Full Houses vs. Empty Houses in your Chart—What to Expect

©2011 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

This is an excerpt from Donna’s New Insights into the Astrology Chart, an ebook collection of readers’ favorite articles, available at moonmavenpublications.com for $15.

When you scan a chart, some houses are empty while others are relatively full. Here, I pay attention only to the basic ten planets, not to a dozen asteroids or the Arabian parts, because those basic planets represent major focuses and expenditures of energy.  What factors you include in your scan, of course, are up to you.  

Given twelve houses and only ten planets, at least two houses will be vacant. However, when several planets clump together in a single house–as often happens with the Sun, Mercury, and Venus–even more houses are unoccupied. 

This is as it should be. We can only scatter our energies in so many directions before we become as fragmented as the asteroid belt. The person whose planets are deployed in many different houses tends to have many interests and to try to juggle many  responsibilities and connections. Whether they are successful at it or whether they become ineffectual dilettantes depends on other factors in the chart.  

Full houses depict highly significant areas of life, where we put lots of eggs in a single basket. Where we expend our energy is where we tend to get results, so a full house is an area where meaningful people, situations, and events are clustered.  

If you have several good planets in the eleventh house but nothing in the fourth, friends will be major supports and may outweigh family in importance in adulthood. Likewise, club officers often have significant eleventh house placements. 

The matters associated with a house with a stellium or the Sun and one or two other planets can even be a career indicator. For instance, a friend with a stellium in the third house started a very successful answering service. A travel agent had several planets in the ninth house. Many academics or spiritual teachers also have a ninth house emphasis. The eighth house can show mediumistic tendencies, when strong, and also is one indicator of the potential for wealth.  

Empty houses or sectors indicate that major planetary energy isn’t being deployed toward matters of that house, but instead is focused elsewhere. Therefore, matters of that house are apt to take a back seat to matters of houses where planets are massed. A woman with no planets in the fourth or fifth but the Moon in the tenth is likely to be more fulfilled as a career woman than as a traditional homemaker. 

Just don’t conclude that an empty house means nothing will ever happen in the areas of life that house governs. One of Jeanne Dixon’s empty houses is the third, signifying communication, and yet her columns and books have been the foundation of her success. We would look to Mercury and to Gemini, since they are related to the third house. They more than compensate for the empty house, because she has Gemini rising and Mercury conjunct the Midheaven.

Many novices freak out if their seventh house is vacant, thinking it means they will never marry. Consider what else in the chart may compensate. How strong is their Venus? Do they have major placements in Libra, especially the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant? Librans tend to marry, whether their choices are sound ones or not.

Where is the ruler of the seventh house? If the ruler of the seventh is in the fourth and the fourth is strongly tenanted, then forming a family and maintaining a home life is a stronger drive than marriage itself. The marriage may be a means to that end. 

Another thing to consider is that houses that are empty at birth don’t remain empty throughout life. Transiting or progressed planets that move into an empty house tend to remain there for years. They stimulate new events and conditions in the matters of that house.  

A long transit of an outer planet through the second house corresponds with a long series of developments in the individual’s finances. If there are no planets in the second natally, that transit means the individual will devote an unaccustomed amount of attention to earning and managing money.

This is an excerpt from Donna’s New Insights into the Astrology Chart, an ebook collection of readers’ favorite articles, available at moonmavenpublications.com for $15.

Readers, are any of your empty houses being activated by transits? Is that house “heating up,” and what’s new there? Tell us about it in the comment section.  

(P.S. If you like this post and want to join my email subscribers list, sign up in the box at the top right hand side of the the front page.)

More Excerpts from Donna’s Books:

• Career Differences between the 10th, 2nd, and 6th House
• Four Kinds of Smart–Which One Are You?
• Donna Cunningham Introduces The Stellium Tool Kit
• English for Astrologers–No Astrobabble Please
• Hyperactive Jupiter Syndrome—The Down Side of an Upbeat Planet
• Getting a Grip on Saturn-Neptune Aspects
• Mars Mission 2: Anger—the Guard Dog of Denial

  Articles about House Transits:

• The Cosmic Piñata, Part 1 — Saturn Transits and Insights into the Houses
• Saturn Transits the 7th House—a Rare Interview with Father Time Himself
• Pluto-Saturn Preparedness Kit #1—Houses & Areas of Life Affected
• Shovel-Ready Projects for the 12 Astrological Houses
• 11th House Transits—New Departures in Friendship
• Transits to the Vocational Houses–Temp Job or Career Departure?
• Neptune’s in your Career House? It’s not a Transit, It’s an Epoch!
• Pluto Transits to the 2nd or 8th —Money Issues Get Murky
• Use Jupiter Transits to the Vocational Houses for a Career Boost
• Facing the Difficult Potentials of a Transit
• FREE TRANSIT TRACKER:  This handy one-page reference summarizes the transits of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto from 1990-2012. Use it to look back on past transits to your chart or your clients’ and to look forward for the next few years.  Download it here: Transit Tracking Table for 1990-2012.

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