Relationship Potential Series, Part 1  ✦  Dawn Bodrogi  ✦  The Inner Wheel

This is the first part of a series on how to examine relationship potential in a natal chart. Let’s be honest. We’re all a little bored with the second house, unless we have some heavy hitting planets there. Okay, it’s all about our talents and our gifts and our sense of ownership. It’s a Taurus house, an earth house — but why does the second house get such short shrift?

Basic astrology tells us that the second house is about what we own: our possessions, our talents, our inner gifts. However, this doesn’t do it justice. While the Ascendant/Aries energy is off experiencing, it’s the second house that grounds those experiences in reality. In the second house, we develop our inner experience of life — this, in turn, becomes our inner reality, which may be very different from the reality that others see.

This inner experience of Self relates directly to the eighth house in the same way that the Ascendant relates to the 7th. The second house is how I experience my essential Self — the eighth house is the mysterious pull of the essence of other. By old rulerships, we have another Venus/Mars opposition: Taurus (Venus) vs. Scorpio (Mars/Pluto). The eighth is the house of sexual merging. As opposed to the objective Ascendant/Descendant axis, the second/eighth axis is all about resisting or accepting the merge — and the life-changing consequences that result.

People with heavy planets in the second often have difficulty genuinely opening themselves to others. There can be a reluctance to be truly known. You may realize one day that you don’t really know this person at all, because the threat of the basic loss of self is ever-present. Sexual relationships in particular cause these people to be guarded. There is a reason the French call an orgasm le petit mort — the little death.

Outer planets here take away security. With Pluto in the second, there is a belief that life is precarious. Neptune in the second suggests nothing can ever be held on to properly. Uranus brings shocks of removal. These planets bring special gifts — but they are often not accessed until much time has passed and the energy is positively incorporated.

I must give Jeffrey Wolf Green credit for the method of looking at the double inconjunct of the 2nd and 12th houses to the Descendant. Inconjuncts represent conflicting energies that are nearly impossible to reconcile. If the second house is what I own, then the Descendant represents what I don’t own. Our gaps and lacks result in needs, and we turn to other — the Descendant — to fill what we cannot fill in and of ourselves.

The condition of the second house will directly and indirectly affect the choice of partner. That we go into love completely blind has much to do with the second house. Oftentimes the function of relationship is to point out flaws and needs that we never knew we had. The natural placement of these inconjunct houses to the Descendant provides the framework for the drive to spiritual wholeness.

The drive towards spiritual wholeness through relationship has much to do with the twelfth house, which we will explore in the next part of this series.

Go deeper

The Foundations Book by Dawn Bodrogi

For a deeper understanding of how the 2nd/8th house axis, the double inconjunct, and the Descendant work together in a complete relationship analysis — Dawn’s Foundations Book is the essential companion.

→ The Foundations Book — all ebook retailers

The function of relationship is to point out flaws and needs that we never knew we had.