The 8th House Experience Pt.1:
(Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You)
Case Study: Rose DeWitt Bukater
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” - Anonymous
“He who feeds you controls you.” - Thomas Sankara
Two old sayings that have colored much of my experience as an 8th house dominant person for a good part of my life. Beyond the sex, occult and transformation themes, one of the most under-recognized signifiers of the 8th house is the connection to other people’s resources. It sounds mundane on the surface, and it is, but growing up and looking at my childhood and adolescence in retrospect I began to understand the depth of how it plays out.
And one of my favorite movies and characters illustrated it before my very eyes.
In Titanic, Rose is showered in gifts, presents and jewels bigger than she can handle. She is gifted things from other people, from a lavish wedding on behalf of her mother to the Heart of the Ocean from her fiancé down to the first-class tickets onto the Titanic on its maiden voyage. While she can play it all up and she does appreciate it, one thing is clear; She never asked for any of it. The 8th House is the house of other people resources, opposite the 2nd house of our own resources.
Rose is never consulted for her opinion, takes or even how she feels about any of the things people shower her with. Her mother disregards the lavender color theme she wants with her wedding, talking about her when discussing it but never actually involving her in the conversation.
The 8th House is opposite the 2nd House, the house of voice and speech.
She’s treated like a child, “meant to be seen and not heard.”
Her fiancé Cal orders her food for her like a child, down to the temperature of the meat.
Her family and friends have celebrated her engagement and impending wedding. Her mother dotes on her fiancé. Her fiancé has their plans set for when they land. She seemingly has it made with the perfect man, wedding and life. But until Jack, no one ever asks her how she feels about the wedding or if she even loves her fiancé to begin with. She says “it feels like i’m standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming to the top of my lungs and no one even looks up.” And that colors a lot of experiences with the 8th house, being on the receiving end of other people’s resources without being asked if you even want them or having any input in them at all.
And running the risk of being called ungrateful if you don’t want them.
Rose feels trapped. She describes the opulent heart of the ocean diamond necklace that many would have died for as a dog collar. But she still hesitates to leave. When Jack comes into the picture and her mother realizes she may be tempted to throw her plan out of wack, she accuses Rose of being selfish and threatens the idea of a poor, dishonorable, shameful existence with them losing everything they have and working as seamstresses. The 8th House is an extreme house, it doesn’t know nuance, it doesn’t know the middle ground.
The 8th House: you accept all the resources other’s have to give you or they threaten to rip the rug out from under you completely.
In the 8th House, you run the risk of people gifting you things with the intention of controlling you.
Dangling their resources in your face like a cat toy.
In the end however, it leads 8th Housers out of the dark into the 9th House, a house defined by independence, adventure and risk. A life very similar to Jack and the path he was able to give her a glimpse of.
The path that she ultimately took for herself.
In the most extreme examples, such as mine, it may even make one hyper-independent but for the better. At the conclusion, Rose was able to give it all up and go live the life she built for herself, based on choices she made for herself and define herself outside of the things given to her, but with things she gave and made for herself.
As an 8th houser, like Rose, you realize people would gift you with things not for you, but for them.
Also, eventually like Rose, you stopped being scared of refusing things people gave you if you didn’t really want it. You, cautiously, learn to trust others but most of all you learn to trust yourself and your own resources to get you ahead, your own resources physically and mentally.
And they worked.
It worked for me
Give it a chance and it will for you too!
Signed, The Divine Erotic (8th House Sun, Mercury, Ketu (South Node), Uranus and Neptune)
199 notes
·
View notes
That car scene in Titanic makes me go insane specifically because Rose is the one holding Jack when they’re done having sex.
We’ve established in recent years that one of Titanic’s amazing qualities is that Jack is a manic pixie dream boy teaching Rose how to live. It’s not the other way around.
In Rose’s relationship with Cal, he is the sexual aggressor, and she’s clearly not into it. With Jack, Rose is the aggressor, and Jack is very into it. He likes a girl who takes charge, and in some way he taught her to be confident, but in other ways she found it in herself. So with her newfound confidence and sense of agency, it makes sense that she's the more assertive one during sex.
And in that scene, they’re naked, as vulnerable as they can possibly be, and this is the closest Rose has ever been to anyone before. And for just a few seconds, we see Jack vulnerable for the first time. He’s trembling and it’s definitely implied that this is his first time, not hers (It's been implied in the film that she and Cal have slept together but it isn't good.) So she holds her lover and strokes his head. She's the strong one, the protector, the experienced one.
You very rarely see that in sex scenes, with the woman holding the man, but this movie chose to do it that way. And it's such a good choice. Rose’s strength helps her fight, but it also helps her love.
1K notes
·
View notes