Having an empty 4th House in your birth chart means that in order to create the best home environment for yourself, you didn’t need any planets in your 4th House. This doesn’t automatically mean that you will struggle or lag behind in these areas or that they won’t be important in your life.
Is a lack of planets in your 4th a cause for concern? What are some things you could expect with your 4th House empty?
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- You can still have a healthy home life with no planets present in the house.
- The sign of your 4th House and its planetary ruler can offer more information.
- Planets will still inhabit your empty 4th House through transits.
Table of Contents
- What does an empty 4th House in my chart mean?
- How do I read my empty 4th House?
- Will my empty Fourth House always be empty?
What does an empty 4th House in my chart mean?
For many astrologers, there are only 10 planets that they consider in a chart reading, but there are twelve houses. There will be empty houses in your natal chart.
If your find that your Fourth House is among the empty houses in your chart, what could this mean for you and your life?
Before you go further, we created an empty 4th House worksheet, emailed to you FREE when you sign up below!
What does the 4th House mean?
One name for the 4th House is the House of Home. The territory of this house covers all things related to your home.
It includes the dwelling itself, how you keep your home, your family, and the overall vibe and feeling inside.
This house also represents dealing with a parent.
Astrologers don’t all agree on which parent the 4th House represents with some seeing it as the mother and some as the father. Others feel as though it would symbolize whoever was the most influential parent in that person’s life.
Your 4th House is also your origins. This could be considered to be the literal place that you came from, but it could also be the dynamics and emotional environment you grew up in, as well.
This is easily tied to one more area of life covered in the 4th House and that is how at home we feel within ourselves, or the person that we truly believe ourselves to be.
The story we tell ourselves about who we “really are” can be formed in our first home, and can be brought with us into our own homes when we are grown, and all of this is the business of the 4th House.
- your physical home
- the mood or feeling inside your home
- family
- your most influential parent
- your origins
- who you are when no one is looking
- self-image
- the person you truly believe yourself to be
What are empty houses in astrology?
An empty house in astrology simply describes a house without planets sitting in it.
In the type of astrology I prefer to use, Evolutionary Astrology, an empty house simply means that you didn’t need any planets in that house in order to do what you came here to do.
I feel that your natal chart is a roadmap to your best life, so a house that is empty doesn’t automatically mean you will struggle in those areas.
But, that also doesn’t mean that you will necessarily breeze through the empty houses either.
Some empty houses can still be important in your life.
What if my Fourth House is empty?
If you have an empty 4th House, in order to create a happy and healthy home for yourself, you didn’t need any planets in the house to achieve that.
From the philosophy of Evolutionary Astrology, your chart is the “right” one for you, no matter where you find your placements or which of your houses sit vacant.
You came into this life with all of the tools you need to have a home life that gives you comfort and acceptance.
An empty Fourth House simply means that your planets were needed elsewhere in your chart.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that you can automatically waltz through your 4th House matters just because there are no planets sitting in it.
But, a lack of planets in your House of Home won’t keep you from building a healthy and caring safe haven for yourself and your loved ones.
And, just because your 4th holds no planets, you aren’t left high and dry without any information about how you might experience this house.
Your natal chart still offers many clues to your empty 4th House that can offer you guidance and insight.
How do I read my empty 4th House?
Even with no planets situated there, your natal chart is still full of clues as to how you may navigate your empty 4th House.
The cusp, or boundary line, of this house actually holds extra significance in astrology and this angle has a special name, the Imum Coeli, or IC for short. It is also sometimes referred to as the Nadir.
Using the steps below, you can learn more about what your Nadir symbolizes in your life, as well as gain more insight into your empty 4th House.
1. Your Fourth House sign
On your chart, see which of the signs of the Zodiac the cusp of your Fourth House, your Nadir, lands in.
In the example chart below, you can see that the cusp of their Fourth House is in Libra.
The 4th House sign describes characteristics and motivations that may “flavor” your experiences of this house and may offer insight into strengths and challenges when it comes to your home life, family, and self-image.
2. Look up the ruling planet of your Fourth House sign
Another way you can add detail to the reading of your empty 4th House is to look to the ruling planet of your Fourth House sign.
Each Zodiac sign has a planet that rules it. In fact, some signs have two!
Locate the sign of your 4th House (you found this in step 1) in the table below to see which planet or planets rule it.
| Zodiac Sign of Your Fourth House | Zodiac Sign’s Ruling Planet or Planets |
| Aries | Mars |
| Taurus | Venus |
| Gemini | Mercury |
| Cancer | The Moon |
| Leo | The Sun |
| Virgo | Chiron (modern), Mercury (traditional) |
| Libra | Venus |
| Scorpio | Pluto (modern), Mars (traditional) |
| Sagittarius | Jupiter |
| Capricorn | Saturn |
| Aquarius | Uranus (modern), Saturn (traditional) |
| Pisces | Neptune (modern), Jupiter (traditional) |
3. Locate the planetary ruler of your Fourth House sign
Next, locate that ruling planet’s location in your birth chart. Take note of which sign and house the planet is in.
The sign that this planetary ruler lands in will help fill in more detail for your 4th House, and some of its traits and predispositions could shine through in your home life.
And, the house that this planet resides in will also be linked to your 4th House, and the areas of life this house describes may be tied to your home and family life in some way.
In the chart example shown below, you can see that their empty 4th House cusp sits in Libra. The table above shows that the ruler of Libra is Venus.
Their Venus is placed in Virgo in the 3rd House, so the characteristics of Virgo and the experiences of the 3rd House could also influence how they express their 4th House.
4. Find the Moon in your chart
One other way to find out more about your empty 4th is to find the Moon, the ruler of the 4th House, in your birth chart.
The house and sign that your Moon sits in can help offer more clues about how you may experience this empty house, combining some of its traits with those you have already uncovered in the previous steps.
Will my empty Fourth House always be empty?
It is true that your natal chart is a snapshot in time taken at the exact moment of your birth. It is fixed and doesn’t change.
Regardless, you will still have planetary energy move through your empty Fourth House due to the transiting planets.
In astrology, the phrase “transiting planets” refers to the moving, current planets. If you want to learn more about the planets in transit, find out more in this article from Astro.com.
Although the planets in your natal chart don’t move, the planets of now are always moving. As they do, they circle and interact with areas in your natal chart, bringing their influence to the houses of your chart as they go.
In the natal chart example above, planets in transit are shown. You can see the transiting Sun passing through this person’s empty Fourth House, bringing its planetary energy into this otherwise vacant place in their chart.
But, it won’t be long until the Sun moves on to their Fifth House, taking its influence along with it.
Your empty 4th House can still, at times, be full of activity when you take the transiting planets into consideration.
Don’t forget to grab your empty 4th House worksheet, emailed to you FREE when you sign up below!
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