Uranus in the fourth house possesses no such importance in moulding the character or mind as in the first, third or ninth. It seems to be busy with more material affairs, and as is always the case with the planet, his operation is much better on the higher than on the lower.
With regard to the father, there is likely to be any amount of trouble, It is not unlikely that he may commit suicide or become mad. In any case, he will be a very queer character and it is improbable that the native will get on well with him. The house will in no case be a good environment. To go away from one’s house in an astrological sense, does not necessarily or always mean to quit the locality, it may imply what is after all a much more radical departure, a change in the mode of life from that which might have been expected from the environment of infancy. A child is not likely to succeed in that line of life for which his parents designed him, when he has this position of Uranus. Everyone of the people whom we are considering has this clement of disturbance.
Shakespeare ran away from home; Joseph Smith created immense trouble in his township; Bismarck broke away entirely from the position of his early environment; so did Bulwer Lytton. Rhodes spent most of his life and died in a foreign land. The lives of Chopin and of Petrarch were spent, so to speak, in exile. Baudelaire passed much of his life in distant dimes, and besides was totally out of sympathy with the idea of home. His prose poem ‘Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world’ and several others expressed magnificently the nostalgia indicated by this position.
One may also see traces of the same thing in the paintings of J.M.W. Turner. Such gorgeous and flamboyant colouring is as unsuited to the grey skies of England as Baudelaire’s exotic poetry to the gentle sunshine of France. From England one can expect Constable and Whistler; the extravagance of Turner is more suggestive of Algeria.
Examples of domestic disquietude caused by this position, the undesirability of remaining in the home, is shown not only by Lytton (mentioned above in another connection, but now in regard to his unhappy domestic broils) but by Alexander VI who lacked conspicuously that sublime repose which one would naturally attribute to his position as the vicar of Christ, and by Henry VIII. The troubles of this monarch were as Froude showed, not at all due to his own temperament; they sprang entirely from the necessity in which he found himself of establishing his dynasty. This unfortunate monarch has been shamefully misjudged by the unthinking. It is too often forgotten that he was the first monarch since Edward III who had any sort of secure scat upon the throne of England. Every single one of the intervening monarchs had been involved in civil war, with the brief exception of Henry V and the trouble which had brought England into ruin, laid waste her fairest provinces and slain her noblest sons were entirely dynastic in character. His father, Henry VII, had only obtained his throne as the result of England’s complete exhaustion, and it was preeminently the duty of the King of the nation to see that no further trouble of this sort arose. All the policies of Henry VIII were consequently, and rightly, subservient to the one policy of having a son to succeed him. As we shall see in another paper, Saturn was on the cusp of the fifth house, which governs offspring, and this position was unfavourable, but the presence of Uranus in the fourth was even worse. It caused eternal turmoil in the affairs of the State, which is, so one may say, the house of the King and it was also unfavourable for the end of the matter, which is also governed by the fourth house. So indeed it turned out. None of his three children, though they occupied the throne successively, was able to continue the dynasty, which accordingly passed to a remote branch, not even English. No better example could possibly be found of the fatal influence of Uranus at his worst. I-lad it not been for the trine of Mars, he would, in all probability, have been unable to score even a temporary and apparent success.
The case of Theodore Roosevelt is also very instructive. His early environment was evidently very unsuited to him; he was extremely delicate and threatened with very serious diseases so that his medical advisers were afraid that he would not survive adolescence. All this trouble disappeared as soon as he got away from home and adopted that free, open-air life which he subsequently made so famous.
With regard to the other matters indicated by the fourth house, it may be stated, as a general rule that the native is likely to be influenced by people much older than himself and also by people of great importance or engaged in affairs connected with governing bodies or large corporations.
The fourth house also indicates the end of the matter, and here the caprice of Uranus is particularly manifest. All of the concerns of the native are likely to terminate in an unexpected and probably a dramatic manner. Affairs may drag for a considerable period and then come to a head almost catastrophically. Whether this last word is to be interpreted in a favourable or unfavourable sense will naturally depend upon the directions to Uranus and transits.
The close connection of Uranus with the will indicates that in some cases, advancing age may bring with it certain ailments of such a nature that the will is interfered with. Exactly what form these may take will depend upon many things. For example, the sign in which Uranus happens to be placed – his direction and his transits. To take a concrete example if Uranus were in Gemini, an affliction of him might mean aphasia, since Gemini is particularly connected with the organs of speech, while if he were in Capricornus, the tendency might be for paralysis of the lower limbs. It is unnecessary in this place to enumerate all the possibilities which are reserved for the special chapter dealing with ill-health.
Sudden and violent death is not indicated by this position of Uranus, so much as when he is in such houses as the eighth or twelfth.
People with this position often possess the ‘wanderlust’, are fond of adventure and enterprise. Anything settled in their lives. does not .appeal to them. They should not struggle against this disposition, but endeavour to harmonise it, so far as may be with their general welfare.