The Twelfth House

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THE TWELFTH HOUSE

Dane Rudhyar

The twelfth house closes the cycle of human experience. It is the last stage in a process which may be repeated during the lifetime of an individual, or terminated by what we call death. In the twelfth house the individual either consolidates his successes into the seed of a new cycle of growth, or he meets the accumulated results of his failures. Indeed, there is practically no man who has not achieved some kind of success and experienced personal or social defeats. In the last house of the cycle, man is unavoidably confronted by his successes and failures. His memories of the past, conscious or unconscious, crowd over the threshold in front of the new cycle. They are Angels of Light beckoning to the beyond, or they are dark Guardians of the Threshold, whose features are shaped by his frustrations, his denials of life, his fears, his sins of omission as well as commission. The individual must face this compound entity which he himself has created. He must go through it, whatever the cost — if there is to be for him a new cycle.

Nevertheless, there must always be a new cycle, even if it is one that follows the loss of the physical body. Thus there is no real escape from the confrontation. Still, the conscious ego that is bent upon beginning, or is fated to begin a new cycle of life in the same body, usually comes to believe that he can escape the ghostly shapes crowding at the gates of rebirth. He struggles frantically in the dark, unable to accept or to bless, to redeem or to overcome. Tormented with pain at the memory of his failures, or oppressed by fears of what the new cycle will bring, he cries for help and light. And help does come — but often unnoticed, for he may be blinded by the darkness and haunted by the ticking of the clock of time, which seems always to run too slow or too fast.

Yet this darkness can be borne if man realizes that only by letting go of the lesser is it possible to be born into the greater. There is light, too, at the core of the seed which waits for the promise of renewal inherent in spring, but this light is a strange and disconcerting glow which makes all things take unexpected shapes and all events become mysteriously symbolic. It is such a strange light because it seeps through the fog of the accumulated past from a far-away reality. The Universal flashes its signals to the particular man; the Whole bathes the part in a sea of new life-giving blood. Under this light our limited concepts shine with an all-inclusive vision of life, like dark rocks transfigured by ultraviolet rays into fantasies of color.

The twelfth house should be understood, above all, as the last phase of the semi-cycle which began in the seventh house. In the twelfth house the realm of the Sky ends. It is in this above-the-horizon realm that man's experiences find themselves centered around the feeling of participation in society, or in a universe of all-encompassing Spirit. Participation in the social or universal Whole has become definitely and concretely established in the tenth house, at the Zenith. The energy produced by such a participation has been released, in the eleventh house. The power of the group has flowed through the individual, as this individual performed his social or professional work. If the tenth house experiences have been vital and squarely met, the individual may enjoy the pleasures of culture and friendship, or he may seek to picture new social ideals, new hopes for a better future. He may enjoy his present, and he may create new tomorrows for himself and for all men. The source of such a creative act is the vision that was born in his communion with the Star shining at the Zenith of his being, a communion which had to be made real and concrete through constant work.

While discussing the meaning of the eleventh house I said that in it the Whole works through the individual so he can fulfill his function in the economy of this Whole; it is creation, not of the individual — as in the fifth house — but through him. What, then, of the results of this creation? They may appear strange to our minds, which are so strongly hypnotized by our separative idea of what individual selfhood means.

If in the eleventh house we have acted as creative agencies through which the power of society — or of our particular social group — could be released in the traditional manner as determined by collective ideals, culture, and religion, then it is only natural that we should have been influenced, or molded, by the character of these ideals. If we live in a materialistic, decadent society, and if we have let it act through us without questioning its validity, can we hope to escape the inevitable fate of such a society? If we sing and dance in irresponsible pleasure while the world goes to its doom, must we not feel within our subconscious, if not consciously, the impact of this doom?

To the individual, the impact of collective destiny is fate. What he must remember, however, is that in the twelfth house he must face the ultimate, logical effects of tenth house causes — and, more distantly, of causal factors going all the way back to the preceding angular houses — first, fourth, and seventh. In the tenth house we met the needs of society; that is, we chose, or we were led to a profession, or a social position of some sort. We met these social needs under the distant — in rare cases the close — guidance of our Star at the Zenith. We establish our place in the larger pattern of filings. From here on, the power of this larger social or universal pattern has to be the dominant influence in our lives. It is dominant whether we accept it passively, or rebel against it; whether we play the game with our fellow citizens, or act as reformers, revolutionaries, or criminals.

In the twelfth house we meet the results of our passive conformism, or our spiritual rebellion. We face the karma of society in a subconscious and blind manner, or we face our karma as individuals who fought society, for the sake of our own selfish interests or for the sake of a better world. Either we go to sleep spiritually, accepting traditions and precedents with comfort, or we bear the burden and the consequences of our ideals and our efforts to incorporate our vision among men. In many lives, both these possibilities are encountered simultaneously in varying proportions.

Just as the fourth, fifth, and sixth houses can be said to represent three different types of ego expression, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth houses represent several types of collective expression. And just as the sixth house denotes a crisis in experience and a transition between the below-the-horizon and above-the-horizon realms, so the twelfth house also denotes a critical state between two worlds. The individual who has been dominated by social and collective needs is struggling to emerge from the set of conditions which have bound him to a social or spiritual pattern, and to be reborn as a new individual. This, too, means repolarization and reorientation, but not in the same way as in the sixth house, where the individual has to work through personal conditions and the need for self-discipline. In the twelfth house, what is to be met has its source in collective issues, in national or social fate, in the pressures of society upon the individual, and of the collective unconscious upon the conscious ego. In both houses much pain may be experienced, but the pain that comes from the metamorphosis experienced in the twelfth house has a poignancy and a quality of inevitability which may make it harder to bear. One has no recourse against the universe, save to be reborn out of the universe.

The twelfth house contains the seed of that rebirth. This is shown symbolically in the fact that the horizon — which is the line of demarcation between the twelfth house and the first house — is curved. However slight it may be, there is significance in this curvature which bends the cusp of the first house downward, from the point of view of the twelfth house. We might say symbolically that the whole weight of the Sky presses upon the horizon. The Sky imprints upon the soil the seed pattern of the new destiny and the seed of the future cycle is released from the past. According to the ancient tradition of Indian philosophy, the last thought held in death determines the pattern of the future incarnation.

We may think of this merely as a symbolic statement, but its basic truth can hardly be challenged. Every birth is a new Act of God; but the soil into which the seed is sown and the very substance of that seed are products of the past. What is new is neither soil nor seed substance, but the God-bestowed power in the new entity to shape to new ends these conditions inherited from the past. It is this power which the Ascendant represents, and which the symbol of the rising degree of the zodiac helps us to interpret. This power is the real Identity of the individual, if he succeeds in reaching the state of truly individualized selfhood. It is the mystic Name of the newborn.

This individual Identity may operate or it may not. The collective power of the memories accumulated in the twelfth house — what is called karma — may be so great that it stifles the individual Identity of the newborn, or drowns out the Tone of the new cycle of the man facing the possibility of rebirth. If this is the case, then the new cycle tends to become no more than repetition of the old, under only slightly changed conditions, and the power of the Collective will constantly challenge and perhaps entirely overwhelm the individual spirit struggling for identity. But if the confrontations experienced in the twelfth house have been met successfully and the individual has absorbed and assimilated the darkness represented by the "Guardian of the Threshold" — the memories and complexes of the personal and collective Unconscious — then, the Tone of the new cycle can ring out clearly. The individual, conscious of his true Identity, is able to use for his purpose of destiny whatever conditions have been inherited from his past and the past of his race, from his parents and from humanity.

The past must be used if an individual is to tread the path of creative accomplishment. The creative life is a constant synthesis of past and future in a radiant present — a synthesis of memories and of goals through a creative act. It is a life of plenitude and consecration. Individual Identity, Personality, Love, and Participation in the organic life of the Whole — these are the cornerstones of the temple of fulfilled manhood and womanhood. They are the four angles of the birth chart, the glorious cross of human living.

One of the stranger characteristics of our western civilization has been its refusal to think and feel in terms of cyclic processes. Such a refusal can be traced to a decision of the Council of Constantinople in the fifth century A.D., which prohibited belief in reincarnation and in all similar cyclic processes; but it is probably inherent in the particular emphasis which singles out western society and its essential function in the historical development of mankind, that is, an emphasis upon a definite break from all traditions of the then ending "vitalistic Ages." Our civilization has always emphasized, often with tragic results, man's capacity for transcending his natural biopsychic state — the state which dominates all instinctual and tribal forms of social organization, especially those related to agricultural and cattle-raising occupations — and to effect such a transcending through the use of intellectual analyses and mental abstractions. This requires separation of the mind and its organizer, the ego, from natural instincts and, in a sense, from all natural processes. It impels the ego mind to glorify itself in opposition to biological demands and to imagine itself supreme ruler of life functions and their cyclic rhythms. But the mind alone can barely resist these natural drives and biological compulsions, often glamorized as "the great passion" or under other mythical images; so the Christian religion had to become its ally in the effort to transcend those life functions dominated by natural rhythms. This alliance gave rise to an implicit belief in the availability of only one life in which to achieve the goal of spiritual transcendence.

Only one short life available for such an achievement! This means that every moment in life should be strained toward the difficult goal; no time could be "lost," no effort spared. In order to succeed, one has to relentlessly control the energies of one's inner nature as well as of nature in general. All this inevitably led to considering death as the great tragedy against which there was no recourse. Dying and living are both parts of the natural cyclic process, but if man's mind and ambitions or desperate will could to a large extent control living processes, he seemed helpless to overcome the last and insurmountable enemy, death. Death had to be postponed at all cost — even at the cost of other people dying. Here we have the ultimate purpose of "black magic," and also of the kind of wars we wage now, not only against men of other nations or races, but against nature and its ecological balance, which, in preserving itself, takes no account of what must die and is not particularly concerned with natural dying.

In India and Tibet some men also have been driven by the will to transcend nature. But the natural forces they undertook to control and transcend were instincts and desires within individual persons. The kind of mind that was being used in this process of transcendence and in all ascetic practices was not analytical or intellectual, but mainly a holistic, imaginative, and integrating power within the single individual. It did not involve social functions and the organization of the communal life, but the at least relative and mostly inner isolation of the individual from society; in this isolation he found happiness and peace in being attuned to the cyclic rhythms of nature. As a result death was not feared, because it was seen to be no more than a phase of the all-inclusive process of existence. The yogi sought consciously to experience death in such a manner that dying would lead, either at once or after a phase of spiritual assimilation, to rebirth — as it does in nature. This gave rise to the general belief in "reincarnation" which was personalized for popular consumption but whose universalistic and personality-transcending meaning Was retained by the wise.

If death is not feared and the belief in the availability of "many lives" for the gradually evolving "soul" or monad is accepted, then a definite process of conscious preparation for death could be devised. This process was to be entered into quietly during the last phase of a person's life. Living and dying were polar opposites, very much like yang and yin, and when the life polarity had waned to a certain degree, the death polarity would gain the upper hand. This was the time to prepare for a significant, peaceful, and noble death.

This, in astrology, is the most positive and beautiful meaning of the twelfth house. It can refer to experiences which consciously and peacefully are related to the task of bringing a process of activity to a significant and not unduly — and especially not unnaturally — prolonged end. This can be, arid indeed is, a difficult task, not only when related to dying, but whenever a person tries to bring to a meaningful and convincing conclusion whatever activity he has undertaken.

Any person who has had to improvise a speech after a dinner party knows how difficult it is to bring his talk to a convincing and significant end. When coming to the close of their speech many speakers fumble, repeat themselves, go from climax to anticlimax, and perhaps at long last let their words die out wearily and inconclusively. Their listeners by that time have become tired and their minds promptly dismiss or forget whatever might have impressed them at some point of the speech. The composer of music, the dramatist, and the novelist often find the same difficulty when confronted by the obvious necessity of bringing their works to a conclusion. It is relatively easy to start something; the natural impulse of life within the individual, the emotional eagerness to express himself can do the starting — and the people's attention is not yet well focused or critical at the beginning. They are warmed up only gradually and will forget how the thing began.

But nature in man will not produce a significant conclusion, worthy of remembrance. The natural end of everything is exhaustion — one gets exhausted and so do the people around you. The speech, or the individual himself, dies rather meaninglessly of old age. Unless the self, the spiritual being, takes control and, binding up all the loose strings of the great lifelong effort, gathers the most essential elements into an impressive and revealing conclusion, there is danger that the great moment will become obscured by the setting dust of the struggle.

Everything that came before may be largely forgotten, but such a significant end will be unforgettable. It impresses itself upon the mind and soul of the people who are witnesses to it. Like a seed, it is the last produce, the consummation of the annual plant's life. The plant dies and the seed falls to the ground, but it contains within it the power of ever-renewed life. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24).

Symbolically speaking, every great and significant conclusion to a prolonged human effort can be a "seed." Every cycle of experience, as well as every human life, can end with the release of such a seed. If it does not, then what remains is only a fleeting memory. The beauty of the flower of the cycle may be remembered, the leaves may have given shelter and food to some living creatures who lived more happily because of them; but if there is no seed, the essence and substance of the cycle of experience, of the speech, of the life are lost.

The body dies, but the value of the life may remain. It remains in a social form, in the memory of friends or foes, if the individual has been able to make a valuable contribution to his community. The value of an Edison shines forth in every electrical lamp; it has its undertones in any phonograph recording. But this element of value is not only a social factor. It is a personal and spiritual factor as well. By living, man adds value to his soul, for the soul is the granary in which the harvest of all cycles of experience is stored; this harvest is the very substance of man's eventual immortality in a spiritual body. When the granary is full, then man reaches individual immortality. He has overcome death, not by denying it — a futile gesture — but by learning how to die significantly: to die the death of the plant which is rich with fertile, life-renewing seed. The only tragic death is the one that comes in complete meaninglessness and utter weariness or boredom — that is, in spiritual defeat.

The art of bringing every experience to a creative end is the greatest of all arts — and perhaps the least practiced in our western world. What this art demands first of all is the courage to repudiate the "ghosts" of the past. It is this repudiation that is also called severance. There can be no real freedom in rebirth without conscious severance from the past, without either the ability to bring the whole past to a significant and harmonious conclusion, or the courage to say "finished," and to dismiss the memory of what one must leave unfinished, unassimilated, unsolved if one is to enter the new life, the new cycle of experience.

Ghosts linger on, alas, with subtle tenacity in the unconscious — ghosts of things undone, of words unsaid, of small or big gestures which the heart and hands could not be made to perform. The speaker who sees from the clock on the wall that his time is over, that he must bring his speech to an end, may suddenly remember everything he had meant to say but did not. Will he try to crowd it all into a jumble of last-minute statements which would leave his hearers completely confused? Speakers often try this, and defeat themselves. One must have the courage to dismiss the things unsaid, the gestures unlived, the love unexperienced, and to make a compelling end on the basis of what has been done. This takes skill, of course, but even more it takes courage. It is a peculiar kind of courage, a psychological kind, but it is courage of the purest type and often far more difficult to summon than the strength to die well in the excitement of battle. The nature of this courage is usually neither recognized nor well understood. It is not an emotional or physical kind of courage. It is partly mental, but mostly it is an act of spiritual will. One takes one's loss and one goes on anew, knowing full well that some day, in some place, the ghosts dismissed will be met again. But if, in the meantime, one has grown enough and established oneself at a higher level of consciousness and power, one will know better how to deal with the unfinished business.

Astrological textbooks repeat that the twelfth house is the house of karma and of bondage. But it is also potentially the field of fulfillment and the symbol of the perfect end which is the prelude for a more glorious future. What the natal twelfth house indicates is how one can reach perfect fulfillment, if one can reach it at all. It does not say whether or not one will reach it. It does not say whether or not one will leave many waste products and much unfinished business at the close of one's life cycle or of any smaller cycles. It does not say whether or not one will be able to dismiss one's ghosts — dismiss them with a blessing and courageously renew one's mind and one's life. But it tells something concerning the nature and insistency of the ghosts one has to deal with; and it gives a general picture of the subconscious — the realm of ghosts and of the remains of problems unsolved or experiences unlived. It suggests the best way to deal with one's ghosts and with the disintegrating products of the subconscious.

The twelfth house gives as positive indications as any other house. There are indeed no bad houses. But there are fields of experience in which crises do occur, and must occur for the sake of a greater future. In the sixth house, one meets crises that involve preparation for the life of relationships — the field of the seventh house. One must meet these crises successfully if one is to experience true partnership and the deep, vibrant sense of sharing steady companionship. In the twelfth house, crises result from the way one has worked out one's relationships to the community, or to the culture and its values. In the twelfth house a man meets the results of his social and professional failures or frustrations, but also those of his successes and his gains. Above all, he meets the less obvious results of the methods he has used in order to reach fame and power, or of the laziness and inertia which have brought him inner or outer defeat. Many achievements indeed produce a shadow as dark as the attainments were spectacular. Success often engenders resentment or enmity, or might inflict misery or even death upon others. One should be aware of these negative results and also of the fears, the sense of guilt, the remorse, the nightmares repeating past tragic scenes one cannot stop — the shadows which our own actions have produced, directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly.

The only way to deal with a shadow is to illuminate it by use of lights focused upon it from different directions. One must not become frightened or frozen up. Ghosts and shadows will vanish when subjected to the light of understanding and compassion.

Astrological tradition assigns to the fourth house the meaning of "the end of things," so the reader may wonder how this fits in with what has been stated in the foregoing paragraphs about the twelfth house. This apparent contradiction can be resolved if one realizes that the end of which the old astrologers spoke was a total end, an end that did not imply a new beginning. In the twelfth house, the individual faces an end which can and does become a beginning — a transition between two cycles. He stands on the threshold between two conditions.

But let us suppose that he stumbles over that threshold and collapses; that as he meets his ghosts, they overcome him. Then the new cycle is not a rebirth, but a descent into the abyss of final and total disintegration: He has missed the crucial moment of transformation, and he descends progressively through the first, second, and third houses to reach bottom, the ultimate end, in the fourth house.

In everyday life, many things do die without any conceivable return, at least insofar as our personal consciousness will ever be able to know. In horary astrology, when a person inquires about a particular concrete matter, the fourth house of the horary chart refers indeed to the end of the matter. Yet what seems very dead may leave ghosts; in this case, the remains of the matter one thought ended will come back to obsess the individual in the subconscious.

Nothing should be allowed to die a final death; everything should be transformed and transfigured — transformed in the eleventh house and transfigured in the twelfth. Every cycle of activity, as it comes to its eleventh and twelfth house stages, should theoretically become transfigured into a new beginning of activity at a higher level. Nothing comes to a dead end unless at some crucial time of crisis and opportunity it has failed to become transfigured or translated into something new and greater. The symbolic place where it can become so translated is the twelfth house. It is only when this translation has failed that the ultimate fourth house end comes inevitably by progressive stages — in the first, second, and third houses considered in a purely negative sense as phases of disintegration. The twelfth house is, therefore, a most profoundly important field of experience, with a meaning that extends far beyond the superficial one attributed to it by classical astrology. It is indeed a house of mystery, for all transitional stages are filled with mysterious and unknowable or irrational elements. These too must be met, in whatever form they may take. They should be met armed with a clear understanding of the entire sequence of past experiences, with courage and with faith, as well as with compassion. Such meetings are promises of immortality.

The Astrological Houses