Have you ever found yourself with a big load of credit card debt, wondering how you got into this mess and how you can get out? I get asked about credit card debt problems quite a bit. It?s a fair enough question?not only do a lot of people suffer from credit card debt, but astrology actually specifically addresses the problem. There?s a house, the 8th house, that covers issues related to debt in general, including credit card and other consumer debt. Looking at the 8th house is key to understanding your own attitudes towards managing (or avoiding) debt.
Natal planets (planets in the birth chart) in the 8th house can contribute a great deal towards our attitudes regarding the use of credit cards. Saturn in the 8th house in the birth chart seems to be the most strongly correlated with ongoing debt problems. Most of the people I?ve seen whose charts include Saturn in the 8th have struggled with consumer debt. (Saturn almost always causes difficulties in the affected house.)
In today?s world, almost any natal or transiting planet impacting the 8th house can prove problematic if not carefully managed. There?s a reason for this. Debt, particularly credit card debt, is a lot like obesity. Both are societal problems in the US, and both take a long time for individuals to solve once they reach a critical point.
In American society at least, the pressure to consume is enormous. Billions of dollars are spent annually advertising fattening fast food, indulgences of all kinds, and?.credit cards. Who hasn?t seen at least one of the Visa "priceless" ads? They?re clever ads, but let?s face it?the whole point of these ads is to encourage us to whip out the plastic for every purchase. This spells trouble for a lot of people.
That?s not even taking into account the amount of junk mail the average family receives soliciting the opening of even more credit card accounts, the use of "convenience checks," and so on. I?ve got nothing against Visa or MasterCard per se, but the relentless pressure to pile up debt in this society verges on the criminal. Even very young people are targeted, often with disastrous results.
Nor have I mentioned the economic pressures that many in America face, pressures that make individuals and families vulnerable to high interest rates and a spiral of increasing financial distress. It breaks my heart sometimes when people tell me their debt stories with an unspoken attitude that surely their own personal flaws must be solely to blame for what is, in fact, a much larger social problem. No one?s individual astrological chart is wholly at fault for the larger situation.
That said, each of us has our own attitudes toward money and debt to contend with, and these are often revealed in our astrological charts, along with our times of greatest vulnerability. Keeping an eye on our patterns can help get us back on the right track if we?ve experienced problems.
Even the most difficult configuration in the 8th house (e.g., a badly aspected Saturn or Uranus) can be dealt with. In fact, the personal patterns that cause us the most problems can be turned around with the help of insight, practicality, and a willingness to deal with the situation.
For example, Saturn in the 8th house may cause problems, but it also holds the key to the determination and discipline that can solve them. Saturn usually teaches things the hard way, but I have witnessed people learn from Saturn that credit card debt does not work for them and that a disciplined plan for paying things off can.
Uranus in the 8th house (whether in the birth chart or because the planet is temporarily transiting the house) can cause erratic fluctuations in income and debt management. But it can also lead to brilliant insights and good ideas for increasing income or dealing with financial problems creatively. Jupiter in the 8th house can increase debt (because Jupiter can increase anything), but it can also increase money inflow if used in a positive way. Neptune in the 8th can encourage a lazy, foggy attitude toward managing money (or an excessively idealistic and rosily optimistic attitude), but it can also lead to deep insight into what?s truly valuable and an ability to strip away encumbrances like debt.
In other words, astrological energy is just energy. It can almost always be used positively or negatively. The 8th house is a deeply mysterious house in many ways. It affects our attitudes towards sex, death, and money?how?s that for a heavy list of concepts to put into one house? But it is also, interestingly, the house of healing. Many times our problems with sex, mortality, and money are symptomatic of deeper emotional, psychological or spiritual issues. Planets in the 8th house offer a means of addressing those issues.
The key is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is one of the main reasons people study astrology. We are all complex, multi-leveled creatures, and it takes both time and effort for us to understand ourselves. Studying and meditating on the energies affecting our attitudes toward money and debt can yield the clues we need to understand how we can lead the lives we want. We can come to see how we are using the energies at our disposal. Difficult transits that bring debt issues to the fore can actually be helpful: they can clarify the underlying situation and give us the chance to bring control to this area of our lives.
http://blog.thirdage.com/?p=675
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