Empty Houses

Do the math Your chart has twelve houses, but only ten planets. This means that you re bound to have empty houses somewhere in your chart. They re unavoidable. They re also nothing to worry about. 

Having an empty house of marriage, for example, doesn t mean that you ll always be single. Just ask Elizabeth Taylor, who has had eight husbands (so far), despite the fact that her seventh house is totally vacant. Similarly, an unoccupied second house of money doesn t mean you re destined for poverty. Look at Bill Gates, the youngest self-made billionaire in history. His second house is empty (as is his eighth house, which is also associated with money). 

an unoccupied house signifies that the usual concerns of that house are simply not a major concern. But you can t make that determination with a casual glance. Just because a house is empty doesn t mean it s unimportant. The truth is that there s so much to think about in a natal chart that even an empty house can keep you busy. To investigate an empty house, I suggest the following three-step method  

Check out the planet that rules the sign on the cusp. 

The position of that planet tells you a great deal. In Andy Warhol s case, Virgo, the sign on the cusp of his second house, is ruled by Mercury. It can be found in flamboyant Leo — a perfect placement for an artist who literally painted money. 

---

He used to take off his boots for fear of waking you, even if you were a dozen rooms away. You have no idea, Emilie, what a stir you caused in that great empty house. ... 

Thinking about the houses of your birth chart Talking about the Sun and Moon in the houses Considering the planets in the houses Pondering the empty houses in your chart... 

If the ruling planet of the empty house is close to the Sun or the Moon, its importance increases. If it is conjunct Jupiter, the concerns of that house are blessed with good fortune. If it opposes Saturn, difficulties arise. And so on. For more about aspects, turn to Chapter 13. 

A house is powerful if it holds one or more planets, but even an empty house can be vital. If the ruler of that house is conjunct the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, or Midheaven, the matters of that house gain importance. 

I have to give an empty house, no people s characters, the passage of time, all eyeless featureless with nothing to cling to well, I rush at it, at once scatter out two pages. Is it nonsense, is it brilliance Why am I so flown with words, apparendy free to do exactly what I like When I read a bit it seems spirited too needs compressing, but not much else. (D3, p. 76)... 

There are two issues that confuse things further. One, it is not clear whether the excavators think that the midden and trash deposits inside the rooms were debris from the activities of the people who built and used these houses, piling up on floors as they lived there, whether it was dumped subsequent to that, after the rooms were no longer in use, or even whether it was later fill. If either of the latter two alternatives proves to be the case, then the possibility arises that the Uruk occupation was subsequent to the local Late Chalcolithic, not contemporaneous with it. The Uruk inhabitants would therefore have tossed their trash over the walls and on to the steep slope of the mound and used abandoned houses as refuse containers. Or they may have moved into empty houses abandoned by their original occupants and reused them. The buildup of rubbish deposits inside rooms, which is rare in permanent sedentary occupations, is characteristic of planned abandonment and/or anticipated mobility (Berelov 2006 136). In this case Uruk deposits could easily end up side by side with Late Chalcolithic remains left in these contexts, appearing to be interstratified (Stein and Edens 1999 169). The consistent presence of some local Late Chalcolithic ceramics and the occasional sealed basket in deposits... 

---