The fourth house is the part of your chart that is all about your roots. It speaks to our parents, home and foundations – and a range of topics connected to these themes.
When exploring your fourth house, you might want to spend some time thinking about the family you were born into and/or the family you grew up in. What do you know about your ancestors and your family lineage? What have your grandparents or their grandparents lived through? What have they passed on, either consciously or subconsciously to their children? What were their beliefs, fears, hopes and dreams?
You might ask these same questions about your parents or caregivers. It is said that the fourth house mostly speaks to the mother or the more maternal caregiver, but I personally like to look at both parents at this stage of the practice. If either or both of your parents were absent when you grew up, you might want to look at those people in your life who have been like a father or mother to you.
The fourth house speaks to our connection to the past. I would therefore encourage you to not only take stock of your present relationship with your parents (and, if you like, family), but to also see if you can relate this present relationship to the past.
For example: when my father grew up, his own father was literally working night and day to provide for his family. My grandfather worked in a factory as an electrician, often taking the night shifts. To make some extra money, he helped people move house over the weekends and put his carpentry skills to use whenever he could.
By the time my sister and I arrived in the family, my grandparents had earned more than they would ever spend with their modest lifestyle. We had no idea that money had ever been an issue. That there was ever a lack and that this may well have been stressful for my father and his brother. When I grew up though, I became aware of a certain nervousness with my father when it came to income, admin and securing a pension. This made me feel that all those things were extremely important and you were not allowed to fail when it came to making enough money. He never said it out loud, but in my mind ‘being on top of your finances’ equaled ‘being worthy’.
As I have written about before, my own income is not always as steady. This has, in the past, led to feelings of unworthiness and doubt on my side. Once I understood where my father’s nervousness came from, I was able to put things in perspective and stop being so hard on myself. It also became much easier for me to speak about my own financial situation with him. And it even turned out that he did not judge me for not having a steady income at all – he had not been aware of the message he had given by worrying so much about his own finances.
Another aspect that might interest you, are cultural or family traditions. Which of those play an important part in your lineage and how do you relate to them?
The next area that can be focused on when making an inventory of the fourth house, is your home. This can be interpreted as the material house you live in, the real estate you own or rent, as well as your home life. Some questions to ask here are: what about the house I live in feels good, what does not feel right? Do I feel at home here?
Feeling at home has a lot to do with feeling safe. And this brings us to the final fourth house theme: our psychological foundations and the sense of security we do or do not experience. Now this can be a very broad and abstract topic, particularly when you are relatively new to exploring your own state of being.
The best way, I believe, to explore ‘safety’ is not by thinking about it, but by listening to what your body has to say. A simple body-scan, as can be found in meditation apps I have previously mentioned, such as Buddhify, is a very good place to start. Learning about our body’s response to threat can also help to recognise where you are holding tension as a result of not feeling safe. There is plenty of material on this topic to be found in very accessible blogs, books and podcasts as well as on an academic level.
The mind-body connection is central to many ancient Eastern philosophies and healing traditions. It has been studied and used by scientists and psychologists in the West for decades, but the pandemic has really helped bring their work into public awareness.
For me personally, listening to Bessel van der Kolk speak to Krista Tippett about his book The Body Keeps the Score in her On Being podcast a few years ago, was a revelation. At the time, I was very aware of not feeling safe, but was unable to grasp the root causes of this feeling. Learning to listen to my body and what it remembered, helps me find my way back to the natural state of calm and peace we are in when we feel safe.
All this not to say that your own exploration of the fourth house needs to be a deep dive into your past! You may very well decide to focus on what the house you presently live in needs to make it feel even more like home.
Or you might, instead of looking at the past, explore what the present is asking for: what are the basics that you really need? How can you look after yourself and your (chosen) family amidst the global turmoil that is more likely to increase than decrease? The crises are accumulating: geopolitical power struggles, humanitarian crises, health crises… and all the while the devastating effects of climate change have become impossible to ignore.
To those who, after reading this enumeration feel despondent and dispirited: please read the wonderful letter by E.B. White, in which he says ‘man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.’
To which I would like to add that we cannot all wait for others to be inventive for us. It is up to anyone who is not immediately affected by war or illness to act, to help and put their ingenuity to good use. We must all provide these basics to others and ourselves: shelter, water, food, medicine, connection.
That and something else: I believe it is essential to ‘keep the hoping machine running’, to provide the hope that E.B. White tells us to hang on to. What often helps me is to remind myself of this definition by Anne Lamott: ‘Hope is not about proving anything. It is about choosing to believe this one thing; that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.‘
My rising sign 