Sun and Mars Transiting into my Karmic 12th House

Difficult at times and always unsettling.

It’s the combination of being tired all the time and not having to know where the emotional intensity is coming from.

Whenever May and June roll around, I know it’s going to be the least productive times for me. This is when my Mars and Sun travel in the shadowy house of the 12th. Don’t get me wrong, I have since appreciated the 12th after learning—in-depth— what it meant having my natal moon in Gemini there. As long as there’s no visitors, the 12th house and I are good. However, when I have an astrological pistol pointing right at me, I’ve learned to take it easy, reflect, make sense of the past and attempt to clear the karmic mess, so to re-enter the 1st house smoothly and move swiftly into a next cycle. 

The 12th is a tricky house to deal with, not knowing what’s ahead of you or what you’re up against can get downright annoying. It’s like walking around a misty forest with no clear direction, sometimes not even seeing your own feet, and the whole time you’re forced to rely on your inner senses to trust that it’ll guide you out of the haze. The shuffling of the branches, the consistent, unknown sounds can make for paranoia or stimulate a boundless imagination. This is why the 12th is considered mysterious, shadows lurk, and it’s known as your subconscious. Better to confront it than let it sucker punch you out of the use of two good eyes.  It’s also known as the house of karma since it’s the end of the cycle, a backlog of all your good deeds and bad ones, which must inevitably be confronted and reassessed. 

Having any planet in the 12th basically obscures its energy, simply disables its normal functions, hiding it’s power. When energetic, all-action Mars transits here it can get frustrating. Think of the warrior-planet in the misty-filled forest unable to use it’s brawn-ability or buzz right through with force. It could start to tire if it uses up all its energy fighting what it can’t see. Mars here tells me to take my time and think before I act. This, of course, has gotten easier for me since my ruling natal sign and moon has made it its home. But it doesn’t mean I don’t lose the ample motivation that I usually have on a daily basis, I have Mars in Sag in the opposite 6th house. This is the time I start to stay in bed later, even when I’ve already been awake for an hour. Or when I’m not as pumped to go for my daily run—not ideal to maintain the demands of my life.

But what makes this a-punch-in-the-face discomfort is old resentment being uncontrollably acted out. It’s the past catching up to me. Think of your past actions as the shuffling sounds in the obscured forest. You don’t see them but they exist cause you can feel them. Paranoia sets in as you become oversensitive about your surroundings. My natural reaction would be to fight aggressively(Mars). Naturally, when I don’t know what I’m fighting, my defences go up. You can imagine one being guarded in a strange forest. Unfortunately, my own guards usually drops me into quicksand, with no way out. After I’ve become overwhelmed with hypersensitivities and over-reactions, my next reaction is to flee, but trying to escape the nebulous of the 12th is to suffer an Escher drawing experience. It’s a journey defined by your past actions, there is no way of avoiding pitfalls since you created them—so fall or understand how to patch them up. 

What I’ve learnt is to look around and get to know the place and trust that all is necessary. The idea is to not lose sight of the strength of a warrior. I place my aggression though my writing. I get it all out and dirty in my words. My energy shifts from physical to internal for the time being. It’s a time for reassessing past actions, fortify my inner needs to give clarity to the chain reaction that has become my present action— acquaint myself to the shadows of my mind. 

I can’t write about these transits without including my moon in gemini in the 12th house. Having my moon there means any transit I have includes emotional (moon)check-ups. My emotions tend to get hidden, mostly from myself. I don’t deal with emotions as well as I wish I could, as well as someone that has it in their first house, in the open, wearing it right on their sleeve. Not having great understanding of them sometimes results in trying to keep them further hidden in this house, for better or worse. So when there are transits here, they usually bump into my moon and prod some, if not all, the things buried emotionally.

Gemini here also means my thoughts are up for grading. This is basically where, I, not only hoard all my unexpressed emotions, but it’s filled with my mental rummages, where I suppressed that anger with my partner, or an opinion about something I should have been upfront about. Mars here tends to aggravate this part of me from sleep.

Mars in my 12th house may have slowed me down physically and caused me to go within to confront what has crystalized from the past, but with the sun joining him there, for a period, I feel defeated—at least in the beginning. Both my will(Mars) and vitality(Sun) in there! Forget it! I dread the sun going in this house, again at least in the beginning. I’m a pretty physically and mentally energetic person—Mercury and Mars in Sag in the 6th—even neurotic, as my partner would say.  So it can get a bit frustrating forcing the breaks to slow down. But what bothered me more than having low physical energy is that it makes it harder for me to maintain a routine—very important for a writer who relies on structure and discipline to get sufficient amount of work done. All I want to do, even as I write this, is stay under my covers with the curtains closed and hibernate into a dreamy, fantastical void.

However, like Mars, the Sun needs to shift gears when transiting my 12th house. The luminary may lose its star power, but it can still shine its rays, shedding its light on those messy emotions—likely forgotten about— or the deep and dark journey one would rather avoid. There’s a spotlight onto the messy decay, on every mold growing, all the rot that has been eating life in the forest. 

Having Scorpio planets, I’ve definitely kept stuff hidden, almost liking it that way. On the other hand, because the Suns transit effects my natal Scorpio Sun, it seems to activate the regeneration, healing tendencies. So, my sun gets the dirty job of understanding the emotional rot, where the fungus has grown, what can be helped and what needs to be uprooted to make room for new growth. Again similar to any planet visiting the 12th, the suns job is to go inward when it’s in the 12th house and use it’s brilliance to shine a light on my subconscious— usually through my dreams.

Part of what I look forward to is the vivid and intense dreams correlated to the planetary transits in this house. When my buried thoughts and emotions surface, it’s a chance to alchemize mold into gold. Personally, with the help of Venus in Scorpio in my 5th, I use the rich imagination of my dreams, as material treasures for my writing. 

The discovery of the gold pot also extends into the good things I’ve done. The illumination also reaches the gifts I’ve earned. Like the gifts in the movie Hunger Games, rewarded to players from sponsors, they get dropped off in the karmic house. It’s connected to ones moral actions in the 10th house of career and 11th house of friends and groups you belong to. It’s a great way to claim what you’ve sowed for the next phase of your journey. I personally get an emotional boost when I’m reminded of the past support(moon) I’ve given friends(Gemini). 

Things fester when nothing is done to clear or confront what’s been hoarded in the 12th house. The longer its left there to grow, the bigger the beastly shadow becomes—my experience often being an uncontrollable, projective nightmare. This is why we have these yearly cycles with the Sun or Mars or other planets passing through to the mysterious house. It’s gives for a less obstacle-filled, swifter entrance into the 1st and beyond. This is achieved by embracing the visiting planets purpose in there. This means to take it easy by taking stock of the past and doing some inner trimming, replanting or uprooting. Mars gave me a chance to understand my strength, the consequence of my aggression and how to exercise it more effectively by channeling my spiritual warrior. With the suns help, it shines a light inside personal emotional and mental caves, giving clarity to the manifestations of my past, whether I need to dispose of it or claim it to help me move forward more confidently with a solidified purpose towards the next chapter of my plans and goals. 

What happens when planets transit your 12th house?

Photo by Tim Rebkavets