Secret Relationships in the Chart: The 12th House, the 8th, and Whether the Hidden Becomes Open

A relationship kept hidden has a house before it has a reason. The twelfth is where the private, the far and the unseen live, and a relationship carried by it is one that lives out of sight, from the family, the community, the workplace; the eighth is where the secret and the transformation live, and a relationship carried by it is one that is concealed and that changes the native in the concealing. Either house on the fifth of romance or the seventh of the bond gives the hidden relationship, and the chart reads four things about it that the couple cannot read from inside. Who it is hidden from, since the family is the second and fourth, the community the ninth and the workplace the tenth, and the house afflicted by the hiding says which. Whether the hiding is the relationship’s shape, a native who loves privately by signature and would hide any relationship, or its season, a sub-period of the twelfth or eighth lord that will end. Whether it comes into the open by the couple’s choice, in the seventh lord’s sub-period under Jupiter, or by exposure, in the eighth lord’s under Saturn or Mars. And what the hiding costs the home. This article reads the four, with nine signatures in a table and a chart in which the twelfth lord sat on the fifth beside the family’s own lord.

It belongs to the complete relationship astrology guide. The relationship hidden because the other person is married is a different reading with its own page, Relationships With a Married Person, and the infidelity signatures inside a marriage are the KP page’s, cheating and infidelity in KP; this page reads the relationship hidden from the family and the world by a couple who are both free to be in it. The family’s response when it comes into the open is the earlier page, Family Opposition to Love Marriage.

Parminder Chahal

Vedic astrologer · author of jagannathhora.com and the article you're reading · builder of this site's calculators

Hidden by shape or by season, and how it comes into the open: the chart knows which.

A relationship consultation reads which house carries your hidden relationship and from whom it is hidden, whether the secrecy is your chart's shape or a passing sub-period, and the season in which it becomes open, by your choice in the seventh lord's period or by exposure in the eighth's, so that the choosing stays yours.

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In this article

• Two houses of the hidden: the twelfth and the eighth
• Hidden from whom: the second, fourth, ninth and tenth
• Shape or season: the native who hides, and the period that hides
• Nine signatures of the hidden relationship
• The secret channel: the third house and Mercury
• Into the open by choice, or by exposure
• When it comes into the open: the seventh lord under Jupiter, the eighth under Saturn
• What the hiding costs: the fourth and the Moon
• The secret that carries danger
• The other person’s chart: hidden on both sides, or one
• A worked chart: the twelfth lord on the fifth, beside the family’s lord
• Frequently asked questions

Two houses of the hidden: the twelfth and the eighth

The twelfth house hides by distance and privacy: the relationship that lives in another city, in a private life the family does not enter, in the hours nobody sees; Venus in the twelfth, the fifth lord in the twelfth and the seventh lord in the twelfth are its signatures, and the twelfth lord on the fifth or seventh, in the twelfth lord in the fifth and the twelfth lord in the seventh, is the same signature from the other side, the private brought into the romance or the bond. The twelfth’s secrecy is gentle; it is the relationship nobody asks about because it happens where nobody looks. The eighth house hides by concealment: the relationship that is actively kept secret, that would cause a crisis if known, that changes the native in the keeping; Venus in the eighth, the fifth lord in the eighth, and the eighth lord on the fifth or seventh, in the eighth lord in the fifth and the eighth lord in the seventh, are its signatures, with the whole range of the eighth in the eighth lord in the twelve houses. The eighth’s secrecy is intense; it is the relationship that is a secret because the world would object, and it carries the crisis of its own revelation inside it. A native can tell which house they are in by the quality of the hiding: the twelfth’s is a privacy, the eighth’s is a secret, and the two come into the open differently, the first by the couple stepping into the light and the second by the light finding them.

Hidden from whom: the second, fourth, ninth and tenth

The house afflicted by the hidden relationship, or the house whose lord is connected to the twelfth or eighth lord that carries it, says who the relationship is hidden from. The second and fourth are the family and the home: a twelfth or eighth lord connected to the second or fourth lord, or the fifth lord in the twelfth with the fourth lord aspecting, is the relationship hidden from the parents, which in this country is most of them. The ninth is the community, the tradition and the elders: the ninth lord touched by the hiding house is the relationship hidden because the community would not accept it, the inter-community love, and Rahu in the ninth is the tradition it would break. The tenth is the workplace and the public standing: a tenth lord connected to the twelfth or eighth is the relationship hidden at work, between colleagues, from a senior, or from a public that watches the native. The third is the siblings and the close circle, and a relationship hidden from a sibling has the third’s lord in the hiding house. The reading names the house and therefore the person, and the couple usually confirm it before the sentence is finished; what they cannot see from inside is the next thing, which is that the person the relationship is hidden from is also the person through whose house it comes into the open, since a secret kept from the fourth is revealed to the fourth, and the fourth lord’s sub-period is when.

Shape or season: the native who hides, and the period that hides

Some natives hide every relationship, and some relationships are hidden for a season, and the chart distinguishes the two before anything else is read. The native who hides has the signature natal: Venus in the twelfth or eighth, the fifth or seventh lord there, the Moon in the eighth or twelfth, and a chart with two of these keeps its loves private whoever they are and whatever the family thinks, out of a preference of the houses for privacy; such a native does not need the relationship to come into the open and is often unhappy when it does, and the reading tells them so, since a twelfth-house lover pressed into a public relationship loses what they loved about it. The relationship hidden for a season has a clean fifth and seventh and a sub-period of the twelfth or eighth lord running, or Rahu’s, and it is hidden because the period makes it so, the job that must be kept, the family that must be prepared, the year that must pass; when the sub-period ends the relationship steps into the seventh lord’s light on its own. The distinction changes everything the couple does next: the natal hider should choose a partner who does not need the world’s audience, and the seasonal hider should be told the date the season ends, which is usually sooner than the fear suggests.

Nine signatures of the hidden relationship

Two signatures from the first eight rows is the native who hides by shape; the last row alone is the relationship hidden by season, and it is the commoner case and the one with a date on it.

The secret channel: the third house and Mercury

A hidden relationship lives in its channel, the messages, the calls, the second number, the account nobody knows about, and the channel is the third house and Mercury. Mercury in the twelfth, in Mercury in the twelfth, or in the eighth, gives the native whose communication is private by nature, who keeps a hidden channel without effort and whose relationship can live in it for years; the third lord connected to the twelfth or eighth gives the same. The channel is also the point of exposure, since a hidden relationship is almost always found through its messages, and the reading watches Mercury’s transits for the season of it: Mercury retrograde over the native’s twelfth, eighth or third is the month the message goes to the wrong person, the phone is seen, the account is found, and a couple keeping a relationship private should be told those weeks the way a traveller is told the monsoon. The Moon in the eighth, in the Moon in the eighth, adds the heart that keeps secrets as a habit and suffers them; the Moon’s sub-period in such a chart is when the secret weighs most. A channel is a structure the couple can manage, and the reading’s practical use here is to tell them the season in which it is most fragile, which is the one honest thing astrology can do for a secret.

Into the open by choice, or by exposure

A hidden relationship comes into the open in one of two ways, and the chart says which is more likely and can sometimes change it. By choice: the couple decide to tell the family, the community, the workplace, and the relationship walks into the seventh house, the open bond, on its own feet; the chart shows this as the seventh lord’s sub-period arriving with the twelfth or eighth lord’s ending, and the reading gives the couple that season as the one in which to speak. By exposure: the relationship is found, and the chart shows it as the eighth lord’s sub-period, or Saturn or Mars transiting the twelfth or eighth, or the Sun transiting the fifth or twelfth in the wrong month, and the eighth’s crisis arrives with the light. The difference between the two is not in the relationship but in the timing, and it is the reading’s most useful gift to a couple keeping a secret: the seventh lord’s season comes before the eighth lord’s in some charts and after it in others, and a couple who know that the eighth’s season is first should speak before it, since a secret told is a different thing from a secret found. The reading does not tell a couple to reveal a relationship; it tells them which season is coming first, so that the choosing stays theirs.

When it comes into the open: the seventh lord under Jupiter, the eighth under Saturn

The relationship steps into the open by choice in the seventh lord’s sub-period, or Venus’s, with Jupiter transiting the seventh, in Jupiter’s transit through the seventh, or the second, the family, in Jupiter’s transit through the second, which is the classical season in which a family is told and receives; the fourth lord’s sub-period is the season the mother is told, and the ninth lord’s the father. It is found, by exposure, in the eighth lord’s sub-period, with Saturn transiting the twelfth, in Saturn’s transit through the twelfth, the two and a half years in which what was private is made to answer for itself, or with Mars over the eighth or twelfth, the six weeks of the quarrel that brings it out, or Rahu over the fifth, the season in which an unconventional relationship becomes public suddenly. The Sun’s transit is the month: the Sun over the fifth or the twelfth lights what is there. The reading names the seventh lord’s window and the eighth lord’s window and says which comes first, and for the couple who mean to tell the family, it names the fourth or ninth lord’s sub-period as the one in which the telling is received rather than merely heard.

What the hiding costs: the fourth and the Moon

A hidden relationship costs the native in the fourth house and the Moon, the home and the peace of mind, and the chart reads how much. A strong fourth and a steady Moon carry a secret without strain, and the native lives in two rooms comfortably; a fourth lord in a dusthana or an afflicted Moon, especially in the eighth or twelfth, pays for the secret in sleep, in the relationship with the mother, in the sense of being divided, and the reading says that the cost is rising in the Moon’s sub-period or under Saturn’s transit over the fourth. The cost also falls on the relationship, since a relationship that lives only in the twelfth has no seventh house to grow into and can stay a secret until it is a habit, and the couple who have hidden for five years have often been waiting for a seventh lord’s season that arrived and passed unnoticed because nobody was looking at the calendar. The reading of the cost is not a judgment of the secrecy, which is often the only sane choice in a family that would not accept the relationship; it is a measure of what the native is paying and a date for when the paying could stop, and a native who hears the date can decide whether the price is worth it until then.

The secret that carries danger

Some relationships are hidden because their revelation would carry danger, to the native, to the partner, or to both, from a family or a community for whom the relationship is a matter of honour, and the reading of such a chart has a first duty that comes before any timing. Where the fourth and ninth are afflicted by Mars, Rahu and Saturn together, where the eighth lord is on the seventh with Mars’s aspect, where the sixth lord touches the fifth, the chart describes a family whose objection is not a refusal but a threat, and the reading says so and stops: it does not name a season for the coming into the open, because the couple’s safety is not a matter for the dasha table, and it says instead that the people to speak to are the ones who protect, a trusted relative outside the family, a lawyer, the police, a helpline, and that a relationship in that position should be made safe before it is made public. This is rare, and it is real, and the astrologer who times a revelation into a family the chart shows to be dangerous has done a harm the chart warned against. Everything else on this page assumes a family that will be angry and then be a family; this section is for the one that will not, and the reading’s honesty here is to say which it is reading.

The other person’s chart: hidden on both sides, or one

With both charts, the reading answers a question the native usually has not asked: whether the relationship is hidden on both sides or only theirs. Two charts with the twelfth or eighth on the fifth or seventh is the couple who hide by mutual shape, comfortable in the privacy and likely to stay there; one hiding chart and one open chart is the couple in which one partner is content with the secret and the other is waiting for the light, which is the commonest tension in a hidden relationship and the one the couple describe as “they will not tell their family” without seeing that the chart of the one who will not tell is a twelfth-house chart and the chart of the one who wants to tell is a seventh-house one. The synastry adds the bond’s kind, in Synastry in Vedic Astrology, and the timing of the coming into the open needs both charts’ seventh lords, since a relationship reveals itself well when both seventh lords’ seasons overlap and badly when one partner’s eighth lord’s season arrives first. The other partner’s family is read from their chart, or from the native’s third and tenth by the derived houses, and the couple with two charts can be told which family the secret is really being kept from, which is often not the one they think.

A worked chart: the twelfth lord on the fifth, beside the family’s lord

A Cancer lagna woman, particulars altered. Mercury, lord of the twelfth and third, sits in Scorpio in the fifth with Venus, lord of the fourth and eleventh, and Ketu: the twelfth lord on the romance house beside the mother’s lord, the private carried into the fifth in the same place as the home’s ruler, and the channel’s lord, Mercury being the third lord too, in the secret. Mars, lord of the fifth and tenth, sits in Aquarius in the eighth: the romance’s lord in the house of secrets. Saturn, lord of the seventh and eighth, sits in Capricorn in the seventh, its own sign: the bond’s lord at home in the bond, the capacity for a marriage intact and slow. The Moon, the lagna lord, sits in Pisces in the ninth. Jupiter, lord of the sixth and ninth, sits in Leo in the second, the family’s house. The Sun, lord of the second, sits in Sagittarius in the sixth. Rahu sits in Taurus in the eleventh. Three signatures: the twelfth lord on the fifth, the fifth lord in the eighth, and Mercury as the channel in the hiding; hidden from the family, since the twelfth lord sits with the fourth lord and the fifth lord is the tenth lord too, from the home and the workplace both, and he was a colleague.

The relationship began in Mercury-Venus, the twelfth lord’s major period with the fourth and eleventh lord’s sub-period, the private romance beginning in the sub-period of the mother’s own planet, which is why the mother sensed it before she knew it. Mercury-Sun, the second lord’s sub-period, with the Sun in the sixth, the house of the quarrel, was the exposure: the family’s lord in the quarrel’s house, and a message seen on a phone, Mercury the channel and Mercury retrograde over her twelfth in that month, the season the channel section describes. The reading, given in the weeks after, made the checks: hidden by season and not by shape, since the fifth and seventh were not the native’s own hiding but the sub-period’s and the seventh lord sat at home in the seventh; the eighth lord’s season had come first, as it does when the eighth lord is also the seventh lord and the two seasons are one planet’s; and the danger check clean, Jupiter on the second, the family’s house, a family that would be angry and then be a family. Mercury-Moon, the lagna lord’s sub-period, in the ninth, was her own decision and the family’s slow turning, the Moon in the father’s house; Mercury-Mars, the fifth lord’s, in the eighth, was the crisis proper, the year the relationship nearly ended under the weight of the secret, Mars’s sub-period delivering the eighth; and Mercury-Rahu, with Rahu in the eleventh, the house of the wish fulfilled, with Jupiter transiting Capricorn, her seventh, was the marriage, Saturn’s own house receiving Jupiter, the bond’s lord at home. It had been a secret for four years and a marriage since, and the reading’s use had been the sentence about the order of the seasons: that the eighth’s had already come, that the seventh’s was next, and that the crisis in Mars’s sub-period would be the last of the hiding and not the end of the relationship.

Frequently asked questions

Which house indicates a secret relationship?

The twelfth, the private and the unseen, and the eighth, the secret and the crisis, carrying the fifth of romance or the seventh of the bond: Venus, the fifth lord or the seventh lord in the twelfth or eighth, or the twelfth or eighth lord standing on the fifth or seventh. The twelfth hides by privacy and distance, the relationship nobody asks about; the eighth by concealment, the relationship that would cause a crisis if known. Mercury in either house is the secret channel.

Who is my relationship hidden from according to the chart?

The house connected to the hiding: the second and fourth are the family and the home, the ninth the community and its tradition, the tenth the workplace and public standing, the third the siblings and the close circle. The twelfth or eighth lord connected to the lord of one of those houses names the person, and the same house is the one through which the relationship comes into the open, in its lord’s sub-period.

Will my secret relationship be revealed?

It comes into the open either by the couple’s choice, in the seventh lord’s or Venus’s sub-period with Jupiter over the seventh or second, or by exposure, in the eighth lord’s sub-period with Saturn transiting the twelfth, Mars over the eighth or twelfth, or Mercury retrograde over the channel. The reading names both windows and says which comes first, so that a couple whose eighth lord’s season comes before their seventh lord’s can speak before they are found, since a secret told is a different thing from a secret found.

Is secrecy in relationships permanent for some charts?

A native with Venus in the twelfth or eighth, the fifth or seventh lord there, or the Moon in the eighth or twelfth hides by shape and keeps every love private whoever it is for, and such a native is often unhappy when a relationship is made public, since the privacy was part of what they loved. That is a preference of the houses, not a fault, and it suits a partner who does not need the world’s audience. A relationship hidden only by a twelfth or eighth lord’s sub-period is hidden for a season and steps into the open when the sub-period ends.

When is the right time to tell my family about my relationship?

In the seventh lord’s or Venus’s sub-period with Jupiter transiting the seventh or the second, the family’s house, the classical season in which a family is told and receives; the fourth lord’s sub-period is when the mother receives it and the ninth lord’s when the father does. The reading’s first check is the danger section: where the fourth and ninth are afflicted by Mars, Rahu and Saturn together, the timing is not given, and the couple are told to make themselves safe before they make the relationship public.

What does Venus in the 12th house mean for love?

The love that is private, hidden or far: the native who loves out of sight, in another city or another life, and whose feeling has little room in the world to become an open bond. It gives relationships that stay half-private even in marriage, a preference for a partner with their own privacy, and a discomfort with the public relationship. It is one of the signatures of the native who hides by shape rather than by season.

What does a secret relationship cost according to astrology?

The fourth house and the Moon pay for it, in the peace of the home and the mind: a strong fourth and a steady Moon carry a secret without strain, and an afflicted Moon, especially in the eighth or twelfth, pays in sleep, in the relationship with the mother and in the sense of being divided, most in the Moon’s sub-period and under Saturn over the fourth. The relationship pays too, since one that lives only in the twelfth has no seventh house to grow into, and the reading’s use is a date for when the paying could stop.

Parminder Chahal

Vedic astrologer · author of jagannathhora.com and the article you're reading · builder of this site's calculators

Which season comes first, the seventh lord's or the eighth's? That decides whether you tell or are found.

A relationship consultation reads which house carries your hidden relationship and who it is hidden from, whether the secrecy is your chart's shape or a passing season, the window in which the relationship walks into the open by your choice and the window in which it could be exposed, and, first of all, whether the family the chart shows is one that will be angry or one that is a danger.

✓ Your past read to you first, so you can check me✓ Chart prepared and read before we speak✓ 30 to 40 minute WhatsApp voice call✓ Every message answered by me personally✓ Your details stay private

Book a relationship consultation or message me on WhatsApp

Flat ₹2100 (Indian Rupees or equivalent), no upsells · USD and other currencies welcome