Empty houses in a birth chart: nothing is missing

An empty house is a house of your birth chart with no planet in it. Every chart has empty houses, because ten planets cannot fill twelve houses. It does not mean that this part of your life is missing: astrologers read an empty house through the sign at its start and the planet that rules that sign.

Why every birth chart has empty houses

The twelve houses are twelve sections of a birth chart, and each is linked to an area of life: the second house to money and what you value, the fourth to home and roots, the seventh to partnership, the tenth to career. They begin at the Rising point, the degree of your Rising sign (also called the Ascendant), so they depend on your birth time and place.

A chart has ten planets, since astrology counts the Sun and the Moon as planets. Ten planets, twelve houses: even if every planet stood alone, two houses would stay empty.

In practice it is more. Planets tend to stand together. Seen from Earth, Mercury is never more than about 28 degrees from the Sun and Venus never more than about 47 degrees, so these three often share a house or stand in neighboring ones. Every time two planets share a house, one more house is left without a planet.

Several empty houses are the normal case, not the exception. A chart with only two would be the unusual one.

An empty house is not a missing part of life

The worry usually sounds like this: "My seventh house is empty. Does that mean I will stay alone?" It does not. People with an empty seventh house have partners. People with an empty tenth house have careers. People with an empty fourth house have homes.

Planets mark where a chart is busy. A house with planets in it is read as an area that takes up a lot of your attention and often comes with questions and inner debate. An empty house is read as quieter. The area is there and you live it. It simply tends to ask less of you.

An empty house is not a part of life you lack. It is a part of life whose key is kept in another room.

That other room can be found. It is the place where the ruler of the house stands.

How to read an empty house: the cusp and its ruler

Every house begins at a certain degree of the zodiac. That starting line is called the cusp, and the sign it falls in is the sign on the cusp. Every house has one, with or without planets. An empty house is read in three steps.

1. Find the sign on the cusp. It describes the style in which you approach this area of life.
2. Find the ruler of that sign. Each sign is assigned a planet whose nature matches it. That planet is called the ruler.
3. See where the ruler stands. Its sign and its house show what the themes of the empty house are tied to.

An example. Your seventh house is empty and Libra is on its cusp. Libra suggests that you approach partnership with tact and a wish for fairness. Libra is ruled by Venus. If your Venus stands in Capricorn in the tenth house, the house of career and public role, astrologers read partnership as something you take seriously, build slowly and connect with your work or your standing in the world.

The same logic, applied to the first house, gives the chart ruler: the planet that rules your Rising sign.

Empty seventh, tenth, fifth or second house

Some empty houses worry people more than others. This is what to look at in each case.

• Empty seventh house (partnership). Look at the sign on the cusp, which is called the Descendant, and at its ruler. Venus describes how you love, whatever house it stands in.
• Empty tenth house (career and public role). Look at the sign of the Midheaven, the highest point of the chart, and at its ruler.
• Empty fifth house (creativity, play, romance, children). Read the sign on the cusp for how you play and create. It says nothing about whether you will have children.
• Empty second house (money and what you value). Read the sign on the cusp for your attitude to what you own and earn. It makes no statement about your income.

Empty houses do not stay quiet forever

A birth chart is a still image, but the sky keeps moving. The planets of the moving sky pass through all twelve of your houses, one after another. Astrologers call this a transit.

The Moon circles the zodiac in about 27.3 days, so it visits every house of your chart about once a month. The Sun does so once a year. Jupiter takes about twelve years for the round, Saturn about 29.5 years. Astrologers read these visits as times when a quiet area of life gets more of your attention for a while.

One more point. Which houses are empty can depend on the house system, the method used to divide the chart. A planet can change house from one system to another, but it never changes sign. A house that is empty in one system can hold a planet in another.

What to do with your empty houses

1. Count them. If you have several, you are in good company.
2. Pick the empty house you wonder about most. Find the sign on its cusp, the ruler of that sign and the house where the ruler stands.
3. Put it into one sentence: you approach this area in the style of the sign on the cusp, and it is tied to the area of life where the ruler stands.

Without a birth time there are no houses at all, so the question does not come up. The signs of your planets can still be read.

If you would rather have it read for you, a Birth Chart Reading is written for your chart and calculated from your exact birth data.