Houses four and ten are houses that are just as dramatic as houses one and seven. These are the big, old angular houses that slap you hard across the face and tell you exactly who they are whenever transits or placements show up in them. The angular houses aren’t exactly subtle when they do things. You can’t really ignore placements when they are close to the angles.

But houses four and ten are also different from houses one and seven. Houses one and seven describe the horizon. Houses four and ten are experienced vertically. They describe top-down relations.

These are the houses that represent your parents. I use these houses to describe the parents a lot. There is always something there when we look at these vertically aligned angles with parents. Vertical authority is something that a lot of us learn through our parents.

And then there are other things that the fourth and tenth houses describe. There are other things that we tend to see authority in. There is God and there is the state. For some of us, friend groups can feel authoritative. For others, the institution of marriage can be authoritative. It’s actually quite common for people to get married when Saturn transits either the fourth or tenth houses.

It’s funny to feel your own lunar nodes through the fourth and tenth houses. This placement has a lot to do with feeling, sensing, and finding authority. Unlike cases where the lunar nodes are in houses five and eleven, I do feel like there is a huge and distinctive difference between people who have south node in the fourth house and north node in the tenth house vs people who have the reverse—south node in the tenth house and north node in the fourth house.

South Node in the Fourth House, North Node in the Tenth House

Basically, to sum it up, this is a person who has a lot of demands that are placed upon them by family. I’m talking about noticeable and blatant demands here. This is someone who spends hours out of their day babysitting a sibling’s child, someone who has had to give important things up to make room for siblings, someone who was told how much money they are expected to send home every month to their parents even before they’ve really found their own footing in the world.

The fourth house is pretty direct. When the south node is in the fourth house, authority figures tell you exactly what they expect from you. They don’t really beat around the bush here. Someone with their south node in the fourth house is someone who is quite used to being told what they are meant to do and how they’re supposed to go about it by other people.

You might think that these people are really subservient or something. No way! What actually happens is very interesting. People who have the south node in the fourth house don’t exactly accept the commands that they are given with docility. People who have the south node in the fourth house are rebellious. You have to remember that these people also have the north node in the tenth house. They have this insatiable and intrinsic hunger towards making something of themselves. They are born with an unquenchable ambition.

People who have south node in the fourth house and north node in the tenth house can be really fun. They have a sarcastic wit. They tell it as it is. They make bones about things. When they are told what to do, they get very angry about it and they push back as hard as they are able or willing.

Sometimes, because the south node is in the fourth house, these people keep their rebellions private. Just because the north node is in the tenth house where it tries to make its own direction in life doesn’t mean that this sense of direction is innate or unearned. Without time to mature, north node in the tenth house can actually be a little scattered and south node in the fourth house can be a tad bit secretive. When someone with their south node in the fourth house and north node in the tenth house feels like they lack self direction, their rebellion can feel more like resentment. They might lash out at people who they perceive as having power over them in unpredictable ways. This happens when they are unwilling to accept their inner authority and say either yes or no to the things that people around them ask of them.

But, really, south node in the fourth house and north node in the tenth house is just about being your own person. This can be hard to do if you have a bunch of family members or just people in general who all want you to live your life how they want you to. This can also be hard to do when you suspect that other people want to tell you what to do even in instances when they might not.

South Node in the Tenth House, North Node in the Fourth House

The most common thing that I hear from people who have their south node in the tenth house is that they had to keep in mind what other people, in a broader social sense, thought of them while they were growing up.

“What will the neighbors think?” “You know what people will say.” “You don’t want other people to talk about you.” These are the kinds of things that south node in the tenth house people had to worry about when they were growing up.

There’s a lot of reasons why someone might be concerned about reputation. Reputation is usually about social status. If you’re a reputable person, then you are also someone who is included in a neighborhood, a community, or a school. A lot of survival hinges upon social acceptance. When we are rejected socially, we might even feel like we are going to die. The feelings can be that extreme.

The north node in the fourth house hungers for one thing—privacy. Oh, sweet privacy! Privacy is a place where no one knows what you are doing. It’s a place where you are allowed to experiment and play and fuck up without having to experience some kind of social death over it. It’s a place where you are protected from the opinions of other people, a place where you protect yourself from the opinions of other people.

People who have south node in the tenth house and north node in the fourth house actually feel really exposed. They might worry about what their actions mean or how they are perceived because they feel like everyone is passing judgment on them or like other people have a huge amount of power in deciding who they are. People who have north node in the fourth house might feel self guided when they figure out how to give themselves privacy and protection. This might mean that they realize they don’t need to explain everything about themselves to other people or that they don’t need to make everything about themselves legible to everyone.