12th House Moon

topic posted Mon, March 31, 2008 - 9:20 PM by  offlineEdward
The following is from a post in the 12th House Tribe
Posting here due to similarity with the Scorpio Moon and childhood abuse by ANA.
The combination is rather grim. I would like others reaction on their experiences.

My Scorpio Moon is in the 12th House, and I assume there are others present in the Scorpio Moon Tribe.


Reading from Tracy Marks, _"Your Secret Self': Illuminating the mysteries of the Twelfth House"_.

Your twelfth house moon suggests that you are a private person, hesitant to reveal your feelings and needs. Often, fearful of your vulnerability, you block awareness of your feelings; you seek refuge from your inner world in habitual activities which you may perform in an automatic manner. Contacting your hidden emotional self may be difficult for you, because you have developed a lifetime of defenses against primitive levels of need and dependency which frighten you. You may feel intense shame in regard to the child-self which is buried within you.

Repressed for a long time, your sadness and longing may sometimes burst forth as infantile tears, which seem regressive and inappropriate. Like Alice in Wonderland drowning in the flood of her tears, you feel overwhelmed, and seek to squelch future displays of feeling. "Be strong;don't cry" may be your motto. You are afraid not only of drowning in your feelings and your needs, but also of revealing your vulnerability to others, then being rejected or abandoned.

Perhaps because of traumatic experiences as a child, in which you experienced unbearable helplessness, need, and dependency in relationship to a parent who could not sensitively respond, you learned to turn to yourself early in life and to establish your self-sufficiency. "I must do it alone; I don't need anyone," you decided, as you withheld yourself emotionally in relationships, and learned how to engage with people without full involvement. Emotionally self-contained and insulated, you became a capable survivor, and learned how to effectively play the roles required of you. But often, as a result of your repression, you feel empty and depleted, out of contact with your source of inner sustenance.

If your moon is deeply buried, you may struggle against fear of the primitive infant locked within you, and against a desire to return to the womb or to escape into fantasies of total nurturance. Fearful of your passivity and your desire for motherly love, you compensate through cultivating your adult competencies and by becoming a caregiver. But although you are independent in the external world, you hold onto your established patterns of behavior and to whatever internal sources of security you have developed.

Forced to turn to yourself early in life, you learned how to take care of yourself, and how to substitute behaviors and activities for the nurturing from others you did not receive. You may as a result be compulsive about your self-caretaking rituals, particularly in regard to food. Tendencies toward anorexia, adherence to strict diets, preoccupation with cooking, and fear of eating in restaurants are all manifestations of a twelfth house moon. Sometimes, you become ill as a means of resting from the demands of your adult self, and in order to allow yourself to receive the caretaking that you seek.

Your twelfth house moon suggests that you never felt allowed to be a child. Perhaps your mother was emotionally a child herself, and wanted you to cater to her needs rather than become capable of responding to yours. She may have been deeply troubled, psychologically or physically unavailable; she may have sacrificed herself to involvements in the outer world at the expense of her family life. Whatever your situation, her negative responses to your needs and feelings, and her messages of "don't cry" "be strong" or "do it yourself" led you to believe that you had no right to have feelings. The hurt or trauma you experienced then may have resulted in a deep-seated decision never to make yourself vulnerable again. "I'd rather die than need you," you may have inwardly said to your mother, "because if I need you I will have to bear the intolerable pain of your failure to meet my needs." As you grew older, fearing the re-stimulation and opening of earlier wounds, you may have said to yourself, " I will not be dependent upon anyone ever again."

Often a twelfth house moon signifies a failure in the early attachment bond with the mother, although a deep inner bond with her exists. Such a bond ( accompanied by idealization) persists in part because you need to hold on to her psychically, as a result of not having received adequate nurturing. Frequently, a twelfth house moon suggests problems in the oral or suckling stage or lack of adequate physical nurturance. If your mother was unable to rspond to your nonverbal (and verbal) signals, you learned to distrust closeness to other persons, and failed to develop a healthy degree of trust.

Because of childhood trauma, you may have repressed your early experiences, and remember little of your family life; you may also have developed a lifestyle which involves minimal family contact. Perhaps because you neer had a secure home, or because you fear experiencing your need for a home and family life, you may avoid creating a home that could be truly nurturing for you. Sometimes, people who have Twelfth house moons never develop roots anywhere; they move frequently, unable to settle down, afraid of sinking into the feelings and needswhich they associate with attachment to home and family.

Another influence of a twelfth house moon is confusion in regard to female identity and to relationships with woman. Lacking an adequate female role model, you may have distorted ideas about womanhood and motherhood. If you are female, you may be insecure about your identity as a woman, and inclined to equate female role behavior with self-sacrifice; you might then, in reaction, reject the traditionally feminine, and seek refuge in "male" values. Sometimes, woman with twelfth house moons deny the desire for motherhood; or, in contrast, allow themselves to become pregnant in order to recreate them mother/infant bond.

If you are male, you may feel insecure about the hidden female within you, which at times feels like overwhelming need and passivity. You may devalue the "feminine" realms of life, while simultaneously idealizing women, falling in love with inner images and fantasies, yearning for the perfect woman/mother/mate, or attracting clinging, dependent women who force you to make contact with the energies you project.
To the extent to which you fear your vulnerability and hunger for nurturance, you attract people who need you and become dependent upon you. Fleeing from relationships which awaken your own need, you are nevertheless quite capable of responding to need in others. In fact, you may even respond with a sensitivity and sympathy which you are incapable of giving to yourself. Psychically sensitive to others, you are attuned to their feelings and intuitively know what to say and do.

Because you are a natural caretaker, you are probably drawn to work in the service professions, where you can meet the needs of wounded or troubled humanity. Identifying with the troubled, ill or weak, you demonstrate your talent as a nurse, healer, or counselor. Having sacrificed your personal mother to the world, you may also sacrifice your personal mothering needs in order to mother humanity as a whole. You seek to give to others what you always wanted to receive. Such giving may not fill the empty space within you, but it does provide vicarious satisfaction and the experience of having made a significant social contribution.

Another advantage of your twelfth house moon is your keen intuition an innate spirituality. Because of your sensitivity, you need to spend a considerable amount of time alone, reflecting upon aspects of your personal life which you do not share with others, and clearing yourself of the psychic overload you have accumulated as a result of too much contact. Your solitude may also be important to you because it helps you to regain contact with yourself, to connect with your feeling nature, and through meditation, music, or other pursuits, to let go of the walls you have created and surrender to forces greater than yourself.

Because you have preserved your true child self deep within you, in a form that is largely untouched by the world, you are capable of contacting and drawing from rich sources of inner nourishment which reside with that child. Because its boundaries are thin, it is capable of openness to spiritual realms. The more you are able to honor that archaic child within you, the more you will become attuned to your divine nature and be able to enrich yourself with the openness to higher energies which it can offer you.

You need to contact, accept, and embrace the child within you, to tolerate its terror of abandonment and its primitive feelings and needs, and to learn to soothe and reassure it. Feeling-oriented therapy, re-birthing, self-psychology, primal therapy, and past-lives therapy all may facilitate this process. As you begin to acknowledge and honor your inner child, you may also choose to create for yourself a home which is truly nourishing, and which helps you to feel warm, safe, and emotionally secure. Once you begin to hear, accept, and meet the real needs of your inner child, you will experience a sense of realness and wholeness which previously was inaccessible to you; you will also be able to give to others more effectively, to meet their real needs, rather than vicariously using them
posted by:
Edward
West Virginia
  • Re: 12th House Moon

    Tue, April 1, 2008 - 11:10 AM
    Hm, this sounds so sad, i kinda chocked. I don´t have moon in the 12-th house but i i have simphaty for these fellows. I never realized that having moon in this house can be so difficult, i even sometimes tend to overlook the moons house. Well, it definitely sounds complex and a lifetime struggle with this position.
    In what part do you relate to this description Edward, i sure hope it wasnt this hard for you. The combination of 12 th house moon and a scorpio moon in it, sounds a bit overbearing
    • Unsu...
       

      Re: 12th House Moon

      Tue, April 1, 2008 - 2:31 PM
      Yeah what I know of 12th house is always Karmic issues relating to past lives. This is very sad.
  • Re: 12th House Moon

    Thu, April 3, 2008 - 8:35 AM
    OK - so hardly anyone wants to comment . . . There follows my response given in the 12th house Tribe -enjoy.:

    I have a Moon in the 12th house at 08deg. Scorpio, with the ASC at 11deg. Scorpio. The time is accurate, and the Scorpio is well hidden; people perceive me as a Gemini, with shades of Leo (Venus) and Mars (Aries)

    Have read and re-read this excerpt from Your Secret Self; am amazed at the difference between my reaction, and everyone else, save Roger and SteamPoof’s follow-up. The last paragraph is good advice.

    I am pretty much a private person, but that’s it for the first paragraph. Am not fearful of vulnerability, don’t perform habitual activities, have almost nil dependency, and feel no shame for my inner child.

    Don’t have a great deal of longing, and sadness - but, at my age, after a five-way bypass; one starts to wonder how much time’s left. Do squelch displays of emotion; if something really matters, I’ll say so, and we can work it out from there.

    I did have some childhood trauma (almost drowned, for one) but remember events and family interaction back to at least the 2rd grade. My mother was a gracious and pleasant lady, my father a ‘40s/’50s father type, who taught me how to read before entering school by reading with me, and discussing the stories we read. He did insist upon my developing independence, and he was fiercely independent himself.

    Have not attracted clinging women, in fact quite the opposite. In the 40+ years since I left home, I’ve lived in four different houses, I love to eat out, trying different cuisines enthusiastically.

    There is some commonality in the “caretaker role” and do respond to others needs more quickly than my own. Occupations include an ABE Math Teacher, and a Disaster Recovery position in which I thrived. Most fun I ever had, and got paid to do it!

    My inner self is almost never seen by others (It IS the 12th house, after all) which does cause frustration in personal relationships. Not their fault, nor my wall, they simply can’t see, I must reveal. Intuition and spirituality? Yes, it’s valuable and important. And I do connect through music and meditation.

    Could go on, will mercifully not.

    One (Gemini, remember) further comment: A quick count shows there are 21 “may”s in this short document. The author seems not ready to make many statements without that qualifier.

    To me the 12th house is not a dark and forbidding place. It is the source of depth, meaning and a wellspring of strength
    reply to this post
    • Unsu...
       

      Re: 12th House Moon

      Thu, April 3, 2008 - 9:50 AM
      Edward,

      Amazing post btw. Yes there is a lot to me I only reveal to some people and not others too. People feel my Scorpio energy when they speak to me on the phone. I wish I could have more Aries energy show. It's amazing how this energy can dominate the rest of our chart. Overall I'm mostly watery/earthy.

      I'll go check into that article you suggest and I'll return with my thoughts on this.
      • Re: 12th House Moon

        Thu, April 3, 2008 - 1:05 PM
        First of all ,Edward I am glad that you didnt experienced so much emotional traumas related to this article.

        As i written above i dont really put a lot of meaning to the planets house positions. I mean, it does have an influence, but in the way that a house placement gives a shade to the meaning of the planet in a sign.I dont think that a planet house position has an intense influence on a person as a sign does, except in some cases, of course.

        I look on the planets in houses meaning from pragmatic point of view. Like, if you have sun in the first house, you are probably more outgoing than a person with a sun in the 12-th house. For example i dont think that a person with moon in eight house is just as intense as a scorpio moon person, but i do belive that a person with moon in eight house may have an interes in the occult.

        I never liked that dark writtings related to the 12-th house, that secret enemies stuff, and generally overly dramatic approach to 12-th house. And i definitely dont like the fear related to this house; its like, uuu you have a lot of planets in the 12-th house you are doomed.That is really funny. But i do belive that emhasised 12-th house gives you hidden inner strenght

        So, from my pragmatic point of view, a look at it this way. The 12-th house is a related to pisces and neptune as its ruler. First thing i can relate to pisces sign and neptune is spirituality, mysticism. So a moon or other planets in the 12-th indicates somebody who is more an introvert, is connected to his spiritual side,and have a tendeny to retreat to solitude in order to gather his strenght. .

        But, than again, it is posible that in some cases this 12-th house moon description, fits the person completely . But those are some extreme cases for some individuals, like the descritption that i posted apply to the people who sufferd a childhood abuse.

        I also noticed that some people tend to quickly identify themselfes with some dramatic or tragic descriptions, without going deeply inside them selfes, and ask them selfes: is this really, trully me?

        I like the way you noticed all that „may“ in the text, you do have a sharp eye. It just indicates that the author is a little insecure about his description, that „may“, shows that he speaks about possibilities or presumptions about 12-th house moon placement.
        What kind of research did he perform to come to this conclusions , what type of people did he include in his research. Is this description intended for general public,or a specific group of people?
        Did he mention something like that in his article
        • Mel
          Mel
          offline 3

          Re: 12th House Moon

          Wed, May 7, 2008 - 10:05 PM
          Hi,

          I've just come across this site and thread. Am finding it interesting. Have always been interested in astrology - a seemingly objective form of learning about myself. Am no expert. Just really curious as to what makes me tick. Self-centred? I know. But, with a twelfth house moon in Scorpio (if that's the reason), I often times (actually almost always) don't understand what's going on with me, and am very curious to know more. I have flashes of understanding, but ithey don't endure. I've come to accept that that is the way the cookie crumbles... Still, it's a confusing and lonely way to live at times. I am a teacher, so I interact with many folks in my day, but at the end of the day I can't wait to get home, and when I do I like to be alone to do the stress of the day, which often means I'm crying buckets full of tears. Apologies if this isn't making any sense. What I think I'm trying to express is how grateful I am to find this site, to read what others "like me" are saying, and to feel a sense of community with you all because of this single point of similarity. Funny enough, I feel more able to share with you than I can with my own partner. Is that a Scorpio moon thing, or a twelfth house moon thing?
          • Re: 12th House Moon

            Wed, May 7, 2008 - 10:19 PM
            Well im a scorpio moon,not12-th house, but i feel like this too. Here is a place i can find understanding for anything i wanna discuss about ,and i know people here will feel what im trying to say.And there is the safety of Internet too.

            In the reall life i dont like to expose my emotional nature so openly and freely, couse its hard to find a match for myself on this level.I mean, occasinaly, when i meet a scorpio type, i can talk to him and we both get each other, bet here there are bunch of scorpio types. They all have something different to say, individualy different approach, but they all share the same trait of deep emotional understanding, and not judging.

            So its comtherbal to hang around in here.

            • Mel
              Mel
              offline 3

              Re: 12th House Moon

              Wed, May 7, 2008 - 10:44 PM
              Hi Ana. Thanks for your response. Now that you mention it, of course it makes sense that it's not just the Scorpio moon factor, but the internet culture as well that makes me feel able to share. Looking forward to sharing here.

              Edward, your long post at top resonates with me in some cases and not in others. My mother and I are not close. Once, as a child, I would have died for her, but being rejected so often made me close my heart. I divorced her years ago, but psychically she is still there. Which is where I am now. I think much of my recent bucketfuls of tears are long-held grief being released over the loss of the mother-daughter bond, but I don't really know when they'll burst forth. I could be working away at something completely unrelated, then in an instant turn into a puddle (I supposed that's just grief working). My son and I have a distance relationship, too, so my mothering instinct ran the other way, partly because of my own fear of abusing him as I had been abused. Definitely lots of feelings inside that no one knows about...until I share them (usually when I've gotten a handle on them - control issues? -yup). Lots of feelings of shame and guilt over the years, especially from childhood. Love spending time alone, particularly in nature. I grew up very much in my head, disembodied from my emotions (too painful), becoming too rational and unemotional (on the outside), but I've always had an in-depth affair within the arms of the Universe - my solace (due to twelfth house moon?
  • Re: 12th House Moon

    Wed, May 7, 2008 - 11:38 PM
    Hey Edward,
    this is some heavy stuff. The biggest thing that I have noticed with anyone that has a lot of 12th house placements is that they seem to almost "forget" themselves and get so deeply enmeshed either in other's lives or in complete deep thoughts. In my astrology class, we have a woman who is a complete 12th house figure. She has I think 3 planets in her 12th house, including her sun. Just looking at her, makes me want to shake her. We are constantly getting the story that she is really not that deep from herself but then she will open up every once in a while, while others are not looking and the stuff that comes out of her mouth is so damned profound. She thinks the most bizarre stuff and I am not meaning bizarre in a bad way but really original and inventive stuff. She can really put herself in another's shoes, can figure out how this person feels about certain subjects and very spot on, without even talking to them. The biggest problem that I think that she has is not taking care of herself and involving herself with so much of other's perspectives that if someone stepped on her, she wouldn't notice. Self-denial, which is okay sometimes if it involves philanthropy or charitable work but when it is constant and it is keeping you from seeing the light of life, you need to do something. You seem like you have managed quite well with the 12th house placement and I bet you would be a damned good psychologist or else a writer, being able to be prolific with another's thoughts and feelings even though they are not your own. Just learning how to discriminate your feelings from others would be a great thing for anyone with 12th house placements. Recommended reading is the Development of the Personality Series by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas. I pickedit up at the Pacifica campus in Carpinteria. It was amazing being amongst Joseph Campbell's haunting grounds. The first book had me completely spooked. A lot of my family issues showed up that were completely unbeknownst to me, but Greene and Sasportas have developed family analysis looking at the 4th and 10th houses, which I suspect is a very prominent house for you, the 4th. The 4th was very prominent for me, Neptune lives there, which showed up with a Zeus-like father, emotionally unavailable yet powerful.
    You have a ways to go, Edward. Your health is a mirror to your insides and you have weathered through the worst, maybe becoming aware about your early childhood will help you release the left over emotions. The crazy thing about Greene and Sasportas is that they make you see if you can do a progressive chart from the time that you were conceived to the time of your birth and so on. I was a C sec baby, was actually induced, since complications could have arisen if things had continued. I am unfortunately unable to figure out what my mother's chart was since she was actually adopted, but Greene and Sasportas I think have a really great point, considering we rely so much on our first developments of self and mother (bad breast syndrome, etc). Here's to you and your health, I think being an erudite individual says much about you and your future. :)

    ~Elle
    • Re: 12th House Moon

      Thu, May 8, 2008 - 9:41 AM
      Would like to thank all of you for contributing to this discussion. When posted in the other Tribe, my post stopped the thread.You guys are more contemplative.

      Will fire a shot across across Shays bow, and return for more, if anyone cares to continue in this vein.

      "You have a ways to go, Edward. Your health is a mirror to your insides and you have weathered through the worst, maybe becoming aware about your early childhood will help you release the left over emotions."

      This statement PRESUMES: (1) My health problems are a result of internal strife, and (2) I have a ways to go, to become aware of early childhood problems which must be there because I have a Moon in the 12th house.

      Response (1):
      My biggest health problems are genetic. A side effect of medicine is keeping people alive who would have otherwise died without passing on their genes. My unmedicated TOTAL cholesterol is circa 140, with Lipitor it was under 100 (yes, TOTAL below 100), far below recommended levels. Yet, I have had a 5-way bypass, and stents. The need for the stents developed while total cholesterol was below 100.
      Both parents, two grandparents, and three aunts, had arteroschloritic problems, and I am named after my mothers younger brother, a star High School football player who fell on the field (untouched by contact) and died of a heart attack at the age of sixteen.

      Response (2):
      The individual chart may be considered as a symbolic outline of the internal state of the person represented therein. The chart does not and cannot indicate exactly how that state came to be. To do so in the present case is to invoke reverse causation. To say my 12th house moon indicates an unfeeling/unsympathetic mother, then the fact of my birth causes my mothers chart to contain those traits. Therefore, the time and place of my birth determined the time and place of my mother.
      Do we really want to go down that path?

      There are a myriad of circumstances which can contribute to a 12th house Moon position as well as a Moon in Scorpio. I believe, in focusing so much on familial trauma, Tracy is off the Marks.

      (Groan)
  • Jin
    Jin
    offline 0

    Re: 12th House Moon

    Thu, May 8, 2008 - 5:51 PM
    hm...
    i have scorpio moon (5 47'49") conjunct pluto (7 20'49") and asc (13 35'38") in the 12th house (although my 12th house is libra, there's nothing there... only in the scorpio section of the 12th house... -_-;;;). my mars is also in scorpio, but it's in the first house (scorpio) rather than 12th, so i don't think it's important for this post.

    anyways~ maybe it's my square aspects to sun, mercury, venus, and jupiter (in the 4th house)... but i've never really experienced this. I've not been abused when i was a kid (I've gotten lost a couple of times, but I was lucky enough to be found by my parents both times...), granted, i was the first born, and our family wasn't exactly rich, so my mom did have to start working after my brother was born, but compared to my brother who has sun, mercury, uranus, and neptune all chilling in the 12th house, i'd think i have it easy... i only have moon and pluto.

    granted, people tend to be scared off easily by me, but hey, i feel very safe because no one approaches me; i approach them if i need to.

    i don't show emotions easily, that's true, but considering the career path i've chosen, emotions aren't really a necessary part (unless i decide to enter litigation... then i might need to utilize it a bit).

    some of it sort of... might come close to it, but really, who here hasn't felt like this at least once in their lives? especially during puberty, right?

    it makes scorpio moon in 12th sound so bad... plus, i don't understand why learning to be independent early in life is a bad thing (then again, my parents still support me through grad school, so i can't really say that i'm independent, period).

    mm... sprituality... i don't really have that.... i don't even really know what that would entail... ha ha...

    the only thing i really have trouble with is my excessive need for privacy and my family's lack of understanding that concept, their excessive worrying about my behalf because i'm female (which makes me really mad..), and people often confusing my expressions for something a lot more aggressive (but i think that has to do with my mars in scorpion in 1st..)...
    • Mel
      Mel
      offline 3

      Re: 12th House Moon

      Sun, May 11, 2008 - 2:19 PM
      Like Edward, I don't see moon in 12th house as a bad thing. Certainly, everyone of us has experienced some form of trauma or sadness in our lives. That has nothing to do with being a 12th hs moon. What I see the initial post provides is a space for those of us who are wondering what makes us tick to help us see ourselves a bit more clearly considering that with this placement it is a challenge for a few of us to really see ourselves as we are, and in some way an affirmation of the pain we've endured, that we are not alone and that the universe doesn't have it in for us, which attitude may be due in part to the way we were raised (ergo the section on early childhood bonding) raising the point at the end that in order to embrace and whole-y accept ourselves we must consider accepting that part of us that may not have had a chance to be nurtured and cared for as we might have wished in our younger years.
      I love swimming through my emotional underworld. Wish people wouldn't get so upset when I go for my private swims.

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