If your Moon is in the 4th house, the Moon was under your feet when you were born. It sat below the ground, on the far side of the Earth, and it was heading for its lowest point. The Moon reaches that low point about 50 minutes later each day, so the clock time of a 4th house Moon depends on the phase of the Moon on your birthday. Near a full Moon, it means a birth in the late morning, up to about noon on Sun time. Near a new Moon, it means a birth in the late evening, up to about midnight.
That link has a side effect. US babies are not born evenly around the clock. The late morning is one of the busiest stretches of the hospital day, and the late evening is one of the quieter ones. So the phase changes the odds of this Moon a great deal. We counted it with every US birth hour on record for 2024. This guide gives the clock times, the odds for each phase, and what the old and new books say. The method is at the end, so you can check it.
The Moon was under the floor
Your birth chart is a map of the sky at the minute you were born. Astrologers cut that map into twelve slices called houses. Each house covers one part of life. The 4th house covers home, family, roots, land and the private life behind the front door. Our guide to the 4th house and the foundation no one else sees sets out the whole room.
The 4th house has a fixed place in the sky. It sits at the very bottom of the chart. The point straight under your feet has a Latin name, the Imum Coeli, or IC. It means the lowest part of the sky. The Sun reaches it at midnight, Sun time. The Moon reaches it once a day too, but at a time that moves with its phase.
Now picture how the sky turns. A point of the zodiac rises in the east and climbs to the top of the sky. It sets in the west. Then it sinks through the 6th, 5th and 4th houses, deep under the ground. At the end of the 4th house it reaches the IC, its lowest point. After that it climbs back up through the 3rd, 2nd and 1st houses, and it rises again.
So here is the plain fact. A Moon in the 4th house had not yet reached its lowest point. It was on its way down, in the last stretch before the bottom. It was not right on the IC, and it was not past it. A Moon that has just passed the bottom sits in the 3rd house. Our guide to the Moon in the third house covers that next step.
Two ways to draw the 4th house
There are two common ways to cut the sky. They agree on the picture, but not on the edges.
Placidus houses cut the sky by time. Most US apps use them. Take any point of the zodiac once it has set in the west. It spends a set time below the ground before it reaches the IC. Placidus splits that time into three equal parts. The last third before the IC is the 4th house. In New York, that last third lasts about one and a half to two and a half hours for the Moon.
Whole sign houses are the oldest way on record. The sign rising at your birth is your 1st house, and each next sign is the next house. Count the rising sign as one, and the fourth sign along is your 4th house. With Aries rising, the 4th house is Cancer. With Leo rising, it is Scorpio. The Greek writers worked this way, and Chris Brennan sets it out in his book Hellenistic Astrology.
The two systems do not always agree. The IC is the door of the Placidus 4th house by rule. In whole sign houses, it is just a degree that lands where it lands. Our 4th house guide found the IC inside the whole sign 4th house in 66.3 charts out of 100. For the Moon, we found the same kind of gap. Only 45 percent of US charts with the Moon in the Placidus 4th house also have it in the whole sign 4th house. If one app says 4th and another says 3rd or 5th, this is the likely reason.
Full Moon near noon, new Moon near midnight
The phase of the Moon is the angle between the Moon and the Sun. At new Moon, the Moon sits next to the Sun. So it reaches the bottom of the sky with the Sun, at midnight. At full Moon, it sits across the sky from the Sun. So it reaches the bottom of the sky when the Sun is at the top, around noon. The quarters fall in between. At first quarter the Moon reaches its low point near 6 a.m. At last quarter it gets there near 6 p.m.
Mars follows the same rule at its opposition, and our guide to Mars in the 4th house shows that a noon birth with it almost always has Mars retrograde.
Your guess from this rule is close, but the 4th house comes just before each of those times, not around them. We took every moment from 1940 to 2030 when the Moon sat in the Placidus 4th house, in 303 places across the United States. Then we noted the phase and the local clock time, with summer time where it applied.
| Phase at birth | Moon at its lowest point, Sun time | Most 4th house Moon births, local clock |
|---|---|---|
| New Moon | Midnight | 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. |
| Waxing crescent | Around 3 a.m. | Midnight to 4 a.m. |
| First quarter | Around 6 a.m. | 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. |
| Waxing gibbous | Around 9 a.m. | 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. |
| Full Moon | Around noon | 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Waning gibbous | Around 3 p.m. | Noon to 4 p.m. |
| Last quarter | Around 6 p.m. | 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. |
| Waning crescent | Around 9 p.m. | 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. |
The last column holds the shortest span of whole hours that covers 80 percent of cases. The spans are wide because they mix summer and winter, the whole country, and daylight saving time. At each phase, the window moves on by about three hours from the one before.
So the rule reads like this. A full Moon baby with a 4th house Moon was born in the late morning or around lunch. A new Moon baby was born late in the evening, before or near midnight. A first quarter baby was born before dawn. A last quarter baby was born in the late afternoon or at dinner time.
Across the chart, a Moon in the 10th house runs the same rule in reverse, with the new Moon near noon and the full Moon near midnight.
The Sun itself passes through the 4th house every night, in the two hours before its own midnight. Our guide to the Sun in the 4th house gives those clock times, city by city.
4th house Moon times in New York, the next six months
Here are the Placidus windows closest to each main phase, from October 2026 to March 2027. The times are New York clock time. EDT is summer time and EST is winter time. The last column gives the moment the Moon itself reached its lowest point below New York. Other US cities shift by a few minutes to an hour, so cast your own chart for a firm answer.
| Window date | Phase | Moon in the 4th house, Placidus | Moon at its lowest point |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 3, 2026 | Last quarter | 5:40 p.m. to 7:16 p.m. EDT | 7:17 p.m. EDT. |
| October 10 | New Moon | 10:53 p.m. to 1:08 a.m. EDT on October 11 | 1:01 a.m. EDT. |
| October 18 | First quarter | 4:15 a.m. to 6:46 a.m. EDT | 6:48 a.m. EDT. |
| October 26 | Full Moon | 11:22 a.m. to 1:09 p.m. EDT | 1:01 p.m. EDT. |
| November 1 | Last quarter | 4:23 p.m. to 6:05 p.m. EST | 6:06 p.m. EST. |
| November 8 | New Moon | 9:12 p.m. to 11:36 p.m. EST | 11:28 p.m. EST. |
| November 17 | First quarter | 3:38 a.m. to 5:58 a.m. EST | 5:58 a.m. EST. |
| November 24 | Full Moon | 10:09 a.m. to 11:48 a.m. EST | 11:43 a.m. EST. |
| November 30 | Last quarter | 3:52 p.m. to 5:44 p.m. EST | 5:42 p.m. EST. |
| December 8 | New Moon | 9:23 p.m. to 11:57 p.m. EST | 11:54 p.m. EST. |
| December 17 | First quarter | 4:00 a.m. to 6:05 a.m. EST | 5:59 a.m. EST. |
| December 23 | Full Moon | 9:57 a.m. to 11:32 a.m. EST | 11:31 a.m. EST. |
| December 30 | Last quarter | 3:52 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. EST | 5:53 p.m. EST. |
| January 7, 2027 | New Moon | 9:48 p.m. to 12:20 a.m. EST on January 8 | 12:21 a.m. EST. |
| January 15 | First quarter | 3:36 a.m. to 5:32 a.m. EST | 5:23 a.m. EST. |
| January 22 | Full Moon | 10:39 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. EST | 12:21 p.m. EST. |
| January 29 | Last quarter | 3:50 p.m. to 6:14 p.m. EST | 6:06 p.m. EST. |
| February 5 | New Moon | 9:25 p.m. to 11:50 p.m. EST | 11:50 p.m. EST. |
| February 14 | First quarter | 4:19 a.m. to 5:59 a.m. EST | 5:52 a.m. EST. |
| February 20 | Full Moon | 10:07 a.m. to 11:56 a.m. EST | 11:54 a.m. EST. |
| February 27 | Last quarter | 3:12 p.m. to 5:43 p.m. EST | 5:38 p.m. EST. |
| March 7 | New Moon | 9:48 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. EST | 11:55 p.m. EST. |
| March 15 | First quarter | 5:14 a.m. to 6:49 a.m. EDT | 6:46 a.m. EDT. |
| March 22 | Full Moon | 11:10 a.m. to 1:16 p.m. EDT | 1:09 p.m. EDT. |
| March 29 | Last quarter | 4:30 p.m. to 7:04 p.m. EDT | 7:04 p.m. EDT. |
Look at the last two columns. Each window closes within about eight minutes of the moment the Moon hit its lowest point. That is the 4th house rule at work. The small gap comes from the Moon’s path. The Moon can sit up to five degrees above or below the Sun’s path, and the chart uses its place along the zodiac, not its true place in the sky.
Now look down the full Moon rows. On December 23, 2026, the window runs from 9:57 to 11:32 a.m. EST. On March 22, 2027, after the clocks go forward, it runs from 11:10 a.m. to 1:16 p.m. EDT. The Sun did not change its habits. The clock did. In summer, the whole window slides one hour later on the clock.
How common is it? One in twelve, until you look at the phase
Over many years, the Moon passes through the 4th house for about one twelfth of every day. So if babies came at the same rate every minute, one chart in twelve would have this Moon. That is 8.33 percent.
We checked this for American births. We took every 10 minutes from 1940 to 2030 and cast a chart for 303 places across the United States, weighted by the number of people who live there. With an even clock, the Moon sat in the 4th house in 8.33 percent of charts with Placidus, and 8.33 percent with whole signs. Our guide to the Moon in the 8th house found the same one in twelve for that house.
But babies do not come at an even pace. The CDC, the US public health agency, puts every birth record into one public file each year. The CDC natality file 2024 holds 3,638,436 births, each with its clock time. The busiest hour is 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., with 6.3 percent of all births, driven by planned C-sections. A second wave comes around noon. Births started with drugs, called induced labor, fill the afternoon. The quietest stretch runs from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m., at about 3 percent an hour.
We weighted every chart by the real 2024 birth hour, month and day of the week. The total barely moved. It came to 8.34 percent with Placidus and 8.33 percent with whole signs. Each phase takes every hour in turn, so the busy and quiet hours cancel out.
The phase is another story. Split the count by phase, and the hospital clock shows up at once.
| Phase at birth | 4th house Moon, Placidus | 4th house Moon, whole sign |
|---|---|---|
| New Moon | 6.8 percent of births | 6.6 percent of births. |
| Waxing crescent | 6.2 percent of births | 6.1 percent of births. |
| First quarter | 6.5 percent of births | 7.7 percent of births. |
| Waxing gibbous | 10.3 percent of births | 10.5 percent of births. |
| Full Moon | 10.5 percent of births | 10.4 percent of births. |
| Waning gibbous | 9.8 percent of births | 9.6 percent of births. |
| Last quarter | 8.9 percent of births | 8.4 percent of births. |
| Waning crescent | 7.7 percent of births | 7.4 percent of births. |
With an even clock, every row would read 8.3 percent. We checked, and it does, within 0.05 points. With real birth hours, the rows spread far apart.
A baby born near a full Moon has 10.5 percent odds of a 4th house Moon with Placidus. That Moon reaches the bottom of the sky around noon, Sun time, so its window runs from about 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the clock. Those hours hold the second wave of the hospital day. A baby born near a waxing crescent Moon has 6.2 percent odds. That Moon reaches its low point in the small hours, when few births are planned. The gap is 1.7 to one.
The waxing gibbous Moon sits right behind the leader, at 10.3 percent. Its window, from about 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., catches the 8 a.m. rush of planned C-sections. With whole signs, it takes first place at 10.5 percent. Put the three phases around the full Moon together, from waxing gibbous to waning gibbous. They cover 37.3 percent of US births, but 45.6 percent of all 4th house Moons.
Compare the 6th house. Our guide to the Moon in the 6th house found the best odds near a waning gibbous Moon, which sets in the busy morning. For the 4th house, the lead moves back to the waxing gibbous and the full Moon. Those Moons reach the bottom of the sky in the late morning, right when the hospital day is in full swing.
Is the Moon at home in the 4th house?
Many pages say the Moon rules the 4th house, so a 4th house Moon is at home. That idea mixes up two things. A sign is a slice of the zodiac. A house is a slice of the local sky. The old rule of rulers was written for signs.
Ptolemy set it out in his Tetrabiblos in the second century. He gave the Moon one sign as its home, Cancer. Astrologers call that home a domicile. Our guide to the Moon in Cancer explains why domicile is not the same thing as exaltation. The Greek writers did not give any planet a house of its own in the same way.
The link between the Moon and the 4th house came much later. Cancer is the fourth sign of the zodiac, and the 4th house is the fourth house. Modern writers of the twentieth century paired them up and called the pair a natural match. It is a handy way to learn the chart. It is not a rule from the old books.
The sky shows the gap in a second way. We counted which signs the 4th house Moons sit in. Gemini and Cancer come last, nearly tied. With Placidus, only 6.5 percent of 4th house Moons are in Cancer, against 8.3 percent for an even split. Sagittarius and Capricorn lead, at about 10 percent each. With whole signs, Cancer falls to 5.2 percent.
The reason is geometry, not meaning. A Moon in Cancer rides high in the northern sky, like the Sun in June. Across the United States, it spends more time above the ground than below it, so its nights are short. With Placidus, each house under the ground is a third of that short night. So a Cancer Moon passes through the 4th house faster than a Capricorn Moon, which rides low and has long nights. With whole signs, a Cancer Moon lands in the 4th house only when Aries is rising. At US latitudes, Aries rises fast, in under two hours, so that window is short.
So the sign the Moon calls home is one of the least likely to hold a 4th house Moon. Overall, Cancer Moons are as common as any other, about one chart in twelve, as our Moon in Cancer guide shows. It is the pairing with this house that is rarer.
What the Greeks saw at the bottom of the sky
The Greek astrologers had a word for this part of the chart. They called it the hypogeion, which means the place under the earth. It was one of the four angles, the pivots of the chart. The other three were the rising point, the setting point and the top of the sky. A planet on or near an angle was said to act with force. Vettius Valens, a working astrologer of the second century, gave this place the parents, property, the home and hidden things in his Anthologies. Later writers added the end of a matter.
William Lilly, in Christian Astrology in 1647, kept the same list. His 4th house holds the father, lands, houses, towns, hidden treasure and the end of any matter. The father sat here in the old books. The mother moved in with twentieth-century writers. The Moon has stood for the mother since Ptolemy, so a 4th house Moon joins both ideas in one place.
The Greeks also gave each planet a joy, a house where it was said to rejoice. The list comes from Paulus Alexandrinus and from Firmicus Maternus in his Mathesis. Mercury rejoiced in the 1st house, the Moon in the 3rd, Venus in the 5th and Mars in the 6th. The Sun rejoiced in the 9th, Jupiter in the 11th and Saturn in the 12th.
Look at where that puts a 4th house Moon. Its joy, the 3rd house, lies just past the IC. The Moon in the 4th house has not reached its joy yet. It is one step away, on the night side of the chart, where the planets of the night were said to be at ease. The Moon was a night planet in this scheme, and the 4th house is the deepest part of the night.
One neighbor sits the other way. The 5th house, above the 4th in the turn of the sky, is the joy of Venus. The Moon passes through the 5th house before it reaches the 4th. Our guide to the Moon in the 5th house covers that earlier step.
How this Moon shows up in a life
Here the counting stops and the reading starts. Modern astrologers read the Moon as the part of you that reacts before you think. Stephen Arroyo reads it as the need for comfort and emotional safety. Liz Greene reads the 4th house as the family story you took in before you could choose it. Robert Hand reads it as the parent who shaped your inner life, whichever parent that was. Demetra George and Chris Brennan keep the older meaning in view: land, lineage, and how things end. Put them together, and you get these themes. They are a starting point, not a verdict.
Home is the battery. This Moon charges up at home and runs down away from it. A hotel week drains it. One familiar chair, one kitchen, one door that locks puts it right again.
The past stays close. Family scenes come back whole, with the smell of the room and the tone of the voice. People with this Moon keep old letters, old recipes and old grudges. The first two are a gift. The third is worth a look.
Feelings stay private. The 4th house is the one room nobody sees from the street. This Moon feels a great deal and shows little of it at work. Friends meet the warm version only once they are let in.
Roots and ground matter. The old books gave this house land and buildings. Today that reads as a pull toward owning a home, fixing one up, or keeping the family house in the family. The move out of a childhood home lands harder here than for most people.
The end of the story counts. The old writers gave the 4th house the end of a matter, and the later part of life. Astrologers read this Moon as one that settles late and deep. The home built in midlife can matter more than the home of youth.
The same house draws other planets too. Our guide to Venus in the 4th house shows how a planet that stays near the Sun gets there only at night, while the Moon can get there at any hour.
How to check your own chart
You need three facts: your birth date, your birth time, and your birth town. For this Moon, the time is the key. The Placidus window lasts about two hours. A birth time that is off by an hour can move the Moon into the 3rd house or the 5th.
Birth certificates in the United States list the time on the local clock. That includes daylight saving time in summer. The sky follows the Sun, not the clock, so Sun time and clock time can differ by an hour or more. A good chart program converts from one to the other for you. Enter the time as it is written on the certificate.
Then use the phase as a quick test. Look up the phase of the Moon on your birthday. If it was a full Moon and you were born at 11 a.m., your Moon very likely sat in the 4th house. If it was a full Moon and you were born at 11 p.m., it did not. At that hour, the full Moon was high in the sky, near the top of the chart.
To find the phase of the Moon on your birthday without an app, use the yearly table in our guide to moon phase compatibility.
Last, check the house system. Most apps offer both Placidus and whole signs. If both put your Moon in the 4th house, the reading is firm. If only one does, read both houses and see which one sounds more like you.
Questions people ask about the Moon in the 4th house
What does it mean to have the Moon in the 4th house?
It means the Moon was below the ground at your birth, in the last stretch before its lowest point. In astrology, it ties your feelings to home, family, roots and private life. A safe home base makes this Moon feel steady.
What time was I born if my Moon is in the 4th house?
It depends on the phase of the Moon. Near a new Moon, it means late evening, up to about midnight. Near a first quarter, it means the hours before dawn. Near a full Moon, it means the late morning, up to about noon on Sun time. Near a last quarter, it means the late afternoon.
How rare is the Moon in the 4th house?
It is not rare. With an even clock, it is one chart in twelve. With real US birth hours from 2024, the total stays at 8.34 percent. The odds do change with the phase, from 6.2 percent near a waxing crescent Moon to 10.5 percent near a full Moon.
Does the Moon rule the 4th house?
Not in the old books. Ptolemy gave the Moon the sign of Cancer as its home. The pairing of the Moon with the 4th house is a modern teaching aid. In our count, Cancer is even one of the two least likely signs for a 4th house Moon, at 6.5 percent with Placidus.
Is the Moon in the 4th house the same as the Moon on the IC?
No. In Placidus houses, the Moon in the 4th house has not reached the IC yet. It gets there at the end of the house, and our New York count puts that within minutes of the moment the Moon hits its lowest point. In whole sign houses, the IC can even fall in the 3rd or the 5th house.
How we measured it
We used pyswisseph, a Python version of the Swiss Ephemeris, with its built-in Moshier tables, for the Moon and the Sun. We stepped through time every 10 minutes from 1 January 1940 to 31 December 2030, in Universal Time. For each step we cast charts for 303 population centers that cover the United States, weighted by the 2020 Census.
We wrote our own house formulas. A Moon is in the Placidus 4th house when its point on the zodiac will reach the IC in less than a third of its time below the horizon. It is in the whole sign 4th house when its sign is the fourth sign from the rising sign. We tested our Placidus rule on 20,000 random US charts against the house function of the Swiss Ephemeris. It agreed on all 20,000. We split the count into eight phases of 45 degrees each.
For real birth hours we used the CDC natality file 2024, from the National Center for Health Statistics. We kept the month, the day of the week and the minute of birth apart. We turned each chart’s time into local clock time, with the daylight saving rules for each year and place.
We checked the result by a second route. We drew 400,000 births at random, with a fixed seed, from the same 2024 birth hours, dates and places. For each one we cast Placidus houses with the house function of the Swiss Ephemeris itself, not our own. The two routes agreed within 0.38 points for every phase, with both house systems. The New York windows come from a scan of the Swiss Ephemeris houses at one minute steps. The times of the Moon’s lowest point come from the Swiss Ephemeris, and we checked them against astronomy-engine, a separate library. The two agreed within one second.
Your own Moon, read in full
A phase and a clock time tell you where your Moon sat. They say nothing about its sign, its links to other planets, or the ruler of your 4th house. Those are what turn a sky picture into a reading.
Astrovision builds that reading from your birth date, hour and town. It comes as a written guide and as a personal podcast, with each term explained in plain words. Get your complete natal chart reading.