The last house of the zodiac wheel, the 12th house, is considered both a “dark house” and a “moksha house.”
How can one house be associated with both suffering (dark house) and enlightenment (moksha)? How can human consciousness associate these archetypes together?
Because they’re the same. Samsara is nirvana. Hell is heaven. They are the same place, the same house, but of a very different conscious awareness. An important revelation for the mind navigating this house.
The 12th house is at its core a house of healing. As the last house of the wheel, it’s the archetype of contemplation at the end of life. It's at this stage in life when we ought to forgive, love, serve, and surrender.
When you can begin to see the end, what is important becomes both more intense and more clear. The end-of-life experience, the last few chapters or years of one's life, ideally when at an elderly age and not cut short, are when we are most confronted with the need and ability to heal. In the paradox of reality, even physical pain at this stage brings us deeper into internal contemplation so we can heal.
To heal you have to feel through it and let what binds you come to the surface for you to accept, forgive, and release yourself from. We heal in this house so we can let go, but you have to heal first to truly detach and become part of something much larger than just yourself. A spiritual connection and meditation or contemplation practice for anyone with emphasis in the 12th can be of great importance.
You’ll often read that this house is “hidden” but that really means it’s of the most depth, the last house down. What comes out of the 12th is from the deepest parts of your psyche. This psychic content that emerges here and encourages these natives to contemplate or engage with the world beyond just their egos is part of the healing process.
This is the most transpersonal of houses. The 12th house, sitting at the event horizon, is connected to the collective unconscious. Energy here can either unconsciously drain someone or consciously help them connect to the masses or understand others. You’ll often read that 12th housers “don’t know who they are.” But the first quadrant of the zodiac is about creating yourself. Here in the 12th, you can go beyond personality. With conscious awareness, this is another profound opportunity.
As you get closer to your own inner being, walking through the valley of your own healing and surrender, the more you’ll realize the infinite supply of the archetypes you have in your 12th. You are unbounded here. There is only one side of the periphery. Be crazy enough to approach the edge and it’s an endless channel to utilize.
The 6th/12th house axis teaches us that part of the process of healing is getting out of your own head! To instead serve those around you somehow or find a passion you enjoy devoting yourself to & to share with others. This is a primary focus, and relief, for this imaginative house or for anyone working through healing or change.
The 12th house of surrender does NOT mean letting go of placements there. It means letting go of the ego’s idea of fixed outcomes and the narratives we tell ourselves that limit us to that past. You don’t want to abandon any part of yourself. It’s in being these very placements that you align your will with that of the divine that made you.
Love these parts of you to death.
To truly and full heal is to completely let go.
-Susan Reis / The Cyclical Seed