The Enchanted Tarot

Astrology

Enchantments

Alchemy

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The Tenth House (or Mid-heaven) is at the top of a horoscope
Since the Tenth House is opposite to the Fourth House, you are right if you've assumed that the basic meaning of the Tenth House is Where you are going. It's easy to understand where the term 'Mid-heaven' comes from. It's the degree of the zodiac in the middle of the sky directly over your head at the moment of your birth. 'Mid-heaven' is interchangeable with the words 'the cusp of your Tenth House'.

While the Fourth House rules the home, the Tenth House rules the Career. The opposite of the Fourth's 'security within the close family' is the Tenth's Fame and Honors within the general public. They're not exactly opposite in meaning, as you can see. In fact, they are differences mainly of context. The First and Fourth Houses are concerned with personal and inner aspects of experience while the Seventh and Tenth Houses are concerned with external ways in which to experience what are, in a way, two sides of the same coin.

The Fourth House mother wants to make you feel secure so that when your stern Tenth House Father decides it's time for you to make your way in the career he's helped steer you towards, you can take the feeling of security with you out into the world and do your best. It's really a case of mother and father fulfilling two halves of one role; preparing the child for an independent life.

Now before you accuse me of being a male chauvinist and perpetuating sexual stereotypes, I'd like to stress that astrology is a symbolic language dealing with archetypes, which can become, in a certain sense, stereotypes. Not everyone's mother fits the role of the nurturing, all-forgiving, Home-making Fourth House image, but the sign on the House does symbolize the qualities associated with your mother's nurturing and support (or your father's qualities, if it was he who played the role of mother in your life), as well as other Fourth House concepts. As is so often in life, the opposite is also true. If your mother was a stern, no nonsense type of woman, whose influence on your career choice was great, then you will experience her through the symbolism of your Tenth House.

The Tenth House is ruled by the planet Saturn and the sign Capricorn.

Any planets in these or any other house positions, will symbolize, according to the energies associated with each planet and the sign each planet is in, challenging issues relating to matters associated with the house occupied by the planet or planets.

This brings me to a question that every student of astrology asks. "What if there is no planet in a particular house of a horoscope?" Since there are twelve houses and ten 'regular' planets, there are going to be some empty houses in everyone's horoscope. The absence of a planet in a house does not mean that you are not going to be affected by the issues symbolized by that house. On the contrary, it usually means that you understand those issues so well that you need not be confronted by them as much as the person who does have planets in that particular house.

The Fourth House		Summaries