The 8th House – What is Theirs and What I Want to Make Mine

Do you like it when I ask you questions at the beginning of my posts?

Does it engage you, make you feel like you’re part of the conversation as though we’re having a tete-a-tete?

Or does it make you shift a little… move your finger to click away?

Are my questions a little too probing, like a torture version of 20 Questions?

Just because someone asks you a question doesn’t mean you’re obliged to answer… took me a long time to realise that even though I was actually born with a natural ability to stay silent even when being given the third degree, but as I was repeatedly told how rude I was being by those who were supposedly older and wiser, knew better, were teaching me how to be a ‘good’ person (rather than the bad one that I was), had power over me, I eventually caved in to peer pressure and would reply to all questions asked…

but the way I replied was wrong too, it often upset people… apparently you’re not supposed to be direct or honest at all times (but you are supposed to give the impression that you’re being direct and honest at all times). If someone asks you – Do you like me? – you’re not allowed to say – No – as this is impolite, you’re required to say – Yes – even if it’s a lie… yet you’re not to lie to people as that is a terrible thing to do, but some lies are okay because they’re tactful tactics which people use to manipulate others, how others experience them… and if someone likes you they’ll give you all their money and some kisses too.

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This image is one of the Easy Astrology Oracle Cards by Maya White

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That puzzling quandary I had (and still have) about social Q & A etiquette and my attitude about it reflects the 8th house in my natal chart, and Saturn’s placement therein in the sign of Aries.

While Saturn in the 8th could be considered quite a good placement for the planet which makes all explorers of astrology groan (it’s the stern disciplinarian of the astroplanet family), as it has been rumoured to confer longevity (which is a ‘good’ thing, right, because everybody wants to be an immortal… as long as they remembered to also wish for eternal youth while wishing for eternal life or they’ll end up being a human raisin)… but it’s in the sign of Aries (my chart gives with one hand and takes away with the other, what an a-hole it is!) and Saturn in that sign is said to be in its ‘Fall’ which means that both Saturn and Aries hate being in a relationship together… foever (that started as a typo… some typos are genius!).

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excerpt via Astrotheme – Astrology: Planetary Rulerships, Dignities and Debilities

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Aries is the unruly child to Saturn’s stern parent and… the longevity of their ‘fights’ is definitely something… you’ll probably be dealing with if you have this placement.

It’ll play out internally quite a bit, but since the 8th house is one of the ‘Interpersonal’ houses it’ll play out externally quite a lot in your interactions with others, especially where their values clash with yours (your own personal values can be found in the 2nd house which is situated directly opposite the 8th).

Basically there’s going to be mucho – Dad, give me 20 bucks. No. Pleeeeeaaaase, I need it desperately to buy something vitally important. Tell me what it’s for and maybe I’ll loan you the money, but I will expect you to pay me back with interest. My character in [insert really violent and loads of fun game here] needs better equipment to defeat the armies of… No, I should’ve known you were frittering your allowance away on fripperies. This game is helping me with my self-esteem issues, but you wouldn’t understand that would you, you don’t care about me, go FCK your money you love it more than me… That’s enough, go to your room, you’re grounded, your computer privileges have been revoked, no more games for you, your allowance is cut off, one day you’ll thank me for everything I’ve done for you. Screw you, I hate you *Storms off. I’ve scheduled you in for a session same time next week *Writes ‘Progress is slow but steady’ in patient file. Not if I kill myself! *Shouts defiantly. Slams door. *Waits.

After these messages, we’ll be right back…

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excerpt via Astrolocherry – Saturn in the 8th House

the ‘learn to drown before you learn to swim’ remark is spot on (although first you have to learn that you’re learning to drown first…) and reminds me…

of my mother’s story about ‘teaching’ me how to swim when I was a baby because my parents had a pool and she wanted me to be able to live should I fall in when no one was around or were around but didn’t notice (the latter was common in our family). According to her she threw me into the pool and then waited for baby-me to sink or swim, this was a method which one of the baby books she’d read had recommended as babies are natural swimmers due to their experience of swimming in the womb (my mother had a tendency to make shit up for dramatic effect – but I did see a pic of her and baby me in the pool with her holding me carefully as I flapped my limbs)

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So, where were we? What was happening? Can you remember last week’s episode? What!?! The episode isn’t over yet, a week hasn’t passed, it’s only been less than five minutes, filled with adverts all chattering about different things you need to get NOW… now now… calm down, all those adverts were saying the same thing – give me all your money and kisses too.

By the pricking of my thumbs, a segue or someone on a segway this way comes or was it that away…

Let’s play a game together, would you like to do that?

But what game shall we play which both you and I will enjoy?

What about Sex, Death and Taxes… it’s similar to Bonk, Kill or Marry… also known as Kiss, Destroy or Avoid… all things which in astrology may be associated with the 8th house as this is the home on the Zodiac wheel of Scorpio and its ruling planet Pluto… who usurped Mars’ rulership in a masterful power gameplay when it was ‘discovered’… although Mars still retains a certain hold on the sign as a silent(ly screaming) partner.

Now I know this game may sound a little intense, too uncomfortable to be called fun, and it might trigger all your ‘stay away from the taboo’ alarm bells, but somewhere inside of you a thrill shivered at the idea of dancing a jig with danger… or perhaps it was a waltz. Within you there’s a frog who might just give a ride to a scorpion… maybe it won’t sting you and then give you that shitty excuse of ‘a scorpion’s gotta do what a scorpion’s gotta do, it’s my natural duty, dude! You knew I was a scorpion before you gave me the ride…’, maybe you’ll become good friends and have a mutually beneficial relationship.

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excerpt via Visionquestbooks – The 8th House and the 5 Levels of Intimacy by Rocky Berlier

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In the 8th house you will find many hidden treasures which may require a leap of faith from you into the abyss of another (and vice versa).This is where you have to let your guard down… and it might show you the kind of guard you keep up.

With Saturn in my 8th – I have a brick wall, with a reinforced steel wall behind it, behind that is… that’s as much as I’m going to tell you about my security system.

With Aries on the cusp of the 8th house – Yup, that’s a warrior you see standing guard in full Samurai armor holding the hilt of a very sharp and slicey sword which at this time is sheathed because you should only unsheathe a sword if you intend to use it otherwise it’s rude to point pointy things at people. That warrior is not just for show or kicks and giggles.

If you confront me I will… readily admit that I’m a teensy weensy bit nigh on impossibly hard to get to know on an intimate basis. There is however a legend about one person having walked into my life and all my defenses somehow vanished, but the security system rebooted itself shutting them inside so… they’ll never be able to tell you how they did it.

Don’t worry about them, they seem perfectly happy which I must admit is a mystery, some mysteries are best left mysterious, they’re looked after and fiercely protected.

But…

It could just be a myth, you know how people are, they whisper and that whisper makes its way out into the world and becomes news and no one knows if it’s real or not, and maybe no one cares if it’s fake or fact. We like our stories when we like them… sometimes we like the ones we hate more.

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Elsa Elsa on Scorpio – she writes a lot on her blog about Scorpionic and Plutonic types and their intense effect on others.

She’s always an interesting, thought-provoking read. She enjoys stirring the pot within.

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Looking at your particular 8th house signs and planets (if you have any there… do not fear if you don’t, it does not mean you’re shallow or that this part of your life is not a labyrinth filled with traps and treasures), can give you an idea of the dynamics most likely to play out in your intimate interactions…

it’s what happens after the 7th house…

it’s the cold dark evening beside the fire, alone with the other, sipping wine, sharing secrets, playing human chess…

however it also represents things like the business side of a partnership, legal matters, accounts, the money of others… and is often associated with what occurs when someone close to you dies, the legalities and the many ways it can affect you, the one left behind.

I wrote about that in this post – A Story of Uranus Transiting the Eighth House. The first words of that post are “Sometimes I think astrology is bullshit. Sometimes it is.”

If you venture into older versions of astrology, how the ancients used it… it can get dark and heavy fast, with pretty much everything tagged as a bad omen predicting doom. Someone like me, with a lot of Virgo prone to worrying about self and others and getting anxious about everything both specifically and generally, in their chart, really should not read that kind of astrology and should not use astrology as a tool of prediction. Someone like me shouldn’t use the Tarot or other tools of divination either… but…

The 8th house can be used to predict how you’ll die and maybe even when… frankly that’s a preferable subject to think about than the death of those close to me. When I die it’s game over, but when they die it’s… they’re not allowed to die before I do and that’s that!

[My Pluto in the 1st, Mars in Scorpio, both of which pertain to the 8th house in my chart with Aries on the cusp, would like anyone who might harm those close to me to know that I will hunt you down and enact vengeance upon you, and I don’t care how long it takes thanks to my Saturn and my Sun in Capricorn (which my Saturn aspects), nor do I mind digging two graves because of that theory and saying about vengeance. I will be fair thanks to Libra on my 2nd house of personal values cusp and kill you quickly (albeit it will probably be an extreme kill in some way thanks to Jupiter in Libra which is conjunct Uranus in the 1st – expect the unexpected… such as for once I won’t be lazy about doing something), and also I’ve learned from watching films like Bond ones that you don’t stop and chat with your target as they might get away or kill you (I have Neptune in Scorpio and everywhere in some confused way which uses fantasy as a teacher). Don’t mistake my obsession with you as interest in you or your sad story about why you’re really the victim here, my Chiron conjunct North Node in the 7th has heard it all before many times and bled for others, my Venus in Pisces feels compassion for you, you were not born evil someone made you that way, but those placements have a flip side and sometimes I just don’t give a… and if you killed those I love to get back at me, what kind of a mess are you to do that, well done, you’ve won, you’re more effed up than I am and you’ve hurt me… and you’ve also removed what was making me press pause on… my primal nature, enjoy your victory. The end… just saying, is all… talk].

According to my Saturn in Aries in 8th house I’m going to die agonisingly slowly from a sudden blow to the head. I hit my head a lot because I’m an airhead who forgets they even have a head and since reading that prediction… each bang now has a the end is nigh story attached to it. Hello Wembley! (the end is nigh = nigh = Bill Nighy = that scene from Still Crazy – this is my mind doing what it does, my mind thinks it’s housed in the head…)

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excerpt via The Chirotic Journal – The 8th House: A Good Death?

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While you try and figure out how you’ll die based on the above excerpt which is ‘for entertainment purposes only’ and thus don’t take it seriously or don’t blame anyone but yourself if you use it to harm yourself in any way…

okay, you can blame me if you need to blame someone other than yourself, my parents trained me in the art of being a scapegoat by regularly telling me it was my fault their intimate relationship was an amateur production of MacBeth (oops, I said the play’s name… but that superstition is only for actors who are acting in the play, right?). Just as I kinda had to learn to drown before learning to swim… I kinda have to learn to be the root of all evil before I can be a better person… or something like that. That’s kinda narcissistic of me… someone just called me a bitter narc in a comment… or at least that’s what I got from a cursory glance at it, in truth I really didn’t understand anything they said so I went with a familiar scenario to fill in the blanks. I’ll read it properly later… once my Aries impulsiveness has gone to have its afternoon nap… for now it’ll sit in comment limbo while my bitter narc self decides what to do with it.

Time to make my exit… through a wall like the Kool-Aid jug…gernaut.

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Intimate relationships tend to obsess (a sort of Scorpio activity) all of us in some way, here’s a few non-astrology related articles about relationships which are worth a look-see:

Soul Mates by Thomas Moore – This is an article on Psychology Today which is an excerpt from the book – Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship, by Thomas Moore. I read this book ages ago and don’t really remember anything about it specifically but generally… I’ll never forget how it explained some stuff I was trying to figure out about intimate relationships. When I read it I was attempting to sort through the mess my parents’ intimate relationship had passed onto me. At some point I decided I’d never have an intimate relationship because it was better if I didn’t as I’d eff the other person up with my shit…

An excellent series on relationship dynamics (read it before Psychology Today messes with their links again):

How to End the Fight You Can’t Remember Why You Started

The Dynamic That’s Poison for Any Couple

Intimate Relationship Dynamics III – guess he got bored of being creative with the titles and decided to tell it like it is.

One of my favourites (I came to Games People Play after reading Transactional Analysis first which was an experience I would repeat if I had a do-over of this life):

Games People Play by Eric Berne – the ‘games’ are listed in the sidebar

And this is also interesting:

19 Ways to Tell If You Expect Too Much From Your Partner – I tend to see myself as expecting nothing from others because it eases interactions and relationships, however… I have ‘hidden’ expectations which can be ‘seen’ in my 8th house (hint: there’s a Samurai standing guard… I’m expecting a battle).