12th House Astrology

The 12^th House, ruled by Neptune, is the last of the houses and often regarded with suspicion or disregarded all-together but it is one of the most important houses in astrology, whether Western or Vedic.

12^th House astrology is the astrology of endings, of completion, of the spiritual. It isn’t the house of death but instead a house of detachment, it is the time to let things go and focus on the incorporeal soul and its place in the universe. In fact, in Vedic astrology it represents being freed from the shackles of the life cycle and the worldly attachments that come from the constant transition between life and death.

It is in the 12th House that we are forced to look back at our life and decide what path we will take forward. Here we can decide if we will learn from our mistakes and determine what our strengths and weaknesses are. Freed, detached, from the public eye, including the influence of our friends and family, we must come to terms with all that has come before. There are no secrets in the 12^th House, everything is laid bare – we must face even those things that we have hidden from ourselves and determine how we will allow them to influence us and how we will positively apply these lessons to our lives.

The 12^th House can also be a sign of physical removal – whether in the form of a hospital stay, or an incarceration, it can even mean a physical removal of the self from those things that are holding you back such as giving up the trappings of life to live more simply with less.

This is the House that shows the true depth of the spirit and it is affected strongly by Pisces and Neptune. Neptune brings a tendency to dream instead of do. You may have spent your life thinking grand plans and creating grand schemes but ultimately you probably never followed through with them – you were a dreamer, not a doer. This will be seen in your 12^th house. Likewise, Pisces means that you probably struggle with pragmatism. Pragmatism means looking at a situation and assessing how true it is based on what you believe its actual success will be. This goes hand in hand with being a dreamer. When we daydream about a situation everything is always ideal and it’s very difficult to be pragmatic because we are ignoring all the ways in which a situation can go wrong. However, life isn’t perfect. There will always be rainy wedding days and sunny funerals. Our ability to look at and assess a situation or idea and determine its success even when things aren’t perfect is our pragmatism.

When you ask yourself what 12^th House astrology means the answer is easy: the meaning of 12^th House astrology is the incorporeal, intangible soul and how it will grow based on our karmic debt, our life choices, what we are, what we have become, what we will be, and how we choose to manifest our goals, our dreams and our desires against our weaknesses.