The fourth house is akin to our inner chalice. Sometimes it feels full, sometimes empty, but with Rahu in the 4th, you might just be trying to get yours to stand up straight.
The fourth house is one of the private houses that governs our emotional nature, as well as life at home. A good relationship with the mother and a loving, stable home environment is foundational to life and our sense of inner security. Along with the 1st, 7th, and 10th, the 4th house is a pillar house that helps form the bedrock of a stable life.
The North node (Rahu)’s placement indicates one’s lack of experience and where consciousness is evolving. It represents the focal point of where most growth will occur in this life. The South Node (ketu) shows the area of life that is destined to not give complete fulfillment (and thus pushes us towards the North Node).
Meaning of North Node in the 4th and South Node in the 10th
It’s tempting to begin with descriptions of an unstable home life, because it’s such an easy thing to imagine with Rahu being in the 4th. This can certainly be the case – growing up living abroad, moving a lot, or going through something that diminishes that feeling of a secure home life.
However, Rahu in the 4th alone isn’t a guarantee that 4th house things are all ruined. What I find more often is an extreme on either end of the spectrum. For example, the mother is often intense in some way: sometimes dramatic and domineering as was the case for Ernest Hemingway, or the mother is extremely influential, as was the case for Kanye West. I have seen both scenarios in the charts of non-celebrities as well, but either way, the mother is more powerful or present than the father. The lord of the 4th, the placement and condition of the moon, and any other planets in the 4th will help paint a fuller picture.
Ultimately, this axis disrupts one’s outer security/stability in life in order to turn the focus on one’s inner emotional security or domestic life. The 10th house is an artha house and the 4th house is a moksha house, so this is one of the placements that indicates moving away from material life and addressing anything that isn’t working inside.
North Node in 4th in Relationships
The 4th and 10th axis has to do with internal life vs external life, and unlike the other houses, this axis has a very yin/yang (feminine vs masculine) polarity. Because of this, it can mess up the feminine/masculine dynamic in relationships. What is fascinating to me is the people with this placement will attempt to be traditional and will outwardly appear to be feminine/masculine, but inwardly they will fail at it. Overall, it tends to be more problematic for the person who wants to be in the feminine/receptive role in relationships because Rahu is creating some confusion in the yin/feminine house.
Let’s say a woman has this placement: She wants a partner who is going to be sensitive to her feelings, but she is not very good at expressing her real feelings because Rahu is in her 4th house. She might not be forthcoming about her feelings, or pretends to feel good even when she doesn’t. Perhaps, she was taught that her value depended on her actions and not who she was.
The bottom line is, if a person cannot be honest about their feelings and emotional needs (or isn’t in touch with them), they have no chance of ending up with someone who can meet their needs. Such is the case with many women with this placement – trouble being emotionally vulnerable, honest, and expressive enough to attract a partner that can truly meet their emotional needs. Men with this placement will also struggle to provide emotional strength/support to their partners, because they have not yet cultivated it themselves.
So the tendency will be to fall back on those 10th house things: actions, profession, demanding respect/authority. Masculine people can continue doing these things and feel pretty good about it, but feminine people will feel that 4th house hole getting bigger.
Rahu/Ketu Breakdown
Until the Ketu placement goes through a breakdown, many won’t fully understand their Rahu weakness. In the case of this axis, the breakdown will occur with career/status. Either the career never takes off and that perpetual state of instability/vulnerability forces them to cultivate their inner security, or their status and career one day breaks/plummets and they’re forced to look at the mess they’ve made in the neglected 4th house (home, family, happiness, mental health). Another thing that can happen is they pursue some kind of title or status for the sake of status, and that status doesn’t actually give them a career.
Sometimes this leads to a mental health breakdown, or finding themselves in utter despondency. This is because Rahu can also show where we are “faking it”, and in the 4th house, people can be in denial about what they are truly feeling. They will discover that their outer/material life cannot flourish if their actions are not aligned with their heart. Sometimes, these people can be really obsessed about the image they project to the world while being totally different inside and that needs to be reconciled.
Healing North Node in the Fourth
With this placement, it is helpful for the person to acknowledge that they are more sensitive and have greater needs than they want to admit. They have to develop the courage to be emotionally honest with themselves. Those with this Rahu/Ketu should also focus on their feelings first and surrender the fruit of their actions. This is what will lead to greater balance in their lives.
Hope you enjoyed this write-up, here is short audio about this placement:
Thank you for this nice write up My daughter has this placement with saturn in libra. I strongly want the best for her in every aspect of life. And my nightmare is having a bad relationship with her. I always want her to express her emotions, we’re working on it. I hope it will be better with time.
Hi Mine, what I have learned from seeing the charts of parent/child relationships and observations of family dynamics is that while a lot of things come from our environment/parental relationships, there is also a lot that comes from the soul’s journey/past life experiences and the karmas we have accumulated. All I’m saying is – you may see that Rahu and Saturn there and question yourself, but one thing is never a full picture. Also, based on what you wrote above your daughter has Sasa yoga, which is said to make one very attached to their mother. Overcoming fears may be the bigger issue! Hope you have a happy and blessed New Year!
This was a very insightful read. Helped bring some clarity to my career life and why I’ve struggled with creating a career my entire adult life. Perhaps focusing on building a career is not meant for me in this life with my north node being in the 4th house.
Wow, wow, wow! Beautiful description of North node in the fourth house (Rahu) and south in the 10th (K2). Having just gone through a 16 year tumultuous transit of Pluto through my sun’s 2nd house of Capricorn, this is yet another puzzle piece that dropped into place, and helped me to understand a lot of that journey as well. I do believe that the dynamics of this placement has a lot to do with past lives and burning through karma. It can definitely be a challenging process, but now that I am coming through a cycle of being knocked down, burning through karma left and right and turning inside, just like you explained in your audio, I can say that a lot of what confused me before makes complete sense now. It’s a difficult journey to be forced to go inside, focus on feelings and energy and like you said as well, surrender the fruits of your outer world activity to Source. That is where i finally landed, and your description was a perfect match to my process. I’ve been trying to reconcile my North node in Aries, as the adventurous, warrior energy, to where I am at this point in my life, wondering if i’m actually embodying Aries energy but now it makes perfect sense. I’ve been an explorer/warrior witness to my own inner journey and it’s been incredibly rewarding. Thank you so very much.
Hi Tam, I thought I replied to your comment earlier! I appreciate you contributing your experiences here, and how you came to a place of surrendering the outcomes/fruits of your worldly activity – it’s a difficult mindset to stay in all the time but just being able to return to that place is so beneficial. Adding the signs of the nodes with the house they fall in and interpreting them together is definitely an art. Aries/Libra is an interesting one to add to these houses since South node in Libra people are very conscientious of the potential outcomes or consequences of choices/actions and their North Node placement pushes them into intense situations where they have to adopt those Aries qualities (become that warrior, as you described). I can definitely see how you could have experienced extra intense inner experiences and that natural awareness of balancing the scales (balancing karma). Thanks so much for reading and sharing!
Right.. and now how can one with high education, years of experience and with recently uncovered autism apply this in real life? After underwent all that you described above. This is like million times more sensitive and with more needs. Insane and doesn’t make sense at all!