What it Means if You Have an Empty House Type







House types correspond to qualities and are given special names: Angular, Succedent, and Cadent.

Angular houses correspond to the Cardinal signs. These are houses 1, 4, 7, and 10, the houses that begin with the Angles of the horoscope.

Why are they called “angles?” Centuries ago, astrologers didn’t draw horoscope wheels. They made a square with the sharp corners going left and right, top and bottom. Of course, the Ascendant, Mid-Heaven, Descendant, and Nadir landed on these angles. The name stuck even after square “wheels” went out of fashion.

When anything is missing in a chart, there are always two ways to deal with it. You can totally ignore whatever is missing. It doesn’t concern you. What you don’t have, you don’t miss. Or, you are very aware of what is missing. It is a lack that you can spend your entire life trying to deal with. You can overcompensate and turn the weakness into a strength. On the other hand, it can overwhelm you.

Missing Angular Houses: When there are no planets in Angular houses, it becomes more difficult to initiate things, to stay in the here and now. An example of overcompensation would be Raquel Welch. One of the hardest working people in show business, she had no trouble diving in and getting the job done. Seven planets in Earth signs makes her concerned with material resources and their accumulation, as good an incentive as any to keep working (especially since four of them are in Virgo, sign of work).

Missing Succedent  Houses: When there are no planets in Succedent houses,  the result houses, there is could be little (if any) ability to focus on ultimate or long range results. Or there may merely be no concern with these things at all. If you have this one, it doesn’t mean that what you do won’t have any lasting effects. It just means that this is not your focus. Jennifer Jason Leigh has no succedent planets. She has seven in cadent houses, which increases her ability to develop characters (cadent houses deal with background) but there is little, if any, attention given to what’s down the road.

Missing Cadent Houses: When the Cadent houses are empty, there may be no sense of your background, of what has gone on before, and that could mean you can find yourself always starting over again from square one. Or you could be unconcerned with background matters and simply take them for granted. Elizabeth Taylor would be the first type. Anyone who gets married eight times simply isn’t learning from experience. Prince Charles would be the second type. Hey, he’s the Prince of Wales. Most of the ceremonial duties and responsibilities fall on his mother, the Queen. He can do what he wants.