What does the 4th house mean in a birth chart?

Home, family and the private self. It describes the place a person lives and the way they live when no one is watching: the kitchen, the parent, the hometown, the self without an audience.

Is the 4th house the mother or the father?

Astrologers have argued about this for two thousand years and still do. The safest reading is the parent who made the home, whoever that was; the 10th takes the parent who stood for the world outside. Either way, the house describes the home now, not a history.

What is the IC in astrology?

The Imum Coeli, the bottom of the sky: the point at which the meridian cuts the ecliptic beneath the birthplace, opposite the Midheaven. In most house systems it is the cusp of the 4th house, and it marks where the Sun is at local midnight.

Astrology basics · The twelve houses

What the 4th house means: home, family and the private self

The 4th house is the bottom of the chart: the portion of sky directly beneath the birthplace, where the Sun stands at midnight. Its cusp is the IC, the point opposite the Midheaven. It governs home, family and the private self, where a person goes when the door is shut. Cancer is the sign that falls here in the natural chart, the Moon the planet.

Area of life: Home, family, the private self; where a person goes when the door is shut.
Chart quadrant: Second
House type: Angular
Sky at birth: The lowest point, straight down through the Earth
Natural sign: Cancer
Natural planet: Moon
Birth time: Needed, to the hour

The sky beneath the birthplace

Each house is a twelfth part of the sky seen from the birth town, counted round from the rising point in the east, so place and hour both fix it. The 4th sits at the lowest point, straight down through the Earth, the piece of heaven on the far side of the planet when the birth happened. In most systems its cusp is the IC, the degree where the meridian crosses the ecliptic below the horizon.

Because the Earth turns the whole wheel of houses through a day, the clock time decides what falls here, and it decides it sharply: the IC moves a degree in about four minutes. The quadrant systems divide each quarter from horizon to meridian in their own ways, which moves the neighboring cusps but keeps the IC on the 4th cusp; equal houses and whole sign measure from the rising degree or sign instead, so in those two the IC need not sit on a cusp at all. The house systems compared sets the seven out. If the time is unknown, the page on charts without a birth time lists what survives the loss, the planets in their signs, and what it cannot give, the houses among them.

Home, family and the door shut

The 4th house covers home, family and the private self: where a person goes when the door is shut. It is the kitchen table, the parent in the next room, the town a person says they are from, the self that has stopped performing. Roots sit here, and so does the place a person returns to at the end of the day.

The Moon and Pluto in the 4th

The fast planets show here in the daily shape of home. A Moon in the 4th: a person cooks for whoever is in the house, rearranges the furniture when upset, and knows the sound of every door. A slow planet here works on the foundations. With Pluto in the 4th, a person renovates the house down to the studs, keeps one room nobody else enters, and talks about family in a lower voice than about anything else.

The 10th house overhead

Opposite the 4th is the 10th, the roof of the chart, the sky overhead at noon. The private self is answered by the public one: career, reputation, authority, the name a person is known by. The 4th is where the coat comes off; the 10th is where it was worn. The two cusps, IC and Midheaven, are one line through the Earth, so a chart cannot have one without the other.

See The 4th house in your own chartA free birth chart, with the reading, from your date, time and place.

Questions

What does the 4th house mean in a birth chart?: Home, family and the private self. It describes the place a person lives and the way they live when no one is watching: the kitchen, the parent, the hometown, the self without an audience.
Is the 4th house the mother or the father?: Astrologers have argued about this for two thousand years and still do. The safest reading is the parent who made the home, whoever that was; the 10th takes the parent who stood for the world outside. Either way, the house describes the home now, not a history.
What is the IC in astrology?: The Imum Coeli, the bottom of the sky: the point at which the meridian cuts the ecliptic beneath the birthplace, opposite the Midheaven. In most house systems it is the cusp of the 4th house, and it marks where the Sun is at local midnight.