Reflection Questions
Do you live out your life’s purpose through what you write, speak, or teach?
What role do your siblings, cousins, extended family, and good friends play in your life?
Did you or do you act as a caretaker or a parent for a sibling?
MOON IN THE 4TH HOUSE
The 4th House is the house of home, family, caretakers, parents, and grandparents. The 4th House is the foundation of our lives, the beginnings and endings of all things.
With your Moon in the 4th House, you need to live out your life’s purpose by creating a foundation for your life. The family that you come from may or may not be a place of refuge for you, but creating such a space is of paramount importance. Since both the Moon and the 4th House are interested in and oriented toward our history and the past, you may be particularly skilled at studying or understanding ancestry, origin stories, and history. Often when the Moon is in the 4th House, it can speak to having an interest in working with families, people’s homes, real estate, or in the domestic realm in general.
Reflection Questions
How does being close to family (chosen or not) factor into your sense of well-being? What in your life tends to go a lot better when you feel connected to a group of folks that feel like family?
Is your ancestry something that you study, work to develop a relationship to, or something that you feel connected to? How does that show up in your life, work, or relationships? How does the study of your lineage factor into your life’s purpose (or how might it)?
What part of your work involves families, home environments, housing, or has to do with the literal or symbolic foundations of life? What about this work are you naturally good at?
MOON IN THE 5TH HOUSE
With your Moon in the 5th House—the place of children, creativity, fun, leisure, sexuality, and erotic energy—your life’s purpose needs to be lived out within some aspect of these domains of life. Because both the Moon and the 5th House have such a strong association with conception, reproduction, sex education, and the birthing process, anything to do with these areas of life may be second nature to you, or may be especially challenging, important, and life-defining for you.
However, human reproduction isn’t the only kind of creativity that the 5th House cares about. The creative process, creative energy, creative projects, love affairs, pleasure, and leisure activities are also central to how you live out your life’s purpose with this placement. Creative disciplines may help you connect to a sense of purpose, as well as to channel moods and emotions.
This placement sometimes reflects having a parent or caregiver who was influential in the lives of children or focused on any of the other significations of the 5th House, including art, pleasure, and creative self-expression.
Reflection Questions
How is creative energy and its expression central to living out and unpacking your life’s purpose? What happens to you when you have somewhere to put your creative energy? What happens to you when you don’t?
How is reproductive health or sex education an important part of your life’s purpose? What talent does working with children or youth help you to access? What does being a parent, caregiver, or mentor to the children in your life help you to fulfill or understand about yourself?
What do you need to make, create, or work on when you feel insecure, unsure, or disconnected from your life?
MOON IN THE 6TH HOUSE
The 6th House is the house of work and health issues. When we struggle through an illness or have chronic pain, we don’t have the same kind of energy or ability to do what we want when we want to. Physical discomfort demands that life be lived in a certain way, a way that the world generally makes even more challenging. With your Moon in the 6th House, you may be sensitive to or experience issues regarding accessibility, injury, illness, and physical suffering.
The 6th House is also the house of work, work habits, and the tools that we have to do the jobs we must (which can involve livestock and small animals, making this also the house of pets). Having your Moon here can speak to your experience or knowledge of economic injustice and systemic power imbalances in the workplace. The 6th House represents the situations where we aren’t in charge—which is neither a positive nor a negative in and of itself, but not having full autonomy is a theme of the 6th House.
However, what houses like this can teach us about life is invaluable. Not having the kind of access to resources that makes life easy or accessible is a central experience to most people on the planet. In the 6th House we can learn how to accept the aspects of life we have no power over and redirect our energy toward where we do have agency. Being open to the truth of our lives means being acutely aware of the precariousness of it.
If your Moon is in the 6th House, part of your life’s purpose may need to be lived out through work-related projects in general. The Moon in the 6th House can be soothed by a job well done, being of service, taking care of pets or animals, working through health issues, learning different healing modalities, or understanding illness and its causes.
Having your Moon here might mean that you have been impacted by a parent, caregiver, or family member’s experience of a health issue. This placement may also want to nurture those whom you work with or for. You may do work that is caretaking, work in the domestic realm, in people’s homes, from home, or work that requires emotional labor or emotional intelligence.
Since this is the house traditionally associated with slavery, work that unpacks its history and impact or that addresses human trafficking, worker’s rights, and fair labor conditions can also be part of your lived experience.
Reflection Questions
Do you work with or find meaning in serving those who live with illness, chronic or otherwise? Do you work in ways that promote healing and care for those who experience pain? Does any part of your work involve worker’s rights, trafficking, or the modern or historical impact of slavery? If so, what about this work are you naturally adept at? What brought you to the work? What keeps you there? How is your mental, emotional, and spiritual health as a result?
Is part of your life’s purpose lived out in your work life in some meaningful way? What does your work help to facilitate for you?
Did a parent or caregiver have a physical issue or have to work excessively in your childhood? What did that experience teach you or give you an understanding of?
MOON IN THE 7TH HOUSE
In the 7th House of committed partnerships, romantic, platonic, or professional, the Moon helps to unpack your life’s purpose through connecting to others. You’ll find that your most important and life-changing experiences occur through intimate relationships and business partnerships. This placement can make you very reflective in partnerships and give you the tendency (depending on the sign it is in) to morph into the people you are with or over-give to them. Emotional boundaries are of paramount importance to develop.
With this placement, those you form close bonds with and decide to commit to can lead you to pivotal experiences to explore, understand, and develop.
Reflection Questions
Do you tend to look to relationships to give life a sense of purpose, direction, or meaning? When you feel lost, unsure, or untethered, do you turn to committed partnerships to be consoled? Does that ever mean you stay in relationships that aren’t totally right for you? What helps you leave partnerships that aren’t working?
Do you feel as though many of the major events in your life come through your partners or partnerships? Which have been the most impactful?
Did your parents or caregivers often get lost in their relationships? How did this impact getting your own needs met?
MOON IN THE 8TH HOUSE
With the Moon in the 8th House—the place of collaborations and other people’s money, assets, and resources—your life’s purpose needs to be lived out by learning how to share resources, how to give what you’ve got, how to receive what you need and how to produce work w
ith others. If you have inheritances of any kind, what you do with them, or how they impact you, will also be important to your life’s purpose.
The Moon in the 8th House may understand the process of death and all things to do with the soul’s journey after leaving the body. The grief, loss, and mental anguish that can come with the impermanence of life are also found here. This placement can be especially experienced with mental health issues and may be very adept at working with folks who have them or who are working through grief. With your Moon in the 8th House, you may have had a parent who experienced mental illness or worked in the field, or you may have suffered a significant loss that marked your childhood.
The Moon in the 8th House may need to confront emotionally difficult situations and may often go through cathartic experiences. You may also be connected to souls who have left the body. Channelers, psychics, and those who are in touch with the spirit world can often have strong 8th House influences.
Reflection Questions
Are your collaborations an important part of living out your life’s purpose?
What do you feel you understand about grief and the grieving process?
What are you sensitive to in regard to mental health issues, loss, and healing the mind? What have you or your parents/caregivers struggled with in regard to mental health? How has therapy or other healing work helped you to address these issues, and has the process revealed something to you about your purpose?
MOON IN THE 9TH HOUSE
If your Moon is in the 9th House, you will need to live out your life’s purpose through teaching, traveling, publishing, philosophy, advocacy, spirituality, religion, or pursuing higher education. You may be fed by or find solace in wisdom traditions and through seeking things that feel far off, adventurous, and exciting. In this house, the Moon needs to experience the unknown, needs to be placed in situations where its mind is stretched, where its comfort is challenged, and where it is asked to experience life through a different lens than it is used to.
You may be a very nurturing teacher or have teachers who are more like a parent or play out parental roles, both difficult and desirable. You are an instinctual learner, talented at absorbing ideas and intuiting answers, and have a knack for working psychically with divination practices.
With the Moon in the 9th House, you need to move around, study, work with teachers, work in publishing, or teach others when you feel insecure or unstable.
Reflection Questions
Do you tend to distribute or need to absorb information when you feel unsure of yourself? Which wisdom traditions do you turn to when you feel off-center? Does traveling or teaching help you feel connected to your life’s purpose? What is it about doing either that makes you feel that way?
Is publishing, in any of its iterations, central to your daily life? What does it feel like for you when you release information out into the world, to a group of people, or as part of your work?
Was religion or spirituality a big part of your childhood or important to a caregiver or parent? Was this a positive, negative, or more neutral experience? What role does it play in your life now?
MOON IN THE 10TH HOUSE
If your Moon is in the 10th House, you live out your life’s purpose through career, social status, and reputation. This Moon wants to achieve social recognition as a way of feeling secure and wants to be recognized by “the people,” achieving goals as a way of self-soothing. As a result, people with the Moon in this house sometimes seek fame, or end up with it, without having to make as much effort as others.
This Moon is able to read or intuit the needs and wants of others. The Moon in the 10th House may have a natural affinity for working with the body, birth, and conception, or supplying nourishment in physical, emotional, or spiritual ways. Traditionally this placement was linked to working with water and all things pertaining to bodies of water.
With your Moon in the 10th House, you need to work as a way of taking care of yourself, which can be tricky when you need to rest. You may need to accomplish something professionally as a way of emotionally regulating and will most likely need to watch the ways in which you tend to over-give to the world.
Reflection Questions
When you feel unsure, insecure, or out of sorts, do you tend to work toward accomplishing goals that will garner you more success and recognition? When is this counterproductive, draining, or challenging to manage on a physical level?
Does getting recognition for your efforts come easily to you? Do others often comment on the kind of attention you receive? What are the comments generally speaking about? Are others often envious of your accomplishments? If so, how do you deal with that?
Is one of your parents or caregivers well-known or famous in some regard? Did you feel like they were larger than life when you were young? How did this impact your own sense of self?
MOON IN THE 11TH HOUSE
If your Moon is in the 11th House of community and good fortune, part of how you live out your life’s purpose is through the connections you build to friends, groups, and possibly through the activism you embark on with them. In the house of good fortune, the Moon nourishes others, and in doing so, creates its own luck. Through building with those who have the same hopes and dreams for the future, you can make at least some of your dreams a reality.
In social settings, group work, and at networking events, your Moon feels a sense of security. You most likely have a strong urge to bring a vision to fruition with like-minded individuals. This is where you thrive, and prioritizing your need to be in community will bring you tremendous joy.
Reflection Questions
Do you get nourished by spending time or investing in the communities and groups that you are associated with? Do you feel like your connections with others often lead you to important life events? Does this seem to happen naturally, or do you consciously encourage it? If you do, how so? If you don’t, how might you?
Does community organizing connect you to your life’s purpose? At the moment, what does that look like? What would you like it to look like?
Did a parent or caregiver connect to the world through their groups and associations, have friendships as a key component of their identity, or struggle in group situations? How did that impact you?
MOON IN THE 12TH HOUSE
The 12th House represents what is hidden from view, secret, and unknown to our conscious awareness. Those with the Moon here may be drawn to unpacking the secrets of family, culture, and society. With the Moon in the house of hidden projects, part of how the life’s purpose gets lived out may be by doing behind-the-scenes work and projects in private, by being in studios, in dark rooms, or in places of isolation that also serve as creative incubators.
This Moon may need time alone to process emotions. Your self-care system might require you to retreat and refuel.
Because this part of the chart also speaks to sorrows, loss, self-sabotage, self-undoing, and all the aspects of self that we tend to want to forget, refuse, or put out of sight, the Moon in the 12th House speaks to one’s experience with suffering. This may be inherited from the parent or caregiver, symbolic of their struggle, or in the family line.
Self-sabotage might be a common survival strategy, as paradoxical as that sounds, but eventually the Moon in the 12th House needs to learn ways to heal the past so it can access the incredible creative wealth that gets bound up by unacknowledged pain.
The 12th House is the part of the chart that deals with incarceration, isolation, and institutions, which may be a part of your direct experience or that of your parents or caregivers. You may have an ability to get into places and do important work where others are incarcerated, locked away, or removed from society.
Reflection Questions
What roles do creative incubators, dark rooms, studios, and places of solitude have in living out your life’s purpose?
Are you comfortable or talented at working with those who have suffered great losses?
Do you have a p
arent or caregiver who deals with mental health issues, has worked in or been in an institution, or works with those who have been treated unfairly by the systems they live within? If not, have you?
Relationships With Other Planets
Who Is Impacting Your Ability to Meet Your Physical and Emotional Needs?
Which Planets Are in Aspect to Your Moon?
Just as there are planets in relationship with your Sun, so too might there be planets in relationship with (in aspect to) your Moon. These aspects also fall into the same categories that we explored earlier—gifts, challenges, and mergers. The same theory applies to all planets. Sextiles and trines are helpful gifts that, when in aspect to the Moon, can help you create physical abundance, experience comfort, or cultivate blessings. Squares and oppositions are challenges that can inhibit your access to material and emotional safety, at least at some point in your life. Conjunctions (mergers) can go either way, depending on the planet in question.
Frida Kahlo’s exalted Moon in Taurus in the 10th House sextiles her exalted Jupiter (planet of abundance) in Cancer in the 12th House. Since the Moon rules Cancer and is therefore in charge of this Jupiter, there is a special affinity between them that is heightened because they are in a helpful aspect to each other (the sextile). Although the 12th House is a place often associated with great difficulty and isolation, her Taurus Moon was able to translate and bring those 12th House experiences into the 10th House of career. Her ability to express her personal suffering, loss, and experiences of isolation in her art brought her great recognition. It should be noted that if other planets had made challenging aspects to Frida Kahlo’s Moon, her career may not have been a place of such great distinction for her.
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