Age 80 and the 2nd House Revisited

Having reached the significant age of 80, I was motivated to revisit my chart and reflect on its relationship to what has been going on in the 2nd house.

The Huber’s maintained that the 2nd house begins psychologically from the Low Point of the 1st house, which comes around age 76¹. This is the house of Saturn and related ‘things’ such as possessions, but also to psychological structures, which includes the ego itself.

The first time around the chart, we go through this house psychologically from the ages 5-10. The book Life Clock uses the phrase ‘stabilisation of the I’ for ages 5-6, then ‘sense of personal possession’ for ages 7-10². Basically, this is the construction of the ego that will enable us to operate as a member of human society. This process continues on into the 3rd house and beyond.

As we subsequently progress through life, this ego is gradually built up, not just psychologically but physically in the body. We know from Jung’s work that things that we cannot cope with, or challenges that we avoid, are repressed and build up in the what he termed the Shadow – the dark of what we refuse to, or cannot, bring to light. The shadow can become a burden that we carry with us, preventing our living life to the full in the present³.

When our Age Point (AP) has made a full cycle of the life clock and return to the influence of the 2nd house, around ages 76-77, we again encounter the 2nd house of Saturn. The appearance of physical challenges is typically a part of this, but perhaps of more significance is the psychological challenge – the now-well-formed ego with its shadow faces its mortality. We must ‘face up to our limitations’⁴ and ‘let go’ of accumulated material goods, which will certainly be no longer required following the dying process.

To reach the potential that is within us, we also need to face up to our psychological limitations and the shadow. This is our spiritual challenge, to deal with our attachments to become more truly realised or enlightened human beings. There are many books on this subject, and indeed I have read many of them over the years, but I think none of them expresses our predicament and opportunity better that Monica Esgueva in her recent book The 7 Levels of Wisdom⁵. Essentially, we need to come to terms with the shadow to free ourselves from the ego’s attachments and begin to live truly ‘in the moment’ as our true spiritual selves. As she says, many will not get there fully in this lifetime, and help may well be needed from psychological professionals. But I suggest that, in the end, it is the process and direction of travel that matters, not the achievement of some idealised ‘state’.

Post by Barry Hopewell. In the next post I will look at my own experience of the 2nd house for the 2nd time around…

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Footnotes

1. See e.g. The Astrological Houses, Huber, Bruno & Louise, page 87. ↩︎
2. Life Clock, Huber, Bruno & Louise, HopeWell ↩︎
3. See e.g. Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Zweig, Connie, Abrams, Jeremiah ↩︎
4. The Second Time Around, Hopewell, Barry & Joyce, HopeWell, page 13. ↩︎
5. The 7 Levels of Wisdom: A Path to Fulfillment, Esgueva, Monica ↩︎