Alphabetty, I recognize some things about your chart. My chart and yours share some basic similarities. I have some particular childhood abuse markers in my chart, so I’m pretty familiar with the topic. You don’t have those markers. You’ve got different things to deal with here.
You have a VERY strong orientation toward the occult with your 8th house placements. You are very sensitive to the Otherworld, and what you are feeling may not even “belong” to you—it may be coming from spirits that are trying to communicate with you, and you just don’t recognize it for what it is. With your north node in the 8th too, it’s a good idea to accept this about yourself and engage with it even more, but from a place of learning and growing spiritually.
You are experiencing a Pluto transit to your 8th house—the “Cosmic Plumber” is snaking your psychic drainpipes. I am also going through that same transit. It’s a deep, slow process, and Pluto always dredges up some kind of trauma. However, this is supposed to help you transform something. It’s no surprise that you’re feeling some difficult stuff with that transit. Saturn will start going through Capricorn soon too, for about 2-1/2 years, which makes it necessary for you to “do the work” of confronting your 8th house stuff. You will be rewarded for doing the work, though, since that’s part of Saturn’s nature. Scorpio on your 6th house cusp with Venus and Moon/Pluto in the 6th screams to me “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” (I also have Scorpio on the 6th cusp, with Neptune plus Moon conjunct Venus in Scorpio.)
Having Capricorn on the 8th house, the occult is an area to which you need to bring a lot of duty and dedication and a high level of personal integrity. (I also have Capricorn on the 8th cusp.) Capricorn on the 8th cusp can feel “lonely.” Most people won’t understand what you’re experiencing. Pointing again to the 6th house, it’s not friends or family that can provide the most meaningful help and understanding—you need teachers, people who know this 8th house stuff, have experienced it, and thus can provide meaningful help. Also with your Capricorn 8th plus your 9th house Saturn in Aquarius, it seems to me that dealing with any fear you might have around occult matters is part of the “work” involved. You seem to have an innate, natural conservatism about religion—to me, Saturn there may mean you need to do some “get real” work around your “philosophy of religion.” Your 8th house experiences don’t really fit with religious conservatism. The 9th house asks you to open up your perspective about that.
Your first step before anything else needs to be learning how to raise and lower your psychic boundaries *at will* and learning how to do psychic hygiene on yourself! I mean, immediately, learn how to do these two things.
With your 4th house Jupiter, you also have the ability to do ancestral healing work for yourself and others too.
Rather than voodoo or witchcraft, I’d strongly point you toward “core shamanism” instead. It’s going to be important for you to find and learn from spiritual/occult teachers of integrity. You could check out some of the high-vibe shamanic teachers such as Christina Pratt, Daniel Foor, and Sandra Ingerman. Their writings and podcasts can also lead you to many other high-vibe sources of occult learning and understanding.
There are many techniques and practices of core shamanism that would be of great help to you, IMO. It doesn’t replace psychotherapy, but works great hand-in-hand with it. Your 3rd house Chiron in Leo does suggest that you’ve somehow sustained an injury to your mind or your perceptions—but it’s a mental wound to your egoic Self rather than a physical wound. It may have to do with your psychic boundaries being invaded, considering all of your 8th house energy. I agree with you that you can do a lot for yourself while waiting for the money to pay for therapy, but a therapist who brings a shamanic or astrological orientation to their work would be far better for you than one who “doesn’t believe” in such things. You might actually discover that getting a handle on your psychic abilities is the whole issue. You’re highly empathic too, so learning how to distinguish your own “stuff” from other people’s stuff is key.
Perhaps your mom and the people who were gifting you these “dark” occult objects were subconsciously picking up on your 8th house vibe and simply responded on the level they themselves are at with these matters. (Most people tend to approach Ouija boards and voodoo dolls as if it’s just a game, so they get in trouble with it.) It seems to me that maybe the gifters just didn’t know any better. But *you can* know better. You yourself don’t ever need to use a Ouija board—your ability to spirit-communicate comes to you naturally, with no need for such tools. You don’t need games or parlor tricks. You need to look toward a higher, integrity-filled, service-oriented expression of those energies.
The unexplainable scar on your cheek... I suggest looking into authors such as Brian Weiss and Ian Stevenson. It has been noted that sometimes people carry physical markers from one life into the next. It’s possible, but up to you to figure out your own truth about it.
I’m literally old enough to be your mother. If you were my child who had a chart like this, I would have started teaching you about these things at a very early age, but from a place of helping you to not fear your gifts and seeing how you might use your strong psychic abilities to help people. I see in this chart too that you are a psychopomp—someone who can help the dying cross over to the Other Side to find peace and Light. You could help and humbly serve others in a positive way with these gifts. You actually have a great chart and could do a lot of good in this world by embracing your Otherworldly gifts.
P.S. I just looked at the other chart too. Your mother is also a psychic/psychopomp and has got a lot of focus in her chart on the ancestors and early childhood and the subconscious. Perhaps you are psychically picking up strongly on her issues and mistaking them for your own? Your gifts are stronger than your mom’s are, though, and her evolutionary imperative is different than yours is. But neither one of you have indications of having particularly toxic childhoods. It looks to me that it falls mainly to you to unravel whatever is going on in your family history. She could be of great help in that regard, though—not specifically with the 8th house stuff, but with the family-specific stuff. *I see great potential for spiritual healing here, whatever is going on.*
