Mercury in Eighth House (Excerpt from Phoenixes & Angels)

When Mercury is placed in the eighth house, you are a person who hides their thoughts and ideas from others. It is difficult for you to trust someone because you are a very private person. Blessed with a perceptive mind seeing through fakeness, superficiality, and verbal accolades is a gift. There is a need for conversation that’s deep and meaningful. You enjoy probing the minds of others and enjoy trying to figure out if others are telling you the truth. Mental games and exercises strengthen the mind. Mental connections lead to greater emotional connections.

Born as an imaginative thinker, you excel by diving deep into complex subjects and solving problems. Understanding how things work on a deeper level brings comfort. Your mind is like a sponge absorbing everything going on in the environment. This ability can lead to confusion, irritability, and depression. You pick up other people’s thoughts easily and it’s hard to differentiate your own thoughts. Psychically gifted, you might have the ability to read minds, although you may not even realize it. Gifted with listening to others you are able to help others who have problems to share. Others like to discuss their secrets and similar spiritual interests with you. You enjoy talking with others about important life matters such as life, death, love, finances, and property.

You make an excellent psychologist or counselor. You have communication abilities that pull out the truth in others. Sensing what is going on with others, you are able to verbalize the words they need to hear. Your gift of expression touches others on a deep emotional level. If you like someone you may never tell them directly. Internalizing your anger can lead to explosions where you use your sharp tongue and lash out at others. Writing down your intense thoughts and ideas in a journal would be beneficial. Writing is a good stress reliever.

Enjoyment comes through reading detective books, mystery novels, and metaphysical books on topics such as astrology, tarot, numerology, and healing. It is important to discuss spiritual topics with people who are trusted and who challenge your belief system. You would benefit by studying the paranormal and researching mystical phenomena.

Mars in the Eighth House (Excerpt from Phoenixes & Angels)

When Mars is placed in the eighth house, you are a person who has a strong sexual nature. You often find yourself involved in relationships that are deep and highly sexual. Bonding with someone on a physical level makes it difficult to ever let go of that person. You become jealous, angry, obsessive and find yourself drawn to intense, unhealthy relationships. You enjoy pushing people to the breaking point and can be reckless in your dealings with others. Temper flare-ups and emotional outbursts are common. Living on the edge, seeking an adrenaline rush through speeding, skydiving, and risky behavior can lead to accidents. You are an intensely passionate person who experiences dramatic shifts in emotion although you try to repress them. There is a need to control your intense feelings and keep things hidden from others. You can be fiercely private and reclusive when you feel vulnerable. On the other hand you can lash out at others in a fiery rage of anger.

Exercising regularly and having a physical outlet for all of your intense energy will help balance emotions. Repressing your emotions, sexual urges, and desires can make you vulnerable to illness. Avoiding extremes and finding a healthy balance should be part of your self-care plan. You’re known for restricting yourself of things or overindulging in them because you are an “all or nothing” type of person.

Intuitive, insightful, perceptive and blessed with a strong imagination you have a gift for digging up secrets. You can excel in police or detective work where you can serve behind the scenes in some way. You have an inquisitive mind and an eye for detail. Researching and delving deeply into topics that require investigative skills suit your personality. People are drawn to you and like to share their problems. To process your complex emotional nature, you need alone time. Experiencing conflicts with family over inheritances, land, wills, and the material resources of someone close to you is common. There can be challenges with the marriage partner. You may inherit money from your father, grandfather or through a male family member. You might have to battle to claim what was given to you or may be cut out of someone’s will because of your aggressive behavior.

You can have special talents and are attracted to the healing fields such as medicine, massage therapy, psychology, and any field dealing with other people’s resources. If you do not feel deeply connected with others or if you are not able to dig deeply into situations, you can become bored and restless. You are sensitive to other people’s emotions, especially anger, rage, jealousy and resentment. With practice and time, you can become a powerful force of change in the lives of others.

Jupiter in the Eighth House

When Jupiter is in the eighth house, you are a person who is blessed with intuition and other people’s resources.  Out of all the placements of Jupiter, this is the most beneficial.  You will be taken care of financially and materially by others in your life.  This is the placement of inheritance and you will often inherit property, money, possession or a special gift from someone in your family or your spouse.  You will benefit from the sacrifices of others and they will give up things in their own life in order for you to succeed.  You may have a grandparent who saves their money for you to attend college.  Your parents might give up going to college themselves in order for you to go and they decide to pay your rent when you are in college.  Many blessings will be bestowed on you throughout your life and you will benefit by embracing this fact.  Sometimes you might feel guilty about what others give to you, but you have to overcome these feelings.  You need to understand that you are destined to benefit from others success and generosity.  The more you allow others to give to you and be thankful, the more you will begin to understand this placement. 
    You may be a person who has to sacrifice things in your own life at some time.  Many times people with this placement will have to give up things important to them, especially things that they know are not helping them grow.  Once you give up the very thing you think you need, the miracles of the universe will start working in your life.  Your greatest dreams and wishes will start to come true.  You will realize that by letting go of things and through your own pain, you grow and more abundance is bestowed upon you.  For instance, you may have had a relationship partner that was a bad influence in your life, treated you badly, disrespected you, but you still loved them.  You may have felt intuitively that you needed to let them go and end the relationship, but you were unable to end it.  Through pain and heartache you were pushed to the limit and finally had to end the relationship.  As soon as you truly let that person go, release them, allow yourself to move on; that is when the blessing will arrive.  You will receive an answer, a gift, or a special present from the universe that uplifts you.  You benefit through allowing yourself to release the old and make way for the new. 
    This placement is very powerful and you are born with psychic abilities.  You might have the gifts of dreams, clairvoyance or you may be able to feel other people’s motive.  Your intuitive gift is important to share with the world.  The more you share your perceptions and insights, the more you will grow spiritually.  You will have many spiritually awakening experiences throughout your life and are someone who is lucky.  You are lucky because you will always know that there is something outside yourself guarding you, watching you, teaching you.  You know you are here for a reason and many people are not as fortunate as you to be shown this truth.

Venus in the Eighth House (Excerpt from Phoenixes & Angels)

When Venus is placed in the eighth house, you are focused on keeping your love nature secret and private. You will benefit through the marriage partner and tend to marry someone of a higher financial status than yourself. Blessings come through romantic partners. Your love nature is deep, possessive, and intense. When you fall in love you don’t take it lightly. Intimacy and trust are crucial in order for you to feel comfortable with a partner. Before you can become sexually active with a partner, you will wait until they gain your trust. You struggle with trusting others and find it difficult to show vulnerability with your partner. Before sharing intimate feelings, you will want to know how others feel. You can feel insecure at times because of being afraid of being hurt. Relationships are all or nothing for you. A high level of commitment and loyalty from your partner is needed and expected. You can become jealous, vengeful, and aggressive if you feel mistreated or betrayed.

Secretive individuals are attractive as well as those who work behind the scenes in some way. The partners you attract are often involved with law enforcement, detective work, psychiatry, counseling, and career fields where psychological depth is involved. You are attracted to intense and passionate individuals. In relationships you are passionate and possessive of your partner. You expect a high level of depth in your relationship and if you do not experience that you will cut ties. You feel most relationships are superficial and prefer to be alone. You cannot tolerate superficiality in your intimate relationships and are not a casual dater. You enjoy a one-on-one relationship that is stable and serious. Marrying someone solely based on their financial status is common with this placement. You are attracted to people who have money, wealth, and status. If a partner struggles financially, it will turn you off, even if you love them. Be cautious about marrying someone solely based on their financial success and wealth. Chemistry and attraction are also important aspects of a long-lasting relationship.

You attract partners that are wounded in some way. Falling in love with others comes easily if you feel needed. Be careful and think about the differences between love and pity. Sometimes you can believe that you are in love but it’s actually your own intuitive ability of feeling others’ pain. Connecting to others’ pain often brings you a partner that is unstable, unhealthy or unreliable. You may learn this the hard way and feel victimized at some time in your life. Sex and love go hand and hand which requires a deep emotional connection. Sacrificing your own feelings for others and avoiding red flags in relationships can bring heartache. When you have sex with a partner you develop a strong attachment and bond that can be difficult to break. Be cautious about who you share intimacy with because you can feel taken advantage of. You need emotional depth in your relationships in order to find fulfillment and happiness.

Moon in the Eighth House (Excerpt from Phoenixes & Angels)

When the Moon is placed in the eighth house, you are a person born with a highly sensitive emotional nature. You are drawn to anything mysterious and fascinated by hidden things. Your emotional nature is intense and secretive. Hiding your true emotions and feelings from others due to fears of being misunderstood is a way to protect yourself. Emotionally you experience extremes, such as love and hate, black and white, and trust or distrust. Early in life you were fascinated with death and sometimes terrified of it. You are connected to spirits and often see ghosts as a child. Attracted to anything that is unexplained such as UFOs, aliens, spirits, psychic abilities, and mysteries. Understanding death on a core level is heightened because you are born intuitive. You may have laid in bed at night and thought, “What if I die? What will happen to me my soul?” Worried about losing loved ones you may have been afraid of dying as a child.

You feel different than others because you are born with a complex emotional nature. You feel lonely even among friends and family. You can feel lonely because you have special psychic abilities that can manifest themselves through your dreams, intuition, gut instinct, and visions. You need to learn to trust your perceptions in order to give insight to others. Intuition protects you from harm and enables you to avoid being hurt.

Attracting people with emotional pain is common with this placement. Your energy draws individuals into your life that need healing and who have wounds. These individuals are not always good for your life. Remember it is not your responsibility to take on the karma of others or try to fix them. You are not responsible for healing the entire world but need to utilize your spiritual abilities. Be careful not to drain your energy or take on other people’s pain making it your own. Absorbing everything in the environment can cause health problems, suffering, depression and negativity if you allow these lower-level energies into your life. Your energy vibrates at a high level and protecting yourself energetically creates strength. Visualizing a ball of yellow light surrounding you when you are in large groups will help you find protection.

Sometimes you feel that others dislike you and this is because you can see through people to the core of their being. Picking up other people’s true feelings can cause tremendous emotional pain and sadness. Other people are not aware of their motivations, subconscious thoughts, or body language but you notice these things. You are born with an antenna that picks up all the hidden, secretive and taboo things in the environment. You will benefit greatly from meditation and relaxation. Journaling thoughts, feelings and perceptions can bring emotional comfort.

You can struggle with emotional highs and lows. You might feel that people are always hurting or taking advantage of you. Learning to have boundaries with others and control your sensitive nature will help balance these negative experiences. At some time in your life, you will feel victimized by others sexually, financially, or emotionally. Your wound revolves around trust and intimacy issues. When you have sexual intercourse with someone you merge with that person on a spiritual level and it can hard for you to let them go. Suffering comes from relationships and sometimes others take advantage of you. Feeling betrayed by those you trust is a spiritual lesson. It is important to realize these experiences are part of the eighth house journey. You are meant to become a stronger person because of them. You are a survivor and have great healing strength and abilities. Even if you suffer and hit rock bottom you will rise up like the phoenix out of the ashes. Regeneration and healing are a blessing with the Moon placed here. You may cry yourself to sleep, depressed, lost, and tired, but eventually the warrior comes out. An inner strength lives inside you. No matter how low you feel, an inner voice tells you to rise up. This makes you stronger, healthier and happier.

You are a natural healer and are often drawn to careers that delve deeply into other people’s lives. You enjoy bringing the unconscious to conscious awareness. You excel in careers such as psychiatry, counseling, therapy, psychology, medicine, research, criminal work, detective work, coroner, mortuary director, and any metaphysical field. You have healing hands and benefit from studying Reiki, Pranic healing, and healing touch modalities. Working with energy and sending energy to others is something you might naturally be good at.

You may have lost your mother at a young age through unexpected death or your mother might be very controlling and possessive. Your relationship with your mother is intense and teaches you a lot about trust. You will inherit something from your mother or her side of the family. Inheriting land, property, possessions, money, or psychic abilities is a common eighth house experience. Spiritual gifts come from your mother’s side of the family such as a maternal grandmother or grandfather. Benefits come from females, and other people sacrifice things for your life to be better. Your financial success and material comfort will almost always come to you from someone else such as family, friends or your marriage partner.

Embrace the blessings that come your way. The Moon in the eighth house is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that you will be a true healer and able to serve others in a deep way. The curse is that you feel a lack of depth in your relationships and feel that no one understands you. You get bored easily with others if they cannot hold the level of intensity that you need. You can become restless throughout your life. Looking for your “soul-mate” and deep intimacy becomes almost obsessive. Intimate partners lack something you need. You connect to others through sex and deep emotional interactions. Your emotional happiness is dependent upon being able to connect deeply with people. You need to realize that your feelings of loneliness will lessen once you begin to see your oneness with others and not your separateness. You are a true healer and need to use your gifts to help others heal and transform themselves. Through healing others, you heal yourself.

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Planets in the 8th Astrological House: Your Greatest Weakness

When planets are in the eighth house at birth or through transit there are challenges that test you and growth comes through difficult experiences.  The experiences in the eighth house help us become closer to ourselves and our soul. The eighth house is related to hidden things and planets here make us more secretive, private, mysterious and deep.  The eighth house is place with dark deep waters where we don’t always see clearly. 

The eighth house is a water house and ruled by the planet Pluto.  The sign Scorpio is associated with the eighth house giving it a heightened intensity.  Planets here create a seeker and what I call a deep soul diver.  A soul with a desire to dive deep into the depths of the self and bring forth all the things that are often kept secret.  There are many issues hidden under the water such as repressed emotions, thoughts and behaviors. 

Many issues that people are uncomfortable discussing such as sexuality, death and loss are things that eighth house people naturally understand.  Understanding comes from personal experience.  Depending on which planets are in your eighth house it will show where you have your greatest weakness.  The eighth house is where you are tested.  It is where you will come face to face with your shadow self and the part of yourself that is hidden from other people.

There are often personality traits and things about yourself that is hidden so deep that you are not even aware of it.  
I realized recently that my own planets in the eighth house showed where my greatest weakness and challenges were.  I finally saw the connection between the planet placements in the eighth as well as the eighth house transits I had experienced and lived through.  Figuring out what your greatest weakness is comes easily when you look at the planets in your eighth house.  If you don’t have planets in the eighth house, you will want to look at the sign on the cusp of the eighth.      

Your greatest weakness can be a person, emotion, behavior or thoughts.  It can be how you deal with emotions, how you show love, family troubles, work, unhealed trauma, grief or pain.  These types of intense situations are often part of the eighth house weakness.  You might not realize what your greatest weakness is yet but by looking at the individual planets in the eighth house you can start to pay more attention. 

When the Sun is in the eighth house your greatest weakness can be something associated with your identity.  It can also involve something that has to do with your father or the father’s side of the family.  Inheriting something from your father or from their family such as personality traits, secretiveness, addiction, anger or psychic abilities is common.  When the Moon is in the eighth the emotional nature and emotional vulnerability can be the greatest weakness.  The Moon represents the mother figure and sometimes there are difficulties concerning mothering or lack of nurturing.  You might be very attached to your mother but there are often emotional issues involving heartbreak and trust.   There can be painful transformative experiences with the Moon here and this makes you a very sensitive person with empathic abilities.  Your greatest weakness could be controlling your emotions and learning to protect yourself from being taken advantage of by others. 

When Venus is in the eighth house your greatest weakness usually has something to do with how you show and express love.  It also affects the type of people that you are attracted to.  Venus in the eighth is a very deep placement that craves intimacy and deep bonding with another person.  You might also struggle with self-esteem and appearance.   Mercury represents your mind, thoughts and beliefs.  In the eighth house it can manifest as obsessive thoughts that create anxiety, worry and negativity.  This placement can make you a serious type of thinker who struggles with expressing yourself.  You might find it difficult to talk about how you feel because finding the words and trusting other people can be a challenge.  You might have a wound involving sharing personal information and feeling betrayed by others who repeated it.  This weakness can make you withdraw and hide your true thoughts from others.

When Mars is in the eighth it creates a very powerful drive and passion.  Sometimes there are struggles with intimacy, suppressing strong urges and then the energy explodes unexpectedly.  Mars here also involves the types of people you feel sexually attracted to and you are attracted to dominant personalities.  The desire to have passion can cause relationship difficulties.   Jupiter in the eighth from my experience is a positive placement.  It can protect you from the darker more complicated eighth house energy.  There is also another side to Jupiter besides bringing positivity, good luck, good fortune and inheritance.  It can make you extremely giving and kind.  Sometimes people will take you for granted or take advantage of your kindness.  It can be hard for you to turn people away and you enjoy helping others which can be a weakness.  You can become drained easily because you are very giving of your time, energy and thoughts.  Be cautious about loaning people money and sacrificing yourself for others.  Jupiter is very protective but can make you too trusting of others.  Understanding yourself is what is important so you can develop stronger boundaries. 

Saturn in the eighth can create a restrictive energy making you afraid of bonding with others.  You might repress your true nature, restrict expression of love and passion.  This placement can make you feel very serious and overly strict.  A strong sense of duty that can turn into a burden is common.  Saturn here is focused on practical matters and finances but especially being in control.  Trying to control people and the outcome of situations is your greatest weakness. 

Neptune in the eighth house makes you very psychic and open to energy in your surroundings.  You are like a light that attracts people to you that need healing.  There could be escapist tendencies and a desire to numb yourself from heavy eighth house energy through alcohol, drugs, relationships and sex.  A sensitivity to other people’s problems, lack of boundaries and a desire to escape from painful emotions are common with this placement.  Your greatest weakness is absorbing other people’s emotions such as depression, anxiety and sadness because your psychic abilities are wide open.   When Uranus is in the eighth house there is an unexpected energy that shakes up your life and causes intense change.  Experiencing many ups and down of emotions and being blindsided is a common experience.  Most people like comfort and stability.  Feeling out of control and like your life is turned upside down can happen with Uranus here.  Experiencing unhealed wounds unexpectedly and facing things you felt you had already healed is common.  Your greatest weakness could be that you get used to unexpected changes that you avoid stability and believe that you must shake things up when things start to feel stable.

Pluto in the eighth house makes you perceptive and psychic with a desire to hide things from others.  You can see through other people and are a very deep person.  Serious and cautious about showing vulnerability you tend to repress emotions.  You can see other people’s weaknesses well, but your own weaknesses are often hidden from you.  Other people can trigger your weaknesses and bring them out to the surface.  Pluto wants to have total power and control over its emotions.  Your greatest weakness would be difficulty trusting anyone and preferring to be alone to do things your own way.  There is always a fear of being totally vulnerable and dependent on anyone. Another important eighth house placement that I like to focus on is Chiron.  Even though Chiron is not an actual planet I have found that it has a profound impact on our lives.  Chiron is the wounded healer and when it is placed in the eighth house you will experience wounds through intimacy and love relationships.  When Chiron is in the eighth house your greatest weakness if often giving your trust to people who don’t deserve it.  The lesson of this placement is to heal your own wounds so you can truly help others heal.  Identifying your greatest weakness is important and it can be different for everyone experiencing eighth house transits or birth chart placements.