Last Updated on July 30, 2020 by astrologerbydefault

The first house/ ascendant is the sign rising on the east horizon as you were born. But upto a couple of hours before you were born, the sign which occupies your 12^th house was rising. The first day of your life, before you arrived as an independent person, the 12^th house sign rose at the east preparing the environment for your to-be-born person/ environment. It was then the bridge between the Pitrulok and the Martyalok. 

The instant of birth is beautifully synchronised by the Moksh trikon. We are born (1st house) from the energies of our past lives (12th house) we settle into the security of our new destination Martyalok (4th house) and the umblical cord is cut (8th house) completing the birth process.

The 12^th house rules the immediate past life. All the stuff from the immediate past life is the resource from which your new persona/environment is created. At the moment of death, the entire life passes before one’s consciousness, in a span of a second, infinitely fast. You watch your current life’s replay in a single glimpse. And you fix your consciousness on one incident from this life as you pass out of the body-shell. This impression decides your immediate next life. You have this choice at your point of exit. If you can choose consciously, you have control over your next life. Or if you can power your exit with a mantra like ‘Om’, Soham Hamsa you can propel yourself to a better energy state or even gain Videha Moksha. But most of us are quite scared at this point, so miss out on this literally once in a lifetime opportunity. 

Most astrologers are hesitant about deciphering the 12^th house. Its traditional meanings of losses, reduction of the physical manifested, dreams, spirits, solitude, dream states, requirement of leaving the home and familiar environments, private prayers, contemplation, sleep, dream-states, past lives, imprisonment, insanity, sensitivity to the other dimensions and to astral cues, etc are quite unsettling. Your 12^th house brings to you all the feelings, thoughts, images from your past lives which shape your present life. This information can be enabling or threatening to your present sense of self. Regrets from the past life and also its successes are stored here.

Examine your 12^th house, the sign, the occupant planets, the aspecting planets. Then the location of this sign’s ruler planet, which sign is he in, the planets with him and aspecting him. Use the keywords of the planets, signs and houses to get a general idea of what type of results you can expect. If you feel confident about reading your Navamsha, then check out all these planets you have identified. Do they gain power in the D9, will they give auspicious results or not. So now you have a reasonable idea of your 12^th house and its power to give results. This is the baseline, more events and their timings will depend on the Dasha and the transits as always.

If there are several or significant planets connected to the 12^th house, you have a lot of your conscious life connected to the affairs of the 12^th house. There will be several issues from your past lives which you will be resolving, albeit unconsciously, in this life. If you have your ascendant sign ruler planet or the Moon or the Sun in the 12th house you need to take care as the personality will be, as a whole, more into the inner subconscious world. If any of the other planets are placed here, then you will focus on your inner side as per the keywords of that planet. eg Jupiter here will make you base your life’s philosophies on your experiences of the 12th house. If you have the biggest karmic boss Saturn here, you will be required to work your karma out in the astral dimensions.

If there are no planets placed in the 12th house, it is empty, then you do not have significant karma connected to this house. Then examine the owner planet to know how you use the mysterious energy of the 12th house in your life. One exception here will be the Aquarius ascendant sign. Here the ruler of the 1st and 12th houses will be the same taskmaster Saturn. The second exception will be Leo ascendent as the other luminary Moon rules the 12th house. Both these ascendant signs, the personality will be equally at home and equally active in the conscious and sub-conscious dimensions of existence.

The 12^th house is the house of extreme results, let’s check its positive aspects in this post. If your 12^th house is capable of giving auspicious results, then it can be a good sub-conscious foundation for the current life. The sign and planets placed here can be your secret helpers and your sub-conscious supports your conscious self in overall growth. You are able to use their energies in effectively managing your external world. These planets/ sign will indicate the positive karma from your past life which you are going to use to your advantage in this life. You were helpful, generous and kind to others in your past lives, worked on your spiritual growth and now in this life you are going to benefit and get a boost from all this.

You need more time alone as 12^th is an intensely private house. You enjoy solitude, dislike noise, crowds and too many people around you. This isolation can be by choice or by necessity. You may live in the mountains, in an ashram or a spiritual retreat by choice, If not for a lifetime, then at least for a few significant years of your life. Or serve in such institutions by karmic necessity, eg in lunatic asylums, prisons, deep forests, mines. You either need to experience the isolation yourself or vicariously through others who are kept isolated. Solitude is often linked to self-introspection, delving into one’s own hidden depths to understand mysterious things about oneself. And you are very productive when you get this time alone. What you do now depends on the planets/ sign here. eg Mercury here can be a writer or Venus here can be an intense spiritual seeker. Your energies indicated by the 12^th house are directed inwards so developing inner resources is very much possible.

You dislike crowds, dislike being in the public eye. You are very sensitive to the astral cues of other people, eg their aura affects you. If you become aware of someone seeing you, speaking to you, listening to you or around you, you feel conscious, shy and unable to perform normally. You feel vulnerable in a crowd. If you have major or several planets in the 12^th house you tend to be an intensely private person. You go out in society, meet people, do your job etc but essentially you are not open to sharing things about yourself. Close friends will be limited and you cannot share your personal things even with them. Things of the 12^th house desire to remain in the background. You are very protective of the things indicated by the 12^th house as you are very deeply vulnerable to these. These things if affected adversely, do not remain on your conscious levels, they directly hit and are absorbed by your astral self.

Another interesting thing if you can observe is, in some families the 12^th house of the all the members shows similar placements. This indicates that the family members are moving as a soul group, taking births in sync with each other and having deep subconscious links from their past lives together. The 12^th house is the mirror of the 6^th house. The house where you consciously repay the one-one personal karma v/s the house where you sub-consciously rebalance karma pending from past lives and linked to a large amorphous collective.

The 12^th house can also indicate the situation in your earliest baby-hood and also the environment around your pregnant mother. You don’t remember all this stuff consciously. This is also the reason why sufferings of the childhood are considered highly karmic. These are linked to your earlier lives and leave a subtle impact on your entire current life.

Our example horoscope, Aleister Crowley, the genius occultist of recent times, birth details 12th Oct 1875, 11:43 pm Leamington UK. His Birth chart, Navamsha chart and Ashtakvarga are as follows.

In his birth chart, the 12th house is Gemini, vacant. Its ruler, Mercury is placed in the 4th house, with Venus and Jupiter. Of these two, Jupiter is quite closely placed by Mercury, and Mercury considers him to be an enemy. Venus is more than 15deg away so there is limited influence of Venus on Mercury. Then Jupiter aspects the 12th house with his ninth house aspect. So we will consider Mercury and Jupiter to be linked to the affairs of the 12th house. In the Navamsha Jupiter moves to Saturn’s Aquarius, a neutral position. And Mercury goes to Mars’ Aries a neutral-to-uncomfortable position. So we can deduce Mercury is not comfortable with all this and Jupiter will give neutral results.

We can glean more information from the Ashtakvarga table for this horoscope. The house total for the 12th house is 25 (Gemini sign is number 3) so as a whole the house will give inauspicious results. In transit through this house, the planet Venus will give beneficial results. Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and Moon will give average results. Mars and Mercury will give unfavourable results as per the Ashtakvarga analysis. Similarly for their Mahadasha-s. So now we know our basic background on the 12th house for further analysis depending on the questions if there were any. 

The 12th house is an important house. The natural 12th sign of the zodiac is Pisces ruled by Jupiter. It is not bad but here you are required to learn very deep lessons which are pending over from your past lives. It might get uncomfortable at times. It is a part of the Moksh trikon. It creates the 9/5 axis with the 4th and 8th houses. We leave the body in the environment of the 8th house, intelligently navigate the transition using the resources of the 12th house and settle into our new destination dimensions using the energy of the 4th house.

If we accept that we prepare our lives for the moment of exit this Moksh trikon becomes more comprehensible. We prepare our mind-set through out our life. We try to meet our targets of karma rebalance. We try to make the most of this life-time and bring positive energies in ourselves. All this so that when that moment of exit comes we can make the most of it and propel our souls to even higher energy states. This genius and creativity of the moment of death is the 12th house. When we leave the body-shell this 12th house again is the bridge which brings us from the Martyalok to the Pitr-lok.

The 1^st house is a reflection of the sub-conscious energies of the 12^th house brought out into the conscious realm. And the 12^th in the same cycle is created by the breakdown of the energies of the 1^st house. This is the extraordinary significance of this 12^th house.

It is strangely fitting that the instant before we were born and the instant after we leave is governed by the 12th house, the House of Bridges.