Understanding The Houses (Part I)
Romanticizing the 8th house
The topics ahead might get a bit heavy or uncomfortable, specially because they can be a breakdown of more lighthearted (yet misleading and, sometimes, false) descriptions of placements. But in order to truly understand and work with placements, we oughta know their true expression.
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The true experience of certain placements can be hard to understand, specially with so much conflicting information being throwing around from all sides, but the eighth house is one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented and miscast of all houses, just like all the water houses, which is why I chose to start this series with it.
Although the sign of Scorpio resides in the 8th place of the zodiac wheel, the sign and the 8th house are not the same thing, and they touch on different ways of approaching life. In fact, none of the houses and signs share meanings. Therefore, the first thing to be said from this is to stop conflating the two – house and sign.
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The 8th is the house that most gets romanticized for the sake of trying to be positive about each and every single placement in a birth chart. At best, its meaning often gets bent and shaped to circle around the truth, attempting to paint a hard deal into the promise of later rewards.
The 8th house a house of sharing, but it's also a house of taking, and a house of stealing. It's a house of force, not of light touch. Every surrender is a sacrifice made on some level, none of them being a natural willing giving. It's a house of power – personal or otherwise –, and who gets to own it.
However, that is the irony of such house. It's a house that deals with depths that are scary, hard to navigate and painful to touch, in a way that is so psychological and internal, so abstract at times, that it feels like a spiritual purging. But understand that to dive into such depths means to leave every tiny nerve exposed and raw, and that means vulnerability. So it's specially important for 8th housers to be aware that their perception of things WILL be affected by others, and those outside of themselves WILL try to shape the way you think and feel about things. Which means that you can fall trap to embellished discourse glamourizing the 8th house, that can range from telling you that you are a gifted psychic that can do all types of mediumship, to telling you that you will be reborn like a phoenix and transform into a powerful entity each time.
The regrettable reality is that the transformation of the 8th house is not glamourous, it's not special, it's not magical, and it doesn't promise any reward.
Oftentimes with the 8th house, specially a stellium, the reward you get is not dying at the end of it, and that's that on that. The whole conversation about how you're gonna alchemize all that pain into power beyond other people's reach is furthering you down a hole of pain and hiding. It keeps you addicted to seeking the toxic because the promise of a big payout makes you feel like you have control even in the face of humiliating defeat, and that is a slippery slope you DO NOT wanna go down.
The 8th house is shovelling you into surrending the attachment to who you think you are. And creating a fantasy character that is above defeat is latching onto your ego exactly like the 8th house is there to break down.
The part that is not told to you is that a lot of the times, the "transformation" you'll go through is eventually learning the ability to accept that you lost and failed, without trying to change the outcome or rewrite history.
Be on the lookout for that, and you'll start noticing your patterns.
The 8th is a house of your subconscious mind and body, so things there are buried, and you need to dig them out. If it's coming to you too easily, it means you haven't reached the point, because you need to dig the meaning out. Nothing that gives you a reductive description of the 8th house experience is leading you anywhere, honestly.
For example: you can hear that your relationships are meant to fail and only after a breakdown will you meet your soulmate and have a prosperous marriage.
That might be the case, but it's an ego trap.
Because, you see, after a heartbreak, you hear that and immediately you "rebuild" by focusing your energy on building that life. What you're not realizing, though, is that you've only shifted your ego into expecting a big reward for having your heart broken. The betrayal left you feeling powerless and humiliated, so deep down you hope that the perfect relationship will bring you back to the top and will ultimately prove that you were always meant to win in the end.
The 8th house is gonna put a flare on the fact that you might never make up for what you lost. You might never get even. You might never regain respect in the same avenue where you lost it. But you need to move on.
A lot of times tou will lose who you are and you won't get it back.
The 8th house loss is painful, constant and traumatic. Don't expect romantic rises from the ashes from it. And don't expect to feel grateful at the end.
Instead, dig deep into what it is that you wanna create for yourself, what it is that you learned, and accept the fact that you are human, and will face all sides of the human experience, including defeat that doesn't get mended.
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On the next post I will touch on all the good things about the 8th house.
