House 8 and its meaning in Astrology

House 8 - Shared Resources

The 8th house carries a great psychological charge in its theme, representing intimate relationships and the great emotional transformations that result from them. It can be compared to the witch's cauldron or the alchemist's furnace: it is the place of crises and changes that occur in secret transmutes, in the innermost being.

In the 8th house, the commitment we make in the seventh worldly house becomes tangible: we go through experiences that make us part of a demanding and larger entity, which is the "we".

In other words, the issues of this house refer to marked existential issues, such as severe illnesses, the dangers of life, fear of death, sexual involvement and reproduction, large debts and financing among others, and are therefore not light matters.

At the same time, we realize that we can use our personal power to control this larger entity represented by the fusion, in order to benefit ourselves in relationships or personal goals. Sexual relationships bring people together and often make them recall old emotional memories. With this, they mobilize conflicts that emerge in adolescence.

The eighth house mundane is commonly referred to as the house of sex, that which deepens relationships and interactions with others - and how certain aspects of these interactions can take on a nature common to both, a shared aspect.

On the other hand, it can mobilize emotions and memories of the emotional frailties of the narcissistic and infantile phase, creating symbiotic bonds, role-laden fusions and projections that often generate suffering, dependence, and submission, and can even lead to aggression and crimes of passion. The body touches imply in a rescue of emotions that one had in the most tender age and, thus, create role mixtures.

This house is about the potential that our relationships will bring us, and how we can make the most of them. It is the gateway to investments and business, governing money and the legacy of other people. Therefore, profitability or losses arising from partnerships or marriages, dividends, the guarantee fund, retirement, inheritances, among others, belong to the studies of this house.

It can also be considered the second house of health, especially terminal illnesses and the shock organs or systems for the effective risk of life.

The Greek term for the eighth house is Epicataphora, which means something like "falling into the nether world", or a parallel meaning, "entering the gates of hell". It represents the Sun's path in the sky as it descends toward the horizon, which many ancient cultures thought was the death of their solar God. However, this sector refers to the consolidation of the dry phase of the day (the fall of the day), the middle of the afternoon, as this house relates to the time from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, a very dry period of the day.

Although a star in the eighth house often has aspects that should be given attention or be of concern, a particularly happy connotation in its interpretation may refer for example to the crescent Moon, which in this case is considered fertile, a developmental pattern for financial affairs if of course considered to other positions in the natal chart. Even Jupiter or Venus in these positions may not necessarily mean problems.

The 8th house in some aspects resembles the sign of Scorpio and the planet Mars (in Greek astrology of the classical period) and Pluto (in modern astrology).

Fusion, transformation, and regeneration

The 8th house is treated in the birth chart as a point of evolution or transformation, which shows our ability to transform, break cocoons, and transcend. But in truth, this is not a very happy house, and is considered a house of attention and concern in astrology.

This sector can show issues significant enough to create existential factors that change courses of trajectories, alter processes and dynamics in an irreversible way, often accompanied by processes of pain, loss and suffering. A struggle to stay alive physically and psychically.

It is a very challenging sector in an astrological chart, covering our deepest fears and the most outrageous abuses of power, if this sector is very activated and the rest of the astrological chart confirms it.

The planets positioned in this house as well as the aspects they make deal with our relationship with great losses and gains, hence its dramatic character.

It is a place of regeneration, which we close in seclusion when we are hurt, lost, or defeated, but which shows us what we must face and change in order to grow, regenerate, evolve, obtain forgiveness, or simply accept some fact. It is, therefore, a sector of self-defense and protection.

Through its crises, it transforms us into better people, if we manage its domains with knowledge. By seeking to understand the meaning of these crucial moments, we may begin to understand ourselves with their meaning. To go through a near-death experience is a traumatic experience, however, it can change trajectories and existential meanings and release potentials, for example.

The 8th house refers, therefore, to our traumas and "limit experiences" in our psychic structure, or physical and bodily organization.

All the people we have already made contact with through the 7th house and left aside will accumulate here, creating apprehensions, dissatisfactions and fears. Thus, the 8th house can refer to part of the results of what we are doing in marriage or society relationships.

It is the place where the most intimate sexual relationships take place and where we can analyze all the eccentric preferences, fetishes, paraphiliases, choices difficult for others to understand, and things we are ashamed of.

The rituals involved in these processes can be tracing back to experiences with the body that gave birth to us and all the fusionality involved, as well as the transference of neurotic charges. In many cases, pleasure and arousal are only manifested by visualizing the submission or the humiliation of the other person who is sharing the sexual experience. Thus, we can see in this sector the neurotic manifestation of emotional experiences and not necessarily a worship of love, or even of Eros (the procreative capacity of a body that we feel attracted to).

It is the place used by our unconscious to send us everything necessary to protect us from life-threatening situations (or throw us into them), being a place of danger and fear, but also of liberation. It is also the place where the eruptions of the unconscious emerge in frightening ways.

This is perhaps the most hated of all the houses, because it represents the greatest frustration of existence, which is death and the end of the experience of life, where we lose control and everything we have built.

But if we analyze it more calmly, there is no reason for it, except for our own perceptions of limitations, fears, and taboos. Managing well our relationship with death and its presence (death drive or death signs) can avoid depression, anguish, as well as anxiety and panic attacks, which make us humans suffer so much.

This is one of the houses that hides all the dirty stuff, our emotional charge, our anger, our disturbing emotions and things we need to free ourselves from, as well as everything we put under the rug, refusing to negotiate or display.

As we already explained, it refers to a defensive sector. So all of these descriptions refer to a natural instinct of preservation. We are, in fact, trying to avoid pain and suffering.

In its final manifestation, this is the house of death, coming as the end of the road after too many things have been discarded for our bodies to handle, but also as an inevitable part of life.

Any star situated in our eighth house is a planet that we fail to see in all its glory and potential. Even when Mars or Pluto are here, given their strong connection, their influence still tends to be complicated.

Some 8th house experiences can be particularly disturbing, although for some people, such experiences are seductive, attractive and stimulating: psychologists, astrologers, occultists, alchemists, caretakers, healers, shamans, and all sorts of people connected with esotericism or parapsychology can have their intuition enhanced, perform grand functions, and possess considerable skills in their work, depending on the configuration of their 8th house.

We also have jurists who desire power or who are defensive and always believe that others are trying to take things away from them, and economists. It can also denote financial ambition, among others.

The 8th House is the sector that also deals with super committed and deep relationships, like a covenant that exists beyond traditional vows, which promise complex experiences yet to come. As seen, it shows what is the quality of our capacity for fusion, intimacy and depth, the way we blend our energies with something greater or beyond the ego. Sex (which is a form of fusion with the other, a shared resource), is at the same time the physical state that most resembles the fusional union by the umbilical cord, and because of this, it can mobilize fragilities and infantile and blind connections between people. This is why sex is not always just sex.

The final issues of some situation and financial institutions are also part of the scope of this house.

A fusion initiative can be experienced as a way to increase personal power and ego dominance, or as a path to transcendence, through the transformation of that same ego.

This process can occur on many levels:

- Material: money, inheritances, ventures; managing and administering the values of others; investments; mutual trust;
- Emotional: intimate and deep connections; sexuality; relationships as catalysts of transformation; the destruction of old ego boundaries;
- Social: power; the search for what is hidden, what is unknown and hidden, both in relationships and in society; manipulation, intrigues, taboos; relationships of domination;
- Spiritual: it can, through experiences lived, provoke reflections about the transitoriness of life, the search for the origins of existence and the transcendence of oneself, that is, the spiritual side.

It is a sector of the chart that deals with power and control, which will shape us for better or worse throughout life depending on how we manage these natures, although we also have the power to control what happens there.

Returning to this house's emphasis on sex, it is important to mention that an orgasm was once called "the little death" by the French. The idea is that when we reach that absolutely exalted state of communion, which is the apex and end of the fusion benefit that sex provides, we leave a bit of ourselves behind. Raising a child through this process is a way of keeping a part of us alive in other organisms.

It is an equal opportunity home that treats sex, death, and rebirth under the same umbrella of equality, recognizing the importance of all three in our transformations.

We will all experience death and rebirth or their proximity as part of our lives, whether it be failed relationships that lead to new ones, in career changes, in ways of being, changes in looks that transform us physically, after crises that make us different people... we all eventually gain new opportunities for transformation and regeneration throughout our lives, and the eighth house can show the quality of these processes and how we react to them.

Therefore this house is very relevant in the analytical studies of the self and the psychotherapeutic processes.

Rituals and Shared Resources

The 2nd house indicates our personal resources, and the 8th house indicates shared resources, both in a relationship and in a society. Inheritance, alimony, taxes, support from other people (financial, spiritual, physical, or emotional), all these things are part of the themes of the 8th house. It is as they say, "one person's gain is another's loss". Such a phrase fits well into the scope of the eighth house.

When entering the 8th house, the ego is flirting with the world of rituals. And rituals are designed to bring people together through common patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. In our sometimes dysfunctional world, some of these rituals are often designed to annihilate the sense of individuality, making one follow a larger goal under the control of another. Therefore, it is a sector of emotional intensity, mobilization of forces coming from the unconscious, and proximity to chaos, to the rupture with control.

It can be a political, business, commercial or religious organization. This ritualistic "brainwashing" process can decree the death of the ego. This can mean that depending on how this house is placed, we can become hostages of power or of the fear of death, of loneliness, of not having sex, of going bankrupt, and thus generate suffering that is far from our ability to manage, and that can lead us to death.

This can be the negative side of some organizations, but in others, the individual reaps the rewards he or she has sown, because the more people participate for the common good, the more resources are produced and divided. In other words, when we participate in "organizations", we can reap both rewards and negative consequences, and all these things can be analyzed from the configuration of the 8th house in the chart. However, this always implies existential risks.

The 8th house is also about healing through regeneration (or death through degeneration), about money not yet earned, about discarding, recycling, pollution, garbage, losses, renunciations and detachments. It can indicate the end of everything, including our path.

Extra Interpretations

For interpretations beyond the birth chart, as in horary and mundane astrology seeking answers to specific events, places, governments, or situations, the 8th house basically means the death rate, the types of people who die and the duties of death, and financial relations with foreign countries. It also relates to the Central Bank, future interest rates, financing, reserve funds, public debt, GDP, and tax advice and audits.

The influence of the stars located in the House 8 of the Birth Chart

Learn about all astrological houses