Jeremy Alan – Moving through the 12th House
An Intro by Matt
Last year, while living in Peru, I had an astrological reading from Jeremy Alan, a passionate and intimate reader of the planets. We spoke for a couple of hours and he described how the 12th house is a very prominent feature in my chart, with many planets falling here.
I have heard things described about the 12th house, a deep, dark place, it’s a place of secret, fear and self-imposed destruction. It’s obsessive, solitary and seems to be the place where subconscious rules, where messages from the universe are communicated, where there are no rules, it’s where chaos hides in plain sight. It went some way to offer an explanation of some of my traits and tendencies, secrecy, inner focus, the path of discovery, digging and an obsession with uncovering of the darkness within, that seems to be an ongoing theme in my life.
Jeremy wrote the following piece specifically about the 12th House, in an attempt to visualise and get to grips with it.
I’m calling to you from the 12th House – from the sea of emotion where the human and divine become one. We all get lost in it from time to time, while yearning for its infinite embrace. We flirt with the edges of ecstasy along its shores – where the waves of bliss and tragedy flow as one. And sometimes, we fall right in.
If you look deep enough into the stars at night, you can see the same. The black abyss, intermingled with sparkling points of light. Can we get confused about who we are in this sea? Can we get lost there, not remembering who we are, or how we ever ended up in this place?
Imagine the eternal optimist in the face of every fact that tries to prove otherwise. Imagine the boat captain. Who slips deep into the bowels of his ship when the storm reaches its climax because that’s the only place where the crashing waves don’t seem to hit so hard. It’s the balance point, right above the keel at the very middle of the hull. A weightless point where, if he gets it just right, he can pretend the storm isn’t there anymore.
The captain could stay there, never to emerge, and dissolve with his ship into the infinite depths of the sea. But that’s not what happens this time. In the peace of this space, he gets a glimpse of truth, of inspiration (of God?). It lights his flame again, and he wakes right up. He remembers who he is. And he climbs up to the deck of his ship to take the helm.
The storm has passed. The Sun is bridging the horizon in the distance. It warms his heart. All he can do is cry the tears he was holding back during that long, cold and stormy night.
On the shore, the Captain meets old friends and says, “It’s hard to believe we can emerge from such a deep and dangerous place and live to tell the tale.” They don’t exactly understand his poetry. But they resonate with his words.
The 12th House symbolizes the dark and stormy night voyage of the person trapped in emotional waters not knowing where they will lead. With the stars blacked out, we don’t know where the Northpoint is. Am I blinded by the tears of knowing that my suffering is no different from anyone else’s and that we’re all in this boat together?
The fog will clear soon enough. As we soon move from the 12th House into the 1st. Which brings the spark of initiation. A burst of energy. A wake-up into individual expression. A “coming out to smell the roses” as a unique individual.
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Watch the video for this text with music and images at the Sunstone Astrology YouTube channel.
Find Jeremy here: Sunstoneastrology.com
Illustration by: Matt Witt
