Twelfth House · Little Almanac

The twelfth house follows the eleventh and precedes the first, closing the cycle. It is cadent, one of the four houses that fall away from an angle, in the classification set out at House Division. In the whole-sign aspect scheme it is in aspect to the second, third, fourth, sixth, eighth, ninth and tenth houses, and in aversion, sharing no aspect, with the first, fifth, seventh and eleventh: it shares no aspect with the ascendant itself, the same relation the sixth house has to it.

A place named in order to be set aside

Ptolemy’s own text names this place directly, and does so to exclude it from his prorogation technique: of the whole region above the earth, he writes, “it is not fitting to consider either the sign that is disjunct from the ascendant, nor that which rose before it, called the House of the Evil Daemon, kakos daimōn, because it injures the emanation from the stars in it to the earth,” being in decline and obscured, in his account, by the thick moist exhalation rising from the ground ^{1 bk. III ch. 10}.

Tradition

Held byDorotheus of Sidon, Carmen Astrologicum: The ʿUmar al-Tabarī Translation bk. I, c. 75 CE

Dorotheus ranks the twelfth, together with the sixth, as the worst of all twelve places by strength ^{2 bk. I}; an ancient Greek technical text and an Arabic-transmitted Hellenistic one agree on which place is weakest even though they are not otherwise in contact with one another.

Tradition

Held byJulius Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis bk. II, Roman North Africa, c. 334-337 CE

Firmicus assigns Saturn’s joy to the twelfth house, one part of a complete sevenfold scheme covering all seven planets ^{3 bk. II}. Saturn belongs to the diurnal team in the day and night division at Sect, together with the Sun and Jupiter, whose own joys fall in the ninth and eleventh houses; the weakest-ranked of the twelve places falling to the malefic contrary to a nocturnal chart’s own sect, or the malefic of a diurnal chart’s own sect made to preside over its own least fortunate house, fits the broader pattern.

Tradition

Held byWilliam Lilly, Christian Astrology bk. I, London, London, 1647

Lilly repeats the joy assignment directly, writing that Saturn “doth much joy in this House, for naturally Saturn is author of mischief,” an agreement across roughly thirteen centuries between a Latin author and an English one. He assigns the twelfth house private enemies; witchcraft; large working animals such as horses, oxen and elephants; sorrow, tribulation and imprisonment, and every kind of affliction and self-undoing; and those who work secretly against their neighbours. He rules by it the feet, gives its colour as green, names Pisces and Jupiter as its consignificators, and reports it cadent and feminine ^{4 bk. I}.

A place named in order to be set aside

References