What the Eighth House governs
The Eighth House is the house of what we share at the deepest level: other people’s money and resources — inheritance, taxes, loans, a partner’s wealth — and, psychologically, sexual and emotional intimacy, merger, and the crises that transform us. It is the traditional house of death, not usually literal, but as the great threshold of change: whatever must die for something new to be born.
A succedent house of powerful and hidden dynamics, it deals in the currents beneath the surface.
The Eighth House in the birth chart
The cusp sign and ruler describe a person’s relationship to intimacy, shared resources and transformation — how they merge, bond and are changed. Planets in the Eighth are drawn into depth and intensity; they rarely stay superficial, and often mark where a life undergoes its most profound turns.
The Eighth / Second axis
The Eighth House of shared resources opposes the Second House of one’s own. The axis runs from what I hold alone to what I merge, owe or inherit — from self-worth to intimacy, from earning to sharing, from having to letting go.