The Twelfth house of the zodiac is recognised as the place of incarceration of one or another kind for medical, judicial or spiritual reasons. The 12th house is a place recuperation and rehabilitation; it is also the place of remand and imprisonment. It can also be the place of solitude, withdrawal and religious retreat from the world. When we consider climate change, the 12th house is the place of losses: losses to the environment, losses to health, losses of the quality of human life.
Although the 12th house is traditionally a water sign, we must look to the impact of climate change on water. The Twelfth house is traditionally the sign of Meena – Pisces – lorded by Jupiter where we have an Aries Lagna. Facing north, Pisces as the traditional 12th house is a water sign. Lakes, oceans, and rivers are made of water. Precipitation is water that falls from clouds in the sky. It may be rain (liquid) if warm, or it may be frozen if cold. If water gets very cold (below 0 degrees Celsius), it freezes and becomes ice, the frozen version of water. If water gets very hot (above 100 degrees Celsius), it boils and becomes steam. Water is very important for life. Water poses many challenges where we have climate change.
The Pacific Ocean is a large body of water. The temperature of that body of water is very important, for it can determine sea level rise due to climate change. Pisces as 12th house is of mutable nature – so benefic or malefic influences here will have a short term – perhaps frequently changing effect. This suggests the changes in the ocean temperatures known El Niño and La Niña. In Spanish they mean “little boy” and “little girl”. The ocean temperature is important as it is connected to sea level rise and impacts on land. Pisces/12th House is of water nature, and of kapha dosha.
Marine Heatwaves
Episodes of extreme heat over land have been studied more closely than those beneath the waves. Oceans, though, not only absorb about 93 per cent of the additional heat being trapped by rising greenhouse gas levels, they are also the main driver of the Earth’s climate.
The number of oceanic heatwave days a year has increased by 54 per cent in the past century globally, the researchers determined, using data of sea-surface temperatures from long-established sites and satellites.
“We have seen an increasing trend in the frequency and duration [of marine heatwaves], and that trend has accelerated in the past 30 years or so,” said Lisa Alexander, associate professor at University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre, and an author of the paper published in Nature Communications on Wednesday.
The westward boundaries of the continents tend to be where oceans are warming fastest
Biodiversity Loss:
The temperature of the water, we have seen, is very important. The temperature on the land in critically significant regions on Earth is also important. The Earth’s natural assets are made up of plants, animals, land, water, the atmosphere AND humans! Together we all form part of the planet’s ecosystems, which means if there is a biodiversity crisis, our health and livelihoods are at risk too. Climate change and the 12th House will bring about loss with heating of the Earth’s surface affecting biodiversity because it endangers all the species that adapted to the cold due to the latitude (the Polar species) or the altitude (mountain species).
Numerous other threats still challenge the world’s biodiversity, from pollution and overexploitation to land-use change and habitat loss, and in many places these are still greater immediate dangers to the world’s wildlife than climate change. But the new series of reports emphasise that action on global warming is also action in favor of wild plants and animals. And in turn, protecting the world’s remaining natural places is also a step toward safeguarding the climate.
Ocean acidification
12th House is a mutable house, so effects will be many and varied. The aspect of malefic planets on the 12th house will have impact on water quality, its usefulness and its capacity to sustain and nurture both marine ecosystems and human ecosystems. Plants need water to grow. Much cooking is done with water. Malefic aspect on water sign will affect many compartments of life. We are generating more and more carbon. Where does it all go? The oceans take much of it.
Oceans are an incredible carbon sink — they absorb about 25 percent of the carbon dioxide humans produce every year. But this is changing sea surface chemistry dramatically: when carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, it dissolves to form carbonic acid. The result, not surprisingly, is that the ocean becomes more acidic, upsetting the delicate pH balance that millions and millions of organisms rely on.
Oceans becoming more acidic after the Industrial Revolution is no accident. As humans burn more and more fossil fuels, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere continues to rise, driving climate change and making both air and sea temperatures hotter and hotter.
Ocean acidification doesn’t just threaten marine ecosystems. It also puts pressure on human food systems and affects the livelihood of people who depend on the ocean for their income in every way from fishing to tourism.
The 12th house will see many activities to mitigate and alleviate climate change, as solutions applied here are not of a fixed nor long-lasting nature. This is the house of losses, and expenditure. There will be much expenditure of ideas, words, mitigation and remedies for water quality, air pollution, land use change and ecological change. While there may be much expenditure of human effort, what is needed is a reversal of solitary efforts to mitigate climate change and joint action.
For humans, climate change will bring health impacts. Lack of clean drinking water brings mental illness. Lack of water for cooking will bring undernutrition. Lack of clean air will increase allergies. Cardiovascular and infectious diseases will rise requiring more medical resources and hospitalisation. Climate refugees are now a reality; mass migration is occurring for the land and its lack of water supply is causing people to seek greener pastures simply to stay alive.
Vedic Astrology is not a defeatist form of philosophy nor life-guidance. The goal of Vedic Astrology is to enlighten, to show where the light has been directed by the planets and the impact of light – and its increase or decrease – in the various bhavas, houses. Here we show that light naturally decreases in the 12th house, the house of losses. Some loss may be good; vairagya and viveka (discrimination and detachment) may have a positive impact as we separate ourselves from ways of generating energy, goods and services to renewable and sustainable forms of generating energy and providing for the manufacture of essential goods and services for human flourishing.
Vedic Astrology does not decry human flourishing. The planets may raise us up, they may pull us down, according to prarabdha karma that we have selected for consumption this lifetime. We must also attend to the collective karma we have created by way of culture and society and use of the resources of the Earth. We may attend to the planets, take up remedies, change our fuels, change our consumption, and engage in healthy discrimination and detachment when it comes to proper use of the resources Mother Earth supplies to us.
Taking up remedies and changes offered by Vedic Astrology and Vedanta generally, we may engage in service to the Earth and turn loss into gain. We do not know the value of thing until it has been removed from us, and we realise our reliance upon this. Together we learn about climate change, together as One race, the human race, we take up the remedies and changes to protect our Earth, the only Earth we have.
