Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

Welcome back to another mid-week episode of Ghost of a Podcast, Astrology Hot Takes. This week I want to talk about something that I’ve talked about before on the podcast, but I get questions about it at least a couple times a week, every single week. So let it be known; I am going to talk about empty houses in the birth chart.

Just last week, on episode 103, I talked about the houses. I broke down a sweet little cheat sheet of what each house means in the birth chart or in the astrology chart. Of course, I got flooded with questions about, “But I have an empty house. Does this mean I’m doomed?” Why is it that you think empty means doomed? Let’s take a moment to hang out there, shall we?

Empty has this negative association, right, and that negative association is bereft, lonely, without. But empty is also open and potential and expansive. Empty’s a lot of things. And anyways, there’s no such real thing as empty houses. The concept of empty houses refers to not having planets in a house. But I work with 10 Planets; there’s 12 houses. Other astrologers work with less than 10 planets. Many astrologers work with asteroids in addition to planets, and that bumps up our numbers quite a bit, but most everyone has several empty houses. When you see an empty house in your birth chart, don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. It does not mean that you are doomed, and it does not mean that you are empty in that area—no, Sir; it does not.

When we look at each individual house, what we are looking at is the energy of, let’s say, in the first house, identity, in the fifth house, creativity and romance and play and arts—we look at these themes. And then when we’re looking at your individual chart, we’re looking at how those themes play out in the embodiment of your life and your nature. And, so, what we do is we look at the sign on the house cusp. And I have explained this before, but I am going to endeavor to explain it again because it is a tricky concept for some people.

An astrology birth chart looks like a circle that is a big ass pizza with 12 slices of the pizza pie. The house cusp—it is the edge of that pizza slice. And the problem is when we are looking at a lot of astrology programs that people are using, they aren’t generating astrology charts because they’re not expecting astrologers to look at these things. So they’re not using glyphs, instead they are using words. And they’re not using degrees and minutes. And, so, they might just put the sign that is in the house as opposed to what you should be seeing on each house cusp—is something that looks like four degrees Sagittarius and 15 minutes.

So you want to look to the house cusp, and—as I said in episode 103—I have a little image that you can peak at in my book actually, if you haven’t already picked up my book, but also on my Instagram account in my bio under the tab Learn Astrology. But when we look at a house that appears to be empty—there’s a such thing as empty in astrology—what you look at is the sign on the house cusp.

Now, let’s say it’s Sagittarius. Well, the ruling planet of Sagittarius is Jupiter. So then we look at what Jupiter is doing in your chart. So let’s say we’ve got Sagittarius on the fifth house cusp, right, and you’ve got Jupiter conjunct the Sun in the tenth house. Okay, that’s really exciting. Even though you have an empty fifth house, you’re probably going to be very creative and be very personally identified with your love and sex life and your creative life. You might be somebody who really loves making things and playing with others. Basically, what I’m trying to say is, you get a lot of data from looking at the planet that rules the sign. So when we’re looking at empty houses—My Friends, there’s a such thing as an empty house—the house is only empty of planets.

Now, let’s go to the next level. When you see an empty house in your chart, I want you to know that all that it means is that you do not have birth planets, so planets in your birth chart activating your particular house. Now that doesn’t mean that part of your nature is not activated because everything is interconnected in astrology—just like inside of you and in life. And, so, in my little example of Sagittarius on the fifth house cusp, when you have no planets in the fifth house, Jupiter is for sure in your chart. And this is where you want to really pay attention to what are the ruling planets of a house.

What’s also fun to know is that planets are constantly moving through the zodiac signs, right. So when we are talking about a planet moving as slow as Saturn—taking 29 and a half years to move through every sign—it’s going to take its sweet time moving through each of the houses. A planet like Pluto taking close to 250 years to move through every degree of every zodiac sign—it’s not going to make its way all the way through your birth chart. This is where there are some Pluto transits that happen to everybody, and they are age specific, but a lot of Pluto transits—all of them that hit your personal planets: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, or Mars, they are all really individual. They’re unique to you, just like Pluto transiting through any of your houses is unique to you.

So that’s the outer planets. But when we’re looking at the Sun—the Sun moves one degree a day. It takes a full year to move all the way through every degree of the zodiac signs. The Moon, it only takes a month to go through every degree of every zodiac sign. So the Moon is just zipping through your birth chart; it’s hitting every house, every month, every month of every year. That’s right. And that means that our feelings about our whole entire nature get stimulated by the Moon monthly. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? You have feelings about yourself and your world and your past and your future and what you’re doing and what you’re not doing. That’s just constantly shifting and changing—the Moon moves quick. So the Moon is IRL, like at this time, moving through your birth chart, which is a snap shot of the sky when you were born, and that is constantly indicating your emotional development, your emotional experience.

Whereas the Sun, your identity, it’s a slower moving thing. Venus, Mercury, Mars—ditto. They move through your whole birth chart, AKA through every house in your birth chart within a couple of years, but it’s not quite as quick as the Sun, or certainly nowhere as quick as the Moon. It’s a lot quicker than these outer planets though.

What I’m trying to get at here is that every part of your nature is important. And every part of your nature is getting stimulated by transiting planets at some point in your life, okay. And when you see emptiness, I want you to think of potential. I want you to think that this is a place in my nature that I can better investigate.

As much as I would love to talk to you about an empty first house, an empty second house and on and on and on, honestly, that’s not something you should Google or hear in a general sense. And the reason why is because of what I said just a minute ago, which is that it’s not empty. It’s not empty. You want to look at the ruling planet of that house to understand how your house is functioning and what it’s being influenced by.

It’s almost like, and this is a loose metaphor, think of the planet as the parent to the zodiac sign, okay—just generally speaking, So Mars would then be the parent to Aries. Mars is the planet and Aries is the sign. Venus would be the parent to Taurus. Mercury would be the parent to Gemini. The Moon would be the parent to Cancer. The Sun is the parent to Leo. Mercury—that Mercurial little devil—is also parenting Virgo. Now, Gemini is an air sign, and Virgo is an earth sign. They are both ruled by Mercury, but one in a very earth way and the other in an air way. Similarly, Libra is parented by Venus. Venus parents both Libra and Taurus. Libra is an air sign, and Taurus is an earth sign. When we look at Scorpio, it is parented by Pluto. Sagittarius is parented by Jupiter. Capricorn is parented by Saturn. Aquarius is parented by Uranus, and Pieces is parented by Neptune.

Okay. Now, I don’t know what your attitude towards parenting is, so this metaphor might actually fall flat, but stick with me here for a minute. Each of these planets have so much—so much that they do to influence and direct and impact each zodiac sign. And that little list I just gave you is the zodiac signs and their ruling planets. Each house is associated with the sign and planets I just named. So I started with Aries and Mars, and that is the first house, and I ended with Neptune and Pieces, and that is the twelfth house.

Then if we go back to my example of an empty fifth house with Sagittarius on the house cusp, right, so Sagittarius is the zodiac sign, and the ruling planet—the parent of that zodiac sign is Jupiter. So we want to see what that parent is doing, how that parent is behaving, and what that tells us about the feelings, nature, and behaviour of the zodiac sign in that particular house. You capiche?  

So, again, it’s layers of data, and it takes a lot of practice and time. And a really effective way of learning, IMO, if you’re not going to learn with a teacher or in a structured way at an astrology school, is to take a lot of notes and to know that your notes are going to be a little messy because there are so many layers of data here. There’s so much to learn all at once, and I’m giving you serious Cliffs Notes, My Friends. There’s so much that I’m not sharing because I want to make sure you get those foundational concepts first and foremost. Because if you get the foundational stuff—the solid, meaty, foundational pieces, then you can start to add more and more nuances to that data. And the thing about astrology is that it actually has so much nuance to it. It really, really does.

And understanding your birth chart is a way to cultivate greater self-understanding but also self-acceptance, and self-acceptance is what it’s all about. When you accept who you are, your nature, how you function, where you come from even, then you have more tools at your disposal to start to change within your nature—so to change your nature within your nature. That right there is a key to success, My Loves. It’s just a Goddamned key.

So that’s a little Hot Take on empty houses and how to think about them, how to understand them in your birth chart.

And you know I love you, and I love talking about astrology; keep on sending me your questions—what you want to learn about in your journey with learning astrology, and also send me your questions that you want me to answer on the Sunday episodes of the podcast.

If you haven’t already become a supporter on Patreon, as of May 1st, I dropped a new tier of support where you can get your month ahead horoscope, so your May 2020 horoscope, and it just breaks down all the transits of the month ahead and then goes through the Sun signs and gives you meditations. So it’s a new thing I’m trying out. I hope you like it.

Also I’m doing a Healing Helpers series. I’m really deep diving into the Rider Waite Tarot deck. It’s fun. It’s fun. If you’re into watching me talk about Tarot for an hour at a time then break a thing down, then you’re going to like this a great deal. So head on over to Patreon for all of that.

Please do pick up my book, Astrology For Real Relationships: Understanding You, Me, and How We All Get Along. It is a great companion to these Astrology Hot Takes and to learning astrology in general—especially in relationship to relationships. And in my book, you know I don’t only talk about love relationships; I also talk about friends and hooking up and the beginning stages of dating, which I think is super important—especially in these Venus Retrograde days.

So, that’s it. That’s the whole thing. I hope you continue to take care of yourself and others and use astrology as a tool for self-betterment instead of explaining bitches away. Bye.