We pay a lot of attention to the Houses that have Planets in them. Makes sense, since these areas have a lot of energy and focus. However, everybody’s chart has the 12 houses, each with a Sign occupying them....
A question I get a lot is, “What about all the empty houses on my birth chart?” It’s a great question. A lot of chart interpretation focuses on the houses on your chart that contain planets and important points of the Zodiac. However, Houses are never truly “empty” and everybody has all twelve Houses factoring into their life and personality. These areas of life, while not necessarily a primary focus in your life, are nevertheless still a part of the whole picture, and they still have signs in them that color your experience with those sectors of life.
Remember, the houses that the Sun, Moon, planets and signs fall into is dependent on your time of birth. While your birthdate will get you the planets in the signs, the motion of the Zodiac is like a wheel, turning throughout the day, a new sign rising on the Eastern horizon every 2 hours. That means that someone born on the same day, the same year, the same place, but say six hours apart, will have a completely different chart when it comes the houses these influences occupy.
You see, the Houses are a static projection onto the sky with which our ancient progenitors divided up the circle into twelve 30-degree segments. They are the things that look like pizza slices. The important thing to remember is that the houses do not rotate with the Zodiac - the Zodiac rotates round the houses throughout the day.
Let’s review some chart components first before we get to the empty house situation. Being familiar with the different lines, points, and symbols is vital to interpreting your chart correctly. Click here for More info on the Basics of Learning Astrology.
Some chart basics concerning the houses
The black lines (the pizza) indicate the “cusps” of the Houses. The cusps are the lines which divide the houses up. So, “the cusp of the First House is the line located at the 9 o’clock position. An important concept to understand is that Western Astrology was developed based on observing the sky to the South, thus you need to view the chart differently than how we typically orient North, South, East, and West on, say, a map. The First House (on the left side of the chart) actually marks the eastern horizon - opposite of where we expect East to be on a map, which are usually oriented towards the North, making East to the right.
Remember “Never Eat Shredded Wheat?” Maybe you didn’t learn the directions this way, but it was used ubiquitously in schools to drill in the cardinal directions starting at the top with North, and them moving clockwise to East, South and then West. However with your Astrological Birth Chart, you need to change it to “Shredded Wheat Never Eat” - it still works!
Following this understanding, the 3 o’clock position is the western horizon, the top of the chart is South, and the bottom North. Pretty simple, but it can cause confusion when you first start getting familiar with Astrology.
The sign that is rising on the eastern horizon at the time of your birth is known as you Ascendant or Rising Sign. This is the sign in your First House - the House of Self. When you look at the cusp of the First House on your chart (again, at the 9 o’clock position on the chart), what sign is it pointing to? As you can see on this chart, it is in the sign of Leo, thus this chart has Leo Rising.
If you look at the AC (stands for Ascendant) point on the chart, you also see that the first house cusp (aka AC) is at 22-degrees, 40-minutes into Leo. Since it takes two hours for a new sign to move into the first house, we can do some quick math to learn something interesting.
Two hours is 120 minutes.
Each sign is 30-degrees.
Taking 120 minutes and dividing by 30 degrees gives us how long it takes for each degree of the sign to move forward as the zodiac rates around the Houses. This gives us a rate of 4 minutes for each degree.
30-degrees in a sign, 4 minutes for each degree = 120 minutes (2 Hours).
So with the AC at 22-degrees, 40-minutes, you can calculate that this native was born about 88 minutes after Leo began rising on the eastern horizon, with about 32 minutes remaining before Virgo occupies the First House. This is why the time of birth is vital to an accurate chart reading. Had they been born later on the same exact day, the chart would be drastically different with the planets and signs in different Houses as the wheel of the signs rotates around throughout the day. Take a moment and imagine in your mind the planets and signs rotating around this chart (remember the black lines, the houses, do not move, they stay right where they are.) Everything would be different when it comes to the distribution of the various influences across the Houses.
A simplified version of the Houses, with their natural signs
Houses in astrology
So what exactly is a House, and how do they factor into understanding Astrology and your chart?
The Houses represent areas, arenas, and sectors of life. They are like the sets and locations of the cosmic play that is your life. They don’t indicate how, why, or what - those are defined by the actors and the characters, the planet/sign combinations.
Houses are all about the where.
For a breakdown on what areas of life each House represents, check out some basics concerning the Houses.
As we have learned, the Houses are occupied by the signs as the Zodiac rotates throughout the day - each sign spending two hours in each house before progressing to the next. However, with the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, and Planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto) there 11 influences, one shy of the 12 Houses. Thus, everybody is going to have a House (likely more than one) that does not contain any planets.
Chart with a bunch of “empty” Houses
Sometimes, a chart leaves a bunch of empty houses such as this chart.
So what does this mean? Would we tell this person that their life is only composed of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 10th Houses? Of course not!
But how do we look at these unoccupied Houses?
The key here are the Signs in these Houses. (Check out some Sign Basics here.)
For example, the 7th House - the House of Marriage & Partnership - is occupied by the sign Capricorn. We know this because the cusp of the 7th House (3 o’clock position on the chart) is pointing at Capricorn. Other people, relationships, partnerships (personal and professional), defending underdogs and fighting open enemies are some of the areas of life this House encapsulates. While this area may not hold a ton of focus and energy in her life, it is certainly a part of it and is colored by the energy and traits of Capricorn. For example they may be seen as cold, domineering, and almost business like in relationships no matter what form they take. Or possibly their relationships will revolve around their career or other public part of their life. Notice, just because there is no planet in this House does not mean there is nothing to interpret. They also have Mars in Capricorn, but in the Sixth House of Work & Health. This makes for a motivated worker, almost aggressive in their approach to the daily grind, responsibilities, and when it comes to health and nutrition. While Mars isn’t in the 7th House, this energy can leak into their relationships which also tend to follow very Capricornian patterns.
See? Empty Houses, and yet still plenty to see and learn.
What Houses are empty in your chart?
What do they all mean? Find out here!
Yours,
The Heretic Astrologer ?