You’ve been there many times: In an elevator with one other person.
Maybe you made brief eye contact when you stepped in — before the door closed behind you — but you quickly looked down, and so did he. Or she.
You punched the button for your floor and settled back on your heels, heard yourself breathing, fixed your eyes on a nondescript spot on the steel doors or let them wander anywhere but within range of the human being not two feet from you.
The brief zero-gravity feel of the elevator pulling you up into space took on a small dimension of eternity, then matter nonchalantly settled back into your belly. The ride went on.
Though the 12th house has traditionally been associated with prisons and mental hospitals, it could be argued that this most typical of modern-day scenes is a quintessential, if quick, 12th house experience.
You are trapped in an enclosed space with nothing but your thoughts, your feelings and time. In the 12th house, you are essentially alone, at the end of individuation, with pure consciousness, pure selfhood. It’s a scary place to be if you don’t know what to do, if you’re not comfortable with yourself.
The most obvious answer is to make contact with the person next to you — but this is very rare in an elevator situation. Less obvious is that you use the moment to dwell on those existential questions that press uncomfortably up against you. Most likely, though, you just think about mundane things beyond the elevator: the walk down the hall after the doors open, the day’s to-do list, whether you left the oven on at home. Sixth house concerns.
Only when the doors open might it feel safe to say, “Have a nice day” or some similarly benign post-greeting to your elevator-mate. Knowing you can escape makes all the difference in the world in our willingness to engage. Having a way out of the 12th house — through aspect lines that open the doors from 12th house planets to other realms or through the development of consciousness — is important for a productive and healthy 12th house.
What’s in your 12th house?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Alan Strand // Apr 25, 2007 at 10:56 am
Not sure which house this fits into but…
My elevator experience today: A nice older lady held the door open for me as I came up to the doors. About 6 feet away from her I fell into her perfume zone. I almost clawed my nose off for the ride up three floors in that tiny, shrinking space…
2 Kathy // Apr 25, 2007 at 11:45 am
Well, that’s another option. You get so engaged in the present moment that it overwhelms you — so much so that the space seems to shrink, the experience takes on a life of its own. The closer you look at an image or the more you write a single word, the weirder and weirder it looks till you can’t stand it anymore and claw your nose off. In the 12th house the experience is especially raw because you’re isolated and trapped.
Also, of note: Perfume is a very Venus-Neptune experience — pungent, ephemeral, girly gas clouds. What is it you can’t stand about being trapped in close quarters with THAT?
3 Alan Strand // May 2, 2007 at 12:29 pm
subtle use of scent is great - and in some encouraged i would say - but an overwhelming assault of chemical awfulness is bad bad bad. To me.
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