Empty house — Astrology glossary

An empty house is one of the twelve houses that contains no planets in a given chart. Since there are usually ten bodies spread across twelve houses, several empty houses are normal and not a deficiency. The area of life that house governs is not absent from the person; it is simply read through other signatures, chiefly the sign on the house cusp and the placement and condition of that sign's ruling planet, wherever it sits. This matters because beginners often misread an empty house as meaning nothing happens in that area, when traditional technique routes the analysis to the ruler instead. For example, an empty seventh house of partnership is interpreted by finding the planet that rules the seventh and examining where it falls and what aspects it makes.