The Midnight Sun: 4th House Horoscope for Taurus Risings
It's Leo season, time to battle your inner demons in the spotlight
Dearest Taurus risings, the sun is now in Leo, your 4th house. This means your 4th house season has begun.
Technically, your 4th house season really began when Venus entered Leo on July 11th, but now with the sun having its own homecoming in the subterranean place, dress rehearsal is over. It’s showtime—but here’s the catch: this time, you perform to an audience of yourself and yourself alone. As much pleasure as can be found in pulling focus, there is an equal and opposite reaction whereupon you may experience the pleasures of separating yourself from the herd and aiming to impress no one but yourself during the next month or so.
The tricky part, however, is remaining in character when things are going your way, when you have actually outdone yourself. Is a victory still victorious if it’s not met with raucous applause? Is there merit to “moving in silence” when you’re celebrating that which has already manifested? Preparing for disappointment may come naturally to some, but have you ever prepared to succeed? The path to 10th house accomplishments is paved with 4th house excavations.
Going underground is interesting when you have a solar 4th house. You are quite literally shining where the sun don’t shine. Many cultures, including ancient Egyptians, believed that the sun ‘dies’ every evening at sunset and is ‘reborn’ every morning at sunrise, traversing to and from the underworld over the course of the night. The sun in the 4th house typically represents midnight, the darkest part of the night sky. But what about when there is no sunset? What happens when there’s midnight sun?
Leo season, in the northernmost parts of the Northern Hemisphere, coincides with a period of nightlessness in the sky. In the depths of summer, the sun can be seen hanging low in the sky even at midnight, and the lines between sunset and sunrise are not just blurred, but dissolved entirely. Here, the sun is not ‘reborn’ during the summer months because it never slips away into the unseen realm to digest and process and integrate information. Here, one must take their integration into their own hands.
Humans use technologies to simulate night time so that they may still sleep and have their own journey to the underworld every 24 hours, because unlike the sun, humans can’t go very long without doing so. Our bodies need to rest and regenerate while the mind categorizes and processes experiences, but even more than that, the soul needs a break from the unending light of god (the sun) in order to appreciate the intricacies and subtle, felt realities of god.
The notion that Absolute God is something that blinds the eye and causes one to lapse into silence is common to most religions. It is the deus absconditus from which rises the deus revelatus, the God whom one can recognize or at least dimly see through his works. Basically, the mystic can only speak of the deus revelatus who, in whatever ways, reveals Himself, who becomes man’s intimate friend with whom he can enter into a dialogue[.]1
When the sun moves through your 4th house, it’s normal to feel the pull to be with yourself (or god) more intentionally. This does not require self-isolation, but sometimes self-isolation is a natural consequence of this desire to spend more time in your inner world. Sometimes you need to hear your own voice before you can hear the voice of god.
The 4th house rules over all that which is foundational and fundamental--what can be solidly built upon. In this sense, the thing we all have in common is what's underneath our feet--the core of the earth, the center of all that we know and all that we are--and what's inside our chests: a heartbeat. The most fundamental rhythm. If you are alive, you can return to your heartbeat as a means of connecting with the center.
Right now, it may feel like there’s not enough time or space in the day to connect with your inner voice and process everything that’s occurred since Leo season of last year. But luckily for you, my dear Venusian friend, as the midnight sun floods your 4th house and shines a spotlight on your tender and sacred inner world, you do have an ally emerging in the skies to help you make sense of it all: Lucifer, or morning star Venus.
The spotlight, by nature, creates a certain type of competition: only one can occupy that phosphorescent space. And when this competition occurs in your 4th house, it’s between the part of you that craves the center stage and the part of you that understands the value of the mask. Lucifer (in Christian mythology) was said to be in competition with God, and therefore was cast out of heaven. Similarly, Venus is the celestial body which ‘competes’ for the spotlight in the sky, coming right after the Sun and the Moon in terms of brightness.
Under the midnight sun, Venus can never win. She will always be outshined, no matter how well she performs—and yet, she continues to shine. Venus never stops vying for the spotlight. Is this congruent with a belief you’ve internalized about yourself and your desire to be seen? Do you take it as an evident truth that you will be overlooked?
When you embrace the spotlight, who (or what) are you doing it for? And when you embrace the mask, who (or what) are you doing it in spite of?
This 4th house season, I want you to remember that salvation is not guaranteed, and you must be willing to traverse uncharted territory without a guide in order to come back to yourself sometimes. I want you to trust yourself with your own transformation, instead of waiting for the passage of time to usher in rebirths for you. I want you to find not only the right words to say, but the courage and tenderness to say them at the right time, hitting your mark and delivering your lines.
This 4th house season, I want you to be intentional about creating environments for yourself that facilitate the integration of your lived experiences. If that means spending more time alone, then so be it. If that means spending more time in the spotlight and letting others witness all you’re becoming, then so be it. Just make sure you are mindful of the mask—if it begins to slip, it’s time to take it off.
Thank you for reading.
My 4th house guidebook, Homecoming, is available here.
“Sun at Midnight: Despair and Trust in the Islamic Mystical Tradition” by Annemarie Schimmel
You’re fucking brilliant!!! This was gorgeous and resonant and it reached me at precisely the right moment. Thank you. 🩷