Sonia made a good point in the comments section to the profile of Tony Blair: “How these 12th house sun people get elected to positions of power is beyond me. I wouldn’t have thought they were the most apt leaders.” Tony Blair has the Sun in the twelfth house, as does George W Bush.

The twelfth house in ancient astrology was known as the “House of Troubles” and the “House of Karma.” Planets that live in the twelfth house tend to operate on a subconscious level, and therefore are more difficult to access easily. They tend to show issues that lie dormant until they create a crisis – hence the “house of karma.” The ancients also called this house the place of “self-undoing,” where the subconscious has the primary influence for good or for bad. On the positive side, individuals with twelfth house planets have a greater ability to access the subconscious and if they choose to follow that route they can control their own destiny.

Individuals with twelfth house Suns tend to be highly sensitive to the energies around them and consequently need a great deal of privacy. Twelfth house people are said to be secretive, but I believe that to be misreading the issue here. These people do tend to withdraw but less out of secrecy (that’s more an eighth house/Scorpio retreat) than from a need to protect themselves from the energies of others and establish a firm footing. In the twelfth house we are not very sure-footed as the sands tend to shift quite a bit.

Astrologer Rob Hand was prescient in his early profile of George W:

I suggest that what we are going to see during his administration will be the following: 1) George W. Bush will continue to carry on as much of his private life as possible away from the media. 2) More than is usual, the public will have little idea of what is going in Bush’s administration. 3) What we see is not quite what we are going to get.

I have long suspected that Bush is not so much going to be the head of our government as the public head of a committee that will actually be in charge. Some of the other members of that committee will have almost as much influence as Bush. None of these things need be negative in terms of the outcome, but I think that we can say that Bush’s administration is going to be one of the less straightforward and less open ones in our history. Given some of the things that have happened over the last several administrations, that may be saying a lot.

The past few years has been ruled by twelfth house leaders, a surprising fact since this placement makes it difficult and uncomfortable to be out in the public eye. Vladimir Putin, has a twelfth house Sun, and Ariel Sharon’s Sun is on the cusp of the twelfth. The illusion and delusion that the twelfth house can create around an individual can make them ideal people on which to hang a projection. Vladimir Putin was KGB and definitely inscrutable. Ariel Sharon was the warrior of Israel for many years. Americans have built George Bush into the president they wanted to have, not the president he is. And the same can be said of Tony Blair, who is famously called Tony Blur.

I think it’s fair to say that twelfth house leaders need to be carefully watched; their penchant for secret alliances and agreements can erode the democratic process, and their ability to create a glamor of illusion has a hypnotic effect on the citizens over which they rule.

Update: Dharma adds: “Gordon Brown, the next British PM, has 12th House Sun in Pisces – as well as Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Node in the 12th.” (see comments section for the rest of his comment)