Empty houses

I was on the phone with my homie yesterday talking about someone who has almost no planets on the right half of her chart, or the western half. That's a self-starting chart, when you have all planets on the left (east) side. When you have all planets on the right (west) side, you need partnership with others to inspire you to take action. All planets under the horizon? That's someone more concerned with their private life. All planets above? Public life (usually this means career but it can be other roles you are known for). Confused? Here's a visual.

Most people have some sort of mix, or planets scattered around a chart. But there's 10 planets and 12 houses, so it's impossible not to have empty houses (spooky noises). What then?

The number one thing Redditors and other message board lurkers post about is an empty 5th or 7th house: 5th house is babies and 7th house is marriage. If either house is empty, is that bad? Those of you who have been around a while and have read more than one astrology book know that the answer is that that empty house has a sign at the beginning of it, and the sign has a ruler, and the ruler is somewhere (else) in your chart, so even with an empty house there's still energy that governs the matters and activities of that house (house definitions are here or you can google to find definitions you like better). The sun, Mercury, and Venus will transit that empty house once a year, Mars will be in there every other year, Jupiter will visit every 12+. 

What if you have a bunch of stuff in the 4th house and an empty 5th house? Well, family's gonna be important to you with the 4th house stuff, so even if you lacked direct motivation to have babies, you'd still be inclined due to all that 4th house stuff. What about empty 7th but packed 8th? Well you're sure as shit gonna care about bonding, so maybe marriage will take care of itself.

You know what my experience is? You care less about empty sections of your chart.  If you were born with everything on one side of your chart (and I don't care which side), the chunk of life represented by where all the planets are in your chart is going to matter a lot, and the empty part, not so much. Let's say you have houses 9 - 12 vacant. All right, well, most people go to college, figure out a career, have friends, and have a subconscious. But are you likely to say "I live to work" or "my friends are my life"? No, you are not. Which is fine!

Planets in houses add weight to the houses, which are areas of life. Where there's energy, you care more, and there's also more traffic. Let's say you have Venus alone in the 3rd house. You like to say nice things (generally speaking) and you might enjoy close relationships with cousins and siblings. Maybe you have a gift for learning languages. That's nice. Communicating will be more important to you than someone with an empty 3rd house (unless Mercury makes a crazy number of aspects in their chart, but let's put exceptions to the side for learning purposes). Let's also say that the sign at the beginning of that house is Aquarius, so Uranus is the ruler of that house. Plus Mercury is the natural ruler of the 3rd house. So if Venus, Uranus, or Mercury makes or receives a transit, or anything else transits through that 3rd house, communicating (or events concerning siblings or cousins or other 3rd house matters) will occur. So 3 out of 10 planets and their transits have something to do with you communicating, and on top of that, 2/3 of those planets move FAST around your chart, so that increases the chance of communication occurring. Now, someone with an empty 3rd house (let's maintain Uranus as the ruler of the 3rd in this example) will care about communicating only with transits to/from Uranus or Mercury or if anything else transits through that house (but only 2/10 planets have to do with communication in this case, and one of them is a slow planet, so when it’s active, the need to communicate will be sustained for several years at a time on a specific topic). My point here is that the extra planet increases the frequency with which communication-related issues come up. Something in there = traffic = caring.

Someone whose energy fills in empty houses or sections of your chart can be exciting—a breath of fresh air—and can expose you to a different area of life you don't think about much. But on the other hand, because you're not predisposed to caring about that area of life, you eventually start begging for a subject change. For example, having no Cancer energy in my chart and nothing in my 4th house: I don't care about food. Start talking to me about food and see how long I last before I either change the subject or leave the room (spoiler: it's fast!). I can fake it for a little bit if I'm trying to make a good impression, but that's it. I have to stretch to accommodate foreign energy and eventually it wears me out and I have to resume being concerned about what I'm normally concerned about. My sister, on the other hand, has 5 planets in her 4th house AND the ruler of her 4th house is in a different house, so that's 6/10 planets tied up somehow in 4th house concerns. That's a LOT.

So take a look at your chart. Take a look at the charts of your loved ones. Who has empty sections of their chart? Is it basically exactly what you’d expect given your knowledge of them? This issue is pretty straightforward. (Need house rulership info? Here's a chart.)

Have fun!

XO,J