If you have Lilith in the 4th house of your chart, her themes will manifest in in the areas of home, family, and roots. Lilith’s energy is deeply personal to you and is at the core of your being.
With this placement, you likely encountered your wound and rage early in life. It may have been caused by your parents or family, or at the least it was mishandled by them. Instead, you were made aware of how inconvenient your pain was to others and it was dismissed, controlled, and contained.
In traditional astrology, the 4th house is the subterranean angle. This is the deepest, darkest, most private part of you. It is your tap root, and it is the soil from which you spring. Having Lilith here shows that your primal fury and righteous indignation has been fundamental in forming the person you’ve become.
With Lilith in the 4th, “the personal is the political” is much more than a slogan. It is your deepest truth. While you might not be out waving signs at every protest, it is likely that you have organized your life to align with your beliefs, often in unseen ways. At the very least, you will strive to carve out a space in your life and your home for contemplation and to process your emotions in safety. As one 4th house native I know likes to say, “I am the priestess in my own den of spirit.”
Though there is much more to say, I will end with this: though Lilith in the 4th house is most certainly painful, it comes with blessings as well. It provides courage and conviction. It gives a strength and resilience that can’t be taught. In the immortal words of Tolkien, “Deep roots are not touched by the frost.”
Do you have Lilith in the 4th house? What is your experience?
Wow, thank you so much Midara. I have been eagerly awaiting your post on this, after reading your previous posts about Lilith.
I have Scorpio Lilith exactly conjunct Neptune in my 4th. Lilith/Neptune is the Apex of a T Square, to Sun and Saturn. Trine my Pisces Chiron/Moon.
The first time I ever had my natal chart read, I lucked out and found a very wise astrologer who started asking me correctly about my parents. I had never met this astrologer, and never spoke to her before so I was shocked she could decipher all that from the chart. She explained the placements and aspects from the T Square and that really intrigued me. I have learned so much since then and I will always be grateful for that 12 dollar teaser reading back when I was earnestly seeking my Akashic records and meditating my way ever so slowly to a better life. You, Midara are really an incredible astrologer to have written about this so concisely. How did you know?
In 2005, I was walking the streets of Edinburgh with my almost 19 year old son on a quiet Sunday morning. I saw a gypsy wagon with a psychic reading sign on the door, and I had enough money on me to pay the 20 dollar reading. I climbed in, saying nothing but hi and sat quietly. I expected a sham. Instead, this woman started talking. She said, “Wow. People REALLY blame you unfairly for EVERYTHING.”. My jaw dropped and I nodded. She added, “And I see that it hurts you very much”. Again, I just sat there and listened. She said, “I see you in the future….signing papers in a lawyers office. You are going to inherit. It will be the most money you will ever have at one time in your entire life. I am seeing your home. Surrounded by trees, there are trees everywhere”. I interrupted…”I live in the desert. There are no trees”. She insisted she saw trees, lots and lots of trees. She told me I would have a boyfriend, if I wanted him.
That was in mid 2005. In mid 2007, I set the wheels in motion to inherit. I was driven, I fought like a lion against all odds. In April 2008, I got that inheritance. It was small as far as most inheritances go, but it was a lottery win in my life. I used that money to do so much to change mine and my son’s life. In 2009, I thought I had that boyfriend. In mid 2010, that boyfriend knocked on my front door.
Pluto is sitting smack dab on my Capricorn Descendant/South Node right now, it will stay there until October. My boyfriend is growing weary of me and my son is grown up and has his own life living several hours away. I am sad, because I feel a loss of control over certain aspects of my life, but I am trying to be grateful. I tore my little house apart thinking I would remodel it, but I have no way to remodel now. I had a nice little home based business, but that has gone bust. I went out on a limb and helped a couple of neighbors who I dearly loved and thought of as family, one moved far away and the other no longer speaks to me. I developed a mysterious pain on my back right side and could barely get out of bed yesterday and had to walk hunched over. I am finally able to sit upright today and walk, but I cannot bend over. I have no idea why, I don’t recall doing anything strenuous and I am normally very healthy and agile. I am 56 yrs. old and my only family is my son. I feel very weird right now, very scared and I cannot figure out what the hell I did to get here. I know I am not the only one, and I am hopeful that the coming Spring will hold more hope when Jupiter meets up with Pluto.
Sherry, sounds like it’s hard to see the forest from the “trees”…I hope things improve for you.
I forgot to mention, my home is now indeed surrounded by trees.
I made a typo, my son was 9. He is now 24.
Thank you Midara. This is so incredibly accurate for me. A joy to read.
I have a good friend who has BML in the 4th house. He was sexually assaulted at age 14; his parents did nothing about it, brushed it under the rug. It’s one of the great wounds in his life, and he has a lot of repressed anger about it, about how his parents did nothing. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction was exactly on his BML, probably why its coming out for him now.
I have a 4th House BML in Pisces. My life has had many similar aspects of the above. Yes true the frost does not touch my roots but I have been accused and blamed my whole life of things I did not do or took the brunt at work for things not my fault. But I persist non the less. Virgo is opposite so I have the service aspect that puts me in places I have no control but as I age I am learning to use my BML in positive ways to being change for the better.
Bring change
I’ve been looking forward to reading your analysis, Midara, and have read it over a few times. My 4th house BML is loosely conjunct my Pisces IC. I live halfway across the country from my parents and am estranged from them, again. They’ve made it clear that it’s their way or the highway, which is easier to stomach as a child when you believe them when they say they are just doing what’s best for you. Once I hit my mid-20s it got really confusing and after some time I began to see they are doing what’s best for them, in their demands of me. My husband and I just want to live a happy life, free from unnecessary drama. My parents are most concerned with how they are perceived, and are willing to lose our relationship over it. Along the way, they have felt the need to smear me and spread lies to continue their cover.
Strength, resilience, courage, conviction. Those are all very honorable. I don’t know if that’s been in me all along, or grown in me through the support of my husband, a true warrior with a big heart 🙂
Thank you for this, Midara. I have 4th H BML conjunct IC in Leo. My parents were the first to divorce in our town. No fault divorce didn’t exist then, so it took 2 years. Apparently, my mother was having an affair with the boyfriend of her friend who was having an affair with our pastor. My dad came home to changed locks one day, didn’t see it coming at all, & ended up having a nervous breakdown. Older brother had parents sign him into the army at 17 during the Viet Nam escalation. My younger brother & I were walked into the back of a U-Haul with the furniture to ride in the dark 1000 miles from our home. My new step-father had severe untreated PTSD, step-mother had a daughter 5 months older than me (took out a secret will & sequestered it with the next door neighbor who lost it when it was needed). My mother thought manipulation was the way to manage moving forward & father became totally passive. Tons of collateral damage. My brothers fared worse than I. Didn’t think I’d ever get married. My husband pursued and simply would not leave me alone. Interesting thing is, he will say to me, “That’s a ruling principal for you”. It’s not anything I would verbalize so much as live, but it’s true. I had no power when I was young. Now, I will not tolerate any f***ed up situation or people & it doesn’t matter what it costs me. Professionally, of course, it has cost me & maybe a great deal, because there are tons of f***ed up work situations out there – these often are the people in charge and who get ahead….but, I do-not-care. Most people cannot touch me now even if they want to. I have a nice safe room all made up inside, lol. Although there is one sociopath somewhere in my dust that weaves her evil whenever she figures out where I am & where I’m working. Is something like that ever rectified? Maybe in the afterlife…I always recognize it b/c there’s a tectonic shift under my feet one day where things had been pretty splendid. Anyway, we carry the wound from the formative years, wouldn’t you say? Forms steel or destroys us.
I’m listening to this podcast Motherhood Sessions, and it sounds like my moon pluto transit.. but as a daughter.. people showing emotions so ugly.. and reflecting on the experience of early childhood from the other side.. it’s so weird to see someone putting in unimaginable effort from the child’s perspective.. other generations were encouraged to hide the difficulties of motherhood.. this one woman is asking essentially “will she like her daughter” because when she was first born, she *didn’t*.. I mean how shadowy is that emotion compared to the image we have of mothers.. or this other woman who conceived through a donor and suddenly wants a partner because of how fucking hard it is and is ashamed of backpedaling.. I mean..
I know the perspective of family through that Philip Larkin poem, but not so much from the other side at this moment.. I have also seen interviews or shows with bad parents (i.e. Anthony Kiedis’ father) excusing their behavior by being like well that’s the way it was or brushing it off.. I am told how ungrateful I am because of my behavior and the moon pluto transit burned away this image of me as an ungrateful spoiled monster because it’s untrue and I need to build my own juggernaut of self-mothering and did in a lot of ways.. and yet, I am hard on them because I don’t know the other side.. and still carry unexamined scars.. I don’t know how to describe these things of being from a “normal” background.. maybe it’s whiny or indulgent to examine family or the difficulty of being a child or mother when others just soldiered through it.. not as if they didn’t have scars from it no matter what they say..
I just don’t believe it’s good to sweep negative emotions under the rug without examining them or dumping them out somehow.. then again my extreme and continuous confessing burdens people and doesn’t solve my issues..
I guess I mean.. I don’t often hear people reflecting on the difficulties of early or mid childhood on this site like I did on this podcast or my experience working with kids.. even from an educational perspective it is a dodgy and continually evolving area, the way we take care of new people and try to raise them and why we do what we do.. I suddenly (from watching rick and morty 😀 ) don’t know how much it matters.. how much any of our trivial tribal human questions matter, or how much I matter really.. still I can’t shake the feeling that motherhood is unintuitive and there is no answer to what perfectly raising someone looks like.. and that it’s an important question.. maybe my preoccupation with “unbroken people” and taking care of them reveals much greater issues
I think I’m escaping the main question of my current transits.. which are Sun/Neptune and Mars/Pluto..
Thank you for this Kri. I honestly should read your post again before responding, …,my current transits are Pluto-Moon and Uranus-Taurus where I have several planets. Maybe it’s my Taurus, but I loved mothering and was pretty natural at it. Would have had more children, but my husband refused. What I am just beginning to realize and, yes, it probably has to do with those early years, is that I do not self-nurture well and do not trust. I expect people to disappoint at some point and they generally do. I would not consider therapy b/c I don’t know these ass-hats and most of them aren’t that smart anyway… So, how else can we see what is not visible?
I have Lilith in the 8th house, and I have some repressed trauma from childhood. I have always sworn that I was molested as a toddler or baby, and I have had vivid nightmares of being kidnapped for as long as I can remember. Even my therapist asked my parents if I had been kidnapped or had an attempt when I was little. My mother strives to look perfect to others, at the detriment of her loved ones. She was aloof as a mother, and was unable to accept anyone else’s view of reality – everything was always exactly how she imagined it should be, even if it was very far from reality, and if you disagreed with her, all hell broke loose. I have been working with a therapist on self-doubt. I was always told that my version of reality was wrong and didn’t happen. This pattern has affected my relationships, as I have been in two relationships with bonafide narcissists and one with a psychopath (gas lighting is the norm for me I guess). I also have Chiron in the 8th house and Pluto in the 12th house, so a lot of darkness in my chart, as far as I can tell. My True node is in the 8th house, as well, and my Ascendant is Scorpio. I do relate to the others, always feeling like I was an easy person to blame. One astrology site said something pretty accurate about me though: “ at first you can be overly accommodating and eager to please, but just when others think you are easy to manage, you come in punching and make it clear that you are going to have your own way.” I can appear to be a doormat, but people don’t realize it’s deeper than that – it’s understanding the value of letting someone have a little to ultimately get what I want in the end. Most of the time I can come out on top, other times I get swallowed in it (like in love – my sun is in Libra). I do come back swinging, even if it’s quite some time later 🙂 In spite of everything, I feel resilient and powerful, and always have. I am known for my courage and my integrity, my unwavering conviction to what I believe is right. Some powerful people at work do not like me for that reason, and those who do, value me for my honesty. Thinking of roots…I have an intense fascination with my ancestors and family lineage – anyone else? I also think that I was a holy person in more than one past life – more recently a monk or priest in the Alsace, and earlier in Ireland. Does anyone else have strong premonitions about their past life – possibly being the roots?
Hi Elise! Is your Lilith in house 8 or 4? You write 8 in the page of 4 so I get confused. I also interested to know about your moon. I myself has Pisces Lilith in 8 house, venus in 8 house and Pluto in 4, if you are interested.
Thank you! I have natal moon conjunct natal lilith in 4th house, and both is on 4 degree of Gemini. I feel like my duality is amplified? if that makes sense. My relationship with my mom also reflected in this placement, she’s the traditional woman, always answers to my dad and as much as I wanted her to get out of that mindset, she just assured me that it’s what she wanted… and we sort of agree to disagree since. It’s kind of funny since she always grounded me when I act unlady-like in my childhood, now that I’m an adult she no longer forced me to. I wonder what else this placement brings, thankfully the energy is restricted bcs of my saturn in 1st house. Come to think of it no wonder I always butting heads with my father or older male in my family…
Welcome, vier!
I also have the placement of Pisces Lilith in the 4th house. I have had a difficult life since childhood. My parents divorced when I was young and my mother was constantly trying to prove to the family that she was okay. At the expense of not giving my brother and I the nurturing children need. I have ALWAYS been the scapegoat child. Even though I behaved as a miniature adult and never caused problems I was often blamed for everything. My brother was chosen as the golden child by my mother and has caused her pain by being addicted to drugs. To this day I am constantly bailing my mother out of legal and financial issues pertaining to my brother’s addiction. This weekend my mother screams at me during a phone conversation that when I mention my brother’s drug issues to him, he gets upset. And that I’m the cause of his problems. I decided until they both receive professional counseling I will not be speaking to either one of them. This placement has been tough to have in my natal chart.
Welcome, Lilith 4th house!
I just found this page, and I feel that you read me so well. Thank you. Really enlightening and validating. In a regression session recently, I found my wound came from birth itself…that’s pretty early childhood. Thank you so much. Talk about a ROOT ISSUE.
Trying to analyze my BML
Natal: Cancer 4H
Transit: Taurus 6H
Prog: Cancer 6H
Natal x Natal orb
trine NN 1H (2°19′)
sextile Plu 7H (2°55′)
trine Nep 9H (4°13′)
trine MC (6°)
Transit x Natal
trine Mar 11H (1°20′)
Prog. x Natal
trine Nep 9H (1°29′)
trine MC (1°14′)
Prog. x Prog.
sextile Plu 6H
square Jup 6H
trine Sun 7H
trine Mer 7H
trine Nep 7H