Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to The Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.


Hi there! I am a Scorpio rising with my Gemini sun and Mercury in my 8th house. The 8th house meaning has always confused me as it (seems) to combine many different things! So how would you define what the 8th house represents? What does it mean when my Gemini Sun is placed there?

—An AnnoyingGemini


The eighth house is the house of rot.

I know that a lot of the associations of the eighth house can seem pretty scary. It’s one of the houses that signify death (there is death is the fourth and twelfth houses too). It’s the house of suffering and of loss. The eighth house is where we face adversity.

The eighth house is oppositional to the second house which is the first house where we find ourselves underground. You know that saying—six feet under? The second house is called the gate of hell and the eighth house, its opposition, is called death.

You’ll notice that the eighth house is located above the horizon. We can see it. It’s not underground. It’s in the air and projected upon what we might call heaven.

There is an association between the eighth house and wealth. Let me tell you why. Hades, the god of the underworld, was thought of as this really rich guy. That’s because plants seem to derive their nutrition from underneath the ground. They grow into abundance when their seeds are buried in the earth.

Now, let me ask you this—where do plants grow into?

Above the horizon. Plants grow above the horizon. They are released into the space above the horizon. That’s the eighth house

What’s also the eighth house? It’s where life returns to the soil. Leaves fall and they rot and then they become nutrition in another form. Bodies are released. That’s what the condition of rot is—it’s a slow moving release.

So—what does it mean to have the Sun in the eighth house? To have your most obvious connection to life, the sphere in your chart that illuminates and energizes the rest of the chart, in the house of adversity?

The Sun doesn’t stop being the Sun. That’s the first thing to keep in mind. Have you ever seen a late afternoon sun? That’s the condition of the Sun when it is in the eighth house. A late afternoon sun is golden and saturated. It’s dwindling for sure but could we really say that it is a weak sun? It’s not. It still shines and, by shining brightly, it takes care of the metabolic processes that we call our world. The eighth house Sun isn’t weak.

In fact, maybe the Sun in the eighth house is a source of strength. A Sun-less eighth house is stinky because it’s fermented, possibly a bit damp and moist because this is where hidden things first retreat and where aged things fall. It’s sickly and stickly with the stuff that life is made of. Fetuses emerge in fluid and corpses decay in moisture.

The Sun warms. The Sun dries. It illuminates this dark in between place that we call the eighth house.

So—there are a ton of things that we might say about this condition of having the Sun in the eighth house. You overcome adversity through your strength and, if you can’t overcome some adversity, then you illuminate the suffering involved. There’s a source of strength and life in this illumination of suffering for you. You have a strong survival instinct. You don’t keep things under wraps. You release them not quickly and carelessly but through a strange and slow cultivation.

You also happen to have the ruler of the Sun in its domicile in the eighth house. Mercury is a feisty planet and one that flits around close to the light of the Sun. You express your strong life instinct and the spiritual connection you have towards cultivating life and death and life again. You have help. You will receive help in the eighth house. You will have help in the face of adversity.