exploring the dark houses : the 2nd house w— Rob Bailey

Today, we sift through the topics and considerations of the 2nd house in astrology with astrologer Rob Bailey. Rob shares his perspectives on how the questions and topics of the 2nd house are relevant to us as individuals but also as collective society, guiding us toward ways we can be more curious and compassionate as we relate to these supporting resources in our lives.

Rob Bailey is an astrologer, occultist and Christian mystic from Canberra, Australia. His focus is the study and revival of early Medieval astrology, and developing authentic ways to use traditional astrology techniques to help people in the modern world. His practise combines traditional wisdom with modern counseling skills and a client-led approach to exploring the symbolism of the stars.

we discuss —

• why the 2nd house is called “a dark house”
• what we find in the 2nd house besides money
• a discussion on poverty and excess
• an ecological perspective on the 2nd house
• spiritual + ethical considerations of the 2nd house
• chart examples

LINKS

If you enjoyed the episode, check out —

the 6th House episode

the 8th House episode

More about our guest —

Rob’s website

Find Rob on Twitter!

Rob’s Instagram

Learn more about the course on horary astrology

Free Resources —

join us for Astro Meet-Up!

get your free Houses Cheat Sheet

Stay Connected —

Subscribe to the home—body podcast wherever you get your listens.

mary grace’s website

home—body website

This podcast is produced by Softer Sounds. ✨

Transcript

0:00

Music. Welcome to the Homebody Podcast. My name is Mary Grace, and here we explore big questions in embodied ways. These conversations intersect the mystical, the practical, and the artful, bridging a range of topics such as astrology, creative practices, what healing can look like, and cultivating deep love and care for the more-than-human world. We not only want to live better, but live more fully, with more connection, courage, and creativity in our day-to-day lives and work. And this podcast asks, what are the ways we can do that? We hope to enliven you and inspire you towards possible regenerative futures, and we hope to encourage you so together we can become dynamic agents of beauty, fully awake, fully alive to all that life has for us. We want to be here for ourselves and for one another with more grace while making room for curiosity, sensitivity, hope, and joy. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a few moments to share it with someone else, and thank you so much for listening. Music. Welcome everyone. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that we've been doing a little spread out mini series in which we look at the dark houses in astrology. And these are the second, sixth, eighth, and twelfth houses. We've already shared about the eighth and the sixth houses and they're linked below in the show notes if you'd like to investigate them further. And today we're talking about the second house with astrologer Rob Bailey. And this is a house where we traditionally find topics such as resources, money, and the substances, possessions, and people who sustain and support our life. Like I mentioned earlier, Rob Bailey is an astrologer, a cultist, and Christian mystic from Canberra, Australia. His focus is the study and revival of early medieval astrology and developing authentic ways to use traditional astrology techniques to help people in the modern world. His practice combines traditional wisdom with modern counseling skills and a client-led approach to exploring the symbolism of the stars. Today, he guides us through a lot of nuances and findings of the second house. And this reason that we're doing this mini series is that these dark houses frequently come up in sessions, meetups and discussion topics. And they tend to be things that we as humans find some grappling with. Rob will be sharing his perspectives on how the questions and the topics of the second house are not only relevant to us as individuals, but also as a collective society and offers some implications or some guiding ethical considerations regarding the Second House. We also look at some fun charts. Whether or not we find our prominent planets living in the Second House or moving through there at this moment in time, it's a house and a perspective that we're all having to navigate and considerations that are offered here can help us interact more intentionally and compassionately with this area of life, both in our personal lives and the culture at large. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive. Please take five seconds to share this episode with a friend. And once you've done that, let's dive into the second house with Rob Bailey. Music. How would you like our listeners to know you? How would you like to introduce yourself to us today? CB Yeah, well, my name's Rob. I'm an astrologer living in Canberra, Australia on Ngunnawal land. My focus is the revival and study of medieval astrology and how to bring those medieval techniques into the modern world and adapt them to help people today. So I have a very client and people-oriented approach to astrology, very sort of client-led, I guess you'd say. I'm a consulting astrologist, so I do readings regularly. I'm also merging into this very exciting field of teaching astrology with my friend and colleague, Chris Brennan, preparing a course on horary astrology, which is the branch of astrology that answers short and specific questions using the chart. Of the moment that the question is asked. So, yeah, preparing a course with Chris on that branch, which has been an area of speciality or focus for me for a very long time now. So, it's a really, pivotal kind of moment in my life as an astrologer where I'm transitioning from being deep into the craft of astrology to transmitting and passing on what I've learned through many hard years of study, which feels really good and really appropriate for me with my- I have a lot of, placements in the ninth house, the house of education and higher learning and astrology in my chart. So, it feels in some ways like I'm fulfilling some sort of core part of myself and my being at the moment, which is really nice to be able to say, actually, when I think about it. It. That's kind of what I do. I guess who I am, I would describe myself as a bit of a history nerd, a philosophy nerd, I'm a Christian mystic, I'm an occultist, and I'm a father, husband and a human being trying his best is probably the way I would summarize that. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good accurate description and that's always so exciting when you feel like a life is moving into some of its core, I guess, core blueprints, I guess. So that's really exciting about teaching and kind of moving into a new phase of work. So we're here today to talk about the second house as we're doing mini series on the dark houses because they are often ones of fascination, confusion, obscuration, all for obvious reasons, especially once we start talking about the concept of dark houses in general. The second house is no, it's something that we wrestle with a lot. It's something that I find as I'm imagining also as someone who does horror consultations, the second house might come up a lot. People tend to ask a lot of questions about money or have a lot of concerns about money, which makes a lot of sense. And while the second house isn't only money, it's definitely a place where we can start to dive into what that means for us and how we're supported in the world. So thank you for being willing to grapple with that during this interview. And I think I'm going to let you steer the ship a little bit when it comes to sort of the basic definition of, the second house, some of the primary ways that we start to conceptualize the second house. What are some of the things that you take into consideration? CB Sure. Yeah, it's a good place to start at the basic definition of the second, I suppose. So yeah, let's start there. The second house is called the second house because, if we're counting the houses in zodiacal order, it is the second house from the rising sign, the second house from the Ascendant. It's called a succedent house. That's one of the main, Keywords we use for describing the houses, the angular, succedent and cadent houses. This is a succedent house. It's called a succedent house because it follows or succeeds the angular first house. Comes after the first. And in terms of if we're kind of situating ourselves on the globe with the sky above, then the second house sits below the horizon. It's always below the horizon, and it's always that, sign that's- or that house, I should say, that is just about to appear over the horizon. But it's never quite there. It's always in this imminent space of being about to emerge. I suppose one metaphor might be standing on the wings of a stage and watching people on stage perform, and, you're about to step out onto stage and be seen. But you're in that sort of liminal space where, you're behind the curtain and you're waiting for that moment to step out. In terms of its significations, just in a very simple, basic way, the second house is the house of money and our material possessions. That's probably a really good way to very succinctly state what the second house means or signifies for people. Today we typically think of the second house primarily as the house of money, but in the medieval tradition that I study, and in later traditions such as the early modern or Renaissance tradition of astrology, they called the second house the house of substance, which is a fascinating term that needs a little bit of unpacking because we don't typically use that word today to mean what it meant back then. So, what that means, the term substance, is all of the physical things that we need that are necessary for us to live our lives and to thrive on the planet. So, physical things, material things. One definition I came across that's helpful. Is to think of it as movable possessions. So things that we own in like a legalistic sense, but that we can pick up or travel with, or remove from one place to another, as opposed to the fourth house, which is associated with real estate and land houses. Things that we own again in like a legalistic sense, but we can't move them. They're stuck in a place. they're rooted in the ground. So that's the distinction, I suppose, in terms of ownership, that are things that we can pick up and travel with or move from one place to another. And if we think about. That old adage of food, clothing, and shelter being necessities of life, well then food and clothing, two of those three fallen in the second house. BT. Yeah. I like you mentioned in your notes and also in the description of how the second house orients to the first is that it literally props up the first house. It literally supports it or comes underneath it and holds it up. And thinking about, as you're saying, food, shelter, and clothing, we're thinking about the Maslow's pyramid of the things that we need in order to have these other considerations, thinking of the second house as being that base pyramid in a way. Yeah, that's a great way of thinking about it. Yeah, and that's how I've always conceptualised the second, because it sits right next to the first house. And so, it has this obvious, symbolism to it. If I am the first house, then the things around me that are immediately adjacent to me, like my computer, my cup of coffee here, my bottle of water, my books behind me, these are second house things because they're immediately adjacent to me and they support me and help me to do what I need to do in my life. Yeah, so that propping up function's really helpful. And when we think about the first house rising up, the second house beneath it kind of giving it a little boost and sometimes help us to grasp the symbolism there. And there's a thing that happens a lot in traditional astrology where we- this might be getting a little bit deep, but the concept of derived houses where we can say, well, the Ascendant is my first house, but say the third house, the house of siblings, we can treat that as the first house of our sibling. In that context, the second house from the third, which would be the fourth, is their money and their possessions and so forth. And the seventh house, the house of our partner. Well, the second house counting from the seventh, which would be the eighth, is the partner's money and material possessions. So there's always this propping up sense, this adjacency. And that's the core symbolism. And we can apply that to pretty much every house in the chart. The 11th house could be like the money and resources of our boss or the government or something like that. So you can keep applying that simple symbolism of what's the next house over? Well, that's the house of the resources or the substance of whatever that house signifies. So yeah, but there's more to this house than meets the eye. And I think that's kind of the purpose here of this discussion. Well, I think one of the purposes, other than to have fun and share ideas and just vibe, is to broaden and deepen our understanding of that house. So there's some other ideas I'd like to bring in about the second house that can kind of expand it just beyond these simple ideas of money and material possessions and get us thinking a bit more broadly. So one of them is that the second house could be seen as the house of arts and and crafts. Not so much creativity itself, which I think a lot of astrologers and myself included, I entertain the idea, let's say, that the fifth house can be a place of creativity. Because it signifies things like children and by extension, metaphorically, you know, our creative work can be like a child to us. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Putting your baby out in the world is often the way that writers and artists speak about their work. And because, it's the joy or rejoicing place of Venus and we associate Venus with this generative or creative, capability. But the second house is the actual output, I suppose, of our creative work. So creativity as a concept, I suppose, is the fifth house. But the actual physical thing that we make is the second house. So the book that we write is the second house. The painting that we've painted is the second house. The piece of clothing that we've sewn or woven is the second house. So I think it's an important place for people who are makers, I guess, or artisans, or, people who create things of beauty or wonder. That also is a second house theme, I think. And another concept that I like to think about with the second house is that material possessions are not just sort of things that we own. Like when we say that word material possessions, we often think about, you know, going to the shopping mall or going online and buying like, I don't know, an outfit or like something for our home, homewares or something like that. That's very limiting because material goods are absolutely crucial to our success and our life as human beings. We're tool-using creatures, right? It's one of the things that separates or distinguishes the human being from many other creatures. There are of course many other creatures that use tools as well. But it's one of our distinguishing characteristics is that we're tool-using creatures. The tools that we use, like the axe that we use to chop down the tree or, you know, the frying pan that we use to cook our food, even the computer that you and I are using to communicate today. These are all tools and they're all second house things because they're, again, just physical material, things that we use to fulfil our purpose. So, technology is a second house thing as well. And then the last thing I think that we often don't think about with the second house is. And this comes out more in early modern astrology. So, by early modern, I mean, perhaps from around the 15th through to the 18th century CE. In that period of astrology, you often read in textbooks that the second house signifies our advisors, our confidants, our sidekicks. So, the second house can also be people. If they have that propping up function, if they have that function of assisting us and giving us the ability to fulfill what we're trying to achieve. So, in the 17th century, astrologer William Lilly's textbook, Christian Astrology, he says that in suits of law, it signifies our friends or assistants. In private duels, it's the queer and second. So, duels today, the concept of fighting duels is very archaic, but I think we're familiar with the trope of meeting at dawn, pistols drawn, take 10 paces, turn and fire. Well, in duels, you would often bring along a person to act as your second or someone who would actually fill in for you and take your place in the duel if you were unable to participate. So, that's someone who's very invested in a very immediate way. With helping you with something. They're prepared to sort of stand in for you and fight your fight. And that concept of fighting someone else's fight also works for legal battles. So, our lawyer in a legal battle would be second house, because they take our place, they stand up for us in court, and they argue for us. They, you know, they are our stand-in, they're our assistant, and they're helping us to deal with that struggle that we're in at that moment. So, there's this sense in which the second house, shows people who go to battle for us. And that's very context specific. So. A friend would typically be the 11th house, but in a very specific context where you're in some kind of fight or struggle and they're helping you with that, they might potentially be located in in the second house in that context. So I think I can summarize all of that by saying, like just as our tools assist us, people can assist us too. So those are a few different ways that we can expand thinking about the second house a little bit. Yeah, I like it. Something that was things that are like making our life possible. And there's a, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but listening to Ursula K. Le Guin talking about technology and just even like how our clothes are a technology, like these ways that we interact and create things that make, that help us just interact with the more than human world and the world outside and the interface between us and it's is sort of like a technology. I'm thinking how that, her way of describing it really fits neatly with what you're talking about. We said that more than human world, that made me think as well, that the second house can be things like, well, for example, the altar in your room that you were concerned the dog might attack before we started recording. I mean that, yeah. And the things that we place on the altar, the incense that I burn each morning I'm praying and meditating. The talisman that we create that's imbued with spirit and that propels us with its magical properties, these are also second-house things. So they're not necessarily mundane and they're not necessarily profane. There can be a spiritual dimension to second-house objects. BT. Yeah, I agree with that. And we've talked about this briefly as we're going through the dark houses, but it feels like we need to touch on it a little bit here, thinking about specifically the second house and how its topics, considerations, and or placement relate or fit under the category of dark house and why. There's some positioning and geometrical configuration that plays into that. But then there's also, of course, some topical correspondence. For that as well. Do you want to touch on that while we're here? CB Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think your listeners are probably familiar with this by now, but we'll move through it quickly, I suppose. The second house is one of the houses that cannot, see the Ascendant by one of the traditional aspects, the sextile, the square, the trine, or the opposition. And so, because of that lack of seeing, that lack of witnessing, that's the reason why we call it a dark house. In Hellenistic and Medieval astrology, they went so far as to call these houses bad houses. That's a very loaded term. But the simple idea behind it is that because they can't see the Ascendant, they cannot directly sort of support the natives life. Which is funny because everything I just said contradicts that, right? Like what I just described about the second house, how it props up our life, how it supports our life, how it is necessary. All the things in the second house are necessary for us to thrive here. So how can it be that there's something about that house that is. You know, in a contradictory way, not supportive of our life. Well, we'll get into that soon, I think. But just from basic astrology, when planets are in one of the dark houses, they're considered to be weak or idle or inactive compared to planets that are in, more prominent houses that can see the Ascendance. That's a very important component here is that, sometimes when we talk about a house being dark or, you know, quote unquote, bad or something like that. We're not talking about its significations necessarily. We might just be talking about that in the sense of trying to assess a planet's condition and its prominence or its power in the chart. So it's important to keep that in mind as well, that it's not only about what they mean, but also it can as well or primarily in some cases be about assessing the planet's condition. So, you've got to kind of be careful and keep those two ideas in tension. So, with the other dark houses, the sixth house of illness and injury, the eighth house of death, or the 12th house of loss and suffering, it's very easy to see that with those traditional significations why those houses are not supportive of our life and are things that we might perceive or experience as being not desirable or unpleasant or negative. But how does the second house fit into that? How does the second house? How can the things that we need, like our food and our clothing and our money, like these are things that we absolutely require. How can they, you know, be bad? Or like, what is the dark side? What is the dark side of the second house? Yeah. Maybe we can start talking about some of the ways that it could be potentially a problematic area. Yeah, I think so. And even I think people listening to this, they'll be like, well, And I think even if they're not like quite sure conceptually, like where we're going, it might also be like, these are topics that there's usually a lot of grappling with, even if it's going well, even if there's like plenty. Um, and I liked what you said about sometimes it just describing the function of something or how functional something is. And I was even reminded of saying how sometimes it's hard to see the ground underneath our feet or appreciate the ground underneath our feet or the things that are making our life possible. Because it's so easy to take them for granted, which is a way of not seeing them. That's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. Our circumstances and our material circumstances are often something that is a bit of a blind spot for us. People who are fortunate to have, plenty in their lives from the moment they're born often don't recognize that as something that other people don't have. There's a sort of assumption or a blind spot around that. That. Similarly, people who struggle to make ends meet perceive that as the common experience. And yeah, it takes a bit of effort sometimes to step out of our comfort zone. Ourselves and view this area of our chart objectively, to the extent that we can view anything objectively. And that can be one of the challenge areas with the second, for sure. Yeah, I liked what you said there. From there, yeah, I think we should just kind of get into it, some ways that, you know, what are, I guess, just like unpacking some of the ways that maybe we struggle with the second house or the ways that we interacted or because it's something that we can't perhaps see as easily or may function a little bit underground, some of the ways that can manifest. PW. Sure, yeah. One thing that really hit home with me was when I was listening to your episode about the eighth house, and you described the dark houses as being areas of struggle. And I think that's really apt and a really great way to get into thinking about dark houses. So, the question then arose in my mind, well, what is the struggle with the second house? And the answer is very simple, it's the struggle to survive. It's the struggle to actually thrive here and not die. To not have enough to move forward. The second house is the house of our food, which is the most fundamental and basic need for humans. For all living creatures, we need to sustain ourselves. And the second house is the way that we sustain ourselves. So our relationship to the second describes that core struggle of all living creatures. And so the things that we locate in the second house are things that are so essential to our, livelihood that without them, we simply would cease to exist. And so that is the struggle of the second, is the struggle for survival. And there are two challenges or two struggles within that, within that struggle for survival. There's two ways that we can struggle, I suppose. With. One is to struggle with having too little, and the other is struggling with having too, much. The thought just occurred to me of the Tory SBIG song, Money Mo Problems, right? We sometimes- we. I mean, some people feel that if they had the money that they don't have that would solve all their problems. But people who have an excess of money sometimes report – and I don't have that, so I can only go off their word – they sometimes report that actually it can create a new area of struggle, a new area of problems. So, whether. We have too little or too much, there can be challenges with the second house. So I think one of the things we're working for with the second house is to find a balance, and to find equilibrium there, so that we are neither struggling because we simply don't have what we need to survive, or struggling because we have too much, and what are we going to do with all of this. And finding a path through those two extremes is the kind of, I don't know if goal is the right word, but it's something that we can seek for. Having said that, of course, we need, to be careful about how we talk about this, because the reality is in our world that most people don't have enough. It's not a simple matter of, well, some people have plenty and some people have not enough and like I'm trying to make it into like a situation of equality when it's really not. We're in a very unequal position. Place here. The distribution of wealth across the world is very cruel. We have a very small amount of people who have far too much resources. Their second house is overflowing. And then we have, the vast majority of people who are, to a greater or lesser extent, struggling to have enough. And there are people, a great many people in fact, who have so little that every day is a struggle, not just to maintain some sort of spiritual balance, but to actually survive, to actually live at all. And some statistics that I wanted to quote, just to kind of center ourselves here that are a bit sobering. But according to World Vision, 9.2% of the world's population, about 689 million people, live in extreme poverty. So they're living on less than a dollar and 90 US a day. Extreme poverty is centered in sub-Saharan Africa. About 40% of that region's people live on less than a dollar and 90 a day. In the USA, there's a different measure for poverty. About 10.5% of people in the USA live in poverty. In the US, the poverty line is $35.28 a day. And globally across the world 1.3 billion people, so that's about 17% of the world's population, live in what's known as multi-dimensional poverty. This is an important concept. So they may have more than that $1.90 a day, but they have no electricity or they have no, access to a toilet or no clean drinking water. And no one in their family has completed primary education. So beyond just the simple economics, there is a broader and more, subtle or insightful way of thinking about poverty, beyond just how much money do you have. Because poverty is not just about money, it's about all of our resources and all of our. Substance, to go back to the definition of the second house. So that's a real challenge, you know. And I guess where I wanted to go with that is just to make sure that we understand that, when we talk about finding a balance between having too much and having too little, well, for the vast majority of people, they're not worrying about having too much. That is not a common problem. That is not something that a lot of people have to deal with. That is. In some ways, a real privilege to be able to say, my problem with money, my problem with. With the second house is that it is overflowing so much that I don't even know what to do with it. That is a position of great privilege. So when we talk about that, I just don't want to create a false equality between those two places. So that's a lot to take in. I do want to say that in the Western world and in wealthy countries like Australia, where I come from, or America, our struggle with the second house can often be this kind of weird struggle where we actually do have enough to survive and our concern is, well, what do we do with it? For those of us who have enough, I don't mean plenty, but just enough to get by, sometimes we worry about, well, what can I do to help other people? Can I share what I have, even though it's not a huge amount? How can I deploy what I have, even though it's precious to me, because I need it? Is there a way that I can use the limited resources that I have to contribute to some sort of solution to these problems of poverty, of people struggling this area of our lives. So even for people who don't have plenty. We still sometimes feel like a guilt about our comparative position of privilege. So, this is a complex area. And I think where I really want to sort of end this point in our discussion is by saying that it's something that we all have to struggle with. Everyone struggles with the second house in some way or other, whether that's because we're, you know, in a situation of desperation and we're trying to simply survive. Whether we're wondering how we can use the resources that we have in the best possible way. There's a concern, a basic core concern with the second house and that stress area. So that's what I think I mean by the second house being an area of struggle. And I hope that illuminates for our listeners how this area of the chart that in a basic sense is an area that supports us and helps us to thrive can also be an area of struggle as well. Yeah, as you were speaking, I was thinking a lot about just our relationship to satisfaction and being satisfiable. There's a podcast I listen to. It's about personal finance, but the way that the episode is structured is that he's talking to usually pairs of people that are in a couple of relationship. And a common answer, you know, if they're dealing with some sort of financial issue and you kind of listen to the psychology about it and also some of the nuts and bolts and numbers about it. And a common revelation I have is like, how much skill and attention it takes to just stay aware of that part of our life. And then also like a common answer to like, well, what do you want to do about this issue? It's like, we'll make more money. It's like, everyone says that I just want to make more money. And it's like thinking about that, I'm thinking sort of that, um, that North node kind of Rahu quality where we think it's just like never quite full enough. I think that's a place where we deal with that, that appetite of what is, where am I satisfied? Am I, do I have a limit set to where I can be satisfied? Do I have the capability of seeing it? do I have the skill of handling it so that I am doing it, doing something justly or compassionately, but also like beautifully for myself and for others. It's a lot to hold. And I think you're pointing to a lot of the common sort of pain points that either we or people around the world, are struggling with around this. Yeah, and it's particularly acute at the moment. I think it's something that's in the focus a lot. Well, for example, in the media at the moment, this moment in time, this is my daytowel podcast, but there's what's known as a cost of living crisis happening at the moment, where the prices of the goods that we need to live are, increasing, but our wages are not increasing to the same extent, so that on the whole, are worse off. And there's this creeping, kind of, how do you call it, like a looming feeling of like something very scary. There's this, the fear, I guess, that we feel around the second house, is ever present, but there are moments in time like ours where that fear is sort of dialed up, you know, and we feel that increasing anxiety. And actually, feeling anxiety and fear, around the second house, around these topics of money and material possessions is, I think, one of probably the easiest ways that we can illustrate the problematic side of the second because that fear... That anxiety of like, how am I going to support myself? Or, you know, even if we have enough, today, even if today we have food in the fridge, the lights are on, we have clothes. We can still feel anxiety about the future, you know, about, well, is this going to last? You know, am I actually secure? That insecurity, that feeling of fear about the future, that anxiety about supporting ourselves long-term can be, I mean, first of all, let's say it's justified. It's fair. It's okay to feel that way because we need it so badly that it's very difficult not to feel that fear, that anxiety about it. So it's okay to feel that in our body, that knot in the chest. And when you have children or you have people who depend on you, if you're responsible for other people's lives, if you're supporting friends, if you're supporting, a community, whatever that responsibility might be, well, that adds to that. That adds to that fear. That adds to that anxiety, because we're not just worried about our own existence. We're suddenly taking on that fear and that anxiety for other beings, even our pets as well. Like this is one of the core issues. And that fear, that's interesting, when I was reading about all of these issues, I came across this really interesting quote. Actually from a very ancient source, a Roman poet, Lucretius, who said something I think was very insightful, where he said that this fear of being destitute, This fear of being, you know, of not having enough, of being in a position of desperation. That can lead us down a very dark path, potentially. You know, like not always. Like, as I said before, it's okay to feel that way. The problem or like the trap, the pitfall is to have that fear drive you to do something, that is going to corrupt you and is going to produce evil in the world. You know, so there's this quote from the creatures. I'll try and read it out. I'll try and do justice to the poetry here, but he says, and greed again, and the blind lust of honours, which force poor wretches past the bounds of law, and oft allies and ministers of crime, to push through nights and days with hugest toil, to rise untrammelled to the peaks of power, these wounds of life in no mean part are kept festering and open by this fright of death. So the fear of dying, essentially, the fear of being cast out into the street with nothing, can sometimes push us or drive us into behaviors that are not only going to corrupt ourselves, but also contribute to evil in the world by making us do things like steal, or cheat, or. Lie, or do whatever it takes to get what we need. And while in some cases it is justifiable, there is a common story. I should share this. In Australia, the history of our country, of colonization in this country is caught up in this narrative about the convict past. So the white settlers of this land have a narrative that the initial colonization of Australia was essentially the British government transporting convicts to Australia. Criminals who were sentenced to their punishment was to live here. This is a place where we were sent to. Suffer. And not all of our ancestors in Australia have this past. It's kind of a myth. People like to identify themselves as, oh, you know, my ancestors were convicts. And I think in some ways that assuages some of the guilt we feel as settlers, you know. But the fact of the matter is that is the dawn of colonization in Australia, is people being sent here. And when you look into the stories of the convicts that were sent to Australia, they're often sent here for very petty or small crimes. And the archetype or the trope that's most commonly used is, I stole bread to feed my family and I was sent to Australia as punishment for that. And so, what I want to say here is that crime is like a human construct and sometimes we need to breach the laws that are created by human beings in order to survive. And that's not something that I want to condemn. But simply to say this, that sometimes that fear of not having enough can drive us to do things that are going to hurt other people, and hurt our own character in a way. One thing that I thought of when I was preparing for this was the... If we cast our minds back to early 2020 and the early phase of the pandemic, the phenomenon of panic buying, where people would go out and strip supermarket shelves clean. And this is, I think, a common phenomenon across the Western world. The first world was the lack, of toilet paper in supermarkets. That's just one example of the way that the fear that we have have can drive us to purchase and just hoard things because we're afraid of not having enough. I recall going to my neighbor's house in 2020, just visiting him because we were friendly. And he opened up his garage because he wanted to get something out of there. And on the shelves, he had a shelving set up in the back of his garage and it was just lined with toilet paper, canned food, all this stuff. He had like a treasure trove in there. And I sat to sort of sit with that because I'd envisaged people who were panic buying as this sort of invisible, nasty people. These mean people who are making my life hard by going to the supermarket and purchasing all of this stuff they don't need and then hoarding it up in the house like a dragon or something like that. And actually it was just my neighbor. You know, it was this man that I was friendly with. I get along with him and I enjoyed our conversations and this sort of, Oh, this is, this really brings it home to me that it's not. The people who are doing this are just people. They're not this sort of, you know, villainous. You know, like someone with a twirling their mustache and like laughing evilly and tenting their fingers while they purchase everything at the supermarket. It's just ordinary everyday people. You know, it makes me think too about how, you know, it's been in actually quite recent history that we have, like the humans are not utterly directly dependent on the place where they live for their survival. I'm thinking for most of humanity's existence, there's been more of like a foraging. There's been a mobility to how we survive and a very directness related to the land itself. And so, therefore, also, the word that keeps coming up as you're talking is this like primal nature of the second house and how we relate to it. It is very primal and the earth of itself being this like wild and wondrous and even dangerous place in a lot of ways. It's being like, you know, this one weird weather thing could make it not possible that food's growing here next year, which may mean something to travel over here and thinking about, you know, it used to be just the things that we had in our, like the things that we had on our back. Like you were talking about these movable things that were going with us and that very like direct relationship we had with those things and how primal that would be. And I imagine some of that still lives in the human system. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that kind of memory in our cells and our DNA almost that pushes us forward. Yeah, I like what you're saying there. It made me think about something I came across while I was researching this as well. I was reading up about one of our chart examples, which you might get into towards the end of the podcast, but to sort of, I suppose, give the game away. I was reading up about the means of production and this concept of the means of production. Today we have a capitalist means of production. And what that means essentially is that the goods that we need to live, the second house stuff, is produced in factories or in plants or in farming that is owned by private individuals, right? But in the past, the means of production was literally the soil and a shovel in our hand. Most of our goods came in a very direct way from the natural world, in a way that we could know intimately. We are disconnected today from that intimate connection between the clothes we wear, the, food that we consume, and the tools and the household goods that we have. We used to understand more deeply where that stuff came from. We used to see it and witness it more and we were more involved in it. Whereas now we're kind of alienated in a way from the source of the second house stuff. And that alienation is also another factor in some of the struggles and problems that have in the modern world with the second house. Maybe this is a good segue into one of my other things I wanted to touch upon, which is an ecological perspective on the second house. I think that alienation from the source of our second house materials really signposts or points the way to some of the ecological problems that we're having in our world today. So for example, this occurred to me while I was preparing for the episode and it inspired me so much that I wrote a lot about it in our notes. In many ways, the climate crisis and the threat of environmental disaster, they are kind of, at least in part, bound up in second house issues, second-house themes. For example, the very depressing, reality of plastics pollution in our oceans and on land is brought about to a large extent by, the, what I just talked about, the alienation from the way that we produce our goods and also the, consumerism of our society where we're sort of encouraged in a sort of a, sometimes in a very very overt and sometimes covert ways to keep on purchasing things, keep on acquiring things. Because that is sort of the machinery by which the way that we have structured our society, we, I mean, the way that people have structured our society is constantly acquiring goods and exchanging goods for money kind of drives that machine forward. And for various reasons that are complex and probably too much to go into in a relatively short podcast, that creates a lot of waste and it creates a lot of the byproducts like packaging or goods that are not meant to last very long. What's that term? Built-in obsolescence, you know, goods that are designed to only last a little while, and then we end up throwing them away. The packaging that we use is usually, unfortunately, still today mostly plastic packaging, which we discard because we have no use for it, and then it sits around for millions of years, cluttering up the earth. Death, then we have phenomenons like fast fashion, for example, where the production of clothes in terrible conditions by people working in sweatshops are underpaid and exposed to inhumane and unsafe working conditions. The cruelty of that process produces a product that's very cheap. And to some extent, that cost, the low cost of those very cheaply produced clothes is factored into our wages and our income such that we're almost being pushed or forced into participating in that system and purchasing the cheapest possible clothing that we can find, the cheapest possible footwear, etc. And we're perpetuating the cycle where we're casting off the clothes that only last a little while because they're very cheaply made into landfill. And so we can see the ways that our relationship with the second house, material goods that we need and the money that we need, through many twists and turns of history and culture and. Society, has led us to this place where we're seemingly stuck in a cycle of abuse of the planet it. And we're contributing to the death of, this is so sad, but it's like the death of the beautiful ecology around us that birthed us, that we live as part of. We are ourselves part of this ecosystem. We are also agents of its destruction. And it's one of the greatest sadnesses that I think many of us bear with us every day and that we struggle with every day. And as a father, I look at my little daughter who's only eight years old and I think about the future that she has and the world that we're creating and it, does make me feel tears, even as I speak, are welling up in my eyes when I think about this. And it comes down to themes and issues that are connected to the second house. So, this is another aspect of the second house in our modern world that is problematic, that is a struggle, that is difficult. So this is another avenue or lens by which we can see the dark side of the second house. Yeah, I was thinking too about how we're talking about just the materials, the packaging, the overwhelming amount of waste or trash, I should say. Whereas when we think about just the way the earth is set up, there is no such thing as trash in and of itself, but something that humans have made. But if you're privileged enough that trash is something that gets taken away from your house and then just deposited somewhere that you cannot see. It's hidden underground or it's, you know, and now, but it sort of like seeps in right now, there's so much plastic in the water that like, it's kind of just becoming everywhere. It's in the rain, it's in the drinking water. It's just, yeah, and just the relationship that we've created between like this creation of extreme poverty in one area to make something that can be super cheap, but then you also have to be like relatively privileged in order to have the power to make a choice that doesn't require you to buy the cheap thing. Like it's such a, yeah, it's such. A mindfuck really. Um, and it's just such a, it feels, it's so crafted and held as you were talking earlier in like the clutches of the palms of a few people who, you know, make these decisions that the rest of us sort of have to work really hard to skirt around the rules of it. It is heartbreaking and it is, it is challenging and difficult, even just the level, like the amount of privilege it would take to make the choice to like, to be someone who's like, I don't make any waste. It's like, well, some people don't have the time or the money or the resources to buy the thing. And of course, if we can, we should, but it's just such a vicious cycle in so many ways, as it relates to like, our like actual resource, like the actual thing that stands under our feet, which is the reason that we are here, which is the earth. So that's my sermon echo about that. No, thank you for saying that. A lot of what you said just really deeply resonated with me. Yeah. I was thinking about the alienation that we have from the means of production. We can also say that we have an alienation from. The alienation from the natural world because of the means of production. We also have an alienation. From the results of that, where we are trying to hide and not witness the damage. And that's another, part of that not witnessing of the second house to the first house, in a way. The way that planets in the second house can't see the first house, well, we're trying to sweep things under the rug. That's actually a really great second house metaphor, sweeping things under the rug, because. We're hiding the things in our house in the same way that we might when our, I don't know, like this is a very stereotypical scenario, but like your mother-in-law or something comes over and you've got to like quickly clean up everything because you don't want to feel the shame of having, someone in a position of like respect and authority, you know, view you as any less because your house is cluttered or like messy. So we run around like crazy, cleaning up, shoving things into closets, and then pretend as if this is how we always live. As though we don't live amongst mess and chaos. Yeah. Yeah. Even just the way that there's so much like, it's so rare that talking about money has any level of like ease. Like it's pretty trigger heavy topic for most people on a person. Like you're not casually sitting around the dinner table with friends and suddenly everyone's like, let's talk about money and how much money I make. And this is what my dad, nobody's really getting into the specifics of like what that actually means. It's usually couched in a lot of shame or insecurity or keeping up with the Joneses. Like it's got a lot of. It's not something that's usually like visible in a lot of our relationships or interpersonal dynamics or conversations. And whether, and that it's not always reflective of like the actual like spreadsheet reality, right? Like we have there's so many like feelings that can kind of like shrouded or get in the way of like honesty or brightness around it, I think. Yeah, it's really deep. It's like, yeah, there is a, it's a taboo area in the same way that the eighth house is the taboo area, the same way that the 12th is a taboo area. You know, we don't talk about things like mental health. We don't talk about things like what we're suffering, what we're what we're dealing with, what, what, what is making us feel misery. People ask us, how are you going? And we say, oh, I'm fine. Right. I feel like God abandoned me and, you know, like no one's ever responding with the devs of their Dark Knights. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the second house also has that taboo feeling to it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's deep. I love deep things. I do as well. One thing I wanted to just quickly touch on, as I feel like I want to transition into talking about some of the chart examples, was perhaps we can elevate a little bit out of the depths of despair of the ecological disaster that's creeping up on us that we can possibly still avert, but let's try and elevate a little bit. I want to talk, perhaps spend a little bit of time about this concept of ethics and spirituality and how those topics can relate to the second house, because we've spent a lot of time talking about greed and poverty and so forth. And what those. Issues kind of crystallize for us is that our relationship with the second house, there's a crucial ethical component to that. And there's also to some extent a spiritual component to it as well, to the extent that if we're spiritual people, then in some ways everything is spiritual. We can't separate or carve out this area of my life is where the the spirituality happens over here. And then over here, this is the mundane part where it's not spiritual. I think the mindset of someone who engages with spirit, who engages with the divine. To some extent, is that everything has a spiritual component, everything has a divine component, and that our actions, whether they're at the altar or in church or at the mosque or in meditation. They have spiritual consequences. But also, our daily decisions and our everyday activities also have a spiritual dimension and a spiritual consequence that ripples out through our lives. And the second house is one of those areas where the decisions we make, even though they may seem mundane, they may seem trivial or, you know, being in the supermarket might feel about as far from a spiritual experience as you could possibly get. But yet in that experience of strolling the aisles and considering what to bring home, there can be an ethical component there. And I think one thing that's really fascinating that's arisen in the last 30 years or so is this concept of ethical consumption, of bringing philosophy and bringing our sense of right and wrong and our sense of justice, these other concepts, with us when we engage with, consumer culture and capitalism and the marketplace. Because the choices that we make in that interaction, they're no longer just an aesthetic or a social component. We're not just thinking about, does this look nice in my house? Or is this the cool thing that's going to bring me social status? We're also thinking about what's the impact of this on the planet. Now, let's be clear here, let's not put all of the responsibility for solving these ecological problems on, the everyday person in the supermarket, because as we know, the root causes of these problems are societal and systemic, and they're deep. They're rooted deep. And to a large extent, the responsibility and the place of change must come from the top as well as from the bottom. It cannot simply be a bottom-up solution. Having said that. There is an impact in the choices that we make. I think there is a growing consciousness and awareness of that impact and people are talking about it more. People are trying their best to make ethical choices with what they purchase. I think there are some recent statistics in Australia that 70 or 80% of people would actually, if they had the choice, would prefer to choose the product or the option that is more sustainable, that uses recycled goods, that has less impact on on the planet that uses less chemicals, produces less pollution, etc. And that can lead to a difficult thing where companies are now doing what's called greenwashing, where they will pretend or make an assertion that a product is better for the planet or something. But sometimes that's not true. Anyway, that's a complex set of issues. You could have a whole set of bitch podcasts on that. Yeah. But simply to say that there is a willingness there and it is a growing... And that idea of ethical consumption is no longer like a fringe idea or an idea that's new and unusual to people. It's actually becoming very common, and that's a place that encourages me. I think we can't really take ethics out of any decision we make, but it's interesting how. It's filtering down even into these very common and everyday decisions that relate to the second house. It reminds me of how in a lot of spiritual traditions there is this concern with what we we consume. For example, dietary laws in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, that points to this awareness that the food we eat and consume has some sort of spiritual component to it, has a spiritual consequence to it, just as much as any other actions in our life. We can also see this in the rise in vegetarianism and veganism, indicative of our growing concern about the ethical implications of what we consume. Now, I'm not proposing that everyone become vegan or vegetarian. What I'm simply noting is the phenomenon that people are, for various reasons, both in response to the cruelty of the way that we farm and also the environmental impact animal agriculture, people are bringing that awareness to what they consume. And this goes, like I said, like I touched on before with those religious examples, there is another stream of spiritual or religious engagement with second house topics that shouldn't be overlooked. Which is the concept of almsgiving, of charity and support for the poor and destitute. So the practice of almsgiving is essentially this concept of sharing our resources with those who are less fortunate than us. And pretty much all spiritual traditions or traditional religions have some sort of concept of this as being important for our well-being, our spiritual well-being, to sacrifice some of what we have, if we have the capacity to do that, to elevate and assist other people who are in a position of less privilege than us. There's some components to this. Firstly, there's an awareness in these traditions that. The things signified by the second house are ephemeral, they don't last. They exist only for a short time before they're consumed or they expire, they deteriorate. I was reminded when I was doing some Bible reading, because as a Christian mystic, I read the Bible a bit. There is a line where Jesus says, do not store up treasures on earth, because, I'm going to misquote this, because if you store up your treasures on earth, the moths can eat them and rust can consume them. These are the metaphors he uses, but store up treasures in heaven. So, there's an awareness that hoarding more than we need, having an excess of material goods and money is not going to benefit anyone because it's going to pass away, you know? And so, to the extent that we can and that we have the ability to, we should. Like, again, we should, I'm saying from these traditions' perspectives, there is a teaching, to try to share that wealth and share that treasure that we have with other people. And, when we recognize that ephemeral quality of the second house stuff, then it can open up a greater willingness to share and to give to people who are less fortunate than us. Yeah. So, and that's not just, it should say, it's very emphasised in the Abrahamic faiths. So there's a concept of almsgiving in Judaism, in Islam, and Christianity. It's very codified and there's many, many lines in the spiritual texts that repeat again and again the importance of that. But it's not just an Abrahamic concept. For example, I learned in my research that in Hinduism and Buddhism, they have a very similar concept called dāna, which means the act of relinquishing your own things and investing them in a recipient. And the important part is without expecting anything in return for it. So it's an act of freely giving something away without expecting it to be reciprocated, without expecting any return. So we're not giving someone something and saying, well, now you owe me. You know, that concept of debt is not present in almsgiving. It's about relinquishing something, not doing it to receive anything in return, whether that's, you know, a payback. But also, we're not expecting to receive status from that either. We're not trying to do it to be praised or to be recognised as a charitable person. We're not trying to get social, repayment for it. We're doing it just purely because we have the capacity and we have compassion, to another being, and that's why we want to relinquish some of what we have as a way of, helping other people, number one, but also, number two, kind of working on that core fear we have that I mentioned earlier, like, it's a way of working against that fear and trying to, like, trying to, like, grapple with that fear, understand it and feel it, but also say that you're not going to control me. This fear I feel is not going to dominate my life, and it's not going to be the driving force in my life, to the extent that we can. Again, And that's the important point, is that people who have the means to give alms in these traditions are encouraged. However, if you literally cannot do that, then there is no, you know, then of course that obligation passes away, you know. There's another story in the Bible of, you know, that old woman who comes up and gives just one little copper coin into the alms box, and she gets criticized for not giving enough, but then Jesus says something worse to the effect, well, for her, that is a huge amount of money, you know. So we give according to our means, essentially, in this concept of almsgiving. And I think where I'm going with that is not to stand here and preach and tell people, do you have to adopt this as a spiritual practice, far be it from me to do that. I'm doing is just pointing out the fact that in these traditions... There is an emphasis and an awareness that our relationship to second house topics, has a spiritual component to it. And so, that's another lens by which we can look at the second house is, how is my relationship to the second house impacting my spiritual well-being? What is is my spiritual practice in relation to the second house? How is that relationship informed by my spiritual or religious path? And that can open up another dimension and a way of thinking about the second house beyond simply, oh, it's my money and it's my stuff. Right. So, yeah. Right. Thank you for sharing all of that and for just thinking through all of it and sharing really graciously with that. Do you wanna look at some charts? Yeah, let's do that. I think that'd be a good way to move out of the conceptual and into some practical astrology and show people how the second house shows up in some real-life examples. Awesome. Which would you like to follow? I feel like I set them out in some kind of order, but as I'm looking at it, I'm like, maybe I did. Oh yeah, I think there was a sense here. Let's follow them in order. So one of the the ones I wanted to show first, and we'll just run through them quickly, is the chart. Of the talk show host, Jay Leno. He's retired now, but he was in the 90s and 2000s, extremely famous and had one of the biggest talk shows in America, and it was broadcast all around the world. I think it's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. And I'm not a massive fan of the guy, like personally, or his comedy or anything, but He's a great second house example because if you look at his chart, we have a night chart with Aquarius rising and then we have Jupiter and Venus placed in the second house Pisces. So Pisces, for those who don't know, is a very happy place for Jupiter and Venus because it's the domicile or the house of Jupiter, and it's also the exaltation of Venus. Having both of those quote-unquote benefic or good planets in the second house, one would think would provide a a lot of fortune or place a lot of emphasis in any way. Any regard on the second house. And one of the things that's interesting about Jay Leno, apart from being famous and well-off because of his success, is that he's well-known for being a massive collector of cars and motorbikes. Like, sort of one of the most extreme examples of someone who's obsessed with cars. So, I read that he owns around 180 cars and around 160 motorbikes. Which is crazy. Apparently, he says that number fluctuates though, because he's kind of always buying and selling and, you know, so it goes up and down, but that is by anyone's, count, like a truly excessive amount of cars. So, I love that example because it just shows how that, that second house theme of just material possessions. Just really jumps out with Jay Leno's chart with both of those benefic planets supercharged in the second house. He has way too many cars, but that's his prerogative. I'm not gonna sit here and necessarily judge him for that, but I just wanted to mention it because it's so funny how literal the astrology can be sometimes. Right, and where we have these two, like another way of thinking about the benefic planets is like they're saying yes to things And we have just like a lot of capable yes happening. It's like, do you want the car? Yes. It's like the answer is just always yes. Should I have more? Yes. You know, so which also just feels very his personality from what little I know of him as being a child of that of the 90s. Yeah, I think a lot of us grew up with him on TV and it's just funny to see, yeah, that component of his personality coming through so clearly in the. A little bit of knowledge of traditional astrology would look at that and think, this guy's probably got a lot of stuff or a lot of money and that would be very accurate. Yeah, for sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The next shot I wanted to talk about... Which is a figure that I think many people probably aren't as familiar with, but he was very famous in the 20th century, was Farouk, who was the last king of Egypt. Born in 1920, and he ruled Egypt from 1937 to 1952. But he was forced to abdicate the throne when the. Egyptian Arab Republic was declared in 1953. So, if we look at his chart, he has a night chart, again. Libra rising. He has Scorpio as his second house and he has Mars, the traditional ruler of Scorpio, placed in the second house along with the Moon and the North Node. So that's a very strong. Second house ruler and also the Moon, which is the planet that is associated with our, I suppose our heart in the traditional sense. How do I say? Our felt. The felt part of ourselves deeply rooted in the second house with the north node there. And the north node being in traditional Western astrology, like a more button that dials up the, it turns up the dial on anything that it comes into contact with. So Farouk was famous for having a very ostentatious lifestyle. He spent vast amounts of money on cars. He owned about 100 cars as a theme here. He also had a very legendary appetite, so he was known to eat just vast quantities of food. Apparently, he's said to have begun his day with a breakfast of 30 eggs, toast, and then you follow that with lobster, steak, or lamb. And then after dinner, were dying on caviar and ice cream. And so this very like ostentatious, very, you know, this is like an example of excess, you know, extreme excess in the second house. And we have that very strong second house ruler there. So another just very obvious example, but not only of material possessions, but also the second house signifying food as well. Yeah. Also just, yeah. And the moon also being related to like appetite and things like that. And the moon also like ruling the tent and it's like, what are we sitting here talking about? I'm like over a hundred years later, we're not talking about his rulership. We're talking about what he had for breakfast and the amount of cars he had. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That it locates that place of fame in his second house. So yeah, absolutely. It's kind of, these are really cute, quite literal examples of how this works, you know. The next chart I had was someone who we will know, who we all know. I'm going to pull it up. Yeah. This is the chart of Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft. The richest man in the world. His net worth by the count of Google, when I looked this up, was $104.9 billion. In his chart, he has a night chart, Cancer rising. So his second house is Leo, and he has Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Leo in the second house. So we can see the way that Jupiter brings good fortune. It also is a significator of increase and expansion, and that's coupled with Pluto, a planet that is also strongly associated with themes of expansion and increase and turning things up to an extreme. Level, making things big, making things huge, making things massive. And also, there's a component of Pluto that is associated with, I don't know how to put it, like an existential component. There's a component of fear of extremity. And here we have a man who's just extraordinarily wealthy and has a huge amount of power as a result of his wealth. What's, interesting about this chart as well is that he made his fortune in technology, which is a second house topic. So another way that we can see- and also have Uranus there as well, I should note. So quite an interesting second house and we can see the way that Uranus signifying innovation and modernity and revolutions. He is one of the people who has, ushered in, I suppose, the computer revolution and the democratisation of computing, where, computers previously were something that was held at universities and were rare objects. Bill Gates, among other people, he's one of the people who made computers accessible to everyone. And so to some extent, the world that we live in is shaped by people like Bill Gates. Again, he's not the only person, but he certainly was part of that. The Uranus in the second house, house signifies that revolution that he helped to bring about. So that technology component to the second house is what I like about Bill Gates' chart, other than his massive wealth. It's just that fact that it's the tool that comes from tools, it comes from the devices that we use. The next chart I wanted to share with everyone, this is one of the people on this list that I quite like is Willie Nelson. He's a country music icon, he's very progressive in his politics, he's an outspoken LGBT ally, he's also a bit of a stoner. His birth chart has Capricorn Rising, it's another night chart. I think they're all night charts, all of my examples for some reason are night charts. And so yeah, Capricorn Rising, which makes Aquarius his second whole sign house, and he has Saturn, his chart ruler, placed in the second house. So that, you would think, if you're just looking at that chart, would show some sort of emphasis or concern with second house topics at some point in his life. And one of the things about Willie Nelson, because he's had a very long and storied career, but one thing that jumped out at me when I was considering Willy's second house. Is that he had a really famous struggle with the IRS. So in 1990, the IRS actually seized, 22 of his properties, claiming that he had unpaid taxes totaling $32 million. His lawyers managed to negotiate. I'm not sure how this works, but his lawyers managed to negotiate with the IRS and reduce that sum down to only $16 million. Again, this is in 1990, so that's worth a lot more money then than it is now. As a result of that, he was just massively in debt. To try and deal with that, he released a double album called the IRS Tapes, Who'll Buy My Memories? And all the profits from the sales of that album went to the IRS to pay off his tax debt. That. Eventually he managed to get out of debt. He ended up suing his accountant, Price Waterhouse, and settled for an undisclosed sum of money. We assume probably enough to pay off the debt, because by 1993 he'd paid off the debt. But it was a really, like, it. Was quite, you know, it was reported a lot when that happened to him. And it's one of those defining moments in his life. And I think we're talking about Willie Nelson's second house, that event really stands out. KS For sure. I feel like the way Saturn doesn't let you get away with anything and the way that it was also like a lot of the wealth was tied up in real estate, which is a very Saturn thing. And even just the relationship of his son ruling the eighth and then using his powers of creativity to pay off tax debt. It's an interesting... It's interesting. The more I look at this chart, the more I'm like, oh, that's why he's kind of cute and cuddly, that little Cancer moon and all that. Yeah, he's a very likeable guy, I think. And that's one of the interesting things about his career is that he's managed to kind of... Be liked by all sorts of people, both on the left and right of politics. He sort of has this ability to… Yeah, he's a very charismatic individual. I love that observation you made of the eighth connecting with the fifth there. I think that is really beautiful. It kind of wraps up…. It kind of shows you how he handled that problem, which is very clever. And sort of turned that problem into a source of creativity and fun. Yeah, the next chart I wanted to quickly run through. This is showing the arts and crafts component of the second house that I mentioned before. This is the chart for Gianni Versace, an Italian fashion designer and founder of the international fashion house Versace. We have a night chart. We have Scorpio rising, the Sun and Mars placed in the second house Sagittarius. So we have not only his chart ruler Mars in the second house, which would show an emphasis or a focus to some extent on second house topics, but also the Sun, the sort of centre of the solar system and has the sort of centering quality of the sun, also placed in the second house. And he was. Very well known for his theatrical and outrageous fashion styles. He designed costumes for theatre and films. And one thing I didn't know about Versace until I researched this episode is that he is also known as a collector of rare art. So, he had a massive collection of artworks. So we can see these themes of arts and crafts, clothing, but also just like the beautiful things that we create being located. In the second house. So I like that example. It's just sort of demonstrating the way that, makers and creators also can find themselves in that second house. So the second house is an important place for people who create. Yeah. And it's always like, also like, you know, like the ruler of the fifth and the first and then ruling the second, like, that's a great chart, actually. I've never looked at this chart before. And I also didn't know that about the collector of rare arts as well, which is really fascinating. Yeah, so when he died there was apparently a bit of a fight over who would get the artwork that he collected. Yeah, yeah. Well, the last example, which I think is perhaps the most on-the-nose, second-house example I could ever pull up, and I love this chart, is the chart for Karl Marx. So we've run through a lot of people who are very wealthy or have a lot of material possessions and things like that. But Marx is really interesting because he has a prominent second house that, also shows another dimension of the second house, which is not just about the stuff that we own and the stuff that we have, but also a concern with the whole idea of ownership and the whole idea of. How we create the goods that we have. So, his chart demonstrates another component of the second house, which is almost like the philosophy or the conceptual aspect of the second house. So, I really love the chart for that reason. So, we have a night chart for Karl Marx. He has Aquarius rising, which makes his chart ruler or his ascendant ruler Saturn. And Saturn is placed in his second house in Pisces, which coincidentally is where Saturn's about to transit into very soon at the time that we're recording this. And along with Saturn, And he also has Pluto and Chiron in the book. In Pisces in the second house. So if you don't know who Karl Marx is, he was a German Jewish, philosopher, an economist, and a very prominent socialist. He didn't invent communism, but he is perhaps the most important and influential communist in history. And he wrote, the Communist Manifesto, which is a little, I suppose, handbook explaining the communist philosophy and worldview, and kind of a radicalising text. He also wrote a longer and more theoretical work called Das Kapital. So yeah, it's hard to underestimate the influence that Karl Marx has had on the world. And to a large extent, a lot of the events in the 20th century. Were kind of byproducts or the result of people's encounter with his thought and the different paths they chose to take in relation to his work. So just a massively influential person. But what I love about this chart is that we have Saturn. Well, what Saturn signifies in its core significations is realism, seriousness, also signifies deep thought and contemplation. And so there's a person who is taking a very serious and deep approach to the second house, and his philosophy in many ways is centered on the societal structures that are connected to to the second house. So, one of his core beliefs, and I hope I don't explain this poorly, is that one of the problems we face in our society, in our world, is that the means of production, which means the things that produce the goods that we need, are owned by private individuals, very few private individuals. And the wealth that is generated from that means of production is concentrated in very few people. The revolutionary stance he took was that those means of production, for example, factories and farms and land. All the sort of things that, I suppose we locate them in the fourth house really. That are owned by the very few and used to produce the goods that we need in our society. That the ownership of the means of production should be with the people. And that's a very. Revolutionary stance to take. And so we can see the way that his thought and his philosophy and and what he's known for is very much centered around the topics of the second house. So I really like the fact that we've got Pluto there, we've got Saturn there, we've also got Chiron there. So there's perhaps, I don't really work with Chiron much, but you can perhaps see how some of the dimensions of Chiron, this idea of healing, et cetera, can come in with Marxist philosophy in the second house. And so, there's a revolutionary component, Pluto, there's deep thought, Saturn. There's also this concern with trying to sort of fix this in some way, which is perhaps the Chiron component. And the other part I wanted to mention is when I talked about the fourth house, land and real estate and things like that being another one area of his concern. We can see all those fourth house placements there, the moon, the sun, Sun and Venus as well. So a great chart that when you look at it, it'll just make you laugh astrologically because of course, Marx has his chart ruler in the second house. But I, think some of the significations of the planets that are placed there sort of speaks to or illustrates or seems to sort of symbolically resonate with the components of his philosophy. Yeah, for sure. Thank you for bringing that in. As we kind of wrap up our conversation and our time, is there anything that you feel like you'd like to share that you feel like I didn't make room or space for before we hear about all your links and things? Ah, look, I think it was a pretty wide-ranging conversation and I think we kind of hit on pretty much everything that I wanted to touch upon. So yeah, thank you for holding space for me to kind of mount the pulpit, so to speak, and talk about these things. But I became increasingly passionate about it as I was researching these topics. And so I've been really excited to share my ideas and it's great to have this opportunity. So thank you for, yeah, thank you for having me on. It's a real privilege and I feel very grateful to you for inviting me. It's totally my pleasure. If our listeners would like to stay in touch with you, with your work, sort of be in your internet metaverse, where could they find out more about you or stay in touch? ACME Yeah, okay, good question. Yes, so I have a website which is oldschoolastrology.com, all one word. And that's where I have my blog and links to the readings and offerings that I have at the moment. Currently, I'm not doing birth chart readings. I'm only doing horary astrology. Readings. And the reason for that is that I am taking time away from my consulting work to focus on the course that I'm preparing with Chris Brennan that I mentioned before. So that course is actually available for sale now for early entry because we're actually Doing this unusual thing where we're working on it. As we go, we're updating his old horary astrology course with new video lectures and new content. As we record it, the new lectures appear on the website. And until we've finished that process, the course is very cheap because it's sort of a half-finished product available for early access. So it's actually only 200 US dollars right now to get access to that course. Once we've finished doing that work, the course will increase in price. So, I suppose if I wanted to be a salesperson, I would say that like you can get in now and you can get access to the content for a lower price and you can get grandfathered into the full course once we've finished. So, that's another area where you can access my work. I'm also very active on Twitter and my Twitter account is at oldschool astro. Those are probably the main ways that you can follow me and get to know more about me and my work and if you'd like me to do astrology work for you, then the website is there. Yeah. BT. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing all that. I'll be sure all the links and everything that you talked about will be in the show notes. If you're listening, be sure to also check out the show notes if you'd like more direct clickable access to all of those things. And Rob, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed hosting this conversation with you and appreciate you for sharing all your perspectives and ideas on what can be a really tricky and difficult topic. So So thank you so much for bringing so much care to it. No, thank you, Mary Grace. It's been great. Thank you for participating in this conversation with us. 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