October 20, 2024
When the moon falls in the house of secrets, places of confinement, and hidden enemies, you are gifted with a profound sensitivity that can be challenging to master.
People with moon in the twelfth house are perceptive, intuitive, and extremely in tune with their environment. They possess a profound sensitivity to the feelings of others that borders on psychic, and they may have vivid nightly dreams that feel like a guiding force in their lives. These people like to operate behind the scenes and are drawn to work in the healing and service professions where they can put their intuitive gifts to good use.
The twelfth house governs what remains when the concerns of the outer world are stripped away. Confinement to monasteries, asylums, prisons, hospitals, or even just to one’s room, serves to direct attention away from worldly cares into the subtle gradations of inner experience that only become perceptible in isolation. It is in these quiet moments that twelfth house moons recharge and get in tune with their emotions.
The emotional attunement of twelfth house moons is so extraordinary that it can be both a curse and a blessing. Many are so sensitive that they struggle to separate their emotions from the feelings of others, even to the extent that they don’t know what they feel much of the time. The most common thing I have heard from people with twelfth house moons is that they are easily drained by other people and need time alone to decompress. Some people mistake their frequent retreats for rejection, which is an unfortunate mistake—twelfth house moons need time to themselves as much as you or I need air to breathe, and if you understand this about them, you’ll have a friend for life.
What makes or breaks twelfth house moons is how they deal with their sensitivity. On one hand, there is a great storehouse of creativity beneath an oceanic emotional landscape, and a true love of the arts. Writing or playing music can be very soothing for these people, who may turn to creative outlets when they are emotionally overwhelmed to experience complex feelings in a structured way. On the other hand, they may retreat into delusional fantasies or resort to substance abuse to drown out the noise.
Individuals with a twelfth house moon may struggle more than others to identify their true feelings, which can lead to a cascade of emotional problems. They are usually either unaware of or overwhelmed by their emotions, which can result in a lack of emotional clarity or varying degrees of emotional confusion. Some report having delayed emotional reactions that appear anywhere from a few minutes to a few months after the initial situation that triggered the feeling. They may be out of touch with or ashamed of their own needs, and they often attract emotionally unavailable people. They are fantasy prone, escaping into fantasies instead of facing their true feelings.
It is important for people with moon in the twelfth house to adopt healthy coping mechanisms. Instead of overeating (the moon has a lot to do with our relationship to food), resorting to substance abuse, or escaping into delusions, it can be helpful to write, make or listen to music, meditate, spend time alone, or find ways to identify or express what they are feeling.
Moon in the twelfth house people are very secretive and have a difficult time trusting people, perhaps because they struggle to trust their own emotions, which feel strange and remote at times. They can come across as guarded, withholding their feelings even from the people to whom they are closest. In some cases, this is because they have been burned in the past. They may keep a lot of secrets from the people in their lives, while at the same time easily picking up on the secrets of others. It is also not uncommon for people to come to them with their secrets; in fact, they seem to attract the trust of strangers and friends alike who unburden themselves onto these unsuspecting folk. Many have an uncanny ability to sense things about people, getting abstract impressions that end up being right later on.
Many people with moon in the twelfth house are surrounded by loving friends and family, yet are filled with a powerful sense of aloneness. Many feel misunderstood or different, or as though there were an invisible wall surrounding them. The characteristic compartmentalization of the twelfth house can also lead to feelings of loneliness, as people with moon in the twelfth house tend to give out different versions of themselves to different people. Although they can get along with nearly everyone, they somehow feel like a perpetual wallflower. They often go unnoticed or overlooked, and they feel as though no matter what they say or do, they do not get the recognition they crave.
There is nothing lonelier than playing a role, and these people play teacher, healer, helper, savior, or martyr more often than not. Although they may not always volunteer for these roles, they are very good at playing them, which makes it that much harder to be themselves.
This placement often indicates a difficult relationship with one’s mother. Frequently the mother is codependent, narcissistic, sickly, mentally ill, or for whatever reason the parental dynamic is reversed and the child ends up parenting the mother. There can be a lot of resentment festering beneath the surface, as well as a sense of unlived potential. For instance, people with moon in the twelfth house may resent people who complain or express their emotions openly because they never felt they could do so as a child.1
In 1955 Michel Gauquelin, the French statistician and astrologer, published “Les Influences des Astres” in which he statistically analyzed 2,000 charts looking for indicators of professional success. He found overwhelming evidence that on average, having your moon in the twelfth house makes you more likely to become a writer.2
Much of the suffering caused by this house comes from its tendency to obscure the energies of the planets here. In other words, it makes the emotions of people with the moon in the twelfth house difficult for them to feel. People who are out of touch with their emotions are more likely to project their true feelings onto other people or situations, which can get them into trouble. The key to surviving this house is to do everything in your power to identify and experience your true emotions before you sabotage yourself. Make music about what you feel. Put pen to paper. Give your feelings expression. Do shadow work: observe what bothers you about other people and notice what that may mean about your own feelings.
It is often said that residents of this house must either serve others or suffer. Once you discover your true thoughts and feelings, and practice living a life that is in harmony with your genuine needs, your selfish desires and behaviors will begin to fall away on their own, and you will have a greater capacity to serve others. This is easier said than done of course, but this placement ensures that you will have many opportunities to do so. The twelfth house is associated with self-undoing, but this is really a misguided way of thinking about the process that destroys the false self. If you identify with the false self, which exists to protect you from perceived harm, this process will be very painful; if you identify with your true self, which is the same as identifying with your true feelings, you will find shelter in your own truth. Do this and you will avoid much of the misery of this house.
Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926 with a pisces moon in the twelfth house. His mother had schizophrenia that manifested in paranoid delusions and disordered thinking, and was institutionalized numerous times during Allen’s early years. Her paranoia caused her to grow closer to Allen, whom she called “her little pet.” Ginsberg later became known for his writings, especially “Howl.” He later claimed that at the core of “Howl” were his unresolved emotions about his mother. In this poem he also “denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.”3
The twelfth house is the point in the horoscope that unites the personal with the collective; people with their moon here absorb the collective mood and interpret it through their own personal experiences in a way that is universal and compelling. In his most popular poem, “Howl,” Ginsberg simultaneously captured the zeitgeist of the beat generation and expressed his unresolved emotional issues towards his absent mother. Also, both his writing (the themes of destructive forces in society and his equally self-destructive friends) and the strained relationship he had with his mother due to her illness, ring of twelfth house woe.
Julian Assange is an Australian activist with a twelfth house scorpio moon who founded Wikileaks, a media organization that publishes leaked documents of international importance. He attracted attention in 2010 after leaking U.S. military intelligence documents and footage, and again during the 2016 Presidential election when he leaked emails from the DNC that damaged HIlary Clinton’s campaign. Assange was incarcerated in 2019 for violating the Espionage Act of 1917.4
Being imprisoned for leaking secret government documents to the public is certainly a twelfth house fate. The secrets he shared had global implications. They shaped the collective consciousness around governments and elections, changing public trust in these groups forever. They caused a profound shift in global power structures (scorpio), putting the power back in the hands of the people. He is seen as a martyr by many, who suffered for the good of the collective.
Arthur Rimbaud was born in France in 1854 with a Libra moon and Venus in the twelfth house. He lived a short but remarkable life as a poet, known for his “scandalous and surreal themes” and for “prefiguring surrealism.” His father was entirely absent during his youth, and he had a strained relationship with his strict, narrow-minded, and occasionally abusive mother who would withhold meals and assign extra school work if he did not perform academically. He ran away from home multiple times, and when he was about 17, he began a scandalous, and eventually violent, romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine.5
When he was about sixteen years old, he wrote in a letter to a friend, “I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.” His final work was called Illuminations, which abandoned “preconceived structures altogether to explore hitherto unused resources of poetic language, bestowing most of the pieces with a disjointed, hallucinatory, dreamlike quality.”5
Rimbaud’s early struggles with an unsympathetic mother figure and later abandonment to what could be described as an almost alchemical process of “disordering the senses,” places him thematically in the realm of the twelfth house. He believed that great suffering is necessary to become a visionary, and that the poet must "arrive at the unknown" by leaping into the "unnameable, unutterable and innumerable things," which elevate the poet by destroying him. He accomplished this mainly by drinking prodigiously, doing opium, and getting high off of strong absinthe. These substances live in the twelfth house, as do the unnameable things Rimbaud encountered in his visionary states. Much like the twelfth house that dissolves the boundaries of the planets that fall there, he dissolved the traditional poetic structures of his day in Illuminations because he felt there were some formless things that could only be described through an equally formless delivery.6
Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Massachusetts with a Libra moon in the twelfth house. She is known for her unconventional poetry and her reclusive lifestyle. She rarely left home over the course of her life, keeping to herself at her family mansion and withdrawing from society completely by the end of her life. Her mother was cold and unaffectionate, and she preferred the company of her father and brother, although she became her mother's caretaker as her health declined.7
The vivid inner world that Dickinson inhabited is a hallmark of people with twelfth house moons. Her decision to live in seclusion (twelfth house) seems to mirror her inner reality, in which she is alone with herself in abstract landscapes. One critic said of her poetry, "Dickinson saw the mind and spirit as tangible visitable places and that for much of her life she lived within them. Often, this intensely private place is referred to as the 'undiscovered continent' and the 'landscape of the spirit' and embellished with nature imagery. At other times, the imagery is darker and forbidding—castles or prisons, complete with corridors and rooms—to create a dwelling place of 'oneself' where one resides with one's other selves."7
The twelfth house is associated with mental and physical illness. According to one correspondent who met her for the first time, she was quite hard on the nerves. He felt he never was "with any one who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her.” Moon in the twelfth house gives one a very delicate nervous system, perhaps even a weak one that might put a strain on others in some cases. It was also thought that Dickinson struggled with anxiety and perhaps even agoraphobia. Dickinson struggled with poor health early in life, dying in her fifties of a kidney disorder.7
Although people with moon in the twelfth house can experience varying degrees of difficulty with this placement, it is far from a prison sentence. In many cases, it is a very creative placement that positions individuals to make significant contributions to society. They have sensitive, perceptive, and nuanced perspectives that are often ahead of their time, and they overcome difficult circumstances by defining a moment in time in a way that is both personal and universal.
Perhaps some of these stories felt familiar to you. Do you think you might have a twelfth house moon? Follow the link below to learn more.
1 https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_dgtwehouse_e.htm
2 http://www.katybohinc.com/blog/2018/1/31/the-twelfth-house-art-and-the-unconscious
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud
6 Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud translated by Louise Varese
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson
You may have planets in the twelfth house.
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