posted March 10, 2005 09:43 PM            

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As for whether I like my Merc in Scorp, I can be really fiesty, and it's all too easy to just point at that Mercury and say that's that culprit. But I think my fiesty moments are due to more than my Merc in Scorp. Being in the 6th is weird too, and something I've been pondering a lot lately because of what I think is an interesting configuration. Mercury, Mars & Neptune in Scorpio in the 6th - Venus & Pluto Conjunct in Virgo.

Several things have my attention here, but for one, how Mars is so closely tied to romance & attraction, how Scorpio is so closely tied to sex, how my Venus is Conjunct my Pluto in Virgo. Follow? In case you don't, I'm looking at sort of a table tennis game between my Mars & Pluto, do you see it?

I also have -

Mercury Sextile Pluto
Venus Sextile Neptune
Venus Conjunction Pluto
Neptune Sextile Pluto

So it's really something important for me to take a look at. If anyone else has any thoughts on it, I'd be thrilled to know.

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A.J., Your intelligence, life energy and dreams (Merc, Mars, Neptune) in Scorpio, the sign of transformation, sex and death (and there is a paragraph on THAT that I would love to copy you on from Liz Greene's "Saturn") all clustered in Scorpio in the 6th house spooks me! Especially after reading the following chapter in "Neptune and the Quest for Redemption" by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas. Enjoy, if you can -- I felt like I'd been run over by a truck and assaulted by a baseball bat after I finished the chapter on my Neptune in III!!! I'm still pondering it after reading it several times, her words will take time to sink in and get meditated over.

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Neptune in the 6th House

The 6th house has always had a poor press. Generally equated with duty, service, and health, it has also suffered the indignity of being given rulership over small animals. But this house will not yield up its secrets without considering the nature of Mercury, its natural ruler. Mercury has many functions in myth. But whatever he is doing – guarding travelers, helping theives, acting as messenger for the Olympians, inventing musical instruments, or guiding the souls of the dead – he is the god of borders, interfaces and connections. The 6th house is the interface between what is above and what is below. Although it is earthy, it is also the arena where everything we have developed through the preceding five houses is given form and anchored in everyday life.

Through 6th house issues we refine, perfect and purify ourselves, and untimately become a better “channel” for being who we are.

The 6th house is as mystical as the 12th, for both are concerned with the synthesis of earthly life and what lies beneath or beyond it. In the 12th, which is Neptune’s natural house, we move away from incarnation in order to merge with the divine source, through the breaking down of individual boundaries. In the 6th, we move away from the source in order to define our lives through the boundaries and rituals which embody that which we have left behind. Our 6th house “duties” are not merely worldly tasks, but something sacred, which, liike a religious ritual, orders the cosmos and ensures a sense of connection with a larger life. 6th house “service” is not concerned with helping others in the ordinary sense, for it is not others we serve; it is God or the gods, whose natures are best expressed through those tasks and skills which embody divine meaning. This work of building bridges between earth and heaven is not always, or even usually, conscious in the individual. For that matter, neither are any of the activities of the other houses, in terms of their deeper levels. But planets in the 6th behave in ritualistic and apparently obsessional ways because we attempt to order and incarnate their archetypal energies and patterns in ordinary life. And as any member of the clergy knows, the transpersonal powers are best channelled and contained within the fabric of ritual.

When Neptune is in the 6th, the deity who seeks incarnation is the oceanic source. This is an instrinsic dilemma, because Neptune is not inclined to suffer the boundaries which the 6th house imposes. Consequently we often see its less attractive manifestations. One characteristic expression of Neptune’s watery formlessness is hypochondria, where the individual fears the influx of invisible chaos, and projects it onto the body though fantasies of fatal disease. Neptune in the 6th may also be linked with mysterious ailments that elude orthodox medical diagnosis or treatment. Such ailments may be largely, if not entirely, psychological in nature, expressing Neptunian feelings of longing and helplessness on the somatic level. The body itself may feel Neptune-prone, and highly sensitive to intrusion from the environment. Allergies and skin conditions such as exzema and psoriasis are not uncommon, suggesting an inability to keep the outer world out. The element of stress reflected in such symptoms may also be connected with Neptune, for the individual may feel helpless and victimised when confronted with the tasks of everyday living. Rather than finding vehicles through which to incarnate the Neptunian longing, he or she may flee from the threat of the waters. Then the body expresses Neptune’s needs and feelings, in characteristic ways. Ebertin, in his description of Neptune in the 6th, mentions “magnetic healing powers”, as well as “a pathological sensitiveness.” Both these attributes reflect Neptune’s porousness and inclination to fuse with outer objects in a state of participation mystique . The healing powers of Neptune in the 6th may be real, but they may also prove a source of great suffering, and it is urgent that personal boundaries are established if the individual wishes to avoid absorbing the conflict, stress, and pain of those he or she is seeking to heal. Any individual with Neptune in the 6th who is involved in the helping professions needs to be extremely clear about the deeper motives involved in such work; for the longing to look after others may be linked with one’s own unconscious feelings of illness, helplessness, and victimisation in the face of a chaotic and disorderly world.

The 6th house is also traditionally associated with work, as the discharging of our daily tasks is a symbolic enactment on the outer level of who we are on the inner one. But the idea of work as a sacred act has long since left our consciousness, and work for us today is merely a means of earning money. The political ideal of each individual happily contributing to the whole according to his or her skills reflects Neptune’s utopian vision at work through the 6th house. The humility of the Buddhist sage whoo accepts “menial” tasks in a spirit of tranquility does not arise from any spirit of servility or desire to “do good.” It reflects the awareness that in the least of mundane rituals may be glimpsed the divine order which stands behind all manifest life. Such service may not involve others directly, and may be best expressed through skills of crafts which channel the creative power of the imagination. Neptune in the 6th may also idealise work. This may create difficulties if one works with others, or for a large organisation. Not everyone perceives work through Neptune’s redemptive vision, and one may be prone to exploitation. One may also find it hard to deal with practical matters in honest and straightforward ways. Here deceiver and deceived join hands in the working place; for the individual may become the passive recipient or the unconscious perpetrator of considerable dishonesty and manipulation, due to carelessness, willful blindness, and inability to recognise ordinary limits. Neptune in the 6th may also carry the dream of redemption to excess, and the person may feel he or she should not have to work at all.

The combination of opposites can be extremely rewarding, if one is able to find a balance between the extremes. Neptune, as the natural ruler of Pisces and the 12th house, has an inherent antipathy toward Virgo and the 6th. It is easy to polarise, and either try to eratdicate Neptune’s threat of chaos (which may result in feeling victimised by the demands of the bodfy and the mundane world). Neptune in the 6th tives its best when one understand the nature of ritual, and the sacredness of the here and now. With some houses of the horoscope – for example, the 7th – we recognise the importance of the particulare arena of life. With other houses, we have forgotten, or have never discovered, that the affairs of these houses are as valuable, significant and necessary to our inner well-being as other, apparently more exciting activities. When a house is tenanted by a planet in the birth chart, this sphere of life becomes a templum inahbited by a deity. More consciousness is required of us than by an untenanted house. Planets in the 6th ask us to acknowledge our interconnectedness with the invisible world, and do what we can to express the relationship in the rituals of our everyday lives. With Neptune in the 6th, the invisible world is oceanic and full of y3earning. If this vision can be given form through crafts, skills, and rituals, then the experience of unity with life can result in savouring each moment of it, and each aspect of physical existence, as full of beauty and meaning.

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