Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to my Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club groups you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.
Pluto (14 degree) and my Moon (12 degree) are conjunct in my 12th house in Sagittarius. Alongside these are, in the same house at the 27th conjuncted Chiron and the South node. This area feels very painful, and it takes me a lot of awareness to even notice my emotions. When people ask me how I feel, a lot of the times I actually don't know. My Moon is perfectly opposite with Saturn in gemini in the 6th house. I feel challenged and very restricted in the emotional realm, they feel unaccessible, even though I'm a very sensitive person, the feelings are hard to get out. It's like what I desire and need most and what I'm most absolutely terrified of. I am very intrigued and afraid at the same time by my subconscious. I'm also having weird health issues that doctors find no logic in, they can't explain the source of what I have (a weird rash skin infection) and it very much feels like it comes from my own dysregulated nervous system, like the body is into self-destructing hobby... Also my Sun, Mercury and Venus are in Scorpio in the 11th. And I have a stellium of Mars, Uranus and Neptune in aquarius in the 2nd house.
Pluto has been transiting in my 1st house and I've been experiencing ego death after ego death, trying identities like clothes u order online and u get super excited and when you finally receive it there's always something wrong and it actually doesn't fit u. It's wild. Mars is currently transiting my 6th house where saturn is and i think it might have activated the whole health challenge I'm having right now.
What are your thoughts on these placements? How can I access my moon and like let the feelies and the storm out instead of being destroyed by it on the inside?
—a nervous system asking for support
Hello nervous system who asks for support! It’s so great to meet you. Thank you for your question about accessing emotions and bringing your awareness of them into consciousness.
In a sense, that is what it’s about right? You know your emotions already. You feel them. They are a part of you. They are embodied and they show up physically and you know that the rashes that show up without logic are a part of their expression. And, still, the emotions feel far. You want to make contact with them as yourself so that they allow you to bring them into your creative self expression, so that they trust you to reveal them when they need to be revealed.
There are some great resources on the twelfth house out there. Diana Rose Harper has a workshop on the twelfth house luminaries which may be satisfying for you since your Moon is in the twelfth house. Jo Gleason has a workshop on waymaking to the twelfth house that was simply incredible.
I felt very inspired when you read what you wrote about feeling both desiring of and afraid of, of being both intrigued by and fearful of your hidden feelings. It sounds like you are able to feel curiosity and fear at the same time, that these two affective states are not competitive with each other in your body but are willing to follow you. The reason why this is great is because you need both of them to walk through the Moon in the twelfth house.
Here is an exercise that Piper Anderson gave me when I attended a workshop once: hold your hand out in a fist. Now, try to pry that fist open with your other hand. Do you feel it tightening up? It latches onto itself, refusing to let go. Now, take your other hand and lay it out against your fist gently. What happens when you do that?
The Moon in the twelfth house is like that fist. It can’t be pried open. It knows exactly how to close itself up. Planets in the twelfth house are very strong. You can’t compete with them through strength alone. But when it’s supported gently by a calm hand wrapped around? It opens up of its own accord like an oyster hungry for bracken water.
When you think of holding onto your Moon with a gentle hand, I wonder what you think of. This is something that you know that I don’t know. Maybe it’s letting time pass before your emotions become evident to you. Maybe it’s allowing yourself the space to intellectualize over them before you find the physical manifestation. Maybe it’s more pleasure or maybe it’s less pleasure. Maybe emotional indulgence feels gentle and welcome or maybe it feels abrupt and alien.
Try this—every morning when you first wake up, write down a few notes. They can be about anything. They can be dreams that you had the night before but they don’t have to be. They can be random thoughts that make no sense and will never make sense at all. They can be foreboding words that you don’t want anyone else to know. If nothing comes to you, you can write down the word nothing. You can write down nothing every single morning for as long as you want. Maybe, someday you will write down something. Maybe that never happens and there is something about keeping a record about nothing that is significant.
Try this because the Sun shines through the twelfth house during the dawn. The Sun shines on your Moon and encourages it to speak, encourages it to shine through light.
Houses twelfth, one, and two are about early life and planets in the twelfth house are planets that we feel like we couldn’t access during our youth. With your Moon in the twelfth house, I wonder why emotions feel like they needed to or need to retreat for you. I wonder if those reasons could be just as interesting as the stuff that your emotions are made of.
You don’t need to start with the emotion itself when you work with one, especially when the feeling itself hasn’t made itself available to you. Sometimes, it’s better to start with the defense around the feeling. When you name the inaccessibility of your feelings, what does that inaccessibility feel like? Does it feel like a wall or faraway distance? What is the quality of that inaccessibility? Does it feel shy? Reprimanding?
Other people ask you how you are feeling. You don’t have to answer and you don’t have to ask the same thing from yourself. Start with the defense around the emotion. That, too, is an emotion. That, too, needs some gentleness from you. When you are beckoning a fist to open, it’s often not because you want what is inside. It’s because you want to show the fist that you are willing to give it touch in the way that it needs.