I wouldn’t say I am the biggest Bob Dylan fan, however we do share two things in common: problematic singing voices, and having Pluto sitting in the middle of our 8th House.
What is the 8th House? In Astrology, it is one of if not the most notorious parts of the sky: falling roughly halfway between the Midheavens (the highest point in the sky) and the Western Horizon.
If I could summarise the general Archetypal gist of the 8th House it would something along the lines of:
Not good (along with the 6th and 12th) with the possible exception of Sex.
What else can we say? As the 8th Sign, a Scorpio will always be most at home here, so we would thus associate things considered Taboo and Underworldish and (with Pluto) intense and transformative. We also have that other fairly universal connotation, which forms the basis for its polarity with the 2nd house: involvement with other peoples resources.
One of my best friends as a 5 Planet stellium (including Sun and Venus) in the 8th House, and my sympathetic observations are that she doesn’t so much as get in relationships, but becomes thoroughly entangled with the other person to an extent that seems both unadvisable yet unavoidable.
And it was the fundamental connotation of “Entanglement” that made the 8th House finally click.
In the universal cycle of life that are the 12 Astrological Houses, we understand the 7th House fundamentally as the House of Interpersonal Relationship, Mutual Partnership and Social Contracts.
More broadly, it represents the start of the second half of the life journey, where we emerge from the personal realm having perfected the art of the Self, and look to expand our meat suit experiences by meeting another soul exactly where we find them: as equals, as comrades, as besties, as lovers.
Such is the intense and unmatched thrill of relating to another soul, it becomes easy to lose ourselves — that Self that we have been carefully developing across the first 6 Houses — to become (often without realising it) completely enmeshed, intertwined and tangled up in the life of another.
And it is from this perspective that we can see why Astrologers assign other keywords like Death, Taboos, the Underworld and Other People’s Money: because it is only after becoming entangled in the life of another that these deeper, often darker yet also unavoidable parts of life become opened up to us.
After reckoning with my friends chart, it left me somewhat relived to only (“only”) have Pluto tucked away there (well, I do have my Lot/Part of Fortune also in the 8th conjunct Pluto to less than a degree, but that seems one layer too many for the moment).
Bob (whose 8th House Pluto is conjunct Chiron, make of that what you will) is not alone in in our cultural elites in having notable planets in perhaps the slipperiest part of the sky: including the Sun of The Slippery One himself.
And, indeed: Happy Solar Return to this Silver Fox, the perfect Saturn-Neptune Saviour for our impending Saturn-Neptune moment.
You know who else has their Sun (and Mercury) in the 8th House?
At the risk of further manifesting the literal Spirit of Medusa into the Realm, take another look at that Sun: not just the start of the 8th House, but 23 Degrees Taurus. Anything significant happening around that degree in the near future?
Anyway, back to Mr. Zimmerman.
Tangled Up In Blue might be Bob’s 8th House Pluto Magnum Opus: the vivid retelling of a romance that just won’t quit: unable to be reconciled, unable to be left behind. And it can all be traced back to this eternal line, which sets the terms of Entanglement that the rest of the song describes:
“I helped her out of a jam I guess, but I used a little too much force.”
I am far from the first person to say this, but I still feel personally attacked by this line as an encapsulation of my approach to relationship in my late teens and early 20s; if "love" doesn’t involve becoming fundamentally embedded in the other person’s life right from the outset, what even is the point?
I've probably said this before, but understanding the meaning of having Pluto in your 8th House (specifically the depths of entanglement it unconsciously leads you towards) might still be the most important knowledge I have gained from Astrology.
Doomed Romance aside, there is another manifestation of the 8th House Pluto experience that immediately clarified in my life: Disability Support Work. I didn’t realise it at the time, but doing this job properly (and it is my Job, in the “mundane” 6th House sense) is a fundamental submission to entanglement: in the lives of people who would otherwise be restricted to the fishbowl of their family and caregivers, and by extension in their lives as well.
Not that I would change anything, and I present it more as an example that even the most formidable and intimidating placements and aspects might actually have their natural and higher practical purpose hidden in wholesome sight.
I actually first heard Tangled Up In Blue through the Australian band The Whitlams, who covered it for their ARIA-award winning album Eternal Nightcap, and even with a squeaky bass pedal I feel like I have done it justice.
Feel like you might be Tangled Up in 8th House Blues as well? Well, I have some good news: next comes the 9th House — the home of the Greater Benefic Jupiter — and where Truth, Knowledge, Wisdom and Enlightenment is found.
With this in mind, what else is there to do but to keep on keeping on, like a bird that flew fearlessly into the Blue.
Uhm… I’d beg to differ: your singing voice is orders of magnitude more pleasant than Dylan’s.
xo