Last month in a restaurant with my friend Mary, I watched tears running down her plastic-surgery repaired but scarred cheeks. She was recalling her experiences of living in Colorado for 30 years, and stated that she had uncontrollable nightmares and that her basic behavior had changed there. She was on-edge all of the time, always expected calamities at any moment, and said she moved there as a cool, calm, collected person, but left as a paranoid, panic-stricken, vigilant neurotic who couldn’t sleep at night or trust any situation or anyone.

A little girl she was responsible for while employed as a social worker was locked in a cage by her abusive foster parents, and somehow died in their care. Mary testified at the murder trial but there was not enough evidence, and they were acquitted. The remaining children in their care were not reassigned. Mary was in shock for years from this and is still affected, rightly so. Also, her best friend died in a car crash, and she had two of them herself, one of which left her hospitalized for months. She has been in physical therapy for years, which is no surprise, because I experienced the same effect. Her Astrocartographic map showed the Uranus Asc only a few miles west of her home in Colorado Springs, which corroborated my observation that the closer to this energy line, the stronger the effect. It lies at the West end of the house geographically, a boundary between it and the Uranus 1st house, which I suspect, is equally harrowing. My studies have convinced me that Uranus 12th and 1st near the Asc is the most dangerous placement in the astrological chart. Pluto in 12th is a close second.

I asked her if there were screaming people in her face (as I had found in my own progressed Uranus 12th), and she said yes. In fact, they didn’t attack, they just screamed. In Pluto’s 12th house, they often physically attack outright during and after screaming. And it happens constantly where both planets are here. Mary experienced the same things with negligence from other people in everyday life as well. The fouled-up billings concerning insurance, utilities, medical, government, and other services are not only angering, but maddening in their relentless occurrence and the inability to rectify them. The injuries-- ones that should never have happened will leave disability and lasting problems, even after leaving this house geographically. Mary is only 58 and will limp and groan from pain for the remainder of her life. This is not to be taken lightly.

Last week while doing a relocated chart for my friend Verna, I discovered that she too had Uranus in 12th. Except…. When I asked if she had death and near-death experiences, sudden property damage, and screaming lunatics around her, she said that only the screaming was apparent. A look at her Natal chart showed Jupiter in 12th there, so this verified what others have said….that it offers protection. I’ve seen this protection from Pluto’s 12th house as well, that the violent and miserable childhoods often seen there are mitigated by father Jupiter’s thumb on Pluto. (Yes, Amiable, this is you. LOL)

The house of self-undoing really does have a special task assigned to the planet Uranus. I’ve always called it the “voodoo” planet because the effects are enough to scare us into believing that almost any nightmare that can be imagined can and will become reality. In the 12th house, this planet creates an alternate reality. Uranus in the 12th house causes events to erupt from the depths of karma that bring shock and awe. The manifestations of this energy occur in every realm of life…physical, social, emotional, financial (business), and I’ll make special mention of mechanical things. These energies cause us to unwittingly take actions that set up outlandish circumstances that are unexpected, inescapable, and unavoidable. Circumstances that…most non-12th house people might experience only rarely. The unlucky will have 20, 30, or 40 times the number of wacko incidents from my observation. Living in Uranus’ 12th house is like being sent to live in a lunatic asylum, though you may be the only sane one--- in the beginning. The voodoo of this placement will slowly convert you into one of the patients.

It started as soon as I had arrived in Arizona. It was unnoticeable to me, because I had just left my Natal Pluto 12th area. Mishaps, bad luck, injuries, and hateful people were standard for me--- I’d not realized yet that this is not “normal” because the Pluto 12th House effects are parallel but more predictable. Unfortunately, this blindness kept me in this location far too long, and in hindsight, far too long was 10 minutes. It had nothing to do with the desert or the heat or city itself that so many easily-bored, condescending Arizona-haters whine about; however, it is based on how each individual thrives or fails in certain locations. I now have nothing but contempt for most 12th houses and want nothing to do with them. Many of you here may see me as a 12th House whiner, but by the time I finish here, you’ll understand why I’m misunderstood. At the time of my arrival, I was riding a bicycle to work, and had a breakdown or flat tire at least 3-4 times a week, which boggled the minds of my roommates at the time. They thought it was some sort of curse, because the repetitive nature of the problems was simply not to be believed. Strangely, these flats never occurred on the way TO work. That first summer, I was told, was the worst lightning/thunderstorm season in Arizona 100 years, and I was caught out in it often. Uranus gave me a strong welcome with lots of electricity. Perhaps it was a warning to leave. As much as I truly love the place and always will, that warning should have been heeded. Funny, things usually went right when no people were around.

When we relocate, the energies take full effect about two years after we arrive. That was when the real fun began. The litany of events is typical for this 12th House placement. My cars were constantly being smashed, ruining my finances with repairs. Insurance companies gave me the worst time trying to collect on policies, one time it nearly turned into a legal fight which left me boiling for years. “Being boiled”, as I call it, is a result of the incessant losses and frustration. It adds another layer of emotional exhaustion on top of the physical and other emotional injuries. 12th housers know this feeling well, especially those of us who lose our grip and end up in prison. Phone bills, home maintenance, and on and on, were constantly being screwed up by service people, even after several phone calls presumably correcting the problems. Vigilance didn’t help. It seemed that everyone I dealt with was brain dead or lazy, or opportunistic. Virtually no one cared about me as a customer.

People acted psychotically against me all of the time. Not just SOME of the time, but ALL of the time. One day at work during the first of my 21 years of living in this madness, I handled a trivial problem by circumventing a particularly strange coworker who then went off on a psychotic rage (in front of our customers at that) and tried to get me fired. People in general were awful, from a tow truck driver who dropped my car and told me to #@$%& off and call my insurance company (I sued and won a partial award, due to a jackass judge), to car mechanics who created problems through laziness or incompetence, to businesspeople who were convinced that I was purposely derailing their goals. Mind you, I’d always considered myself a timid person trying to make peace among all.

My neighborhood was infested with undisciplined cats who urinated all over my car, and I borrowed a trap to remove them….only to have that same finger smashed again and again by the closing mechanism while setting the trap. The more diligently I paid attention to NOT being injured, the worse the malfunctions seemed to become. It reached the point where I was afraid to even open the hood of my car. Electric shocks happened, even though my hands were dry and I was hyper-vigilant, and the wiring was perfect.

My dating life was peppered with acrimonious incidents on the part of my dates. Again, my car was attacked and physically damaged over and over, and my poor neighbors had to endure more than one crazy date acting up at my house. More disturbing was the hate I saw in traffic, especially as a pedestrian. Several times people consciously tried to run me off the road, or run me down in crosswalks or in parking lots. In 1999, an old couple in a new Cadillac tried to run me down in a crosswalk because the light had changed on me too fast. At first, I thought these incidents were my own perception, but years later, after telling the stories to people I know there, it became evident that the drivers were pretty hateful and victimizing in Arizona….worse, the police had an attitude of doing nothing about it. Yes, I did try to file complaints. Most of my friends there did not encounter the same numbers of abusive people. In 2002, I was rammed repeatedly with a shopping cart in a store, just because I was ahead of this psychotic lady in line, and she didn’t want to wait. While she was leaving, I told her that she was living proof that America was breeding from the bottom. Few, if any incidents like this happened to my friends there. I seemed to attract strange, punishment-obsessed people who did strange things to me. Also in 1999, my family and I were stalked via defamatory hate mail, multiple incidents/attacks on my car, and personal threats by someone I hardly knew who had stolen from me. The money was the least of it; he was so angry, I was convinced that I was going to have to kill him. Fortunately, I did not act… and the experience was both distressing and educational. He is dead now and would be about 43, so karma is strong and does go in both directions, just so you know. I’ll also add that an abusive employer ended up in federal prison. It reached a point where the next person who abused me was going to make me very violent, and put them in the hospital. I was realizing that something had to change and that something was amiss following the stalker incident. I was experiencing toxic overload. The constant destruction and attacks on me left me feeling that I was going to kill or be killed. Depression followed. Fortunately, I was able to get counseling and recognize this horrible energy enough to let go and relocate out of it. My counselor was ecstatic when I informed him I was leaving.

While in the Uranus 12th House, someone told me that I “attracted” these events by my own attitude. Well, the subconscious may have attracted it, but it was not voluntary. Tolerance was useless, avoidance was not an option, and any type of diplomacy was met with even more vicious attacks. Even the people who were kind to me did not understand why I reacted the way I did to these problems. They thought I was a freak. If we do attract it personally, my feeling is that it was not intended and no amount of personal change can overcome it. Trust me, I tried a lot of different changes. It was exhausting trying to do damage control on a daily level, only to see it happen again from a different direction with a totally new twist. The only change that worked was giving up and leaving. It is apparent that having the 12th House in Uranus also attracts judgmental, blaming people into the mix. Perhaps there is a special energy emanating from 12th house people in general that invites others to abuse us. I know I never asked for any of it. From the time I was young, I had always worked hard to move life forward, and had high expectations and tried hard to get along. Not asking for it seems to be central to the experience. Objecting to the abuse brings ever more abuse. It’s fatal to the cure.

In 1999 my back (sciatic intersection) ruptured the same week as the stalker, and I spent almost two years in bed in horrible pain. Physical therapy didn’t work. I was unable to keep up with my expenses, and eventually had to sell my home to get out from under. A year after I sold out, its value had risen by about $120,000. This is typical of the irony encountered in the 12th, a turning of the knife so to speak. That house is probably now in foreclosure and back to the value I sold it for. Too bad, I just don’t care.

The constant injuries like my back were beyond the pale but there were many, many more. Once I was placing a comforter on my lodgepole pine bed and pushed it down behind the footboard, only to find that a 2 inch splinter had gone deeply under my fingernail like a Viet Cong bamboo torture method. The doctor wasn’t able to remove it, and it took two years to grow out. Fortunately, my finger did not go gangrene, though it was purple for a week, the antibiotic prescribed saved me.

By far the most disturbing events surrounded the people I knew, who were dying off in droves. Mind you, I was only in my late 20’s when this all started. About 1990, my 80 year old neighbor had a fall and his wife called me to help; when I ran over to their house and picked him up, he died in my arms. But at least he was old. Death was ever-present.

Several people I’ve questioned (including Mary) who lived in their 12th House Uranus area had this same continuous cycle of death happening around them. My partner and at least 50 of our acquaintances (that we knew of) died of AIDS. When I came out of the closet, I felt like a debutante being marched out of the ballroom and into a slaughterhouse. One of my friends, who was NOT having the same experiences but noticed that it was happening to me called it “The Black Cloud”, and it actually caused him to keep his distance from me. Strangely, I did not get infected by a single thing, and am still clear to this day. Perhaps Uranus and Pluto keep us alive longer to extend the “learning” period. During the early 90’s I ended up being a caretaker when I should have just packed my clothes and driven away as fast as I could. But I’d not have succeeded at escaping; my car at the time broke down on a daily basis. Perhaps I should have walked. You have no idea how horrible it is to see someone rot away from AIDS, it is a deep 12th house experience not unlike surviving a war. I had many young friends and acquaintances die of other things, too. There was Hepatitis B, kidney failure, alcoholism, drowning, heart defect, asphyxiation, cancer, and even a jetliner crash. These were people I liked, too. Maybe they weren’t so good for me, their motives were often hidden. One would assume that these events are typical in anyone’s life...except that their high frequency and their (mostly) young age at death was not quantifiable from a scientific standpoint. For my young age at the time….this was very disturbing. My siblings had a few events like this, but the sheer number on my side of the equation is baffling. Debates on that could rage for decades over who deserves what karma or why.

The entire time it was occurring, my thought was-- Please make it stop!!! I really don’t feel that I had manifested this horror movie of a life, but someone recently said it was probably in our “contract” with the powers that be before I was brought into this world. I know that Uranus in 12th was responsible for most of the trouble, because the rest of my chart was fairly benign.

After escaping this surreal era by leaving the mainland, the incidents all disappeared overnight. This is NOT an exaggeration. In five years in Hawaii, only one neighbor’s son has died, and it was from drugs. He avoided me. The excessive damages have stopped with an occasional minor problem that’s easily corrected. It felt like I had escaped a cemetery where hateful, homicidal poltergeists were running the show. By going West, Uranus was moved into the 2nd house (With its own financial dramas, trust me), and its domination was replaced by a massive stellium in the 4th. The attacking people I had become so accustomed to…now naturally avoid me except by phone when they’re on the mainland (back in the old 12th neighborhood!). Any physical injury whatsoever is rare and mild. My car is no longer suffering shattered windshields or being dropped by tow trucks, or hit by backhoes, or getting keyed and slashed by psychotic dates, or…or…or…whatever Uranus had in mind. I’m not as sick from sinus problems, my back is doing fairly well, and I feel well liked in this community and rarely get attitude. Yes, there are some bad people, but I only hear about them now. It seems probable that life will not return to the past destructiveness that was previously encountered. Life is even serene, actually.

What saddens me most is that right now, some of the people around me are living in their 12th House Uranus hell, and they won’t listen to my story. When we become accustomed to a life lacking any peace or security whatsoever, it becomes natural. I had already learned this false conception from my 12th House Pluto while growing up, so the experiences of my bad location were not perceived as unusual. Pain was life, life is suffering. An important part of the process of transcending our 12th houses is to recognize that this constant loss and agony is NOT normal. We don’t need it for a lifetime in order to move our souls toward a deeper understanding…..but sadly, some of us accept our misfortune and hang on. I’ve had three identifiable episodes of PTSD, two of them were in my progressed Uranus 12th, another on the East Coast with Pluto in 12th.

This placement is one of the “avoid at all costs” astrologic influences. Even in adulthood, it is severe and unforgiving, and depressive. Pluto, while more predictable, is riding along with Uranus in the 12th house for those of us born between about 1962 and 1968, about a six year conjunction. It’s unimaginable how bad they are together. I’ll have to write up a topic on how Uranus-Pluto house combinations work, they’re quite nasty.

Well, that’s my story, albeit a bit rambling. No doubt I will have rewritten it five times and vacillated over whether or not to even post it, because of its content being too personal. Nor am I looking for sympathy…what’s happened is just history now and I’m only sharing it for the benefit of others. I hope my honesty here has not been disturbing for anyone. None of this was imagined. I keep hearing how wonderful it is that we have had the chance to have our soul grow, blah blah blah, but I’ve done my time in hell, thank you. Mary did say that the troubles were so out of control that it had become comical. This is how she copes. Each day I wake up grateful and am emphatically relieved that it has diminished. She feels the same way.



What to do if you are stuck without options in Uranus’ 12th house:

Live simply, the fewer belongings you have, the less you have to lose. Make sure you have insurance. Read your policies carefully. Get a signed letter from the agent promising your glass is covered with a zero deductable if you can get that coverage on your car. The mere existence of coverage will ward off bad events. Uranus doesn’t like to waste its time and knows that if someone is protecting you, or will fix the damage, the less likely it will attack, and the safer you’ll be. Have good health insurance. Go to the doctor for every little injury or illness. Build up a good relationship with them. My splinter-affected finger turned purple and would have gone gangrene if not for quick action. Play video games to keep your hand-eye coordination sharp. SLOW DOWN, don’t rush things. AVOID sports of any kind, don’t climb rocks, or hike in areas with dangerous conditions, animals, snakes, or insects. Avoid machines- especially vehicles that are running, lawnmowers, or household appliances like toasters. Always disconnect them or get help if they malfunction. Be careful around high-voltage electricity. Low-voltage shocks may actually diffuse some of this influence. Don’t give anyone a jump start, or pick up hitchhikers, or expect people to follow traffic laws. Learn to accept bad driving and rude people. Don’t take them personally, they don’t know you. All they know is that they feel the need to act up. Karma will crash them eventually. Assume no one is paying attention or is unable to. If you have a significant other or friend living with you, always ask for them to repair things. Don’t do it yourself. Forget having a phone land line at the house or even computer cable. Get WIFI and a cell phone. Buy magazines off the rack. Get some weights and exercise at home, gyms have trickster contracts. Minimize any billing that could go wrong. Be a roommate with no responsibilities, or rent a furnished home or apartment if you can, because things will go better. The more you cherish something, the higher the vulnerability for damage or loss. Learn how vehicles work, what can go wrong; always be wary of bad advice from mechanics. Find a knowledgeable car-nut to coach you. I was told my car’s alternator failed by someone who tested it, and it only required a new battery. It cost me hundreds of extra dollars when I was broke, all for nothing. Don’t buy a nice car, get one that is good mechanically that you won’t have to care about if it gets dented. Dented up cars don’t suffer additional dents, I swear by this. Buy a maintenance agreement. Better yet, don’t have a car or bicycle at all. Walk or bus, but watch out for cyclists, they may run you down because their need for speed outweighs your safety, they’re psychotic.

Keep a cell phone on your person at all times. Program 911 on speed dial and use it if someone road rages you. Don’t hesitate, don’t cut anyone off or pull out on them, either. Signal. Slow down to keep others from running stop signs. After a few incidents with that, you’ll understand what I mean. The faster you go, the more close calls you’ll see. If you get accosted in a building, take the phone out and confront the attacker, mirror the 12th house shock back at them, tell them you’re assuming an attack is underway and that you are calling the police. They’ll think you’re crazy but it throws it back in their face. Confront them, ask them who they are, and say they don’t know you, and that they have no right to treat you this way. I always did better when I fought back with questions. Most importantly of all, if you get angry, don’t attack first. They probably won’t be violent unless you have a Pluto 11th or Mars 1st or other aspect that attracts it. There’s probably going to be a lot of rudeness and abuse, and as Stevo says, NO apologies. I agree, you won’t get apologies, period. Always call for help, for security at the store to come, etc. Make friends with a Wiccan and get multiple protection spells. Wear amethyst. Never rush anything, leave early for work and the airport. Pay bills early if you can. Don’t make friends with freaky, discouraging people, period. Abandon them. Walk out on the middle of a project if the abuse starts, get higher-ups involved. Shock them all back. Use your power against them. Refuse to cooperate. Head off trouble if you see it coming. Don’t overlook that. Yes, do be vigilant but try not to be neurotic.