Now, let’s unpack what’s going on in your fourth house, which is the place in your chart that has to do with home, ancestry, foundations. Since, as we know, your first house is in Gemini, that means that your fourth house is in Virgo. Common associations for Virgo: hard working, perfectionistic, purifying, introspective, critical.

            Some say that people with a Virgo fourth house will have a perpetual feeling of “unsettledness” at home, or a sense that something is “lacking,” or they feel as though they are on an eternal quest to “perfect” their home. But, astrological signatures are complicated. Besides the houses and the signs, there are all the planets and their placements in your birth chart to factor into the equation.

            Let’s say you’ve got Jupiter here, in your fourth house, in Virgo (which, you do). Jupiter is the planet of luck and optimism and expansion. It is thought of as wise, a spiritual teacher of sorts. Jupiter brings luck and good fortune to whatever house it is in.

            Except when it doesn’t.

            Jovial Jupiter does not do well with Virgo the Virgin, the Taskmaster, the Critic. (I hate to say it, but having Jupiter in Virgo is basically a waste of your Jupiter. Sorry.) It might look like this:

            Jupiter transits into Virgo after being out and about spreading good fortune. Hi honey I’m home!

            They are met at the door and told, reminded, again, to remove their shoes. It’s bad enough that Jupiter never remembers to do this, and now, the rug has just been shampooed. Can’t they see that? {sigh} Okay, well now that they’re home, maybe they could take a look at the Chore Chart. Virgo has rated the job Jupiter did last week on all of their assigned scrubbing, sweeping, wiping, and washing: not great. Like maybe 2 ½ out of 5 stars. Maybe they could try to do better this week?

            Jupiter takes a seat on the sofa. They want to spread out, relax for a minute, take up some space. 

            Virgo stands, hands on hips. Really? Feet on the coffee table? After they just went over the Chore Chart.

            Meanwhile, in your chart, Jupiter is not the only one here in the fourth house. In fact, you have Jupiter and Mars and Pluto all in Virgo. Let me just say that is a lot of big, unruly energy for any sign, but for Virgo? Oof.

            Oh! Yep, here come Mars and Pluto, wrestling their way right across that freshly shampooed carpet. Again.

            Jupiter, wise one, is like, hey, guys. Guys! Could you not? Jupiter tries to split them up but ends up embroiled in their battle. Virgo comes back in from the kitchen, wearing their apron, yelling. If I have to tell you one more time!

            There goes the lamp, knocked from the table, shattered. Now fists are flying, everyone is shouting . . .

            Yeah.

            Keep in mind, this is just one example of how things might go down. There are many other possibilities. Maybe there is some kind of big, intense energy in your ancestry. That’s sometimes what this astrological signature could mean. Maybe your great, great grandfather was president or something. Or an axe murderer. Also, this scene represents where the planets were located at the time of your birth. How any of this plays out as your life progresses, we don’t know.

            Just know that you may have trouble finding peace at home. And, it’s possible that there will be some violent energy in your childhood home, or in the childhood home of your parents, or the childhood home of their parents. And on and on back through time with the violence.

            And, yes, you may experience a sense of “unsettledness” at home throughout your life. If you’re not sure what this means, think about the story your mother likes to tell about how, as a toddler, you would climb out of your crib and sleep where ever – at the top of the stairs, at the foot of their bed, on the bathroom floor. She never knew where she would find you. (This itinerant sleeping arrangement may resonate later in your life during a rough Saturn transit, a period when you will not have a physical home and you’ll hitchhike around and live in a tent. Or, just, you know, on the ground.)

            Maybe things will change once you leave home and move on in life. Maybe you’ll feel more “settled” then.

            Or, it’s possible that when you leave home and go to college, you won’t end up in a typical dorm room like all of your friends who went off to various colleges. Maybe the college overbooks its dorms, so you end up in temp housing with twelve other freshmen girls on bunkbeds in the lounge area of the football players’ dorm, and one of these twelve girls might get hepatitis and wear all of your clothes and another of these twelve girls could cloud up the place with all of her aerosol hairspray have loud, aggressive sex in the bunk above yours, and another of these twelve girls might like to brag about how she graduated from a place known as Murder High, and she may threaten to cut you.

            Oh, and speaking of knives, I mentioned earlier that Mars is here in your fourth house. Mars is the Warrior of the zodiac, symbolized by a spear. Mars energy is known to pierce, puncture, and/or separate, so it’s possible, with Mars in your fourth house, that you will experience a separation in your home.

            You might get divorced.

            Or, it’s possible that you will live with someone who collects, makes, and/or uses sharp weaponry: spear, lance, halberd, polearm, glaive, mace, pike. It’s possible that you will have a roommate or family member who has a cache of medieval weaponry in a trunk in the basement, or who perhaps works at the Renaissance Faire.

            You may experience other forms of aggression in or toward your home. Like, maybe your place will be robbed, vandalized, egged, TP’d, or struck by lightning.

            You might have a roommate who steals from you. Or, maybe they don’t steal, but they go into your room when you’re not there and move your stuff around. Just a little bit, enough to barely notice and then wonder if you imagined it, like, all the time. Or, you might sense that they are under your bed when you are sleeping. This kind of roommate dynamic could lead to that feeling of  “unsettledness” we talked about earlier.

            It’s possible that you will have a landlady who is a drunk, who will call to tell you to stop being so loud and rowdy, even though you live alone and spend most of your time there writing.

            You may have fires in your home since Mars is so fiery.

            Or, you might have a downstairs neighbor who gets upset about the fact that you sometimes forget to clean out the dryer lint trap. He might leave angry, threatening notes on top of the dryer. These notes might say that you could burn the whole building down. He might draw a picture of the building, burning. He might say that you could all die in a fire because of the lint in the trap. Because of your lint.

            But who knows? Again, these are just examples of the kinds of ways this signature in your chart might play out.

            On the plus side of this whole Jupiter/Mars/Pluto in Virgo situation, Virgo in your 4th house points to strong mental faculties, and this will serve you well.

See also: Pluto, ninth house, your fucked up 20’s

Christine Simokaitis is a prose writer whose work has appeared in anthologies including “Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About HealthCare in America,” and the journals “Upstreet,” “Calyx,” and “Paper Darts,” among others. She teaches Creative Writing at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. // @casimo7

Banner image by Olivia Cronk