What is the meaning of planets in 12th house?

Question

Uranus and Neptune are in the 12th house in my chart. What does it mean? (Uranus and Neptune are both in Capricorn)

Also: I pulled up a chart of one of my friends. She has Pluto in 12th house, scorpio ascendan (pluto is in scorpio). What does it mean?

Answer 1

I don't use Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto, but I can tell you something about the12th house.  The original meaning is the house of troubles.  Also it is associated with slavery (your own), prisons, childbirth (which used to be called confinement), and most recently the house of self-undoing:  the things we do to mess up our lives.  The 17th century French astrologer Jean Baptiste Morin broke with the tradition of his day and included illness in the definition.

Planets in the 12th have a difficult time manifesting.  The same is true for planets in the 6th and 8th.  So if you have a nasty planet like Saturn in Leo and it is in the 12th that's a good thing, but if you have Jupiter in Sagittarius, you might prefer to have that in the 10th (it's not as though you have a choice).

Some 12th house planets do "get out."  If the planet is in aspect, and by sign is usually enough, to one of its dispositors, it will manifest.  So Sun in the 12th in Cancer square Jupiter (exaltation ruler of Caner) - Conjunct Moon (ruler of Cancer) in Libra on the fortunate fixed Star Spica, and you get to be President of the US.

However, if you have Uranus retrograde in Aries in the 12th and have no aspect to Mars (Aries ruler) or the Sun (Aries exaltation ruler) then, under the right circumstances, you get to be Charles Manson.

12th house planets are not the end of the world.  They usually represent some of the difficulties we all experience and in this case usually the ones we inflict on ourselves.

Hope this helps