4th House AstrologyA Guide To The Zodiac's Fourth House
The fourth house, in union with the Inum Coeli (IC), tell us about our roots, family and childhood and that space where we find comfort in our pasts.
This is part of a guide on the Astrology Houses.
You can read all of our guides on our LEARN ASTROLOGY page here.
Let’s take a look at the fourth house.

4th House Meaning In Astrology
4th House Meaning In Astrology
In Astrology, the fourth House refers to the home and everything associated with it (both the childhood home & the current home): In general: Family. Family history, family traditions and family members, land, personal foundations (inner emotional security), your roots. This is the house of home and the universe we lived in as a child.
The moon, being the natural ruler of the house, then governs this space. The moons connection with cancer, family, inner emotions, our childhood from a young age home security and sanctuary are all key themes.
Astrologers are divided over whether this house is associated with one’s mother or father, especially if one is a more dominant parent. What is clear is that a person’s upbringing is related to this House.
On a deeper level, the 4th house is the base of consciousness or the centre of our concrete existence. See how the cusp of the 4th house is the I.C., the lowest point on the chart, representative of things below the surface of Earth.
Due to that, the 4th house was believed to rule the conditions at the end of life, and graves. As the root or base of your real self, the 4th house rules where you go when you “die” but also where you came from. For those who believe in reincarnation, the 4th house would give clues to your karmic lesson for this lifetime. It shows what karmic baggage you brought with you into this life. Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation, you’re likely to be surprised by what you find in your 4th house for it may move your soul.
Any planets in the 4th house affect your home life, your emotions, your subconscious, and possibly your relationship with your parents. Also, the “home”, so real estate can also be a theme here whether buying real estate for rentals or just for living and material possessions, but from a roots perspective, rather than material things, which is ruled by the second house.
Any planets in the 4th house affect your home life, your emotions, your subconscious, and possibly your relationship with your parents.
Word Summary of home and family life according to your 4th House Sign Cusp:
- Aries – Active
- Taurus – Secure
- Gemini – Playful
- Cancer – Loving
- Leo – Pompous
- Virgo – Strict
- Libra – Harmonious
- Scorpio – Tense
- Sagittarius – Detached
- Capricorn – Committed
- Aquarius – Unconventional
- Pisces – Devoted
Word Summary of your home and family life if you have a planet in your 4th House:
- Sun – Solid
- Moon – Emotional
- Mercury – Communicative
- Venus – Benevolent
- Mars – Provoking
- Jupiter – Enriched
- Saturn – Controlled
- Uranus – Enlightened
- Neptune – Amazed
- Pluto – Transformed
What Body Parts Are Related To The Fourth House Of Astrology?
The 4th House gives information about the heart area of the body which includes chest, lungs and heart. It tells about health problems such as heart problems, lung diseases a person might get concerned with. A weak fourth house will indicate these problems or diseases.
Cusp Of 4th House – Imum Coeli (IC) or
Indicates the cusp of the Fourth House. As the base of operations of the personality this house is quite important, because without a place to stand emotionally, the personality cannot function.
Astrology Meaning
FACT: The word astrology is from the Greek word ‘astrologia‘.
In fact, Astrology is the combination of the 2 Greek words: astro, which means star and logos, which means study.
Simply put. Astrology means “study of stars”.
Planets In The 4th House
Planets In The Fourth House
The planet which mainly affects the fourth house astrology is Moon. The Moon rules Cancer and the 4th House. When it comes to the fourth house, it controls a lot of emotions, family, home comfort, resources, values and habits. Following is what different planets bring to the fourth house of astrology:-
Sun In 4th House
The Sun brings a lot of effect on emotional peace, comfort and things that feel good. Hidden ambitions can cause frustration and problem in family.
All of this is most likely to be focused upon, and affected by, your home and background. So your roots are very significant in determining what you make of life. You can either get buried in them or use them as a base from which to launch yourself. If there are negative qualities in your early home life, this will dog your progress more than is usual, so it is not until the latter part of life that you begin to prosper.
Even then, this would entail your coming to terms with blocks created in childhood. Your father has a lot to do with all this, for his character has affected you in more ways than you possibly care to admit. Your career or reputation may well involve being the proprietor/owner of some form of establishment or foundation, or simply that you work at or from home. Whatever the case, making a deliberate effort to get away from the home and family scene occasionally is very therapeutic because you can become so bound up in it as to lose your sense of vitality and individuality.
Moon In 4th House
The Moon brings a high capacity of stable emotions. It helps in conquering emotional disturbances and help in maintaining peace im family. It also provides the ability to check emotions before acting on a situation. Whatever your feelings or needs, you instinctively know how to protect and feed them. In fact, you are a natural homemaker. You exude a home-from-home, hearthside familiar atmosphere. This fosters all domestic and catering talents, be it on a professional or amateur basis. You also have a closeness to Nature. A feel for flora and fauna is in your blood and you could have green fingers. You can, however, be overly attached to your roots – never leaving the region, or even home, you were born in. Your mother imprinted herself on you in a very strong way, which could be positive or negative. You can be deeply moody, but good at not letting anyone know. You spend a great deal of your time, hiding out at home, so it must be cozy and warm. Design choices are heavily influenced by your mother.
Mercury In 4th House
Mercury brings a welcomed light and an unbiased, slightly loving feelings toward others. These mental qualities of yours were strongly influenced by your early home life and racial, cultural or national background so your mind can be somewhat buried in your roots as it treads well-established, but possibly habit-ridden paths. As a reaction to this, you might rebel against them, moving about from place to place in a need to find your own mind, or attracting a domestic or family set-up where you’re continually having to assert your individual attitude. You like to surround yourself with books and bits and pieces of interest because they give you a sense of security. Another interest in roots, and the security which they provide, may well involve subjects like geology, archaeology, ecology, genealogy, etc but, at the bottom of all this is your father, who was probably an intellectual type and not easy to get to know emotionally. This would have fed your mind but frustrated your feelings. In other words, what you’re really digging for is your father’s soul – because it is the route to your own.
Venus In 4th House
Venus bring beauty and connection of hearts. It brings feelings of love and affection between individuals. It brings emotional comfort and ease.
These senses most readily find expression in your private or home life so it’s more than likely that your interior decor is tasteful and your flair for this might be employed on a professional level. Romance too is more happily pursued in the home or family environment, where there is more likely to be a warm atmosphere and no unwelcome intrusions. Your father and background are the wellspring of your sense of grace and charm and in times of stress you retreat to regenerate in your nest of pleasingly familiar surroundings.
Mars In 4th House
Mars brings a lot of emotional distress and restlessness. It may be due to some mistake realizations.
These powers of self-assertion are somewhat unconscious, buried either by having had the actions of others overwhelm you in some way, or else it has simply never occurred to you that you had a right to get what you wanted. Your father’s influence or your early sexual experiences could have contributed to, or been, the cause of this. Whatever or whoever it was could well be causing you to feel very angry, but probably unconsciously.
Left to itself, this anger could give rise to domestic strife or, at its most extreme, fires or accidents in the home. So sooner or later you have, or have had, to get out from under – possibly as a result of some emotional upheaval – and strike out for what you want and what you believe in. Such angry feelings can be released temporarily through energetic housework.
Jupiter In 4th House
Jupiter helps in rising above difficult situations such as emotional distress, physical pain, and family issues.
You have inherited this brand of faith and philosophy. This means that it is in your blood and so therefore you are not that conscious of it; it is just there. At some stage it may well be necessary for you to become more aware of the nature of this inheritance because either it’s a negative faith and is doing you no good, or, it’s positive and you’re not making the most of it.
Your father’s beliefs, or lack of them, have a lot to do with all this. A sign of your innate faith or luck can be seen in your domestic affairs and where you live. Your abode may well be large, mobile or involve human growth activities.
Saturn In 4th House
Saturn brings heaviness in the heart. This heaviness can be due to some fears, mistakes or guilt.
These lessons and necessities focus mainly upon your home or inner life and the sense of order that was laid down during your early years – especially by your father. If that sense was absent or restrictive, you may now go around with an inner feeling that something is missing or not good enough and then come to depend upon having very stable domestic security to compensate for this.
But in the long run of course it doesn’t, because it’s a want of something emotional rather than something material. In other words, at some stage, you will have to reaffirm that sense of belonging which was not forthcoming in childhood. At the other extreme, your early life might have been highly structured in a supportive way, thus giving you an inner sense of being in the right place at the right time.
Uranus In 4th House
Uranus brings some unwelcomed emotional pain during childhood such as child abuse.
Your urge for change and awakening is most likely to manifest itself as upheavals or something out of the ordinary on your domestic scene, in your background, or in your relationship with your father. With regard to these situations, you find that you have to adopt an unconventional or even breakaway attitude. You may at times experience feelings of being uprooted or of being rootless. Your father might appear to have disowned you.
The intention behind this, or any other such feeling of being disinherited, is that you re-establish your right to be here on your own, more consciously conceived, terms. You may find that all of this entails moving home more than average, or of occasional chaos within the home and family. In your home itself, you like to have freedom of movement and not be too tied to it. This is one reason why you may like effort-saving electronic gadgetry. Your home is a testament to the uniqueness of your lifestyle
Neptune In 4th House
Neptune bring emotional suffering due to family members.
For you, such sensitivity and yearning for some ideal focuses upon your home life and family background. It is most likely that you experience this as remembering things in the past as being idyllic. The streets or fields of your childhood have a rosy veil cast across them. Indeed, such childhood dreams are true, even if only because of the way you perceived life in those innocent times.
Actually, this is the whole sentiment underlying Neptune here: that life is as sweet and as secure as you make it. The negative value here is, of course, one of glossing over the less pleasant or even harsh experiences of early life. This has the effect of making you feel rather rootless because, through denying past pain, you are still denying a part of yourself. So, you have to go into that pain and then re-emerge cleansed with a far clearer sense of ‘Paradise Lost’; this in turn enables you to go about regaining your ‘Paradise’, thereby imbuing your own home with a hauntingly familiar quality.
This is very important to you and creates a haven for others too. It also has something to do with your psychic sensitivity to the Earth and Nature’s forces. Without doing this ‘regaining’, as with the weeds at the bottom of a pond, you can be trapped in the past, or in the self-contained nature of your family and particularly the relationship with your father, who may have been a vague, weak or unavailable figure. Positively though, he could be a great example of selflessness and compassion.
Pluto In 4th House
Pluto brings some struggles in the life of a person. These struggles can cause emotional imbalances and pain.
Your area of power and transformation is your home, family and roots generally. If you’re comfortable with your family or racial background, then you truly have deep roots and a firm sense of belonging. If, however, there are shadows cast across the path that leads back into your past, then they could haunt you with feelings of statelessness and a profound inner loneliness.
Either the positive or negative qualities will be in evidence in your domestic situation. Someone in your life (most likely your father) went about in the time of your childhood in a similarly soul-torn state, but as a child you took it personally and now you feel that the ground could open up and swallow you if you don’t keep yourself very much to yourself.
If you’re to prevent what amounts to self-isolation from dominating your life – or someone from still dominating your domestic scene with a heavy presence (and that could be yourself!) – then it is imperative that you exorcise such a ghost. To do this you must delve and dig into your past history until you’ve found what’s obsessing you (and what you cannot forgive in yourself or someone else) and then actually forgive them.
Once you’ve accomplished this, you will at last feel that you have a power-base, a home that is your castle – because it will have been built on the only foundation that will satisfy you: a deep feeling of being here on planet Earth.
Signs In The 4th House
Signs In The 4th House
Here we look through the signs where the cusp of the 4th house begins.

Fourth House in Aries
When the fourth house begins in Aries, it often speaks of impatience of the parent of the opposite sex when they were young. This is a sign of fired up, emotional clarity, the speed of decisions and the confidence one brought from their home and their upbringing.
This is someone raised in a full household, with a lot of conflicts, destructive or constructive and both give as much energy to one’s soul as it can take it away.
Fourth House in Taurus.
When the fourth house begins in Taurus, we see a natural position of care and physical devotion coming from one’s parents. Possible strict/traditional upbringing, it always provides one with a certain sense of comfort and joy that creates a robust and fixed basis for a satisfying life. This position enables someone to find beauty and see the world in colour, and provide them with the ability to enjoy material reality and engage healthily in practical matters.
Fourth House in Gemini
When the fourth house begins in Gemini, we can see the changeable, unstable nature of one’s home. Very often, this comes as a root for a person’s feeling of inconsistency, that they cannot mend into one.
Since the sign of Gemini is the sign of communication, it carries a risk of an absolute lack of compassion, coming from a parent who overly rationalises person’s emotions, not giving them a chance to recognise and accept them as they are.
Fourth House in Cancer
When the fourth house begins in Cancer, it speaks of the connection to their family. It is a house of inheritance in its core, and the sign of Cancer here emphasises family matters that came into one’s life only to be resolved.
The most important thing a person can do with this placement is the love for oneself and the ability to be gentle, slow enough, and filled with compassion for their own needs.
Fourth House in Leo
When the fourth house begins in Leo, this is wonderful and challenging for there is an emotional push into one’s world of character, confidence and self-recognition. Personal satisfaction is essential to develop that is deeply rooted in one’s home and their relationship with a dominant parent that maybe didn’t give them enough space to establish entirely healthy emotions. In its best light, this can be a place of warmth, joy, laughter and openness, giving one the sense of personal bravery to engage in any emotional challenge with ease and clarity.
Fourth House in Virgo
When the fourth house begins in Virgo points out to the lack of something in their primary home. Whether it is love or approval, there always seems to be something that needs to be fixed, changed, or nurtured in their soul, as if it was a bit damaged from the start. This isn’t a position that necessarily speaks of emotional hurt, as much as it speaks of emotional lacking, and one’s inability to reach the point of perfection in their emotional world that will finally allow them to be truly satisfied. The greatest thing this position brings is incredible intellectual strength and strong mental powers.
Fourth House in Libra
When the fourth house begins in Libra, we see someone who carries a strong basis of their parents’ relationship in their deepest core. The best thing of this placement is the fact that one of the parents was calm and courteous, able to teach responsibility and basic manners that a person will be able to use to make progress in various fields of life. This is a fourth house that gives one the image of what their marriage will be like without fear or holding back.
Fourth House in Scorpio
When the fourth house begins in Scorpio, we can see the strongest ties to family that often aren’t healthy or emotionally supportive. The challenge of 4th House Scorpio cis hiding in the darkest, most profound emotions, ones we all try to dismiss, demean and avoid. A person with this fourth house position has to find a way to forgive, forget, and turn to the future instead of staying tied to the past, or to negative emotions that have to be let go. They can be manipulated and dissatisfied, while unaware of the reason for their negative feelings. Until they see a constant motivation to smile, these people become the root of strongest emotional connections imaginable.
Fourth House in Sagittarius
When the fourth house begins in Sagittarius, it is not exactly easy to feel at home, wherever one tries to settle. This is one of the predicaments leading to life abroad, often because there was distance and space in their upbringing that makes it impossible to incorporate their beliefs into the country they were born in. Whatever the case, this is a strong guiding point to discover the entire world is our home, not just the couch we choose to sit on.
Fourth House in Capricorn
When the fourth house begins in Capricorn is never easy. In the best possible scenario, this is a position that gives one the ultimate faith in the Universe, and a strong connection to God. Dissatisfaction and the strict regime at their primal home can provide a strong foundation for the tenderness and love in the family they create, and this is the most beneficial use of this placement, however hard or challenging it might get.
Fourth House in Aquarius
When the fourth house begins in Aquarius, a person always seems to be in search for consistency. This is a signal there was a lot of moving and changes at a young age or points out the importance of the divorce parents went through while they were still in the phase of emotional recognition with their child. The greatest satisfaction here is found through personal freedom, though not easy to incorporate it into one’s relationships or any society they are trying to fit into.
Fourth House in Pisces
When the fourth house begins in Pisces speaks of family secrets and shady ancestors that have done who-knows-what. However, this can sometimes merely talk about the lack of clarity of emotion one receives in their primary environment. Of all emotional extremes, this is one of the strongest as all ancestors can be blended into a mush that is truly difficult to understand, making a person feel detached, lost, lonely, or even depressed.