12th House Synastry (Astrology Writing Sample)

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12th House Synastry

By Cherrie K. A meditation on a complicated synastry. “…tasting sugar and smelling roses in full view of someone who shared both the taste and the speed” – Sula, Toni Morrison.

I have begun to consider Toni Morrison’s novel Sula a 12th house novel. The rich surreal gothic imagery, the sense of nothing happening, yet the feeling that this ‘nothing’ is everything. Nel and Sula see each other without ever really seeing each other, they know each other but refuse to touch this knowledge, and their love is warped and secret like ugly vines. “...Which was only fitting, for it was in dreams that the two girls had first met…they had already made each other’s acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams. They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream.”

There will never be enough love songs even though all love songs sing about the same thing — for this reason, I consider love songs to be the purview of the 12th house. The 12th house is everything and nothing at the same time. This house rules everything that is unseen. Everything that exists without physical form.

Angels and demons alike. What is love but this? The 12th house is as easily romanticized as it is demonized.

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12th house people are more at home with this synastry. Mariah Carey has a stellium in her Aries 12th house. A whopping five planets reside there: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Chiron. She is our 12th house queen, writing in her memoir, “whimsy and fantasy… my natural tendency.” At all stages of her life, she attempts to arrange time and space to match her visions and simply ignores them when they do not budge. When a reporter tells Mariah Carey that, “your greatest hits album is coming out today,” she looks absentmindedly at the camera and laughs while twirling her hair strands, saying, “Oh…does it come out today?”

Later, in response to that video, she tweets, “Knowing dates has never really been my thing…” Mariah got into a jacuzzi in the snow wearing a full-length body-hugging ball gown and took stunning pictures. She survived a dysfunctional family and an abusive marriage to become a multimillionaire and the second best-selling female artist of all time. Her song lyrics are thoroughly poetic and dream-like; she sang of fantasies and dream lovers while her husband exploited her and kept her surveilled in their very beautiful house bought with her own money. A princess in prison. And yes, the 12th house also rules prisons. And other forms of confinement like mental asylums. The 12th house Mars right on her ascendant is loud: childhood scars from the time her older sister burned her back with boiling-hot dandelion tea are still visible. The 12th house rules celebrity and delusion; Neptune rules this house and is associated with glamor and deception. Sometimes it’s the 12th houser who deceives and sometimes it is them who is deceived. What is clear is that nothing here is clear.

This house rules hidden enemies. The 12th house comes right before the sun rises. It is darkest before dawn. We are not aware of the planets here. We do not monitor their activity or even consciously direct them. We do not know what these planets stir or create in our surroundings. We therefore attract people who respond to energy we are not even aware of. That’s why we should be vigilant

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with 12th house synastry. When somebody’s planet is in our 12th house they are either our wildest dream or worst nightmare. Sometimes both at the same time.

They come into our lives because they are responding to either our angels or demons, or both! Watch them like they watch you, except that might be terrifying. It is terrifying for that other person too. They feel a pull towards the most unknown part of you. A lot of the time what is found here is so scary, embarrassing and heart-wrenching that nobody wants to make it known. They bother you (“why are you bringing up all this?”) or you ignore them (because you cannot see them, the 12th house is the “unseen realm”). Sometimes however, we cry with relief because they see and heal the most shameful parts of us. When there is nothing to heal, they exalt the most sacred parts of us. They burnish our angels.

Either way it will always feel like being turned inside out. Being inspected. Being attacked. Sometimes being stolen from. It will feel like being constantly shaken down for pocket change. Being exposed. Being caught off-guard. 12th housers are already at home with these feelings. Their own planets in this house do this to them all the time. A person’s 12th house Mars acts out, refuses to be humble or kind, and the next thing they know, they get beaten up (Mars) and can’t find out why (12th house - unseen). A 12th house Venus (money) could bring monetary loss for example. The 12th house represents big losses. This is all because a 12th Houser’s desires will always be subsumed underneath the eternal movement of the universe. Desires are an 11th house concept. For the zodiac wheel to turn towards the 12th house, our desires have to be examined. Desire is powerful but it has to submit to the expanses of spacetime, symbolized here by the 12th house, to be completely meaningful. The Joker said, “Desire becomes surrender, surrender becomes power.” Desire always becomes surrender. Surrender is associated with the 12th house.

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Our 12th house planets move unseen. They move according to the universe and are taunted by delusion, danger and confinement when they stray from these paths.

12th house synastry behaves in exactly the same way. It is purely divine and often must be surrendered to slowly and willingly. Anything less is anguish for everybody involved. The only way out of the 12th house is daily surrender within one’s self to erase the barrier between one’s actions and the universe. Whether our 12th house synastry comes from a lover or enemy, it always comes in time to force us to do the shadow work we had neglected. Shadows are a kind of prison too.