Rethinking the 11th House

The 11th house in astrology is traditionally called the House of Friends, but astrologers are usually quick to add, “Not those kinds of friends.”

You won’t find drinks in the pub or birthday parties in the 11th house. Those activities are the domains of the 5th house.

The 11th house is about meeting goals. It’s the house of networking meetups and the people you talk to on social media who have the same job as you. Astrology conferences come up quickly when astrologers talk about the 11th house because they are places where astrologers go to be with other astrologers.

But is that the right way to think about the 11th house?

Big Sea, Small fish

One of the biggest reasons I decided to move to Portland, Oregon was Powell’s.

Powell’s, if you don’t know, is a bookseller. It is most famous for its “City of Books” in Downtown Portland, a literary wonderland that fills an entire city block with labyrinthine color-coded rooms, but Powell’s is actually a small chain of massive stores that casts an enormous shadow over the literary scene in the Portland area.

I had just published my first short stories in online literary magazines when I moved to Portland. I was doe-eyed, smitten with the idea that I was becoming a fiction writer.

It took me less than a week to visit the Powell’s store in the suburbs of Portland. I will never forget standing in the middle of suburban Powell’s and feeling the weight of all the words towering over my head, filling the line of shelves that seemed to disappear into the distance.

I felt like I was dissolving in a sea of clones. Everywhere I looked was a book, and behind that book was a person with something important to say, begging me, “Please, pay attention.”

What can I possibly write that is as important as any of this? I thought. There’s no room for me here.

What House Are We In Really?

It’s February 2021 as I write this. Covid-19 has been a driving force in society for over a year. It’s hard to imagine a world where conferences are the defining metaphor for the 11th house.

Where conferences still exist, they are virtually indistinguishable from social media.

Algorithmically sorted communities—which is what online social networks are—are designed to cluster people together with people who are like them. This can be a positive experience when you are in a 5th house mood, looking for people who have the same hobbies and are fans of the same shows. It can feel like dancing at the world’s biggest dance party. When you are on social media to accomplish something, however, it can feel like running with the season’s salmon, swimming through a river of tails slapping you in the face as you try to fight the current to get upstream.

The 11th house is supposed to be the place where you meet the people who will help you meet your goals, but the world of professional, goal-driven social media is suffocating. Everywhere you look there are people just like you crawling all over each other, competing for attention. There are nice people, too, who are willing to share their platform or offer advice, but the goal of these places is not to connect people for the purposes of mutual support. It’s to get eyeballs for the famous few who drive most of the advertising revenue.

Perhaps, the people who are members of the most famous 1% of their fields can find 11th house camaraderie on social media, but for most of us social media is a place where ego goes to dissolve. It is easy to think you’re doing something worthwhile when you’re the best in your small town, but in a social sea that knows no boundaries, it is difficult to imagine you’re doing anything special. Maybe social media belongs in the 12th house.

Ensembles, Not Crowd Scenes

Lately, I’ve been rethinking the 11th house.

Instead of seeing the 11th house as the house of the masses bound together by a common interest, I have begun to see it as the house of ensemble casts.

In ensemble stories, a group of people come together to go on an adventure or solve a problem. One of the defining features of an ensemble story is that the members of the ensemble have profoundly different personalities and skillsets.

In the TV show Firefly, a pilot, doctor, mechanic, psychic, spiritual leader, fighter, diplomat, strategist, and tactician join forces to keep the precarious spaceship Serenity flying and in the air. Each member of the crew has a unique niche that they fill in the functioning of the ship and talents that no one else has.

It is because of their differences that the crew of Serenity is able to help each other. They are bound to each other by this mutual support and a common goal, celebrating the differences that keep each other alive.

I talk more about how to find your own ensemble in “Finding Your Adventuring Party with Astrological Archetypes.”

Ecosystems, Not Monocultures

Powell’s is the sun the literary scene orbits around. With a giant like Powell’s on the scene, it is hard to be an independent bookseller in Portland. In other major cities, the independent bookselling scene is diverse, full of neighborhood and specialty shops. Every city has their famous places like the Strand in New York or City Lights in San Francisco, but they are stars in the sky, not forces of nature shaping the space around them with their gravity.

In order to survive in an environment like Portland, a bookstore needs to have an extremely narrow and well-defined niche.

One of my favorite sources for occult books in Portland is a store called INVOKE. Facebook calls INVOKE a “gift shop,” but, to me, it’s the runes shop. The owner of the store has a passion for the runes, and they are everywhere in the shop—filling books, etched on jewelry, carved in stone. INVOKE is a collection that reflects the unique personality and interests of the woman who runs it, which is typical for occult shops in the city.

If you are just getting into the occult and are looking for a book by Buckland or Cunningham, you should probably go to Powell’s, but as soon as you get into the occult at any depth, Powell’s probably won’t be able to help you.

You need to find the tiny shops that make up the ensemble cast of the occult scene, the specialty players, the occult version of farm selling honey out the backdoor instead of the supermarket.

Where There’s A Will, There’s An 11th House

On the internet, ensembles are difficult to find. Search engines and recommendations algorithms assume you’re looking for the things that are the most popular, not the things that are the most unique and interesting. If you float with the current, you’ll think that the 12th house is all there is.

But the 11th house is all about swimming against the tide, thinking for yourself, and going after a goal. To find the other members of your ensemble cast, you have to search with intention and be willing to go places that are off the beaten path.

So, go, find the others! And not just the others that are just like you.

Related Articles