Eclipses in 12th and 6th Houses: Crisis in Retreat and Adaptation

by April Elliott Kent

This is PART 3 of 7. Read the previous installment here

dancing_dark_mainDon’t know how to find where an eclipse will fall in your birthchart? This post will help.

After the hectic activity of eclipses moving through the first house and seventh houses, eclipses move into the 12th and 6th house, and our young newlywed finds herself in a Crisis in Retreat and Adaptation. After months of frenzied activity, planning a wedding, setting up a new household, our young couple enters the honeymoon phase. For a year or so they barely leave the house for social engagements; they’re just plain worn out, and they need some time alone.

Our young bride is wondering just when the exhilaration of married life is supposed to kick in! She adores her husband, and their wedding day was beautiful. So why does she feel so tired all the time? Why does she find herself crying at odd moments, picking fights with her husband over inconsequential things? Why does she feel so weird?

Meanwhile, she’s spent hours changing her name on countless documents: the DMV, the passport office, Social Security office, credit cards. People call her by her new name and she doesn’t even know who they’re talking to.

Living with someone new has brought about the challenge of working out new routines and adapting old habits. Will we have separate bank accounts or joint? Which toaster will we keep? Who does the dishes? After years of sorting out her own routines, each day with her husband is like recreating the wheel!


Eclipses in the 12th house, like eclipses in aspect to Neptune, are times for retreat and recuperation. Our young bride is recuperating not just from the wedding, but from a lifetime of bad relationships, stored up hurts and disappointments – and confronting her illusions about relationships, and her new husband. Now that she has a safe haven, she can surrender her armor – and purging the emotions that have resurfaced is a tiring business.

Eclipses in the 6th house, like eclipses in aspect to Mercury, find you delineating and defining roles and expectations, and dealing with the day to day reality of living with whatever changes were made during the cycle of eclipses that fell in the 1st and 7th houses.

The fundamental crisis of this cycle involves honoring your need for solitude and contemplation, while simultaneously taking care of the mundane tasks that take up most of our time on a day-to-day basis. Ideally, you can bring some 12th house contemplation into those mundane 6th house affairs, and approach your day-to-day tasks as a spiritual journey – instead of envisioning spirituality as something which occurs apart from the everyday world.

Part 4: Eclipses in the 11th and 5th houses »

© 1999 April Elliott Kent.

MoonShadow reportWant to know more about how this year’s eclipses will impact your birth chart? Order my Followed by a Moonshadow eclipse report – 3 years of eclipses for only $35. Click here for a sample and ordering information.

1 comment to " Eclipses in 12th and 6th Houses: Crisis in Retreat and Adaptation "

  • Hello, wow I did a google search and found this. This is absolutely incredible and speaks to me in such amazing ways. I’ve just celebrated my 3 year anniversary with my partner, 1 1/2 years of living together, and blending our combined three girls. I am feeling everything you wrote, to a precise point. Although we are not married officially, this is it. Thank you so much for writing this. I feel heard and supported. I am excited to read many of your other writings. I realized this was written in 2000, wow! You are wonderful. Sending you love and light from the Pacific Northwest, Allie

Leave a Comment