Astrology Intro: Bringing Us Closer To God (Pt 8)

This is part 8 of an ongoing series of articles. If you haven't already, please read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7

Parts 4, 5, 6 and 7 of this series have brought us so far through the 10th house of our example birth chart. The first ten houses have covered many different areas of experience that we have in our lives, and we will be wrapping up the house evaluations in this article by looking at the 11th and 12th. Going from the 1st to the 12th house will give us the full overview of how the Zodiac through the lens of Vedic astrology can be viewed as a progression of consciousness from the individuated I AM to spiritual realization and actualization. So, after wrapping up our review of the 12th house we will do a recap to help integrate what we've gone over these past few months. As with the other articles, we will be mainly using ideas and direct excerpts from James Kelleher's book Path of Light Vol 1.

Below are our reference tables that we've been using in our reviews. This first one we use to do a rough evaluation of the strength of planetary placements.

These next two tables we mainly use to see information at a glance about the planetary and house placements that can be useful for making our assessments of the houses:

The Eleventh House

Along with the 3rd and 7th houses, the 11th is considered a Kama house, which is a house of desire; and in the 11th it is also in interplay with relationships with others. Being the 11th house, the experience here is more complex and developed than the 2rd and 7th houses. When it comes to our relationships, we are usually talking about those that are more expansive than siblings (3rd house) or romantic or business partners (7th house); we are talking about our friends or 'chosen extended family', social groups and "tribes", society at large, and the way one interacts with these.

The same applies to how the Kama houses relate to desire. Desire here relates to our vision for how we believe that the world could be. Bringing together that vision with the relationships, spiritually speaking, this could culminate in our ability to look at all of humanity and even all beings as our brothers and sisters as children of the universe.

The 11th house is also a Upachaya House, a house of growing and improving, along with houses 3, 6 and 10. In the 11th house we are nearing the end of growth and improvement as the fruits of our labors should be ripening on the vine, so to speak. Experiences relating to the 11th house would have to do more with the culmination of growth and realizing of gains. This house can be looked at in charts for material wealth along with 2, 5 and 9. But here in the 11th this is wealth more directly related to achievements. It is a natural follow up to the 10th house of work, career, occupation and karma (action) and the gains realized from that. Devoid of material reward, this house still is related to the the culmination of work and accomplishments, and the fulfillment of our desires there.

I want to reiterate here, any time we are talking about the significations of a house, we are considered both what we may consider the positive and negative experience. So, when we talk of growth, relationships and achievements, it's not just our preferable experiences in those areas of life, but the unpleasant ones as well. The 11th house for some people can reveal information about why they are unable to achieve their goals, or integrate with larger groups of people in a favorable way.

In our native's chart, the 11th house is in Gemini, which is ruled by Mercury, who is placed in the first house.

The Ruler of the Eleventh House Placed in the Twelve Houses

First House

Positive: If the ruler of the eleventh house is placed in the first house the person will be wealthy. He will be able to succeed at whatever he chooses and will be very successful as a result. He will have close friends and will treat all people equally. He will have humanitarian instincts and could become involved with clubs, groups, or community organizations. This placement  also suggests that the person could come from a wealthy family. He will also be close to this next older sibling who might be a very clever, charming and versatile person. The eleventh lord here also contributes to writing ability. 

Negative: If the ruler of the eleventh house is weak or afflicted in the first house, the person will experience difficulties related to friends and/or the next older sibling. If it is seriously afflicted, he could lose a friend or a sibling when he is young. This placement also makes it more difficult to achieve goals, and can diminish the person's ability to earn, making prosperity harder to realize.

In our evaluation, we had Mercury at pretty even, however, I'd slightly edge it out towards the positive of this description. Mercury is conjoined Venus and receiving the aspect of Jupiter in the first, both of which are great. It's suffering because of being retrograde and conjoined the Sun. But, Mercury and the Sun are always very close, and retrograde can be overcome in many circumstances.

The Moon is also placed in our native's 11th house so we will look at what that means as well.

Planets in the Eleventh House

Moon in the Eleventh House

Positive: When the Moon is in the eleventh house, the person will be social, popular, and very attached to his friends. He will be prosperous or wealthy, and will have good luck with real estate. He will be sensitive, introspective, and will have many women friends. He will also have friends who are in the public eye in some way. In any case, he will have many charming and supportive friends. This position also motivates the person to become involved with groups, and to be interested in improving the condition of his organization, community, or even society at large. The moon placed here is also good for general reputation and popularity, giving increasing prestige and reputation as life advances. After the age of 50, the person could experience a sudden rise in reputation or become famous in some way. This is also a good placement for the person's relationship with his next older sibling, who will be sensitive, social, charming and supportive. Also, the spouse of the first child will be charming, social and a source of great support to that child.

Negative: When the Moon is malefic or afflicted in the eleventh house, the person will be inconsistent in his ability to achieve his goals. His mind will be subject to many fluctuations, which will cause him to change or give up his goals frequently. He will let his personal problems affect his decision-making process, leading to career and financial problems. Although he will have a deep need for friends, he will feel that the does not get the kind of support he needs from his fiends. His relationship with females, especially, could be a source of occasional  anguish. Sometimes the social problems suggested by a negative Moon here are due to the person being overly needy or dependent on his friends.  Other times, it is the friends who are fickle, unsupportive, and unreliable. In any case, this position of the moon makes it difficult to find fulfillment through friendships. The same is true for the next older sibling, who will be a source of challenge and disappointment.

We evaluated our native's Moon at a +1 because of it exchanging aspects with Jupiter, so I'd lean towards the positive description here. Combining Mercury's beneficial-leaning placement along with the Moon's I would venture to guess that overall our native's life experiences with things related to the 11th house would be more enjoyable, with some challenges.

The Twelfth House

Just like the 8th house, the 12th house is a Dusthana and a Moksha house. As a Dusthana, or house of suffering, the 12th is often associated with loss. Carrying on the discussion in relation to the Zodiac being a wheel representing the progression of consciousness, here is the culmination! And the common experience we're probably all sharing here is the loss of life, but this is the most simple way to understand this. Loss can be experienced physically in a multitude of ways and this also relates to loss in more abstract, mental and spiritual ways. We can consider the dissolution of the ego to make way for the rising of true spiritual vision as a form of loss that many people actually desire.

And the loss of mundane aspects of life providing the opportunity for more subtle and spiritual experiences to enter one's live directly plays into the 12th as a house of Moksha, or spiritual liberation. I appreciate the description of the 12th house as the unbounded sea of consciousness, which I think plays well on our inner vision of what a spiritual dissolution may be like. Pisces is the natural 12th house, being the 12th sign in the Zodiac, and it being a water sign with a symbol of fish corresponds well to this. So, if one was looking for details about how a person leads their spiritual life the 12th house is a major one to consider.

As the last house in the Zodiac, it's really about the culmination of a cycle. An opportunity to go within and reflect on the "this turn of the wheel." Here the native wrap up a cycle with a new perspective for the next time around, or if one has done the work, break free from the cycle completely in more concrete, physical ways as well as nuanced, subtle, spiritual ways.

In our native's chart, the 12th house is in Cancer, which is ruled by the Moon, who is placed in the 11th house.

The Ruler of the Twelfth House Placed in the Twelve Houses

Eleventh House

Positive: If the ruler of the twelfth house is supported and placed in the eleventh house, the person will have financial gains in distant places or foreign countries. This result will be magnified if the twelfth lord combines with money planets, such as Jupiter, or the rulers of the second, eleventh, ninth or fifth. This placement is also good for practicing meditation in groups, and is seen in the charts of people who belong to spiritual communities or who frequent ashrams and retreat centers. The person will choose friends who are creative, intuitive or spiritually oriented. His next older sibling may love to travel or could live in a distant place. That sibling could also be prosperous and successful. 

Negative: If the ruler of the twelfth house is afflicted in the eleventh house, the person will have financial losses and difficulty achieving goals. His friends and older siblings could be the source of financial or emotional loss and disappointment. He may also choose friends of dubious character, or who have unstable lives. His next older sibling could be unstable financially, emotionally, or even physically. In cases of serious affliction, the person could lose his next older sibling at an early age, or the sibling could move away under negative circumstances.

Again, I want to hammer home the idea of how the significations between houses mix when you you are talking about the lord of one house being placed in another house. In the positive description the group aspect of the 11th house combines with the meditation aspect of the 12th to describe how the native may benefit from meditation in groups. And, in the negative description it brings together the idea of financial gains from the 11th with loss from the 12th for financial loss. These combinations are the soil upon which the variety of experience may grow. 

The Moon should be fresh in our minds since we just went over its placement in the 11th as a good one, and so in this case, I would lean towards the positive description for our native's experience.

Putting The House Evaluations Together

Now that we've gone through all twelve houses using an example, it's a good time to look back on what we've reviewed - and I think that using our table format is an easy way to digest it. So below, we have the house number in the first column, along with the sign it is in, the second column are some of the realms of experience in life that the house relates to, and the third column are some of the influential factors in our native's chart that guide that experience.

Being the Ruler or the Lord of a sign / house means the same thing. In the 'Influences' column, I used the word Ruler when the planet is the ruler of the house for the row. I used the word Lord to show what other houses the planet rules besides the house for the row. Occupying means that the planet is in the house. Followed by the word "In" is the house that the planet is in, if it is not occupying the current house. Aspect means that the planet is aspecting the house. The number in parenthesis is the relative strength we came up with from part 3. For aspecting planets, we just put a + or - based on whether the planet is benefic or malefic. The * next to Rahu and Ketu rulership is because not all schools of thought use this.

Hopefully looking at it like this is a helpful representation of the reviews we've done from parts 4 through this current part 8 regarding house placements. At a glance we can see some of the major themes of the houses along with the planets that may be influencing those areas of the native's life with a value we found while determining the strength of the planets in part 3. This is about as simple as I felt comfortable representing everything we've gone over the past few lessons because as we have seen there really is a lot of nuance and reducing it down to numbers and values doesn't really do it justice; although it is an excellent way to introduce ourselves to the concepts, in my opinion.

This is a great way to take our first steps towards understanding our own charts, and how the stellar influences may be affecting certain areas of our lives. In my own experience, not only did it result in me having a better understanding of myself, but the profound accuracy of what was revealed to me made me feel very close to nature and its laws, which are very pure extensions of God or source itself (at least from our perspective). If anyone is interested in finding out about their own chart, they'll need to know their birth place and time, and they can use a website ( like this https://www.prokerala.com/astr... ) to calculate a free chart that will use the Vedic layouts that we've been reviewing.

Now that we've got some of the fundamentals down to understanding our own native charts, our next articles are going to start to cover transits, which are what we review during our ceremonies. For people that have been attending those, I'm really hoping this will provide a foundation for looking at our review of the transits during a lunar cycle in a way that can be applied personally to benefit our selves and all of creation. Thanks for coming this far, and stay tuned ;)