Light, Darkness & Ketu

Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chance out between two worlds, fire walk with me!

The 8th house, co-ruled by Ketu, is the dark house, the house of secrets. There are great treasures buried in that house, but to access them one must possess a special gift, a sixth sense. Ketu isn't guided by the senses but by feeling, it is wandering headless in the bhava he inhabits. But not all those who wander are lost. Ketu rules contrast, black and white, the interplay of opposites. When we see flickering lights, we are experiencing the activation of Ketu and 8th house in our lives as we are witnessing Ketu's energy as the ruler of polarity—light and darkness, presence and absence, moments of clarity within confusion. It is the universe indicating that a secret—a hidden treasure—is about to surface, that an important piece of information is about to be revealed to us. David Lynch is a Ketu native (Magha nakshatra) who was unconsciously channeling this secret meaning of flickering lights as the universe giving us clues; and the contrast between black and white as a transition between two worlds (in Twin peaks: the world of mortals and the astral world, but also the black lodge and the white lodge).

The 8th house is the house of death, and it is only through death—the symbolic severing of the ego (head) from the body—that one can reach enLIGHTenment. Ketu teaches us how to reach the light by pushing through the darkness, like in the path of Aghora, which teaches the alchemical transformation of darkness into light. Actually, Aghora, the shadow path, appears to be the darkest spiritual path externally, but its name literally means "absence (a) of darkness (ghora)." On the opposite end, Rahu appears as light, "the glitter of material enjoyment", but it actually leads us deeper into darkness by keeping us trapped in the cycle of samsara. Rahu (the disembodied head) represents the illusion of material enjoyment. It can never truly satisfy, as there is no body to digest what is being consumed. Material pleasures are experienced through Rahu (mouth / 2nd house), while Ketu governs defecation (anus / 8th house), releasing the toxins accumulated through material enjoyment. Rahu is the sparkling surface of the ocean, while Ketu is the depth of that same ocean where the real treasure lies - the treasure of liberation, moksha. 

Ketu