Astrological significance[edit]
The Imum Coeli is said to refer to our roots and also to the least conscious part of ourselves. It symbolizes foundations, beginnings in life, what may have been experienced through parental inheritance and homeland influences, need for security and relationships with the home and family life. It also may describe the circumstances that we will encounter at the end of our lives. Because this house was the most distant point possible from the visible part of the
horoscope,
Hellenistic astrologers considered the IC to be the home of the underworld, or
Hades.
In many cases the IC refers to a parent — traditionally, the
father. Modern astrologers may use the IC as a significator for the
mother, or for both parents. There is no consensus in modern usage for which parent is best represented by the IC. The point is moot for
Hellenistic astrologers who considered the
fourth house the house of the father, but did not use the
Imum Coeli as the cusp of the fourth house.
Using the natural houses system (see
cadent houses) and modern quadrant house systems in which the IC is the cusp of the
fourth house, some modern astrologers see a correspondence between the fourth house and the
astrological sign Cancer. However, traditional astrologers, using whole-sign houses, never made this connection.
from WIKIPEDIA