In the forums, there’s an interesting conversation happening about ancestral trauma. I thought I would share my story because I have a few theories about the astrology.
If you’ve been reading here a while, you know both my 4th and 8th houses are jam-packed. The 4th house rules family and roots and the 8th rules legacy and the dead. Most of the time this is benign, but sometimes it can get downright spooky.
I have a friend who is reliably, verifiably psychic. Years ago, we were sitting around talking when suddenly a blast of cold air blew through the closed room. My friend turned to me with wide eyes and said, “Um, your grandfather is here. Your mother’s father.”
Now, he had died before I was born and I knew nothing about him. He and my mother were estranged, and she refers to him only as a sperm donor. In fact, she never speaks about her childhood and I know nothing of her life before the age of 17 or so. She’s a Scorpio Moon, so you know she’s not about to volunteer information.
“My grandfather? Why?”
“He says he’s in a kind of limbo and he’s trying to make amends for the way he lived his life. He’s…oh my God, he’s opening himself up. He’s pointing to his rotten guts…I think it’s his liver? He must have been an alcoholic.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with me?”
“He says he used to be just like (my abusive partner at the time). He says he’s been protecting you in the way your grandmother should have been protected from him.”
“But how do I know it’s even him?”
“He says to ask your mom about the farm on the hill. About his boots. About the chickens. He says his name is Clyde. And he’s sorry.”
And then the cold air went away, but my friend and I were both thoroughly shaken.
About a week later, I sat down with my mom and asked her to tell me about her father and early childhood. I didn’t let on about what had happened, only asked questions.
She sighed. “Well, we lived on a farm, right at the top of a huge hill. I remember going and playing with the chickens and running around in nature. The sperm donor used to clomp around in these big, muddy boots and he would always get dirt all over the floor and we had to clean it up. He…he was awful. He hit us and we were terrified of him. He eventually drank himself to death.”
I took a deep breath. “And what was his name?”
“Clyde.”
So that’s my story. I have a theory that this happened to me because of those packed houses I mentioned earlier. My job is to work with my ancestors (4th) to heal the legacy of the dead (8th). I don’t know what he did, but I survived the abuse and came out stronger on the other side. So I suppose I owe him gratitude. Thank you, Clyde.
I want to know if anyone else has stories like this! Have you ever had a supernatural experience, especially one involving your ancestors? What are your 4th and 8th houses like?
Sun, Venus and Mercury in 8th house and this is exactly something I can relate to. ASC in Scorpio, Mars and Saturn in Scorpio 12 house. I can feel my late grandfather (I can feel I’m not alone for a brief moment) as we were so close and I was so loved by him, in dreams he asks for help, but this isn’t something I can say out loud, people don’t understand, they think I’m obsessed with death, but I’m not. I’m just very familiar with it, I’m not afraid of it. Having these placements sometimes makes you very lonely, misunderstood, but I more lonely because it scares shit out of other people, even you family members.
Root trauma generational issues are wrapped up with the IC, The Black Moon, and Pluto. The deep unfinished, unredeemed emotional experiences that draw us back into embodiment out of the astral are indicated by the Black Moon. When they are “worked” in us – they also facilitate the redemption of our ancestors and of the Earth itself.
Totally empty fourth and eight houses in my chart. Exact Taurus Moon / Leo Pluto square with a sixth house Aries Black Moon conjunct the North Node.
Much work with a very gifted akashic reader on foundational root type trauma.
I never knew my dad very well. He was never happy to be married to my mom, so he spent long amounts of time away from home on business trips. He left for good when I was starting 6th grade. He always lived far away, so visits were brief and infrequent. He remarried and his wife was very heavy handed insisting always their marriage came first. I was never allowed to speak to my dad or visit with my dad privately, his wife insisted that she even be included in every phone call. He went from being my dad to being her husband who was my dad. Eventually I only saw them a small handful of times as an adult. Just distant.
My dad died in mid 2001. I was very relieved. Then, one night around 2012 or 2013 my dad randomly showed up in my room. He was dressed in the last way I remember him, and was unapologetic. He telepathically conveyed that we should go get ice cream. As we drifted thru my house, he stopped to admire some artwork that I had made.
It was so strange. My dad never showed up alone to visit me, his wife is still alive. I never had a home to live in when he was alive, I always rented cheap rooms and moved a lot. The artwork that my dad stopped to look at was a type of artwork that I did not know about when he was alive, it was a mosaic that I made out of broken dishes. My dad was very artistic, growing up he and my mom were always creating art out of found objects or building something outside for the garden when he was home.
I have lots of stories like this. I have been visited by deceased loved ones off and on thru the years. All very random. I no longer fear death as a result.
Midara, thank you for sharing this. Wow…what a powerful experience!
I don’t generally consider myself to be a psychic or a medium. But, last year during a mediumship training I was participating in, I received a message from a group-member’s deceased father who wanted to apologize to him for beating him and making him feel like an outcast. I was surprised when the group-member (who was a stranger to me) confirmed that his father was indeed abusive when he was a child and he always felt like an outsider in his own home and was fearful of his father during his childhood.
I’m starting to think that the deceased are often able to see their own shadow sides once they’ve crossed over, and they try to redress it in the best way they can.
I do have Pluto in Libra in 8H, which closely squares Mercury in Capricorn in 12H and closely sextiles Neptune in Sagittarius in 10H. My natal Pluto also opposes Jupiter in Aries.
I’ve had 4 apparitions:1st in garden a navy Blue color seems to race at me I felt it coming I turned quickly as I thought I heard a deer racing it was navy light that lifted as it rushed thru me used to think something was on eyelid,2nd was an ivory type gauze color that wrapped my hair around my face like a curtain again thought this to be my eyes in my down stairs of my house 3rd just as I opened truck door felt as if something
Jumped down from tree and came too
Close between me and truck seat
It was a presence, lastly I was in my upstairs and I have 10 long panes of glass in front of my house solar envelope, my downstairs has 2 bedrooms; from upstairs I could see beds in window reflection When I looked a child was on bed I ran down
No child I went up a child again
Ran down looked everywhere no child when I got upstairs child
Young back now lifted head and looked at me, so spooked left house
All of this close to fathers death
10 years ago,Nothing since so bothered for months following
Mine is a very occupied Eighth House, with Pluto conjunct in the 7th all in Leo. That threesome squares my Scorpio Sun, Mercury and Chiron in the 10th and 11th Houses. My Ancestors, my family is intimately part of my life. When I was a child I dreamed of my great grandmother, and asked my Ma to help me understand the lady in the white muumuu(long dress). It was difficult to explain, I was a dreamer early with troubled sleep. Later in life, after I left my birth land the Dead have been very regular company. I dream of them regularly, have had deeply healing conversations with my Grandmother (who I never met in this life) when I lived in my family home. She would answer physical health and spiritual health questions when thyroid issues rose for me (she died in surgery for goiter). My culture is filled with dream medicine. I woke recently with this thought: “I know more interesting people who are dead than alive.” Made me chuckle and laugh out loud. I write my way through the hauntings, and touch astrology, watch the heavens for confirmation, and commit to living a very full and interesting life. It’s a major nod to the ghosts.
P.S. Thanks for sharing your terrific roots story, Midara. My mother and I would’ve loved hearing it over coffee at her kitchen table:)
Incredible, healing story Midara! Thanks for sharing and for bringing this topic up for discussion.
My 8H consists of Virgo Mercury and Ceres, Libra Sun and NN. My 4H Gemini Mars is the apex point of my mutable T-square with 1H Pisces Moon opposing my 7H Leo Uranus/asteroid “Jayne” conjunction. My 9H Scorpio Jupiter/Neptune conjunction trine my Aquarius ASC.
The sudden (Uranus) passing of my father (Mars) in my early childhood (4H) greatly colored my life (Moon). Three years ago, I daily asked for his assistance when I was downsizing from my old home and searching for a new home. While cleaning out old boxes I was feeling extra sad and I asked him, “I wish you could give me a hug.” Hours later, I ‘stumbled’ across old photos of him that I hadn’t seen in decades. During those months, I routinely told the Universe, “I need a new playground; a fresh neighborhood to live in.” Also, “I need a new sandbox to play in!” Two months later, I did purchase a new house – with an old-fashioned, wooden framed sandbox! What a sign!! The day I moved into my home, new playground equipment was being installed in the community’s park! While putting items away in my new home’s bedroom closet, I found an old penny on the floor. I looked at the date. 1967. The year my father died.
Wow.He’s trying to make amends. W/ packed water houses, you must be pretty intuitive, too.
Yes, Cancer moon in 8th. Pisces mars rx in the 4th. It kinduv sortuv runs in the family passed down by my maternal grandfather who had the same deal going on. My mother was quite phenomenal in that way. I don’t pay much attention to it or try not to. It can get pretty life consuming elsewise. Sometimes one of my sisters and I see the same thing at the same time. We usually comment on it like dummies and then people are like oooo ahhhh your psychic. Like no, it is just a part of life. I don’t focus there. Neither does she.
I lied. It was my maternal great grandfather. I think it might have skipped a generation in there as I never heard any stories about my grandmother (my mother’s mother’s) experiencing this. She was a Gemini. She probably had a busy head. There has to be a very quiet space within for this to manifest I think which is why I think it comes to many in rem time sleep. And also why some keep very busy to block it out.
Wow that’s amazing. I’ve never had this kind of experience but wouldn’t mind if I did.
I have an empty 8th house and both pluto and uranus in my 4th house. My north node is conjunct the uranus placement smack dab on the cusp of the 4th and 5th house. I’m completely estranged from my entire family. I tried my best to build a relationship with each and every one them. None of them care about family ties. Grew up in a military household where i was the youngest of 5 children. Complete and utter lack of sentimentality and total commitment to survival of the fittest competition. We were pitted against each other. None of us keep in contact. My parents never talked about our ancestors. The spirit world was non-existent in our household. It’s laughed at as nonsense when mentioned. We were completely cut off from that side of life. I knew at a very young age that i was on my own. My parents were so disconnected from us children that they put a lock on their bedroom door and would immediately enter the room when they came home from work. We had to knock on the door and ask permission to speak with them. The reason I mention this is I originally didn’t understand the lesson that might be learned from pluto and uranus in my 4th house. What am i going to learn from having no family or roots? Other than physical sustenance and having a roof over our heads, we weren’t taught anything. So i turned to books. I read in a Barbara Handclow book that the 4th house, when no family is present, can also represent re-connection with THE EARTH itself (the ultimate root). I sometimes imagine that souls, both dead and alive, are part of the earth’s magnetic field…Babara Handclow claims the earth’s inner most core is liquid crystal (hence, the psychic’s crystal ball).
I had a military childhood. Not sure if your father was a Marine? It is a tough group, and not sentimental at all. It helped me to read the book “Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood inside the Fortress” by Mary Edwards Wertsch. I have told many brats about this book, and it usually helps them. You will discover you are part of a hidden tribe, and other third culture kids are part of your family. There are groups of us over on facebook conversing about this childhood, and making connections, as wel understand one another. It also helped me a lot to understand my parent’s mission, what was going on in the world at the time, and their perspective. It is not an easy circumstance, but it is a legacy, and it will help if you integrate it. At least it did me. I started searching for this when I turned 39. You are a third culture military kid – you will never fit with the civilians.
Yes! I have natal Pluto at 10 Virgo in a tight conjunct with the IC, 4th house side, and Saturn conjunct South Node in Aquarius, 8th house. The Saturn/South Node conjunction in Vedic astrology points to “an ancestor who was improperly mourned.” I did some spiritual work with a shamanic witch a few years ago, one who does healing work by channeling the Bone Mother. In shamanic journey together, we traveled my maternal ancestral line and found a blockage, which the Bone Mother somehow removed. It was quite a profound experience. I leaned enough information from that journey to go searching the archives at a well-known former insane asylum in my home state. I found paperwork confirming that my great-grandmother had institutionalized her mother. A part of my family history is my grandmother noting at one time that her mother never talked about *her* mother. It was wild to find actual information on paper that confirmed these previously unknown circumstances! My grandmother lived a block away from a cemetery where her mother and a lot of my maternal relatives were buried, and she faithfully tended their graves for years before she died. My natal moon is in mid-Scorpio, tightly conjunct Venus, so as I learned more about astrology, this confirmed for me my longtime awareness that my mother/ maternal line had “secrets.” This theme continues on in my life. Several months before my mom passed away, I had a dream that my mom was in a nursing home with a “black” face. As I comforted her in the dream, her face returned to its normal color. I called one of my sisters the morning after and said, WHAT HAPPENED TO MOM? I told my sis about my dream, and she told me they had put Mom in a nursing home… without telling me. The precipitating event was that my mom had fallen in her home and badly bruised her face. ? One of my nieces, in her early 20’s, also got pregnant (unmarried) a couple years ago and had a baby—no one told me—I found out by accident. I was always the odd one out as a child and had a strange, disruptive, and grueling childhood with both physical and emotional abuse. Both my parents have now crossed over, and I have very little connection with my sisters and the remaining extended families on both sides. But sometimes my mom and I visit with each other when I am dreaming—the kind of dreaming where you know in the dream you have gone beyond the bounds of your own brain into the transpersonal realm.
I’m similar to “notch” and have cancer moon In the eighth and Pisces IC, north node and Chiron very close together and Venus in the Fourth. I hAd struggles through my teenage years with step families and a father who was a steady drinker, blaming me for problems. He’s now deceased and appears in my dreams regularly as a happy man. I love it when that happens. I’ve always felt extended family gatherings were an obligation rather than enjoyable and feel like I’m doing some heavy work in this life getting rid of a bunch of ugly cycles or patterns that have been unbroken for lifetimes it seems.