA
Tel: ( 1 ) 505-758-1931
Ext. 1 for SCA
Fax: ( 1 ) 505-751-1353
www.ErinSullivan.com
for Southwest Contemporary Astrology
Erin Sullivan
erinsullivan@newmex.com
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