The twelfth house is one of those hard to define things in the world. What is it supposed to mean? Secrets? Backstabbers? Sabotage? Attics? Loss?

The twelfth house is called bad spirit because Saturn, the diurnal malefic rejoices here.

In classical or Hellenistic astrology, the twelfth house ruled not only enslaved people but also foreign places. Rome’s economy was built on enslaving foreign populations. Later, the twelfth house ruled asylums, prisons, witches, and attics. In a wealthy person’s house, the basement held the ancestral crypts while the attic was where the servants and enslaved people lived. Not died—lived.

If the twelfth house is the house of enmity and danger, then it is also the house of resistance. If it’s the house of self sacrifice, then it is also the house of escape.

This is the place of attic ghosts. Attic ghosts are different from basement ghosts, which tend to be the ghosts of the ancestors of those who live in the house. The people living in the house tend to fear attic ghosts for different reasons than they fear basement ghosts.

Avery Gordon writes that ghosts are not “a case of dead or missing persons” but is, instead, “a social figure.” She writes that “to be haunted in the name of a will to heal is to allow the ghost to help you imagine what was lost that never even existed, really.” To do this, one must “follow ghosts, neither to memorialize nor to slay, but to follow where they lead, in the present, head turns backwards and forwards at the same time.”

Following ghosts does not result in professional success, Gordon writes, but as failure. Following ghosts means that you sit in a room and quietly call attention to the fact that “There’s something in the room with us.” Following ghosts, Gordon writes, “is about making a contact that changes you and refashions the social relations in which you are located.”

Gordon quotes Patricia Williams who is a lawyer and professor of contract and property laws. Williams's great-great-grandmother was enslaved by the father of her children, Austin Williams, who was also, like her, a lawyer. Williams writes, "I see her shape and his hand in the vast networking of our society, and in the evils and oversights that plague our lives and laws. The control her had over her body. The force he had over her life, in the shape of my life today...I look for her shape and his hand."

Ghosts, then, are not just the dead. They are the unmemorialized dead—the forgotten dead. There's another meaning for the twelfth house: it's the house that contains the things that your mother repressed during her pregnancy. It's the things that the ghosts in your lineage couldn't find access to.

There’s an episode in the new Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix that tells the story of a Japanese town that was haunted after it was hit by a tsunami. Asian ghosts aren’t wisps of vapor like western ones but fleshy. The ghosts would show up, getting rides from cab drivers all around the city, sometimes dripping wet. The cab drivers picked up the fare for these ghost rides. They said that they would always welcome a ghost because they, too, lost people during the tsunami.

That's the twelfth house. It's the house in which we take a ghost for a ride because we, too, know what it's like to lose something.

The Twelfth House Changes

Our capacities for seeing and noticing ghosts changes throughout our lives. It is more likely for children to notice ghosts. It is also more likely for a child to be taken by a ghost.

Classically, the twelfth house rules enemies in the first phase of life, sadness and sorrows in the second, and big animals in the third. When we get older, ghosts sometimes become a synonym for grief. We learn to love the people we know in life and must contend with loving them when they are no longer alive. We learn to contend with love that never disappears.

It’s after our first big losses, which can happen at any age, that the twelfth house becomes our mourning rituals. It becomes the dreams in which our dead come to see us and the memories we carry of them that adjust and change after their passing. Grief makes a break. Grief is not about success but about failure.

The thing about animals is that, the larger we are, the longer we tend to live. Big animals have slower metabolisms and slower heart rates. The larger an animal is, the slower it tends to move. We forget this sometimes because humans live so long now, often longer than elephants which are supposed to live for a hundred years but often die at nineteen when in captivity. But big animals move slower and live longer.

There’s things in the twelfth house that you can’t notice unless you are living slowly—you can’t follow ghosts unless you call attention to what can’t be perceived. That’s the twelfth house. It’s the things that you don’t notice unless you are moving at an elephant’s pace.

This is interesting because I often see impatience characterize the twelfth house. We are impatient for the things that we feel like were denied to us. We hold them like duties and think that we must curate and force a path.

And, yet, the twelfth house works like a ghost. It resists impatience. It never lets us know what it knows until we are paying slow attention.

Venus and Saturn

The co-significator for the twelfth house is actually Venus and the planet that rejoices here is Saturn. These planets don’t get along. One of them is the nocturnal benefic while the other is the diurnal malefic. Saturn cares about overthrowing things while Venus cares about maintaining and enjoying them. These planets are at odds with one another.

According to On The Heaventhly Spheres, the reason why Venus signifies the twelfth house is because the twelfth house is where the vices live. Vices, I suppose, include things like smoking and drinking.

I haven’t really noticed that people who have Venus in the twelfth house tend to smoke more but I have noticed that Venus in the twelfth house people feel as though desire is forbidden to them. Venus in the twelfth is about anticipating exclusion and about having to reteach yourself that you’re not a secret.

Saturn makes an obvious impact in the twelfth house. People with Saturn in the twelfth house sometimes live as though they wish they didn’t have a physical body. They’re frustrated with their bodies, staying up for whole nights to work and forgetting to eat, as though they wish they already were a ghost. They hate the endless maintenance of the stuff of life. Saturn in the twelfth house people forget that they, for a while, are alive.

Working with the Twelfth House

I find it easier to work with the twelfth house by looking at it through the lens of childhood. Children are more likely to notice ghosts. Childhood is for following ghosts, even if the ghosts follow you out of childhood.

Inside the twelfth house live the things that you felt you were denied when you were a child, when you were becoming, and before you were completely finished. Because we are never completely made, there will always be ghosts that we notice if we give ourselves enough time to do so. The twelfth house rules the things that you know you were denied without really knowing, without really knowing what those things were.

Sometimes, the planets in the twelfth house can feel like a duty. There’s another meaning for the twelfth house—it’s the things that the birthing parent felt like they were denied during their pregnancy with us. I’ve seen people react to twelfth house planets like duties that they must fulfill for that parent while frustrated that they must bend themselves to define these things for themselves.

Venus is the twelfth house is a denied pleasure. Mars in the twelfth house is denied emotional expression. Jupiter in the twelfth house is denied freedom—there’s a great number of people who grew up in very strict families with Jupiter in the twelfth. Saturn in the twelfth house is the little rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, the one who never has enough time. Saturn in the twelfth house people are urgent people because they are afraid that they will be denied enough time.

The best way to work with the twelfth house is to follow ghosts. It’s to acknowledge that there’s something else in the room with you. It’s to let contact with those ghosts and those failures change your social context. The best way to follow ghosts is to use your imagination.

Jo Gleason has an excellent workshop about waymaking to the twelfth house. She shows you how to use the ruler of the twelfth and its friends to make your way towards what can seem like a hole in the ground. Waymaking to the twelfth house uses imagination because imagination is the only way you can contend with uncertainty. You literally don’t know what will happen tomorrow. That’s the twelfth house and that’s what the ghosts are trying to remind you of.

The best way to work with planets in the twelfth is to acknowledge the physical, financial, and spiritual wounds that not having enough of something has made for you. And then, it’s to confuse your ideas of what it means to have enough. This is part of what it means to accept suffering. Confusion happens when we learn something and we must learn from suffering. What does having enough time mean? Having enough friends? Having enough freedom? Feelings? Working with the twelfth house means that you must remember that you are enough even when you feel miniscule. Remember—big animals live longer but they also live slower.