Houses for Mother and Father

DavidMcCann said:

I think that it was a matter of language. Greek and Latin, like English, distinguish between "father" pater and "parent" parens (Lat.) or goneus (Gk); in Arabic, however, walid means both father and parent. If the fourth house is thus the "house of fathers", it seemed natural to look for a "house of mother" and to find it in the seventh house (wife) from the fourth (father). But there is some logic in this, for the tenth is the house of authority and it is the mother who represents the first authority figure in our life. This interpretation lasted in Europe down to the 19th century.

The reversal (mother = 4, father = 10) started in the late 19th century. I presume it was based on the simplistic equation of home (fourth) to the mother, and work (tenth) to the father.

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Thanks for the language background, especially the Arabic. That seems to providea goodt rationale of the mother becoming tenth house in later Astrology. As it was Arabic texts that reintroduced Astrology as a worthy area of study, the Arabic link is very important in Western Astrology. I think you are right about the reversal in Modern Astrology, though there's also the supporting idea of Sign=House=Planet andCancer being the fourth sign, feminine and nurturing (at least as viewed from the modern perspective)/ I see a lot of reference to that by the moderns. Oddly they ignore the fact that the tenth sign is Capricorn and it too is a feminine sign (and still viewed as such) but through Saturn it does have associations with labour and toil.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who contributed their valuable insight on this topic. I wish I had more to contribute on this topic, but I'm still learning, so I'll take the info you've all been kind enough to add here and read over it all as I continue with my studies of horary.

Thank you again!!!

Even later to join in, but I'm just catching up with this subforum.

I'd heard that there were two schools of thought, giving mother and father to 4th and 10th house and vice versa, so it is really useful to have the "timeline", albeit vague, of how the thinking has changed. And it makes much more sense intuitively for the 4th to be both parents. Minderwiz and DavidMcCann, your posts are especially useful for me.

Minderwiz said:

the tenth, which by derived houses is the seventh house of marriage for the person signified by the fourth house.

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And it's the fourth house of parents/home, for the person signified by the seventh...

Minderwiz said:

I use the fourth for parents (both). If I have to differentiate between the two, I try and look for the circumstances. For a single mother, I'd use the fourth without any question. If the mother is the main wage earner and supporter, I'd also use the fourth for the mother. I'd use the fourth for the mother in a matriarchal society. But for most of the Western world (and indeed the world as a whole), patriarchy still reigns. So if I have to consider the two parents separately but need to refer to both, I'd use the father for the fourth and the mother for the tenth. In the event of having to consider one parent only (either mother or father) there's a very good case for using the fourth for that parent. The Hellenistic assignments did not put the mother in the tenth or only the father in the fourth.

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Here's my question: how you'd allocate them in my case...

I grew up without my father (never met him), or any man or boy in the home. My two "parents" were my mother, and her mother. My mum was the breadwinner, and the one who did the gardening, climbed ladders, drove the car, etc. My gran did the cooking, the sewing, the housekeeping, most of the domestic stuff, and the finances; she was the one in the house when I came in from school and mostly the one to go to for cuddles. My mum read the bedtime story but I learnt later that that was because my gran thought that was important. (I always knew my gran took the "mother" role, but only years later did I see that my mum was more like a sister - both of us brought up by the same mother!)

My fourth house cusp is in Aries, and the only planet in it is Saturn; no significant aspects, but it is the first planet as you go round from the Ascendant (which I've read makes it important). My absent father's Sun is in Aries...! No planets in the tenth.

Apart from any way it screwed with my sexual identity I'm really interested and have puzzled over this, on and off, since finding that astrologers give houses to the parents and doesn't agree on how to.

MandMaud said:

Here's my question: how you'd allocate them in my case...

I grew up without my father (never met him), or any man or boy in the home. My two "parents" were my mother, and her mother. My mum was the breadwinner, and the one who did the gardening, climbed ladders, drove the car, etc. My gran did the cooking, the sewing, the housekeeping, most of the domestic stuff, and the finances; she was the one in the house when I came in from school and mostly the one to go to for cuddles. My mum read the bedtime story but I learnt later that that was because my gran thought that was important. (I always knew my gran took the "mother" role, but only years later did I see that my mum was more like a sister - both of us brought up by the same mother!)

My fourth house cusp is in Aries, and the only planet in it is Saturn; no significant aspects, but it is the first planet as you go round from the Ascendant (which I've read makes it important). My absent father's Sun is in Aries...! No planets in the tenth.

Apart from any way it screwed with my sexual identity I'm really interested and have puzzled over this, on and off, since finding that astrologers give houses to the parents and doesn't agree on how to.

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I would use your fourth house for your mother, without any hesitation. Your grandmother, as family is also fourth house in general terms. So any question regarding both of them would be fourth house. Note, that's not because your grandmother exercises a parental role, but because the fourth house relates to family as a whole.

If I had a question regarding your grandmother, I would use the seventh house because it is the fourth (parent) from the fourth (parent), ad so is your parent's parent. This is a medieval association, I've not come across anything similar in Hellenistic Astrology, but then I've not read everything, especially the later chapters of Ptolemy.

Minderwiz said:

I would use your fourth house for your mother, without any hesitation. Your grandmother, as family is also fourth house in general terms. So any question regarding both of them would be fourth house. Note, that's not because your grandmother exercises a parental role, but because the fourth house relates to family as a whole.

If I had a question regarding your grandmother, I would use the seventh house because it is the fourth (parent) from the fourth (parent), ad so is your parent's parent. This is a medieval association, I've not come across anything similar in Hellenistic Astrology, but then I've not read everything, especially the later chapters of Ptolemy.

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OK... and what would you use for my father?

In my opinion it's 4th house = mother, 10th house = father

I'm not sure that giving an opinion without reasons gets us anywhere.

For what it's worth I've done a horary today in which I did use the fourth for the mother. The question related to her boyfriend and as the father wasn't mentioned (not sure of the exact reason but the context suggested he was no longer relevant), I gave her the fourth house of parents (it happened to be Cancer in whole sign houses). That meant that i gave the tenth house to her boyfriend (her partner).

My point is that the circumstances and context of the chart may dictate that the mother is treated as fourth. It's never a case of applying rules rigidly and ignoring context. But we should start from a sound astrological basis, and that in my case that is the original assignment of the fourth to the parents.

Yep, it's seeing each other's reasoning that allows us to form our own opinions, whether or not we agree with each other's conclusions.

Did you see my last question, Minderwiz? In post #15.

I read mom as 4th as it is ruled by cancer and rules the home. What if she's single, wears the pants, is the breadwinner? She is still 4 and the chart will show that in 4th.

Beth-Anne said:

I read mom as 4th as it is ruled by cancer and rules the home. What if she's single, wears the pants, is the breadwinner? She is still 4 and the chart will show that in 4th.

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Yes that's the standard modern view - the woman's place is in the home Not that they would come out and say it LOL.

The tradition doesn't make the Sign=House association, it's a twentieth century innovation. The nearest the tradition comes to it is the Thema Munda from Hellenistic Astrology - the birth chart of the world. They didn't actually believe that was a fact, but an idealised representation of the event (in the same way that moderns, see the fourth as Cancer even when Capricorn is on the IC).

The Thema Munda doesn't have Cancer on the fourth. Cancer is on the Ascendant. The Goddess rules the world! Or from a more mundane (literally) perspective, The Moon acts as the mediator between Heaven and Earth. Down here we are subject to the Moon and you will find plenty of references to the sub-lunar realm in the Tradition. The Cosmos (the bit out there) is ruled by the Sun. In the Thema Munda Leo is the second house of Substance. The Sun provides for our material needs through light and heat and the coming of the seasons. But it is the Moon and what she symbolises that rules over the Earth.