Eighth House

The Eighth House
By Darby Costello
Transcript of a live webinar
Tony: Welcome, everybody, to Darby Costello's webinar on the eighth house. Darby's
joining us from her home in London and we're really blessed to have her here
with us, talking about the eighth house. This is part of a three-part series on the
water houses. We did the fourth house first. We'll be doing the eighth house
today, and then we'll follow up with the twelfth house, when we can schedule it.
I got the idea to do this series after listening to an archival recording that we
have of Darby on the water houses that was just lovely. Definitely check it out if
you haven't heard it, we have it available on the site. It was, I think, her first
UAC lecture. And Darby will be at UAC again next year, so if you haven't heard
about UAC, it's the United Astrology Conference. It'll be held in Chicago next
year (May 2018), and you can see Darby in person there.
So welcome, Darby. It's really great to have you here. Can't wait to see what
you're going to share with us today.
Darby: Thank you. It's lovely to be here, and to connect, to feel that there are people all
over the world. I really like that feeling, somehow. So, let me begin.
I'd like to begin by saying what my intention is, because then, that allows me to
actually do what I intend. And I'm speaking about the eighth house today. And
I'm going to start by speaking about Mars, Pluto, and Scorpio a bit, because they
are connected with the eighth house. And then, I am going to, well, I'm going to
speak about the eighth house in as many ways as I can, and I'm going to use
images for that. And then, the second part, I've got a lot of different charts from
different periods in history, and different stories. And so, I'll use those charts to
describe, and to elaborate what we've been talking about in the first part.
Let me see if there's anything. There are certain things, places that I'll go more
deeply than others, just because I know them more, and other people know other
things more. So, there are certain things I've learned. And so, let us begin.
I'm starting with Mars, and Pluto, and Scorpio. I was just recently in Germany,
lecturing in Hamburg, and Claudia, I don't know if you knew, but she asked me
a particular question, and said, "I'm told that the Americans," and remember, I
began as an American; I've lived away for a very long time, but I began in
America. "You Americans," she said, "don't distinguish between Mars, Pluto,
Scorpio, and the eighth house. Is that true?" And I said, "No, not in my
experience. I think we do," but of course, I've been practicing for such a long
time.
And I remember that I probably did learn in the '60s that Mars, Pluto, and
Scorpio were all connected up in some way. In fact, I learned that Pluto was the
ruler of the eighth house. And when I came to England, I discovered that Mars
was also the ruler of the eighth house, and in fact, the early ruler. So, they were
all, they were mixed up and odd. And I thought, "Let me just try and separate
them a little bit. I want to see about the eighth house, particularly. And let me
just try and separate them a little bit," I thought, "and perhaps put them together
again later."
Okay, let's bring this (slide) up. It's 1888 Flammarion (Darby showed a slide with
an image of a woodcarving from a book by Flammarion). And it's just, we're
stepping now through, from the Earth to look at the patterns that, as astrologers,
we use to reflect life here on Earth, so we understand it better.
So, Mars. Let me say from my point of view what Mars has to do with the eighth
house. I'll put it that way. And I've got lots of charts with Mars in the eighth here.
But from my point of view, as I look at Mars, and yes, I'm looking of course at
Mars and Scorpio, the ruler, there’s Mars that rules Aries, and there's Mars that
rules Scorpio. And they are very different.
And one of the things about the eighth house is that when you are in a
circumstance described by the eighth house, it demands courage. And Mars is
your warrior. And it demands a different kind of courage. Sometimes, it is
actually physical courage, but it's another kind of courage. It's the courage to go
into something, where you have absolutely no idea what is on the other side. No
matter what people tell you, you cannot predict what is on the other side. You
cannot be sure, because when you go through an eighth house experience, you
go through something that, when you come out of it, you're different.
Something has changed. Something has died, and something new is born.
And so, the connection, for me, to Mars with the eighth house, is that it's your
warrior. And as long as your warrior is fit, as long as he's strong, in other words,
he's not suppressed too much, and he's not given absolute freedom; in other
words, you have some sort of connection to that Mars energy, that warrior of
yours. You know, you're in league with him. You have a conversation with him.
Then that warrior, when you need courage, he's there for you.
Every one of you who have been faced with a danger to your life, knows your
Mars. And anyone who hasn't had that experience yet, probably doesn't know it,
quite, but it's the thing, that's when it shows up. When you're in a really
dangerous situation, it arises and is your guardian. And that's why it's good to
keep it fit.
I'll speak about Mars a bit more as we go along, but for now, let me speak about
Pluto. I love the one in the corner, down on the right hand side. It's on the right
hand side. It's so grrrrr (Darby made a growling sound), such a terrible image of
The 8th House Page 2 of 36

Pluto. It looks like before he met Persephone, you know, very much alone;
whereas the other one's very dignified. I think that's at The Louvre. And of
course, the planet, that's a new image of it that, now, we're seeing. We're going
up to these planets. And the connection with Pluto and the eighth house is that
Pluto takes us to a place, we go to a place where we, this is the truth of, we have
a Plutonic experience. We come out, and we are absolutely different.
Those of you who have very strong Pluto’s in your chart, periodically go through
experiences, and in the middle of those experiences... All right, let's say it this
way. Between the two experiences, where you're one person and then another,
there's a period where you don't know what's happening at all. And one of the
things about Pluto is that, for a period of time, you have no control. You are
taken.
Pluto, why it describes something about the eighth house, is the, what we call the
“Rape of Persephone” (Darby shows a slide with that sculpture). And her, as a
young woman, she is playing in the fields with her 90 friends. She goes and goes
over to a flower and picks it up, and Hades comes from the Underworld, and
brings her down into the Underworld. And there are many ways we describe it.
It depends on your experience of eighth house and sexuality as a woman, and
perhaps as a man, too, I don't know, because I'm not a man. But it depends on
your experience as to whether you think she actually ate the pomegranate.
You know, Demeter tries to get her back. She's horrified that her daughter's been
disappeared like that, and she tries to get her back. And she finally convinces
Zeus that she needs to come back, that she needs to come back. And as
Persephone leaves the Underworld, she eats, I think it's three pomegranate seeds.
And therefore, she cannot be freed of the Underworld. And I think it depends on
your own experience of sexuality, early on, as to whether you think she was
tricked into eating them, or whether she ate them because she wanted to come
back. She didn't want to go back to her mother in the upper world. She'd become
attached to the Underworld, to being Queen of the Underworld.
But really, I hear people describe it, talk about that again, and again, and again,
and I'm sort of fascinated as to why. I think it's because of our own experience, as
to whether we think she chose to come back, or whether we think she had no
choice at all. Persephone becomes Queen of the Underworld, and all of you, and
there's something about, and this is eighth house rather than Pluto ... No, no. It's
about Pluto. Sorry, it's about Pluto. When Plato describes Pluto, he talks about
him as wealth. And there is this early tradition that Pluto, Hades, is about
wealth. Of course, we can see it in many different ways, the wealth in the world,
in the earth itself, oil and things underneath the earth.
But it's also, when each of you, and you'll notice, when you've gone through an
eighth house experience, and by the end, maybe it'll be clear what that is if it's
not already, you come out, and there's more of you than before. I was wounded
when I was young once, and I remember having a sentence in my head, and I

realized later I'd probably paraphrased it from Kahlil Gibran who said
something near it, but it was, "Pain carves out the places where joy can later
dwell." I remember thinking that all the time. This pain is carving out the places
where perhaps there will be more. And I think Hades and Persephone, and the
beauty of their, the depth of their relationship, and her generosity and kindness
to people who come into the Underworld says something about when you go
through an eighth house experience. There's a larger, there's more of you, there's
a wealth that you have that you cannot have when you hide from the kind of
death that you go through in the eighth house.
And yes, the eighth house is connected, especially in ancient times, and I'll give
you some of the ancient ideas about it just now, with death. And so, those who
have strong eighth house, now we're in eighth house connection, who have
strong eighth house connection, and perhaps strong Scorpio connection, do have
to look at death, or contemplate it, or come to terms with it before you actually
get to the actual place. It is, I know so many people who have died by now, in
my age, because I've lived all over the world and lived in many places. And it's
very interesting to see how people get to it. Most of the people that I've been
close to have gotten to it and said, "I am not afraid." I think we're more afraid of
the process than we are of the actual experience of it, though some people I've
known have been actually afraid of what's on the other side.
But this eighth house is truly, it's about death. And I'm going to say, I think
everyone who's ever died that I've known, I've looked at the chart instantly,
because I've been an astrologer nearly 50 years. And I have to say, I do not, you
can't ... I don't know, how do I say it? If you can predict a death, you're using
more than just the chart. You're using intuition as well. I've seen people go
through, I had somebody I knew once in Germany, an extraordinary woman, she
died at about 100. And I met her in her 90s, and she had been ill. Pluto had been
on her Sun in Scorpio, and she got very ill in her 80s. And she was a homeopath,
and she said to all of the young homeopaths around her, "I'll go in and out of
coma, I'll be ill for this amount of time. Do not bring in a medical doctor. That is
my order."
And so, for six months, or eight months, or a year, a long period of time, she was
in and out all the time. And I met her after. So, she'd had Pluto on her Sun, in the
eighth house. She'd gone through this, and I met her after. And she stayed alive
for another 8 or 10 years. She only had one sentence in English. She'd come here,
her father had brought her during the second World War, I think, and every time
she saw me, she'd say, "I danced with the officers." I think she had Moon in Libra
in the seventh, but she had Sun in Scorpio in the eighth.
So why I'm saying this is because those of you, when you're going through, or
you're watching someone you love go through an eighth house experience, it is
more often not connected with actual death, physical death. It's more often
connected with a death, and then over, after the kind of going through it, coming
into a new life.

Thanatos. There are many kinds of death. And maybe it does say, "This is
possible." And again, through my own experience, it may say something about
the way we go to death. And I'll show you some charts that'll make that possible.
But again, how do I know? It's just my experience, okay.
Now, the eighth house is also about other people's money. And this is probably
what I'm not going to talk about much, because I don't know what to say about
it. And I'm not as interested as I am in the transformation that one goes through,
to go from child to adult, to go from let us say, the seventh house, where we meet
people, to the eighth house, where we get into a relationship, which is profound.
And I do understand, okay, so, this is what ... So, let me do it this way.
Let me just go a bit further off, then back to this. And please remind me if I
forget, in a little while to remember this, it's because you know, sex, death, and
other people's money, right? I think it's that, where you go into something, and
you're extremely vulnerable, and where you gain wealth through your
interaction with other people, and where you are always capable of being
betrayed, and that's why you're vulnerable. You're always capable of being
betrayed when it comes to eighth house matters.
And so, money is one of the ways we can be betrayed. I think it's also, we can be
betrayed with secrets, but it's other people's money. Yes, it's wife's money, or
husband's money, or something, and it's really true. If you have really good
planets in the eighth house, you are often subsidized, even when you don't mean
to be. A friend of mine, this morning, she has her Uranus in the eighth, and it's
sextile her moon in Taurus, and trine her Venus, conjunct Mars in the fourth.
And she said to me, "Do you know, twice in my life, near strangers," she'd grown
up a child on her own, when she was young, "almost complete strangers have
sent me substantial amounts of money, for absolutely no other reason than they
thought I might need it."
And she said, "Do you think that's Uranus in the eighth, in Cancer?" Sextile her
Moon, conjunct Jupiter in Taurus, and trine her Venus in Mars, and Pisces in the
fourth. I said, "Maybe it is."
And another friend of mine with Uranus in the eighth said yesterday, she said,
"Suddenly, when I absolutely have none, and nothing is happening, there it is."
And what I've noticed, we'll speak about it a bit more, perhaps, but to me, yes,
it's other people's money, but often, this person, it was Uranus. So, she wasn't
vulnerable. She was a stranger. She hardly knew the person, but when it's a
personal planet, you often have to have a very, you have to take into
consideration that money is involved in the relationship; because if you're
intimate with another person, and it's about money, you're very vulnerable to
each other.
Okay, so let me say something, one thing about Scorpio. I think the house where

you have Scorpio as the ruler, or when planets go through that, you have to be
very ... The work is to face yourself and look very clearly at what that's about. To
be as ruthlessly honest with yourself as you possibly can, in the house where
Scorpio lives. So, we'll say, so that's the main key of it. It's just that where it is, it's
where this is demanded, where hiding from yourself, about yourself in this
house is not useful. Consequently, people with Scorpio rising, I know so many
people with Scorpio rising, and the ones who are extraordinary are the ones who
go through things where they become ruthless about who they are. And they go
through a transformation, because in a relationship you have trouble, all kinds of
things happen, then you examine the relationship, you find your own part in it,
and then you're free.
And so, wherever Scorpio is where you have to go through that again and again.
Wherever there's difficulty, or blockage, or pain, it's extremely important that
you're able to do this.
Now, this is just because I did this for the fourth house. I want to do it for the
eighth house. I love Deborah Houlding's work. I'm sure all of you know her
website, Skyscript. It is spectacularly good and interesting, about all kinds of
things that you can't find anywhere else for the same level. So, eighth house
associations through history, I'm so glad I'm in this era, and not another one a
couple hundred years ago. Manilius is one of my favorite ancient astrologers,
doesn't say much about the eighth house. He says it's unfortunate, and the abode
of Typhon. Okay, not so friendly.
Firmicus Maternus, in the mid fourth century: The kind of death. And I do think
that that's true, but I do think that consciousness does change this, you know?
Anyway, I'll say more about that. And he says, "No other planet than the Moon
rejoices in this house, and then only in nocturnal charts." Nocturnal charts are
those where the sun is beneath the horizon, rather than above the horizon; you
know, born from dusk to dawn. "Debilitated and passive because it does not
aspect the ascendant. It was called the Gate of Hell." I mean, it's astounding how
I looked through all the traditional stuff for years, there's just nothing. You
wouldn't want to have planets in the eighth house. Al-Biruni, in the 10th century,
"Death, murder, poison, inheritance. Wife's property, expenditure, and poverty."
Lilly, "Death, wills; partner's money. Fear and anguish of mind." And Modern,
this is Deborah speaking, "Income, taxes, legacies, shared feelings, sex, birth and
death. Big business, insurance, and crime." I suppose the one thing is, that if I see
planets in awkward relationship to the eighth house, and somebody's going
through a kind of difficulty about money, or they're being sued, or they're being
threatened in some way, I do notice the eighth house. I say, "Pay attention, pay
attention." You know, get lots of protection around you. Make sure you know
what you're doing. Make sure you can trust the people that are on your side.
So, I do think it does carry these things. And oddly enough, Vedic astrology calls
it emotional liberation, and transforming our insecurities into strengths. I know

almost nothing about Vedic astrology, but I read that, and I thought, "Well, that's
interesting," because I do think it's true. I think when you're in a situation
represented by the eighth house, if you go in and you go in with courage, and
recognizing that you have no power for a period of time except your courage and
your willingness, then you transform your insecurities into strengths. I know a
lot of people, of course, with planets in the eighth house. And there is anxiety
around a lot of times, but lots of them recognize the anxiety, go through it, and
come out. But I don't know that you can easily avoid the anxiety, I think when
you have planets there, as far as I know.
Okay, so the part that is, to me, the most interesting, this (image) is on the ...
What do you call it? It's on the Altar of Verdun, in France, and I found it the
other day. And I thought it was fascinating. It says it's about rebirth. The whale is
apparently a symbol or rebirth, and I just really think it is very interesting, Jonah
and the whale. Let me read you this from a book on symbols: "He's an ark or
womb symbol of regeneration. And some scholars see the story of Jonah and the
whale as an allegory of the Babylonian captivity and deliverance of the Jews.
More plausibly, the belly of the whale represents the obscurity of initiation,
leading to a new, clarified sense of life."
Remember, after the eighth house is the ninth house. And at the end, I'm going to
speak about the progressed Moon. Well, not at the very end, but later, about the
progressed Moon, because when you go through the eighth house, the
progressed Moon, and you come into the ninth house, it's so often like you've
come out. And you're looking up this mountain, and now you can climb it, and
you couldn't have before you went through the eighth house because you didn't
have the resources that that eighth house gives you, to go up that mountain.
“In Matthew's gospel, Christ draws a parallel between Jonah's experience and his
own impending descent into the Earth and resurrection. And Jonah's burial
period of three days and nights could suggest a symbolism to the arc of the
Moon.” You know, those three days and nights, and that's interesting that
traditional astrology had the Moon connected with the eighth house. I think that
was all. It's just that I found it very interesting, because he goes into the belly of a
whale, and he comes out. And those of you who have gone into eighth house
experiences know that experience. You go into something, and in it, you're just
surviving. You are surviving, but when you come out, my lord, there's more of
you. There's more light.
Tony, you're there. Is there a problem? Are you okay, because you disappeared,
and now you've come back.
Tony: Oh, I just came in because we had a question that fits in right here. So, did you
finish your thought?
Darby: I have, yep.

Tony: Okay, great. So, this is from someone who says she has an eighth house stellium
in Virgo: Uranus, Pluto, Sun, Venus conjunct, and Pluto is opposing Chiron. And
she says, "I have lived death and life over and over, and at 53, I'm totally worn
out, not much fight left. I'd like to escape the eighth house energy, or somehow,
find the positives. Can one escape the eighth, or make something positive about
it?"
Darby: And are those degrees, those Virgo planets, late or early? What are the degree
areas?
Tony: I'll wait and let her type back in.
Darby: Because remember that Saturn has been in Sagittarius for almost two years, and
it's going to be there until the end of the year, so it's squaring Virgo planets. And
Chiron is in Pisces, and Neptune's in Pisces, so they're opposing those Virgo
planets. And so, it's been a very gruelling and long period, especially if you have
those planets in the eighth house. And so, I would suggest you, well, tell me if
it's part of the Saturn thing. And yes, my experience is, it's something about, I
wonder if maybe I can say this later, after we've looked at some of the charts.
It's something about, I have a sentence in my head lately. I keep saying it, and I
have to say it again, now: that life is suffering and beauty. I mean, I said it so
much in Germany, somebody put it on their website. "Darby's life is suffering
and beauty." And I went, I said, "Please, please change it." And I thought,
"Maybe that's true," but from my point of view, life is suffering and beauty. And
when you have so many planets in the eighth house, your ability to touch
beauty, to just tune in to the smallest possible moment of that, just that butterfly,
or that bird, or that dragonfly, or that plane, or, "What is it? Going across the
sky," and the ability to give yourself to it is so great.
But if you're trying to get things from other people or life, then the eighth house
is exhausting. And I think that's probably the thing that we get from it, to a point
where you absolutely have to stop. Remember, again and again, to stop asking
others to complete, it's so exhausting. The instinct, the background, the ancestral
background to rely on others is so great, or to look for others to get something.
And yet, all that eighth house, and you'll see some beautiful examples of it later,
something about an ability to get absolute, extraordinary beauty from something
so small, and so deep, is the gift of those planets.
So, maybe come back at the end, and we'll speak about it again.
Tony: Sure. And she said they are in early degrees, so I think she's-
Darby: It was last year, with a Saturn squared Neptune all year.
Tony: Yeah, so I can imagine she's exhausted, but maybe there is some, a break there.
And another attendee, Katherine, commented, "I guess there is no escaping the

eighth house experiences, but I understand how she would want some kind of
relief or peace." And I think everybody could read that. By the way, I just want to
say to folks, in case you didn't find it, when you do post a comment in the chat
window, you can choose to address it to just the panelists, that would just come
to me and Darby, or you can address it to all panelists and attendees, and then
everyone will see it if you'd like to share it.
And we have a couple more comments here. "Regarding Scorpio house, where
you need to be ruthlessly honest, would you say the same about the house where
Pluto is?"
Darby: I was wondering about that myself this morning, when I heard myself thinking
about that. I don't think it's the same, somehow, unless it's conjunct Mercury, of
course, or opposite Mercury. Then, yes, you know? So I think if a personal planet
is connected to Pluto, then yes. I think the house that Pluto is in takes you to
places where periodically, there is nothing, and you have to wait until something
appears again.
I'm thinking of a friend with it in the ninth, and he said he's gone through three
complete changes of the way he sees life, his perspective, starting with religion;
and now, certain philosophy. And between each of them, there's always a
twilight zone when it comes to Pluto. You go through an experience. The
experience ends, and you don't have the next one. And you're in this dark zone,
where nothing is happening at all. I call it a twilight zone. And then, the next
version starts appearing, and this is when you have Pluto. So, I think that's what
Pluto is. I don't know that it has the same demand for honesty that the other
does, but you know, it's an interesting thought.
I want to go back to say the Virgo thing, the key, I want to say that thing about,
with your planets in Virgo again. Just experiment with the rituals that, every
single day ... Tony, it keeps occasionally coming up and saying, "Your internet
connection is unstable." Can I ignore that?
Tony: Yeah.
Darby: I'd hate to leave.
Tony: Oh, yeah. No, I'll let you know if it becomes a problem. It's when you're seeing
that message, there's probably a little, tiny, we hear a little blip where we'll lose
like, one word, but it's happening really infrequently, so it's okay. You mostly
sound really great. The audio sounds really great.
Darby: Oh, good. I'm glad. Okay. I just wanted to say that, because Virgo is always
about rituals, the rituals you have, and always checking the habit patterns and
going back to the rituals. But also, with that Saturn squared Neptune, it's still
Saturn in Sagittarius, mutable signs just don't, under the pressure. And it is
exhausting when it's exhausting, but there are moments of seeing through, and

you have to look for them.
Tony: Thank you. Thanks for taking that question.
Darby: Okay. So now, the bridge, let me say something about this. The reason, the way I
see the eighth house is because, I don't know, years ago, I became very close, I
suppose about 25 years ago, I became very close to a friend, a woman. And over
time, I suddenly realized that the eighth house wasn't only about sexual
relationships. It was also about relationships where, because I realized that this
person knew me very deeply, and I knew this person very deeply. And at some
point, for some reason, I realized that this meant that either of us could, not
meaning to or meaning to, betray each other. Neither of us had secrets, like you
know, that were, I don't know, that could be, you know, like, "Oh, she's having
an affair with somebody."
It wasn't like that at all, but either of us could speak about each other to other
people, in a way that would be a betrayal of trust. And I just became so aware of
it, and she and I spoke about it. It was very interesting, because she was very
Plutonian, and I am too in some ways. And we spoke a lot about it, and over
time, I realized that, I put it this way, you meet in the eighth house. This is the
living room, or the parlour, or the meeting room where you all meet, and you're
all dressed up, you know? And you say, "Oh, hello," and, "He's cute, she's cute,
and that's interesting." And you have chats. But if you are to become real, if
you're to change each other, if you are to become intimate, you have to go into
the eighth house.
And you go into the bedroom and take your clothes off, I mean, literally, but it's
also not just literal. You go into another room, where you sit, and you share
secrets. You discover things about each other. You tell things to each other. You
reveal things, even if you don't tell things. You get to know things about each
other, that are very, that if you took them out of that room and gave them to
other people, you would be betraying this person.
So, I thought that the eighth house ... Now, the other thing is, that Hillman,
James Hillman, once said something quite extraordinary, probably in Suicide and
the Soul, it was so long ago that I read it. And he talked about this anecdote,
where the father was having the child jump off the stairs, into his arms. And he'd
say, "Come on, come on," and he'd catch him. And at one point, he dropped him,
and he said, "That's what betrayal is. Be careful of it," or something. And he said,
"And I won't do that again, but that's what betrayal is."
And I thought, but in all, in sexual relationships, and possibly financial, I don't
know that it's in the same way, the possibility of, and the feeling of betrayal is so
connected to sex and love. This thing is about this big, just an inch and a half, or
something, and it's in a British museum. It was recently discovered, and it's the
oldest image of two people having sex. And you can't tell who's male and who's
female, and as they say now when they take you around, and you can't tell if

they're both male or both female. This is the modern British museum speakers,
which I think is great, but there's a tremendous intimacy in this.
And this is the place where ... Okay, let me just say, how do I say it? If you are
going to have a sexual life, an intimate life, a life of intimacy with others, then
you have to know that you risk betrayal. And my understanding and experience,
as well as watching other people is, and as long as you are willing to know that
loss and betrayal are part of intimacy, then you can have intimacy and erotic
friendships, meaning there's this excitement; or in an intimate relationship,
sexual, erotic that way. And it can go all the way to the end of your life. You can
have it forever.
One of my closest, I mention her often, she was 94 when she died. And she
taught me in her late 80s, that the only way that you can still fall in love at 90,
which she did, of course, they didn't do much about it, but they had a really
great flirtation, you know, dance. She said, "As long as you're willing to be
betrayed. As long as you're willing to lose, as long as you're willing to have your
heart broken," is the way that she would say it. And so, I have known people
who, early on, have been hurt or betrayed by life and others, and have not let
that happen again. And that's valid, but you have to know that you're also
shutting yourself off from certain experiences. And people with planets in the
eighth house probably have that tested more directly than other people.
Somebody mentioned this to me the other day. This is very ancient, too, and I
don't have the reference. Sorry, it's somewhere else, but sex is called "the little
death." Isn't that amazing? And of course, all of us who have had sex know why.
There is a point where you're gone, and then you come back; gone, and then you
come back. You go, you're gone, and you come back. You know, and when you
come back, you're different. You're just different, may not be hugely every time,
but you're different, slightly different. All the thoughts are different. All the
things are rearranged. Your body is different. And so, sex and death.
And I found these recently, and I think they're so beautiful. They're tombs from
Italy. One is Etruscan and the other is just Italy. And they're couples who loved
each other, and had these images put on their sarcophaguses. They were buried
together. Isn't that extraordinary? Look at that, so beautiful, sex and death
together.
Okay, this is Jung, and this is what I was saying earlier. "For two personalities to
meet is like mixing two chemicals." This is Jung, but, "For two personalities to
meet is like mixing two chemical substances. If there is any combination at all,
both are transformed." And I think that's eighth house.
Somebody was asking me recently, and I was asking them, is sex the fifth house
or the eighth house? Fifth house or the eighth house, and we went back and
forth. And I suppose you can, I don't know, but I think it's eighth house. I do. I
think your attitude to it, your experience with it, your initiation to sex is eighth

house. I think, if you look at your eighth house and go back to your first sexual
experience, you will find something there in the eighth house; how you went
towards it, how you were taken towards it. There's something that happens in
the eighth house, and yes, with sex, but also, remember, this is with friendship
intimacy as well, with any kind of real intimacy, where you have to let go. You
have to be willing to risk, and be willing to lose. And there's something about
going through this loss of guardedness that offers you a transformation once
you've gone through it.
There's something about having planets in the eighth house, that you have to,
again, I said this about the house that Scorpio's in, but my experience with
people, my friends with planets in the eighth house, you periodically have to go
through periods of absolute cleansing to get out, so that the world is clear again.
It's like a white-water rapid, some of the time.
Oh, yes. And I'll stop again, I'll ask, there was a question over here. Is that, there
was something over in the corner here, “the willingness to be betrayed, reminds
me of the necessary abandonment to experience pleasure.” Yes, the little death.
It's true, isn't it? I mean, it's even like having a glass of wine, you know, almost. I
mean, I don't know, maybe not a glass. Well, no, sometimes a glass of wine,
schoong, you're gone. You know, you're free. And I've noticed that it's something
about being able to give over control. And perhaps the house Pluto is in is where
one tries to hold onto control, but you can't, in the end. And the eighth house is
your ability, how difficult or how easy it is for you to give up, absolutely give up
control.
And then, the ability to go through that, and to be reborn again, gets you into the
ninth house. Tony, was there something that someone was asking?
Tony: That was great. I just wanted to say, we've had a few more questions come in
that are more about specific chart interpretation of people's specific placements.
And we'll definitely try to get those in, folks. I thought we might save those until
Darby gets through the bulk of what she's prepared for us, if that's okay.
Darby: Of this part, yeah. I would like to get this, and then, looking at the other parts
when you have something that is similar, or you know, then we'll do it there.
And then, I'll give time towards the end, as well.
Tony: There is one question though, that I think you might be addressing here as part
of your material. She's really asking about projection with the eighth house, and
kind of, how can you tell when it's you in the eighth house, and how can you tell
when it's the other person.
Darby: Oh isn't that exhausting? Yes, oh, God. I mean, there's no, when you fall in love
with somebody, you find God in them. You find deity. You find perfection in
them. And then, once you get to know them, you get to know all of the stuff
underneath the rose, I say, the worms, and the gooey bits that make the rose so

beautiful. And I think, when you're having difficulty with another person, if it's
about money or betrayal, a feeling of betrayal of some kind, where there was
intimacy, intimacy because you trusted money to them. Intimacy because you
trusted your body to them, you trusted secrets to them. And it goes bad, I think
you always have to find, to free yourself, what part of yourself let that happen, to
find out what about yourself. You see what I'm saying?
I think that the eighth house is there to destroy your innocence. There are other
places where you have to keep your innocence, but there's part of us, to become
full, we have to lose our innocence about ourselves in relationship to other
people. So, if you still are saying it was only him, or only her, I was innocent in
this, then I would imagine you have not done completely, the eighth house work.
I think that thing about two chemicals, there's this thing that, if you have a
relationship, and sometimes people say to me, "He's not interested in me at all,
but I am in him," or, "He's interested in me, but I'm not in him," that's not true.
If one person has a strong relationship with another person, the other person, it's
happening to the other person too, but on a different level, on an unknown level.
So, the main thing I can say about it is, if you're having a difficulty with someone
with whom you have shared something intimate, and you have not found
yourself, how you are, a version of what you're seeing in them, then you're still
keeping your innocence. And I think that doesn't allow you to get to the next
stage of yourself, which it has to do with wisdom, the ninth house. Does that
make sense? Is that a sort of answer? We'll try and answer that more, yeah?
Tony: Thank you. We did have a clarification about something you said earlier, to the
prior comment on absolute cleansing. What are some examples of the type of
cleansing you're referring to?
Darby: With the eighth, going through purification?
Tony: Yes.
Darby: I was thinking of the Virgo when I said purification. I think it is. I'm thinking of a
friend of mine who has four planets in the eighth, and she gets caught up in
things happening with other people. And you know, grumbling. And I just
watched her, when she comes back. And she and I had difficulty once, years and
years ago, and both disappeared (Darby makes a grumbling sound here to
indicate the difficulty).
But when she came back, the clarity, the cleanness of her response was so great.
So over time, I've asked her about it. And she said what she does, is she goes in,
and she goes right to the place of rage, and betrayal, and hatred, and jealousy,
and resentment. And she goes all the way down to feel every one of them. And
she said she looks always, at jealousy, and envy, and when she gets there and
finds out what she's envying, and what she's not getting that she wants, she can
come back up again.

And I've seen her, I've known her for 32 years now, and I've seen her go through
these things maybe five or six times. And she disappears. She just disappears.
You don't know where she is. And when she comes back, she's clear, like a shiny
thing, so I mean that kind of purification. And always, always, you have to look
at jealousy and envy when you're dealing with problems that happened in
intimacy, that always have to do with your eighth house.
I'm looking at it. I spent seven days once, in Zurich, at a Jungian conference. I
don't know, she was just teaching, and the guy said, "Come over, and you've got
to hear this. It's about envy." And I said, "Envy and jealousy, I don't do those
very much." And he said, "Come on over. You'll find you do, and you didn't
know it." And he was training as a Jungian analyst, and I spent seven days, and
then I came back. And I thought, "Anyone who thinks they don't do envy and
jealousy is lying to themselves."
But now, the difference is, when there's a difficulty, I can look, and I can say,
"What's going on? Ah, envy. I'm envying them," because it's not envy at all. I'm
just rather judgmental about them, or whatever it is, or however it is. And there's
something about, when you go through an eighth house experience, there's
always something around, as far as I know; resentment, envy, jealousy.
So, let us go a bit further. This is an image that they say could be Ereshkigal, you
know, the sister of Aphrodite, of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess that is
Venus. And Ereshkigal is the goddess in the Underworld. And I want to say
something about ...
Ereshkigal and Nergal are the Mars and Venus of early Mesopotamia. And
there's a point, there's a moment, I said this in the one recently, on longing and
wanting, I think, there's a point at which Nergal is told to go down into the
Underworld, to bring some food to Ereshkigal because she can't come up to the
feast they're having in Heaven. And besides, he's being such a pain that the gods
want to get rid of him for a while, because he's Mars, you know. He's really
aggressive.
So he goes down, and they have this, they look at each other, and they go
passionately to bed. He grabs her tresses, her hairdo, and they love each other
wildly for three days. And then he gets bored or something, and he goes back up,
and she goes "Aaah," and Marduk, who is Zeus, sends him down again. And
then, he says, "No, you've got to go down. She's causing too much trouble."
"Oh, yeah," and he goes back down, and they mate again because they are mates
for life. For life. They never are unfaithful to each other again. And that is not
true with Aphrodite and Ares, or with Venus and Mars in Rome. Their
relationship is not Underworld, whereas these two are. And I think that's the
difference, it's something about relationships. I think you can be Aphrodite and
Ares, and have affairs and everything, oh, yes.

And you can be Venus and Mars, and go to the temple, and be perfectly
respectable in the Roman sense. But you can also have a relationship with
somebody that periodically hits something so intense, that you can have a
marriage that goes on for 65 years. 70 is the oldest that I've heard, but all the
way, I don't know all the way. You know, I'm not in my 90s yet, or 80s yet, but all
the way. If it has this quality of the ability to transform each other, and the ability
to confront each other in ways where you absolutely have to look at yourself,
which equally, has an erotic side to it, then you go to places that are represented
by Ereshkigal and Nergal.
But if you don't want to ....ah, you know sometimes women say to me, "You
know, all men are little boys." Well, I've never experienced that, because I'm not
motherly in that way, so men are never little boys to me. They don't do that with
me. They may with other people, unless I'm being a little girl, then we all do it.
But there's something about, when the eighth house is not about, it's not about
when you become mother to a man. Sometimes, we get caught, because you have
children, and the husband, and everyone's busy, and you're not paying attention.
But if you're in a relationship with any length of time, what I would say, you
have to periodically make sure the eighth house is okay.
I want to say it that way. Make sure that you're at each other clearly, demanding
clarity, demanding nakedness from each other, if you see what I mean. It's the
eighth house that you look to, to say, "Are we being clear? Are we being true?
Are we staying at the edge?" Sometimes, you don't want to. You want to turn
into something very cozy, and just carry on, but it's your eighth house that tells
you where you have to go to get this experience of intensity with other people.
Now, I want to, where are we on time? Oh, we're nearly an hour. Okay, so now, I
want to look at some charts, unless there's another question. And look at some
charts for the rest of the time, sort of, but using them to talk about what we're
talking about now, but just let me ask if there's a question or a problem with
what I'm saying again. Or do I need to say something more?
Tony: So far, nothing beyond the more specific chart interpretation questions, Darby.
Darby: Okay. Well, I'll definitely get to those when I go along. I just have to show you
this. It's not very deep. The reason I have to share, I love Marsilio Ficino. I spent a
lot of time with him in the '90s. And what I love about this, if I do this, if I put the
cursor up, can you see it, Tony?
Tony: Yes, we can see the cursor. So, we can see it pointing, yeah.
Darby: Okay, good. He's got Venus, he's a Scorpio, with sun in the ninth. And he's got
Venus and Virgo in the eighth house, and he was a priest, and he was astrologer
to the Pope, to rulers, the Medici family. And the reason I have to show this to
you is because one of the things, he battled with his sexuality when he was
younger. And then, he won, and he became a celibate priest. And he was

celibate. He didn't mess around at all. And one of the things he said about Venus
is, "Venus is but Diana to me."
In other words, Diana is the virgin goddess, and only somebody with Venus and
Virgo in the eighth house could say, "Venus, the goddess of love and sexuality, is
actually a virgin goddess to me." And I wonder was he joking? You know, was
this a joke, or was he serious? I don't know, I think he might've been serious.
Tony: Yeah, it's hard to say knowing, if he knew his chart.
Darby: Oh, he knew his chart. He definitely knew his chart, yeah. He definitely did.
Now, he had something different. He thought he had Mars in Aquarius, you
know, he's 29.47. And I think, did he think he had Jupiter in Virgo or something,
you know, because they were calculating in a different, they didn't have the
accuracy that we did. But he knew he had Venus in Virgo in the eighth house,
and I've used the house system that he used.
So, I don't imagine that everybody who has Venus in Virgo in the eighth house
chooses celibacy, but you can understand why he might do that. Now, I wonder
if you know John Dee. He was called The Queen's Conjuror. And I would
suggest that you look in, there's a wonderful article about him in Skyscript, in
Deb Houlding's web thing, or whatever it's called, her Skyscript. And it's really
brilliantly done. And he's an extraordinary man, John Dee. He was born in 1527.
Pluto was still in Capricorn. You know, Pluto was in Capricorn from 1520 to
1534. And Neptune was in Pisces, as it is now. And I wonder who's being born
now, to powerful people.
And he had Sun in Cancer in the eighth house, and Jupiter conjunct Mercury in
the eighth house. And I just want to read you certain things about this. Listen to
this about Jupiter conjunct Mercury. He had one of the greatest libraries in
Europe. It was absolutely phenomenal. He was extraordinarily generous with it.
People would come to his house, and he'd lend them books, as many as they
wanted. And what's equally interesting, I think, and his library was just taken
away, because in the end, he ended up in poverty. And he may not have ended
up unhappy. He was taken care of by one of his daughters. He had six children.
He was taken care of by one of his daughters to his death, but he ended up in
poverty and obscurity. And in his lifetime, he was hugely powerful. He was The
Queen's Conjuror, and this was Queen Elizabeth I, Henry's daughter.
And this is a painting. I think he got caught up. He got caught up with
somebody named Edward Kelley, who was tricky, and took him down a garden
path that wasn't good for him in the long run. He became fascinated with the
occult. He was an astrologer. He was a magician. He said that the world was
magic, it was generated. In his library, he had Copernicus' Commentariolus. And
he announced it. How do I say? He put it forward as the truth. Copernicus died
in 1543, and did not want his Commentariolus, on the fact that we're going around
the Sun, and the Moon is going around us, as opposed to being a flat surface

where everything is going around us. That's how people had it before, right?
Yeah.
And by the time he was older, Copernicus' stuff was going around Europe. And
he said it was the truth. This was the truth. And he had books in his library, he
had Placidus, he had Kepler. Oh, sorry, Kepler's after him. He had many, many
ancient texts that he read and commented on. And what's interesting about this
is, I think, with his Mercury conjunct Jupiter in the eighth house, he was
communicating with the ancestors. He was communicating with those who were
dead. When he read these people, he felt as though he was communicating with
them.
And I think, when you have planets in the eighth house, I call it the house of the
remembered dead; whereas the twelfth house is the house of the unremembered
dead. The unremembered – who you only hear stories about. The eighth house is
when you go visit, and where you have communication with those ancestors.
And he communicated with them, and he conjured, and he communicated with
the dead. And he communicated with the dead, literally, by having a fabulous
library of 4,000 books. What else have I wanted to say about him? There's
something else-
Tony: I just, I like that image, Darby, because you know, when we think of
communicating with the dead, we think of psychic stuff, too. But I like what you
just said, about communicating with the dead through all of those books, and
just another way of thinking about it more literally, I guess.
Darby: And it's trine Neptune as well, you know, it's trine Neptune, I mean, that
combination. It's trine Neptune, he had books from absolutely everywhere. He
was so blessed with the ability to be able to do that. And equally, he was
generous beyond breath. And consequently, he lost everything, and as I say,
ended up alone and in poverty, but he was in his 80s when that happened. And
he had an extraordinary life, and met absolutely everyone, and brought everyone
to his house. The Queen came to his house.
And also, when he was young, when the plague was there, he was sure he was
going to die. So, he wrote incredibly fast, trying to get everything down, and
making sure everything was okay. And then, he didn't die. He lived another 50
years, in fact. So, he went through death, and came out, and he was not afraid,
which is quite extraordinary. Can you imagine how many people were terrified
in the plague? But he wasn't. Now, I'm going to see, there's something else.
Tony: Sheila just added that he has Mars in Scorpio in the twelfth, ruling the fourth,
you know, speaking to the point you were just making.
Darby: I know. And I looked into that, too, the end of life. I know, I thought of that. It's
trine the Sun, and it's sextile the Moon. And I thought about that. The ruler of the
fourth is in the twelfth, in Scorpio. And so, I've never read anything about the

last years. He wrote diaries a lot of his life but then he stopped. But I know that
he loved his daughter, and that she stayed with him and took care of him until
the end. And I suppose I can't help hoping that ending up in poverty was not a
horrible thing for him. I don't know.
You know, you'd think of it, that it would be, because he was so powerful. But
when Elizabeth died, James came in. And James was really anti-occult. And he
made laws against spells, anyone using spells, or any kind of magic at all. At
first, the law was, when Elizabeth was there, the law was if anyone dies using
magic, then you're condemned. But you can use magic, as long as they don't die.
Then James made one after another, one rule after another, until the end, he was
in real danger. And he was in jail a couple times, you know, because of his occult
side.
Also this, listen to this. He gave so much money to other people, money to her,
time to her, Elizabeth. And she almost gave nothing back. Dee, throughout her
rein, she had promised Dee much, but delivered very little. He'd spent a fortune
of his own money in service to her, but he never saw it returned. And he's called,
by scholars today, "An inspired melancholic."
And as far as I know, from what I've heard from the scholars that I know, he
didn't end up in misery, but he did end up in poverty with nothing. And yes, he
could've chosen it. You know, what is it Dale Carnegie said, "A rich man who
dies with his money is a poor man indeed." So, perhaps because he was wise, he
did not mind as much as it would look. You know, he did have Venus in the
ninth house, and we would wish that he was wise.
Tony: Imogen asks if there's a biography of him that you might recommend.
Darby: I don't know. I probably got one over here, but I'd have to go look for it. If you
look on Skyscript, the woman who wrote the ... Where did I put those pieces of
paper? The woman who wrote the article that I'm talking about, probably has a
bibliography. Her name is Sue Toohey, but if you look on Deborah Houlding's
Skyscript, you'll see it. And it's called, "John Dee - The Inspired Melancholic."
Tony: I'll find the link for you, Imogen, while Darby's talking, and I'll pop it into the
chat window, okay?
Darby: Oh, that's great. That's really great, yeah. Okay. So, let's look. Oh, yes.
Apparently, this painting, he was conjuring for her. And the painting, the
original painting has skulls all across the floor, going from Elizabeth to him. And
when they cleaned up the painting, they actually saw them, but they sort of
disappeared, but they were there originally.
This guy, Kelley, brought him into all kinds of occult things that were very, very
dubious, and convinced him that his wife should sleep with him. So for a period
of time, his wife, Dee's wife was sleeping with him and with Kelley. But then, in

the end, Dee said, "No, no, no. That's too much." So, he really did experiment
with all kinds of wild things that you wouldn't think of today.
I was in Germany, and I heard about something called polyamory, where people
have several love affairs, and they're all sleeping with each other, and they're
totally open about it. Well, he was doing that. He was very much ahead of his
time. Okay, what I wanted to show you here was Galileo.
But really, I want to show you these three, because Copernicus at the bottom,
Galileo, and Kepler, all three have planets in the eighth house. I find that really
interesting. I looked at lots of physicists, and all of them except Einstein had
planets in the eighth house. Richard Feynman had planets in the eighth house.
Somebody I'll show you now had planets in the eighth house. It's really strange.
And I kept thinking, "How is that?" Copernicus, you know, Copernicus was very
shy, as you know. He didn't want his work talked about, because he was afraid
of being made fun of; not because he was afraid of not being believed. He was
afraid of being made fun of. And he had Venus in the eighth house as well. And
he never married, but he had a mistress. His housekeeper was his mistress, and
he had three or four children by her. And they were very close and very intimate,
apparently. And he had Mercury, depending on the house system you use, I'm
using Placidus here, it's either in the seventh or right on the cusp of the eighth.
And look, Galileo as well, Sun conjunct Pluto in the eighth. Now, Galileo, he was
challenged by the Inquisition, and he had to run away and hide in a castle. And
he actually dared, he took on the Pope. I don't know if you can say it that way.
And that Sun conjunct Pluto in the eighth house, so powerful, so powerful. You
cannot not go as deep as it gets. You cannot not cultivate danger, if you have Sun
conjunct Pluto in the eighth house.
And Kepler, who I know less about, I just suddenly realized, had Uranus on the
cusp, and then Sun and Venus, also in the eighth house. And again, he's one of
the greats. And I don't know if you know this man, Rupert Sheldrake. His chart
is public, so I'm using it. I know him, that's why I say it. I'm not using it because I
know him, I'm using it because he put his chart out in public. It's on Astrodienst.
And I've known him a long time, because he lives, you know, I'm in the same
section of town. And he's a physicist. No, he was trained, I think, as a biologist.
Anyway, he's an alternative, he challenges science. He's written a book called ...
Dawkins wrote a book called The God Delusion, because Dawkins is challenging
religion, and saying it's rubbish, and everybody shouldn't have it. And Rupert
wrote a book called The Science Delusion. Now, he's a scientist who challenges
science. And he's extremely courageous, and he just does it. He's courageous in
the Gemini, Cancer sense. He just does it, and the Moon in Capricorn sense, and
the Scorpio rising sense. He doesn't make noise about it. He just does it.
And he's been very fortunate in being able to do this. And he's got a very

powerful voice. And now, he was born in 1942, so he's in his mid 70s. And I
haven't been able to see him for a while, because he's been very busy, because
what he's doing is, he's writing down everything. He wants it there. He wants
everything written down about what he has found out about science. And one of
the things he has found out about science, and I'm putting in quotes, only
because it hasn't been, it's not a law yet, is that there aren't laws, that things
change; that there aren't absolute laws of science, that something changes, and
moves, and you might almost say evolves.
So, he might say, "I didn't mean 'evolves,' Darby." I don't know, but that there are
no laws. There is something else moving, and changing, and over time, we
discover the new versions of things. And he's very, very well loved, and popular.
And his main thing is teaching children to be open to things, not to shut down
their minds. Look at what, do you see what I'm seeing here? I mean, look at this,
that Mercury, to dare to listen. And he's got two sons who are wonderful, and do
extraordinary things as well. They're now in their late 20s, mid 20s, or something.
And it's about going, he goes as deep as you can. And yet, when he speaks, it's so
simple, and so kind of, almost light. And yet, when you come away, you see life,
you see more than you saw before. Very Jupiterian eighth house. Do any of you
have Jupiter in the eighth? I'm just curious, suddenly.
I do, in my experience, if you have Jupiter in the eighth, I'm going to show you
somebody else that has it, in a short time.
Tony: Oh, interesting, two people already. And one person, I'm trying to figure out,
Doctor Grove, can you share with us your first name? And she or he is
describing a complex pattern here, and I can't tell if the Jupiter is in the eighth or
not. Maybe you could clarify that for us, that would be great.
Darby: I tell you one of the things that I've learned.
Tony: Oh, my goodness. There are lots of Jupiter in the eighth. That's really cool.
Darby: I've known many, many old people. You know, I've cultivated very old people in
my life, just forever. And all the ones that I've known with Jupiter in the eighth
have gone to death quite pleased, quite fine. You know, so it is really, I've only
known one person who committed suicide, and he had Jupiter in the eighth. And
we were utterly shocked. We never imagined that it was possible. We were just
shocked, because it was so awful.
But he wasn't afraid, I guess. He was a Scorpio with Jupiter in the eighth, and
something in him wasn't afraid in that way. But most of the people I've known,
when it's come, they have seen some sort of blessing that makes them unafraid.
A friend of mine who had it said, "Tell everyone I love that I am not afraid." And
then, she went off, and had the operation and died.

So, it's very, there is a blessing in it. It's true, and whatever transformations you
go to. And he's gone through the eighth house thing, Rupert, that he's been
slammed by science, and he's come out again and again. And he's asked to teach
in so many different places, even though people like Dawkins condemn him.
The difference between Jupiter in the eighth and Saturn in the eighth is very
great. Jung, in Placidus, has Jupiter in the eighth. In Koch, he has it in the ninth.
And I usually use Koch, but I've seen it in the eighth; whereas Freud has Moon
and Saturn in the eighth. And somebody said to me yesterday, "And perhaps
that is why Freud never quite got over the sense of betrayal with Jung, whereas
Jung said about Freud, 'Without Freud, there would be no Jung.'" He absolutely
knew that Freud was so important to him.
And I think it may, I'm not sure, I don't know this to be true, but I think it may,
the intensity of having Moon the eighth and Saturn in the eighth, he felt like he'd
found someone, a companion. Can you imagine how it must've been, to meet
somebody who understood what he said, with that incredible brain of his? And
then, when it fell apart and broke, the sense of loss must have been very great.
You know, he lived to be 93, but he lived with a lot of pain, because he had
throat cancer for a lot of that. Yes, he's very Plutonian. He's got Venus conjunct
Pluto.
But it's interesting, he's got Moon in the eighth. And whenever you talk about
sex, and hysteria, and you know, the problem that women had around sexuality.
And it's interesting about him, because I don't enjoy his, I don't like his theories
as much as I do Jung, but he writes so much better. And he gave himself with
such intensity to his work. And he lived to be very old. And I remember learning
Jung, that if you have Saturn in the eighth, I don't know if this is true, you hold
onto life. He had something to say, and he was going to say it beyond death, and
he did. Extraordinary richness.
And I think Saturn in the eighth, my experiences of people, there's a kind of

vulnerability, that when you get hurt or betrayed, the tendency to want to not let
that ever happen again is very, very strong; to not want anyone to get that close
to you. When I was young, I read that you either had hundreds of love affairs, or
none, you know, the extreme. And of course, sometimes that's true, and
sometimes it's not, but if it's many, it's probably because the one is trying to
break down that thing that shuts down because of the fear of being vulnerable.
You know, Saturn is where we are humbled. I always say you have to check
every day, your Saturn. Check every day. Are you paying attention to your
Saturn? It's something we check every day. And when it's in the eighth house,
the fear of being humiliated, I think, is very, very strong. And so, the courage to
dare to say things, to write things, and to have intimacy, I think, is enormous.
And I imagine, because the gifts of Saturn are so great when you finally get
them, I imagine that in his old age, he got the gifts of the knowledge that he had
given to so many people.

I know lots of people with Moon in the eighth house, and all of them have to
deal, at some point, with their own jealousy or with somebody else's. And
because they're people I know and love, they're able to talk about it. I'm sure
there are people with Moon in the eighth, and they really think it's other people,
it's not them. Probably wasn't them. The ones I happen to know, I can say, "And,"
and at some point they will say, "Oh, yeah. I know. It's me too."
But when you have Moon in the eighth, emotional jealousy and competition is
part of who you are. It's part of who you are. Yeah, it's who you are, and also, the
ability to have such wonderful intimacy with another is so great with Moon in
the eighth. It's paradoxical, because on the one hand, Moon in the eighth, and on
the other hand, Saturn. So it's very paradoxical.
Now, I want to show you two people with Moon in the eighth. One is Henry
VIII, and the other is Martin Luther, both who were around all this period. I love
this period, and also because Pluto was in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces from
1520 to 1534. So, I know this period really well because it's a historical period that
I'm interested in.
What's interesting is, Henry VIII had Moon in Aries in the eighth house, and he
cut off the heads of his wives. I mean, you couldn't make it more literal, Moon in
Aries in the eighth. And what did he do? He cut their heads off. Good God.
What's interesting is, he's got, now, the eighth house, ruled by Mars in this case,
and Mars is in Virgo, and in the first. And it's squared to Neptune, though
Neptune wasn't around at the time, but it's squared to Neptune. Neptune was
around, but it wasn't for him. And it's squared to Jupiter. It's in a T-square, and
its trine to Uranus, but the main thing is this, I thought, the square to Neptune
and Jupiter.
He had an idea. He had such a strong idea. He wanted to carry on his father's
legacy, his father, who had made England great. And the only way he could do
that, he thought, was to have a son. And that became a kind of obsession for him.
He had to have a son. And because he couldn't have a son, he just went from
wife to wife. But he cut off some of their heads, and in the end, undid himself.
And in the end, his daughter became Queen and ruled England …
Now, I'm sorry-
Tony: I'm sorry, Darby. Could you just repeat that sentence about his daughter? It cut
off just a little bit.
Darby: Okay. His daughter, Elizabeth I, the one who we were looking at with John Dee,
his daughter was one of the greatest queens that England ever had. He was
obsessed with having his woman, his wife, give him a son yet he wiped out...
And in the end, his daughter became Queen, and she was one of greatest queens
England has ever had. It’s very paradoxical and bizarre, isn't it?

Tony: It is.
Darby: That his woman … in the eighth.
Tony: Yeah, Darby. You're cutting out a lot. I wonder if you can just check to make sure
that no one in the house is using the internet.
Darby: I would have no idea how to find out.
Tony: Okay.
Darby: Yeah, I mean, there's certainly no one in this place.
Tony: Oh, yeah. So, Stephen's not online, right?
Darby: No, no, no. He doesn't go online, as you know.
Tony: Okay, that's what I thought. That's what I thought. Well, it sounds like you're
back now. For some reason, that Elizabeth story didn't want to come out.
Darby: Oh, really. Okay, well, we'll leave her out then.
Tony: We did-
Darby: yeah?
Tony: Sorry, go ahead. I'll let you finish your statement, and then we had a question.
Darby: Yeah. Okay, he also has Moon in the eighth house. Also has that kind of
intensity, but he was a monk, or a priest, and he wasn't going to marry. But in the
end, you know, he was rescuing the women who were being, the Protestant
Reformation, which he was one of the ones who began, got a bit too wild. And
women were being raped and murdered in the monasteries, and somebody
wrote from one of the monasteries and said, "Please come and rescue us." So, he
sent a friend of his to deliver herring, and they delivered herring to the convent.
And then, hide nuns, in the herring bag, in the herring, what do you call it?
Boxes? Herring bins, and they escaped. And he ended up marrying. He didn't
want to. He didn't think he should, but his house was a mess, and she had a
dream that they were meant for each other. And they ended up having six
children, and he ended up saying she was the treasure of his life.
Now, look at the difference. Also Moon in the eighth, but in his case, Mars is in
Scorpio, and Saturn's in Scorpio, and Venus is in Scorpio. You wouldn't think
that he would be the one who ended up incredibly happily married, very well
married. Both of them have Moon in the eighth. She was very headstrong. He

said she was his, oh, I don't know, she was the one who ran him. He said some
version of that. You know, she was his master, sort of. And she was, financially,
she made his life work, and emotionally, she made his life work.
So, both had (Moon in the) eight, one cut off the heads of the women, and the
other one said that she was the smartest thing that had ever happened to him;
very interesting. And the question has to do with, I think, what's the difference
between Moon in the eighth and Moon in Scorpio.
Tony: Correct, yeah.
Darby: Yes, what is the difference? In my experience in Moon in Scorpio, and I have a lot
of friends with it, there's a kind of ... A friend of mine said, 40 years ago, "Why do
people call me the wooden Indian?" She had Moon in Scorpio in the seventh, and
Sun in Aries. And I said, "Maybe because when you feel very deeply, you don't
show it." And we laughed.
And then, I've known other Moon in Scorpio since, and there's an ability, one of
the things about Moon in Scorpio that I love is that when you're with them, you
know that you can be in pain, and they're not going to try and fix you, and say,
"Oh, no, you should feel fine, blah, blah, blah." They're going to let you be in
pain. It's very restful, and it's very healing.
They incarnate, I say, to a mother who is struggling with something very private,
and they carry that. They carry other people's pain with them. Now, Moon in the
eighth, the people I know with Moon in the eighth are not silent like that. They're
Moon in Aries, Moon in Gemini, and they talk, they move. They attract complex
emotional situations, but they operate like the Moon in Aries, and Taurus, and
Gemini, and Cancer, whatever. Do you see what I'm saying? They attract envy.
They have to deal with envy. They have to deal with jealousy. They have to deal
with dangerous situations periodically, financially complex situations, but they
operate like the Moon; not with this silence that Moon in Scorpio has. You know,
Moon in Scorpio tests you very deeply, before they know if you're going to be
their friend. And once you're their friend, you're their friend for life. That's it. It's
different with Moon in the eighth.
Is that it?
Tony: Thank you.
Darby: Okay. Oh, yes. Now listen. I can’t read it, because I've got the chat thing on top of
it.
Tony: I can read it out loud if you want.
Darby: Okay, please.

Tony: "In speaking about his friend who died," and this is Michel de Montaigne, "'I was
so used to being his double in all places and in all things, that I feel no more than
half of myself. There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss
him.'"
Darby: Okay. Look at that. He's got Pluto conjunct Mars and Venus in the eighth house.
And he wrote about his friendships. He had extraordinary friendships, and he
wrote about his friendships. And he wrote on friendship. And he wrote some of
the greatest works on friendship. And he wrote essays, and he started the notion
of essays. But his ability to feel so deeply with his friend, and it had nothing to
do with sexuality; it was pure friendship. But his ability to feel one with another
person was absolutely extraordinary. And I think that … "I feel no more than half
myself. There's no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss him."
And I think that's one of the gifts of having planets in the eighth house, when
you dare to feel them that intensely. And he is a Pisces, after all. The ability to
feel ... And because of this man, he was able to write about friendship in a way
that nobody had ever written about it before.
So, I don't know. It's the combination. He never wrote a word about his wife, and
yet, he apparently had a very long and satisfying marriage, as far as we know.
We don't know what she thought, but he's known throughout for his capacity for
friendship. And there might've been something else I wanted to say, but I don't.
Tony: And I think, isn't that the Aquarius shining through as well. I think of Aquarius
as being such great friendship energy.
Darby: Oh, yes. Oh, thank you so much, because I knew there was something else I
wanted to say. Yes, because it's in Aquarius, the combination of ... Yes, because
when you look at that Mars, Pluto, you'd think it'd be, you know ... I don't know.
You wouldn't think it would be about friendship because it's so deep, but
because it's an Aquarius, it's the intensity. Yeah, exactly.
Tony: And Dorian points out, "And Moon in the eleventh."
Darby: And Moon in the eleventh, I know. And interestingly enough, squared, so is that
why the loss, as well, he suffered that loss.
Tony: Yeah, the square. Mars, Moon.
Darby: Yeah.
Tony: Also, Imogen says, "Also, no planets in Gemini, which rules the twelfth. Maybe
he felt an absence, or need of a twin."
Darby: Oh, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting?
Tony: And someone else points out, "Plus the Moon," oh, yeah. We said that one, the

Moon in the eleventh.
Darby: Yeah. And also, oh, no, you know what else I was thinking about it, because the
rulers of Aquarius, Saturn and Uranus, are on his ascendant. That's the other
thing I thought. His double, no more than half himself. It's almost like he
identified so fully, and he did this with other friends in his lifetime too, and
wrote about them as well. But this was the first. It's as if that friend became him,
and when the friend died, he died. And I think it's because of that conjunction on
the ascendant as well.
Tony: Right. So interesting.
Darby: So intense, yeah. He wrote other things, too, about the misery of life, and the
pain of it, and that life is about despair and pain. In the end, he was quite
cheerful, but he did it like Schopenhauer, through music and art. They felt that if
you, that more than religion, music and art were the ways of making life
beautiful, because life was so painful. But he's got, you know, Sun in Pisces,
Neptune in Pisces, Saturn conjunct Uranus on the ascendant, three planets in the
eighth house. But he found a way to make life beautiful, and he ended up quite
serene, which is lovely.
Now, I'm showing her because I want to say something about Neptune in the ...
Sorry, where am I? Where are they? Okay ... I wanted to say something about
Neptune there. These two people, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre had,
I don't think they were ever physical lovers, but they had a spiritual, or
affectional, or something love that was extraordinary, and intellectually fed both
of them, hugely. And I remember when I was studying astrology in the '60s, that
somebody said, "If you have Neptune in the eighth," well, this is what they said.
"You may not have sex a lot in your life, but the sex you have will be fabulous,
and you can see someone in a room, across the room, and have a connection that
is orgasmic." I don't think Isabel Hickey said "orgasmic," probably. She did have
Scorpio rising, she might have, but she was saying something like that.
And I remember saying this to a Scorpio who had Neptune in the eighth once,
about 25 years ago, or something. And she said, "It's absolutely true. I can be at a
party or something, and I can look across the room," oh, yes. This is what Isabel
said. I think it was Isabel who said this, Isabel Hickey. Oh, yes. No, yes, she said
it can be so powerful. And this woman said to me, who was living with another
woman, they were very intimate. They had a long and very close relationship
until they died. And she said, "I'm at a party, and I look across the room, and I
catch eyes with someone, and I have learned that that is time I leave the room,
because if I don't leave the room, I am in so much trouble."
So, there's something about the connection that you can have, when you have
Neptune in the eighth. And yes, I do think when you have Pisces on the cusp of
the eighth house as well, that is true. If your Neptune is at least okay, or maybe
not... And both of them had it in their composite, they had it conjunct Jupiter in

their composite. And they had an extraordinarily, intimate, rich, and as far as I
understand, totally non-sexual relationship.
Now, last night, I looked at two other people. And they were Paul Newman and
Joanne Woodward. And both of them have Capricorn rising. And both of them
had Neptune in the eighth. And they had, how long were they married? I mean,
it can't have been 60 years. And what I found out last night made me so sad, that
I've heard that after he died, she started developing Alzheimer's. And she is still
alive, and knows not even her children; and recently said to one of her
daughters, "I was married to a very handsome man, wasn't I?"
Tony: Wow.
Darby: And I wondered ... I know, and I only found it last night, so I didn't print her
chart out, you know, because we needed the PowerPoint before. I just felt very
sad about that, you know? Because I remember them from my childhood, you
know, Joanne Woodward. And they had such a relationship, and I know they
had lots of different things happening at various times. There were people, I can't
remember, I don't know, they had quite a time, but they were very, very close.
And their marriage was very, very powerful. And they had a spiritual
dimension, and they gave away so much of their money. And now, their children
are struggling over what's going to happen when she dies, because he left most
of his money to her, and gave five million pounds to each of the children. And
there's a bit of a struggle going on.
But this is the negative side, perhaps, when Neptune is connected to the eighth
house, and when outer planets are connected to it, you're operating in another
realm. And ordinary, day to day experiences don't happen to you in the same
way other things happen to you. But the price is, perhaps, the sense of loss. And
again, if you look back to Montaigne, he had Pluto in the eighth house. And I
think, when you ... I don't know what to do about the loss. It's just the way life is.
If you're going to have intimate relationships, and you have very intense planets
in the eighth house, you're going to experience this other side. It's just part of it.
It's just the way it is.
Tony: Our earlier question about projection was about Neptune in the eighth, when she
was asking, "Are we not being honest, or is the other person?" And I just replied
that I think you have to consider that either or both could be true. But I think
she's just asking specifically about a Neptune question, where there's both some
confusion, lack of clarity, and then, an issue around honesty.
Darby: Oh, gosh. Now, you see, that's really interesting because I would say, if you have
Neptune in the eighth, chances are, you're going to get Neptunian deals with
people. So, I know that they didn't have an easy time, some of the time, these
two. And I know that there were sexual things that went on with Paul and
Joanne when they were young. Someone lived with them for a time, and
definitely had a relationship with both of them; whether he did when they were

all together, that I don't know. Hollywood was pretty wild in those years.
I imagine that you can never ask the other person to not be Neptunian, if you see
what I mean. If you have Neptune in the eighth, you're going to draw people
that you cannot ask earthy, solid things from. So the question is, there are things
that are going on, that you can't grab hold of, that you can't keep, you can't make
safe. And that's the way it is. I don't know how else to say it, because with
someone like that, you can have a magic that other people don't even know
about. You can have a beauty. You can have a transcendence. You can have an
experience of God in intimacy and sexuality, that other people don't know.
Equally, you cannot ask that the other person not be Neptunian.
So, the question about projection, are you projecting, it's not really about that. It's
about the kind of people, what you're drawn to. And that, for the other person,
you may be elusive, too, but you ask ‘elusivity’ of other people, without even
knowing you're doing it, perhaps, some of the time, if that makes sense.
Tony: Hadley's adding, "The eighth house dimension, though may not want to, that
knows that all relationships are terminal, no matter how long you live and are
together. One of you will die first."
Darby: And I have to say that's a constant. I think you and I spoke about that, Tony,
when you were here in London, I'm not sure, around our kitchen table, maybe.
Because it's true that after, if you're in a long relationship, there's probably a
point where you pretty much know the other person's not going to sleep with
somebody else. You've gone through that, if you're in my generation. I believe
that to keep the erotic connection alive, it's important to be, both of you are
aware that one of you is going to die before the other. As uncomfortable and
painful as that is, it allows you to not waste too much energy on trivia.
You can't avoid confrontation, because the very nature of an intimate

relationship, is that there is, periodically, you come up against each other, and
have to see each other naked. And the longer you know each other, the more
nakedness does not always mean beauty. Not only physical, it's also
psychological. Somebody who's in their 50s, 60s, or 70s, and sees themselves as
fine, perfect, is in trouble. After a period of time, intimacy has to reveal to you
the places where you are not as good as you would like to be, not as pure, fine,
you know, all of those things.
And so, you will have to come up against each other, if you have a long and
intimate relationship. And you have to keep facing that, and equally, facing the
fact that exactly that, one of you is going to die before the other. And I'm
thinking of somebody with Scorpio Moon who said to me years ago, I said, "Why
did you leave him and go off with him when he was your soulmate?" And she
said, "I could not bear that he'd die before me." And I thought, "That's
interesting. It means she's honest, and she's choosing not to, she's hoping to
choose not to, that pain." But you're absolutely right. When there's intimacy, and

the eighth house experience, there is loss. It's not like there could be loss. There is
loss. And once you love someone enough, you know that it's not just their death,
it's that you know they will suffer when you die.
So, it's both ways. And there's something about this suffering, and being able to
bear it, that allows you, I think, to be able to see beauty, because you don't want
to waste it. You don't want to miss it. And that's the power of the eighth house,
as I can see. Yeah, okay.
All right, I want to see how far I am because I want to talk about the progressed
Moon. And I can't believe how fast the time goes with these things. Okay. I want
to make sure. I'm going to see how many I have, okay. I'm just going to talk
about him briefly, lightly, because he's so controversial, and I think, quite
wonderful, but also very awkward and difficult in the Vatican, apparently. And
his mother was extraordinary, and turned him on to all kinds of cultural things,
and brought him up in a culture that was totally hierarchical, class oriented, and
they were very, very poor; and brought him up to be, culturally, very, very alive.
And so, very, very awake, operas, music, poetry, art, and he was a chemist. He
studied chemistry when he went to university, and he's gone through
transformations. And he's known for being able to go into the street and talk to
anyone, absolutely. And he's known, also, not being very good with people who
are hierarchical and think they are somebody. He's very problematical for the
people around him, but he's extraordinary for people like us, who are watching
him.
And I love the fact, and I'm talking about mother here, that he was brought up
by someone who went against the norms and refused to allow him to be brought
up with this, "We're lower class, poor, they're upper class, great," so he never had
a problem with that, with people being upper class or lower class. This is also
partly, I think he's got Saturn in Pisces as well, who doesn't recognize authority
unless it's spiritual authority. And he's got, also, that in the eighth house.
So, I think he's had a lot of difficulty. He has done things that are probably not
right, and then he's transformed himself, and gone to the opposite side. I think he
got involved with the wrong people when he was young in Buenos Aires, and
allowed things to happen that shouldn't have; I don't think sexual, I think to do
with corruption and all kinds of stuff. And then, he turned around and changed
himself.
So, he's constantly, he's very outspoken. He says what he likes, and he doesn't
pretend, as far as I know. And I think that's an eighth house Moon. And can you
imagine the power struggles, and the power stuff he has to deal with?
Inconceivable. There was an excellent question, Emma, but I don't know what
the question was. Did I answer it?
Tony: Yeah, so, Emma was just asking how the experience of loss might differ between

the eighth and the twelfth, and I just told her that we might talk about that at
more length, once you get to the twelfth house webinar, but maybe you can say a
couple of thoughts?
Darby: Oh, yes, please. And the twelfth house, write that down and send it in, or make
sure you ask that, because they're very different, in fact. I want to go there, but I
don't want to, because I haven't got enough time, so I'm going to stay here. That's
a really good question. Is there anyone I really want to show you? No, I think
we're okay.
There are one or two people. I'm only showing you because, and this part of the
eighth house, too, talk about facing your fear, Thor Heyerdahl, we know him.
Kon-Tiki, he-
Tony: And there's a great film called Kon-Tiki, for those of you who don't know, can
learn about his voyage.
Darby: He died at the age of 87, with his family around him. He went to Italy to make
sure he died with his family around him, because of that eighth house. Listen to
this. He went to the Kon-Tiki when progressed Mars was conjunct his Venus. His
progressed Mars was conjunct his Venus in the eighth, and Jupiter was on his
progressed Mars on his Venus. And Chiron was on his Mars, and Neptune was
opposing his Moon.
And the reason I tell you this is because he said, and it was really difficult, it was
a kind of wooden sort of float thing, they went off thousands of miles, and I
mean, just astounding. And the thing is that he didn't like water, and he was
afraid of it. He said that, and he's one of the people that have done more brave
things to do with water than anyone. He's extremely controversial, very, very
awkward. He has that Mars conjunct Mercury, opposition the Moon, squared to
Uranus, and squared to Neptune. He wanted to prove that Polynesians had
settled Peru, and Egyptians had settled the Easter Island and everything. The
scientific community just thought he was nuts. He never got any satisfaction
from them, and yet, he's considered a hero by all of us, by everyone, because of
his courage, and his strength, and his derring-do.
And I love the combination, that he went, he was terrified, and yet he still did it.
When he was young, very early on, he went out and dared to do things that
frightened him to death. And he did it because he said his parents were very
protective, and he had to fight against that protectiveness, so that he could
become the person he wanted to be. How about that, for a Grand Cross in the
eighth house, right? Cool.
Tony: Amazing.
Darby: Amazing. He's fascinating.

Tony: And yet another example of somebody with a Grand Cross, who accomplished
something really great with that energy.
Darby: And what I love is, when I look at very, very difficult charts, like David
Attenborough has a great, a fixed Grand Cross too. And again, I don't know, we
don't know the time, but I just love it when I see charts that are really difficult;
like if I look at the happy marriage that Martin Luther had, and he's got Saturn
conjunct Venus in Scorpio, and Moon in the eighth, you know? You think, “oh
that could be terrible,” but no it isn’t – depends on the person who's inhabiting
the place.
Tony: Right.
Darby: Okay. Do you know Ray Bradbury?
Tony: Yes.
Darby: Yeah, Fahrenheit 451, again, Sun conjunct Jupiter, Saturn conjunct Venus in the
eighth house. Saturn conjunct Venus, squared the Moon. He married the woman
that he met when he was young. He never slept with or had any other
relationships, and as far as everyone knows, it was a very good relationship.
Again, I love it, because of the Saturn conjunct Venus in the eighth. He had one
woman his entire, whole life, but he pushed the boundaries of reality, and he
made science fiction an actual art form. And I love him, because he said some
amazing things.
Look at the one down in the corner, the green one. "Stuff your eyes with wonder,
live as if you'd drop dead in 10 seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than
any dream made or paid for in factories." Fabulous. "Jump, and you'll find out
how to unfold your wings as you fall." Okay, I should go back to the chart now,
but this is the one I find most interesting. This is in Fahrenheit 451, and it's an
interaction between two people.
"'Why is it,' he said, one time at the subway entrance, 'I feel as though I've known
you for so many years?' 'Because I like you,' she said, 'and I don't want anything
from you.'" Now, again, this is eighth house stuff.
Tony: That speaks to your point earlier, about when you go into the eighth house with
somebody, and you're wanting something from them, and how that might get
you in trouble.
Darby: Absolutely. Again, and I'm sorry, I have these sentences. They last about a year,
and then I get new ones, but one of my ones that I've had a couple of years,
actually, is, "A drop of neediness in an interaction, immediately makes the other
person reject you." You can need something, but if you're needy, immediately,
you're rejected. And I think people with planets in the eighth house really have
to have guards, constant mirrors to check about that.

But those who do, who figure out the difference between need and neediness,
and recognize that the reason this person is moving back from me is because, "I, I
need, I need something." As soon as that's happening, and you pull yourself back
into this place and clear it out, what is it? What am I doing? What am I doing?
You're free again, and you can have the intensity of experience that hasn't got to
do with neediness.
I've got two friends, and they both, they've been married for 45 years. He has
Moon in Cancer in the eighth, and she has Moon in Gemini in the eighth. And
they're absolutely, wonderfully, wonderfully connected. And there's no, they do
not ... We've talked about it a lot. I've talked about it with her. And she said, her
experience is, whenever she finds herself needy, she immediately goes and
cleans something. She's a Virgo, so she immediately goes, and she says, "As long
as I clean something, I can get rid of the neediness, and then I can come back
again." And I think that's one of the secrets of eighth house planets.
"How do I feel I've known you for so many years?" "Because I like you, and I
don't want anything from you." And the eighth house teaches you that. I just
mentioned her because she's died recently. This is not the Simone Veil of old.
This is somebody who's died at 97, recently, and she's a great hero in France,
huge. And she died very beautifully.
And she was in the concentration camps when she was 18. And she lost her
father, and she watched her mother die on a 45 mile march, at the end of the war,
and her mother just died. She's seen everything. There was a point at which, and
she fought for women's rights in the most beautiful possible way, in France, and
for abortion, so that they could have abortion. And there was one point where
somebody was shrieking at her, threatening her, right-wing, screaming at her.
And she shouted at him, "You can threaten me with anything. There is nothing
you can do that I am afraid of. I have been there and far beyond," something. I
don't know, I just love it. Can you imagine being able to say that? "There's
nothing you can frighten me with," she said. "Nothing. I've been farther than you
could ever go."
And yes, we can look at a lot of things, and maybe I'll leave her for the twelfth
house, because I would like to talk about her more.
Tony: That'd be great.
Darby: I'd like to talk about her because of her absolute, and fighting for abortion, you
know, and fighting for women; and doing it in such a way that she had
enormous grace and respect. So, I'm going to just look at maybe one more.
Tony: And I'll just say, while you're looking that one up, Jeff, you might want to study
that chart a bit, because Jeff was asking about a grand trine in his chart with the
eighth house, so that'd be a good one to think about some more.

Darby: Yeah. And then, I want to give a few minutes for ... I can't believe the time has
gone so fast. I want to give time for questions. I don't quite know what to do.
This is my friend who said, when she was going into the operating theatre,
"Please tell everyone that I am not afraid." She came out of the operating theatre.
She had said to me years ago, "Will I have a good death?" And I said,
"Absolutely. You'll have a great death." I mean, I never say things like that,
never, but I couldn't help it. How could I help it? I said, "I promise you, you'll
have a great death."
She went into the thing, she came out. She was alive. Five days later, she said to
the friend who was with her on the island, Rhodes, she said, "Pull out the plug. I
don't want them feeding me anymore. I don't want another operation. Just pull
out the plugs." He pulled out the plug, and the next morning, she woke up. And
he was holding her hand, and she said, "You didn't pull out the plug."
No, he said to her as she opened her eyes, "What happened, lady? Miss the bus?"
And she said, "You didn't pull out the plug." And he said, "Oh, yes. I did." And
he showed her that she was no longer wired up to anything keeping her alive.
And she smiled, closed her eyes, and died.
Tony: Wow.
Darby: Isn't that cool? And her closest friend was with her.
Tony: Wow.
Darby: Yeah, classy. Very classy.
Tony: Very classy.
Darby: Very classy. So now, I'm not going to look at anyone else, because I mean, all I
had left was Marilyn Monroe, and we know about her. And what I wanted to do,
is say, are there any questions? Can I do that?
Tony: We had a question about Chiron in the eighth, in Aquarius.
Darby: Chiron in the eighth, in Aquarius.
Tony: And Emma, is that in aspect to anything?
Darby: Yeah, that's a good question.
Tony: And let me just back up the chat window here. Early on, there were some more
chart questions.
Darby: What is Chiron in the eighth? How interesting. All right, if you can tell me

something about it, then I can tell you more. In other words, I can't, it's just one
thing. If I was looking at the whole chart, I could say something, but tell me what
your experience of it is.
Tony: Oh, so it's a client of hers, and that's all she knows. You want to go on to another
one?
Darby: I think so. I'm really sorry. I hate not answering it, it's just that it's too separate.
It's too alone, you know? I need more. I think I need more. If I can think of
anything before the end, I'll let you know.
Tony: So, here's one with Leo, Virgo in the eighth house, and also Mars, Sun, Mercury,
and Venus. Venus is two degrees Virgo, and conjunct the eclipse on August 21st.
She's wondering how she can best navigate the eighth house Leo energy, in
Venus conjunction to the eclipse in August. And I'm sorry, I didn't read through
that question all the way before I read it out loud, Darby, because I know you
don't work much with eclipses. But maybe you can speak to that.
Darby: I don't, much with what?
Tony: You don't work much with eclipses, right?
Darby: I don't work much with eclipses because I don't like anything anyone ever says
about them. And they always just seem so miserable, so I ignore them.
Tony: I like that answer. I think that's a great answer.
Darby: I want to say something about the progressed moon.
Tony: Okay.
Darby: And I want to say something about Uranus. I'm sorry, I'm so aware of the time. I
want to go back to Uranus. It's a great unpredictability, and unexpected ability.
And as long as when you have a lover, you let them know, as nicely as you
possibly can, that you cannot abide by rules, and that you keep changing things.
This is what my friends, who I have several friends who are this way.
And also, one of them said to me that she thinks Uranus in the eighth means that
when we're having sex, your sense of humor works the best. I don't know, but
her sense of humor comes out most of all, she says, when she has ... And then,
also, I think it's in intimate friendships as well. So, it's really, and she said to me,
she said last night, to me, "I'm always surprised by how death takes me. When I
think somebody's death is going to wipe me out, it doesn't. I feel the person is
free, and I'm free because of that. And when I think it's going to be fine, it's not,
and I'm just wiped out." So, there's an unpredictability around death, and an
unpredictability around relationships.

And I've got a friend who's been married for a very long time, with Uranus in the
seventh, but I know periodically, she does things that make him feel very
surprised. And then, he gets used to it. Yeah, that's what she told me, and I knew
that was true.
Okay, I wanted to say something about the progressed Moon in the eighth. It's
really, oh, unpredictable death, my friend was ... I don't know, death is pretty
much always unpredictable. My friend who died, it was, but it's not frightening
in the same way as it is, perhaps, for others. Okay, let me say something about
the progressed Moon. I tend to be very, very fast, and I'll stop talking so fast.
Okay, the progressed Moon, go back to this. "Soul turns events into experience."
When your progressed Moon is going through the eighth house, you ... Okay. A
friend of mine, okay, when it's going through the eighth house, you give yourself
to it. You know that when it comes out, you don't know what you're going to go
through. You absolutely say, "I have no idea, but I'm going to go in, and I'm
going to let my soul go down to places I didn't know I could go. And when I
come up, there will be a larger world. When I come up, I'll be going into the
ninth house, up to a mountain. I cannot get to wisdom, to the next stage of my
wisdom, unless I go through that."
So, it's as if you take your Mars, you know, wherever it is, however it is, and you
take your warrior, you close your eyes, and like Ray Bradbury said, you leap,
and let your wings begin to come alive. They'll come alive once you're through it,
and you start up into the ninth house. So, you go through, without question, an
intense experience, maybe to do with money, some of you, but in my experience,
always to do with relationship.
Going through it, the first time I went through it was very very intensive. And
the second time, I was scared, and I thought, "Oh, no. It's going to the eighth
house again." And I realized that going through the second time, I sort of knew
the territory. And so, it was much more interesting. It was very intense, and
incredible intensity of encounter, and feeling of loss, and all of that. But when I
came out, I came out with much more than I had the first time, because there was
much more of me.
So, I think when the progressed Moon goes through it, I think it's an
extraordinary, white-water rapid, emotional, soul death and rebirth. And you
don't really know the rebirth until you're coming out to the mountain, climbing
up the mountain into the ninth house. So, I have to say, I want to say ... I wanted
to say, "Don't fear it," but that sounds stupid. Take your fear, and go in with it.
Having fear is a good thing. It makes you aware there's some sort of danger
around. Stopping doing something because of a fear, is kind of a dumb thing,
because you don't get the wealth that comes out of the eighth house. And yet, I
do understand, some people have to say, "I cannot let myself be hurt again," for
periods of time, and you have to shut yourself off. But I would say, make sure

that your clients, and the people close to you, when they're hurt and broken
through eighth house experiences, they say, shut yourself off for a time, but
never permanently. Be awake to the possibility, where you're going to come out
again, and dare to throw yourself into something that feels very dangerous, and
very exposing; because each time you come out, you come out with much more
wealth than you ever imagined possible. But you have go through it to get it.
Tony: I think that's a great place to end, Darby. That's a beautiful statement. So, thanks
for being with us today. Emma just asked if you would mind sharing your Sun
and Ascendant sign.
Darby: My what?
Tony: Your Sun and rising sign.
Darby: I'm a Gemini. I have Sun and Moon in Gemini, and I have Leo rising.
Tony: Thanks. And yeah-
Darby: I’m always reading books. I say I'm a library nerd, but when I have to be out
there, the Leo rising works. So, I'm quite grateful for it.
Tony: And I can say, I've been in that library. And it's quite amazing. So, I was looking
at it every day I was there. Thanks for the comments coming in, folks, getting lots
of comments that people were enjoying the presentation. I know there were some
chart interpretation questions that we didn't get to. Sorry we didn't have time for
everything.
Darby: Yeah. Maybe when we get to the twelfth house. I don't know if I should give
more time. We'll have to discuss that, Tony, because it is lovely getting the
questions as well.
Tony: Yeah, no worries. And I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording, but I'll stay
in the room for a few minutes with you and say goodbye. But thanks again,
Darby, for taking time out to share your knowledge with us today. We really
appreciate it.
Darby: It's been a real pleasure, as always, Tony. Thank you, wonderful group of people.
I can feel them all over the world.
Tony: All right, take care.
Darby: Okay, okay.

Eighth House

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The Eighth House

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Darby: I have, yep.

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Tony: I'll wait and let her type back in.

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Darby: I'd hate to leave.

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Tony: Thank you. Thanks for taking that question.

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Darby: With the eighth, going through purification?

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Tony: Yeah, it's hard to say knowing, if he knew his chart.

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Darby: I tell you one of the things that I've learned.

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And I think Saturn in the eighth, my experiences of people, there's a kind of

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Now, I'm sorry-

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Darby: That his woman … in the eighth.

Darby: I would have no idea how to find out.

Darby: Yeah, I mean, there's certainly no one in this place.

Tony: Oh, yeah. So, Stephen's not online, right?

Darby: No, no, no. He doesn't go online, as you know.

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Tony: Correct, yeah.

Tony: Thank you.

Tony: I can read it out loud if you want.

Darby: Okay, please.

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Tony: And Dorian points out, "And Moon in the eleventh."

Tony: Yeah, the square. Mars, Moon.

Darby: Oh, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting?

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Tony: Right. So interesting.

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You can't avoid confrontation, because the very nature of an intimate

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Darby: Amazing. He's fascinating.

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Darby: Okay. Do you know Ray Bradbury?

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Tony: That'd be great.

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Darby: Yeah, classy. Very classy.

Tony: Very classy.

Tony: We had a question about Chiron in the eighth, in Aquarius.