posted March 18, 2007 05:40 AM              

(There is another thread about Mars in the 4th house, but) I'd be very interested to hear people's experiences about someone else's Mars falling into their 4th house, especially in adult love relationships.

I have Mars and Neptune in Scorpio in the 4th house, and my man's Mars in Scorpio comes in conjunct with my Neptune there (his Neptune in Scorpio also falls in my 4th house, but is not in conjunct, and in his own chart he has these planets in the 9th house).

We don't live together (yet...?). He is EXTREMELY dominant and kind of makes the whole territory his own... What would a man's Mars in a woman's 4th house indicate...? Any ideas, anyone?

posted March 18, 2007 06:57 AM              

I'll copy some here:

SF: The 4th house is profoundly related to hearth and home and, as such, is the most underestimated relationship house in modern astrology. It is profoundly reflective of relationships wherein we have entered a state of commitment with each other. It doesn't have much relevance until we have moved into the same house and begun to share our stuff. In many ways, the 4th house is the true house of marriage, because it is home. We cross a line with people, and that line is beyond loving and trusting and making love for the first time. We are actually saying, "Here I make my clan, my home." That is the holy grail in terms of committed relationship, and the 4th house captures that. In modern astrology we look at the 4th house much more psychologically, and those are valid interpretations. The comment I would personally make is that when the clan broke up - because of the Industrial Revolution, and when people began to lose their sense of being in absolutely bonded relationships and taking the family name - when that great collapse of the clan archetype occurred, psychology arose. They coincided synchronistically in time quite closely. When our basic need to have absolutely trusted, bonded, committed links with other human beings ceased to be met, we all went a little crazy. When people go into therapy, much of what they are going to talk about are 4th-house issues, even in a very concrete sense - what happened to me in my family, what is happening to me in my current family, where is my family. They are all 4th-house questions. So the clan, bonding, hearth, home, the sense of having a place that is safe - that is all 4th-house stuff.

JF: And that dovetails completely with the image of the 4th house as a relationship house, because in order to form your own clan, you need to understand what happened to you in your clan of origin. Just as the 4th house is supposed to rule birth and death, in some ways it rules your psychological resolution of your past clan in order to give birth to your current clan.

TMA: When you look at the compatibility between the individuals' 4th houses, what do you feel signifies a healthy compatibility?

JF: First, it is impossible to tell just by looking at a chart. The individuals need to be fully aware of their own 4th-house energies - the energies around their own roots - without unconsciously looking for the partner to provide that for them. They need to be aware of their own 4th-house needs.

TMA: So if you find a man's planets transposed in his partner's 4th house, does it feel to you like that relationship for him is getting in touch with his own roots, his own feelings?

JF: When someone puts a lot of planets in your 4th house by transposition, that individual's affect on you is to raise your 4th-house issues and to increase the amount of time you are going to spend dealing with the 4th house. If your own 4th-house issues include a 4th-house Mars, and you are totally unaware of your own rage, this individual may have a catalytic affect on you. If you are well aware of your 4th-house issues and have worked out a reasonable modus vivendi with them, someone who strongly influences your 4th house may remind you of them, but still be someone with whom you feel comfortable and at home.

SF: Absolutely familiar.

JF: Yes. You live together easily. You are deeply familiar. You feel like you have known the person for a long time. There is a clan feeling, a tribal feeling.

SF: You smell right.

JF: A very good way of putting it. The primate part of you, the monkey part of you, feels okay being in this person's tree, and you feel okay if he or she is in your tree.

TMA: That really explains the 4th-house comfort in a way I haven't thought about before.

SF: It certainly is at the heart of relationships. When we look to the question of do we get along, can we communicate, can we a find a modus vivendi, as Jodie put it, I would look primarily to 7th-house kinds of themes, 7th-house placements, Venus placements. If we change the focus to the general categories of chemistry and electricity - those magical elements of passion and the heat of the blood that have their charm in a committed relationship - that I would relate more to the 8th house, to the
Mars, Pluto, Scorpionic types of things. They seem to be the astrological symbols that carry the chemistry and electricity for us, and ideally things would have to be cooking there, too. But for this deep sense of the rightness of staying together, we swing back into that 4th-house domain. In any relationship between adults, there is going to be a need to withdraw sometimes and just be alone and stare out the window, and that I would relate more to the 12th house. By similar logic, we could go around the whole circle of astrological symbolism and find that there isn't a single piece of it that is not relationship-oriented, because a relationship is between two human wholenesses. So a blunder for a beginning astrologer would be to believe there really is specific relationship symbolism in a chart. Holistic synastry has to include the relationship between two entire charts.