Our emotional foundation and subconscious self-image based on early childhood experiences are established in the fourth house. The way we feel about ourselves is conditioned by our experience of our parents’ (or significant others’) acceptance or rejection of us as we were growing up. From these experiences we developed our sense of belonging and our capacity to receive - and/or a sense of alienation and a difficulty or frozenness in receiving.

The fourth house rules the home, our family as a child and as an adult, the nurturing parent and our early experience of being nurtured, our most personal and intimate life, real estate and property, and our heritage and ancestry. Here is where we send down roots and establish a base of operations, find our limits, and generally secure ourselves. It is the end of any searching we might have done in the Third house, and thus rules the latter part of life. A planet here indicates the need for a stable emotional base in order to fill the needs of the house it rules. The more planets in this house, the more one tends to be subjective, personal, private or introverted.

Astronomically speaking, the fourth house is that one-twelfth sector of the local sky counter-clockwise from the nadir (see above picture) occupied by planets in the two hours before they reach the lowest point in the local sky.

The lunar influence of the moon is very strong in its natural (fourth) house, and your attachment to home, family, mother and roots is a bond that may eventually need severing. On a feeling level you may be self-centered and self-absorbed, and need to learn to grow beyond your self. Be careful of a tendency to insulate yourself from reality. History (personal or otherwise) interests you, and you tend towards nostalgia. Security is very important and you need to have real roots in order to be productive. You look to home and family for support and encouragement.