#8 - The Crucible

We now look at how we are changed by emotional interaction. The deeper the connection the greater the possibility for transformation. Are we brave enough to enter into relationships that can change who we are for the better? Let's hope so! Join Craig as he looks at the 8th house in astrology, where intimacy, trust, and change, go hand in hand.

Transcript

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Hi, you're listening to the Sage of Stars podcast. This is episode number eight of the Crucible. So we've been talking about the houses of astrology one by one. The first six are the formation of the personality. The direct experience that we have with the self and the way in which we process ourselves or transform ourselves or modify, however you might like to look at that, and turn ourselves into the best version of ourselves so that then we can go out into the world for the second half of the chart, the second six houses, and meet the world, and then have the world external mirrors and influences modify us further, transform us further, help us to see ourselves in a way that we haven't been able to see ourselves before. So the seventh house was about the establishment of relationships, and we're all drawn to having them. None of us likes to be in isolation. So I think it's important for us to know that the seventh house is where we start saying, okay, well, I'm going to have relationships. I'm going to have a relationship with a marital partner or a lover. I'm going to try to create a business with someone and I don't want to do it alone. I'm going to find a therapist that I can trust and help that individual to uh and have that individual help me to transform. There are other forms that are in other representations that are in the seventh house, but what happens when we get to the eighth is that the connections that we establish in the seventh become deep enough that they alter us. The seventh is about, you know, an experience of viewing other people and saying, could we, might we, you know, is it possible? This is what it would look like to be in a relationship together. It's some of the conversation of, you know, what would it look like if we created an interaction with each other? It's not casual, it's not like simple partnership. There's nothing surface about the ace house about the eighth house, because the eighth house is where vulnerability becomes more present and boundaries become thinner, consequences become shared, which is quite interesting, and lives become emotionally intertwined, needless to say, emotionally, psychically, financially, and in every other way entwined. So consequences become shared. That's fascinating too, right? Something that's, I think, very important here is that we are changed through this mutual connected experience. We're in an agreement to be in the relationship with these people, with this person. You could think of it as one. But unlike a third house relationship, which is your grocery store checkout person, where you say, hello, how are you? How's your grandchild, right? Or whatever. You this becomes a place where you are actually changed through the fact that you're connected to this person. Not your children, that's something different, but through selected relationships of choice. The seventh house says something like, I meet you, I met you. And the eighth house says, Now something about me is going to change because we met. So you could think of it as emotional entanglement, but it it I don't like entanglement as a, you know, we get entangled with people. I'm going to be talking here about why does the eighth house rule obsession? So that's why entanglement comes up, but it's really about vulnerability. Um, emotional exposure. When we have emotional exposure, whether it's with a husband, a business partner, or a therapist or a doctor that we've known for many years, it wouldn't be necessarily a brand new doctor. It would be somebody that we've had a relationship with. The emotional exposure to that individual carries real stakes. There's trust, there's fear of losing that person, there's surrender of being defensive when you're around them. There's sort of an emotional merging, whether it's sexual or financial. Um, it's always at an emotional level because of those shared consequences. And one important thing about the eighth is that the deeper the bond that we have with this person, the greater the capacity for transformation. And it always says, like, well, what does deeper mean, right? So deeper really means trusting. The more trusting the bond is, the greater the capacity for transformation because you're really in it with someone else. You're really on a journey of transformation with another individual. The eighth is where separation thins. Separation between two people thins, and there's a joining of energies that bring about a consequential set of events that affect both people. I'll give you some simple examples. Like if you're married and one person loses their job, both people are affected, right? So it's a shared consequence. It's not, if one person gets sick, both people are affected. If one person is grieving through loss, both people are affected. So this is sort of where we're headed with this is that all of these deeply connected emotional experiences change us because we're in a shared experience with another. So why are you know these things like sex and mutually shared resources like money or crises, crisis, having, you know, crises, traumas, and death. Why does that all belong in the eighth house? Like, how do all of those sort of odd subjects, odd, almost a little bit taboo? I sometimes teach us, says, like the eighth house is shared, mutual, emotionally intense experience, and those things do fit into that, right? Sex, money, crises, and death are all mutually shared, intense experiences. So that's why we fit those in together. But individually, these subjects belong together because they involve vulnerability, surrender, exposure, some kind of attachment, and the loss of full control. If you're doing it right, right, if you're doing it right and you're not trying to fully maintain control over your wife or your or your or your business partner, then there is vulnerability, surrender, exposure, um uh, attachment, and then also a loss of personal control because the other person has needs. They're going to express them, they're going to tell you how they're feeling by the way that you know you're coming across to them. It's Scorpio, the eighth house. So it has to do with the emotional intimacy and trust and our ability to be honest emotionally with each other. This is how you're affecting me. So it's not just sex, for instance, as attraction and pleasure. Sex belongs in the eighth house because it has to do with merging or exposure or transformation through intimacy or letting go or again the loss of personal control when we surrender to what someone else would be doing with us. And if we're in a mindset for that, if we're in a space where we can be vulnerable to that experience, then we're transformed through the surrender. We're transformed through the vulnerability, through saying, This is going on for me, or this is not going on, this works, this doesn't work. Money, shared resources becomes a symbol also of trust and also things like dependency and survival. And like I said before, if someone were to lose their job or someone were to win a million dollars, if you're married to somebody and you win the lotto, it's half theirs. So trust, dependency, survival, shared consequences of shared resources, being in a relationship with somebody that's intimate. Crisis is also really important here. The different kinds of things that can happen to us and the way in which they transform us because we share those crises together, whether it's a crisis that's happening with a child or our health or financial situation or the passing of a parent or other person that might be important in your spouse's life, or even your business partner's life, right? That's why all of these people where we have these contractual agreements, these deep contractual agreements. If, for instance, your business partner were to have a death in their family, that might affect their capacity to come to work, to be at work. Crises creates an emotional truth about the relationship. It reveals the attachment that we have, it reinforces the attachment. We may feel like stepping up to the plate if someone else is in a crisis. It reveals where we're fragile based on the bond, and it shows us what truly matters. The crisis is tremendous because it can deeply reveal that we love someone even more than we ever imagined if they go through a health crisis or something like that. We could be, wow, I all I want to do is, you know, visit this person in the hospital and pray that they get well. So there's a certain kind of bond that we feel very committed to and very attached to. The the self uh essentially enters the experiences and doesn't really fully survive the experience unchanged. And that's what's so cool about the eighth house. And I'm also a Scorpio, so the eighth house is fascinating to me because it's the process that we all go through. Being a Scorpio is different than the Eighth House, and these first 12 podcasts are all about the psychological blueprint for the development of us as an individual, and the eighth is where we're finally at an emotional level that as we are drawn to others, which we all are, we're all seeking each other to create transformation for ourselves, and as we attract other individuals into our lives to have these interactions with the self does not fully survive the experience, it comes out the other side changed. And that's where I'm gonna go into um the idea of uh psychological depth, but also attachment and obsession. Because you think like, well, how does the eighth house have to do with you know these really heavy shadow sides of the eighth, like obsession, jealousy, fear of abandonment, possessiveness? So, first of all, it's what grips us, right? It's what the these individuals have a hold on us because they change us, but secondly, we don't want to let them go because they change us, whether they change us financially, spiritually, sexually, psychologically, emotionally, in whatever way, we can become very attached to the individuals or the experiences that we go through in life that we feel have created a better us. So you say we say, like, oh, I go through this experience with this individual, I live with this individual. When my mother died, that person helped me through it in a way that I could never have seen without them. We become even more attached to them. We want even more to have them around. So obsession can appear when uh you know someone else feels like they're tied to our identity or survival or love, a love interest, or vulnerability, or the possibility of transformation. All of those things. And all of those things are so key to the eighth. So obsession, jealousy, right? I don't want that thing to go away. I don't want to share it because it's mine. Fear of abandonment, I don't want that thing to go away. Possessiveness, I don't want that thing to go away, right? And a power struggle, a power struggle also in that dynamic. When we think of Pluto that rules Scorpio, and and the way that that connects to the eighth house, Pluto is a dominant force of power struggle because it's an incredible source of power. And the power struggle is I need you, I don't want to need you, do you need me? I hope you need me. Oh, I see you need me. Are we safe? Are we vulnerable? Is this mutual? Am I going to get hurt? Am I going to get betrayed? All of that is in the eighth house. And it can be difficult to navigate unless we are in emotional relationships where we feel very safe. Hopefully, we feel that way with our husband or wife. Hopefully, we feel that way with a therapist, hopefully we feel that way with a doctor, hopefully, these people are trusted, trustworthy, and so that then we can feel comfortable and safe handing over some control of ourselves to them. So the eighth house is not really exclusively like a dark thing. It is um intimacy and exposure and transformation, profound psychological honesty. It's really like the deepest part of our human experience. In a lot of ways, our society is very far away from it. That's why we fear transformation and death and all of these really close, intimate experiences. That's why we even have now, you know, intimacy phobia, commitment phobia, because these kinds of things, commitment and intimacy, are going to lead us to a deeper experience of who we are. They're going to transform us, they're going to reshape us. I titled this episode The Crucible because after a long time of sitting with it and saying, you know, what really is this connection, intimacy, vulnerability, experience, trust, you know, there were lots of different titles that came to mind. And then I saw that vessel, the crucible, that heated vessel, as an incredibly intense place where transformation from one form to another occurs. And that is the eighth house. The eighth house is the place where closeness changes who we are and uh helps us to become who we want to be. I'm Craig Martin. You've been listening to the Sage of Stars podcast. You can find me at SageFstars.com. I hope you have a great day, and I'll be here soon.