Feng Gao: counted from Tiger at the Rat hour

One line of verse, twelve landing points

The branch of Feng Gao (封诰) depends on the birth hour alone, and the year, month and day take no part in it.

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Comparison sketch: Feng Gao counts from the Tiger palace and Tai Fu from the Horse palace, following the verses in juan 2 of the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu and this site's engine output; the late Rat hour folds back onto Rat.

The placement verses for Feng Gao and Tai Fu (台辅) sit on neighboring lines of the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu (紫微斗数全书), under juan 2. The one for Feng Gao is a single line:

Start from the Tiger palace as the Rat hour and count forward to the hour of birth; the star is placed there.

Read it as a count. Take the Tiger palace (寅) as the Rat hour, the next palace forward as the Ox hour, and keep going until you reach the hour of birth; the star sits where the count ends. In the picture the second column is the number of steps counted and the third column holds all twelve answers: the Rat hour lands on Tiger, the Ox hour on Rabbit, and so on until the Pig hour lands on Ox. The last column, Tai Fu, comes in the next section.

Tai Fu and Feng Gao: four steps apart, inside one trine

The verse for Tai Fu changes only the starting point, to the Horse palace. Horse lies four steps after Tiger, and since both stars advance one step per hour, Tai Fu sits four steps after Feng Gao in all twelve hours.

Four steps has a ready-made name. Three branches that lie four steps apart form a trine (三合): Tiger-Horse-Dog, Monkey-Rat-Dragon, Snake-Rooster-Ox and Pig-Rabbit-Goat. Sort the twelve hours by trine and each group turns up exactly three times, four hours apart:

In each trine Feng Gao and Tai Fu take two positions and the third stays empty. Back on the chart, that means: starting from the palace that holds Feng Gao and moving four palaces forward, you will find Tai Fu. The two palaces are each other's trine positions in the three sides and four directions, so there are always three palaces between the two stars, and they never share one.

The branch comes from the hour, the palace name needs the month

For the branch of Feng Gao a single input is enough. What you read on a chart, though, is the palace it sits in, and the name of that palace depends on where the Life palace is. The Life palace is fixed by the birth month and the birth hour together: count by month first, then step back by hour. Each hour later moves Feng Gao one step forward and the Life palace one step back, so in palace names the two drift apart by two palaces.

Take the sample chart for 12 October 2017 (lunar month 8, day 23) and change only the hour:

The Tiger and Monkey hours are six hours apart. The Life palace and Feng Gao both swing to the opposite side of the chart, the count from one to the other stays the same, and the name is Children both times. The count can be computed directly: 2 × the hour number − (month − 1), modulo 12. For month 8 that is 2 × hour − 7. The late Rat hour folds back to 0 and gives 5 steps, which is the Friends palace.

The pattern repeats every six hours, so once the lunar month is fixed Feng Gao shows up under only six palace names:

The odd-month half is exactly the set of six names the Body palace can have. The reason lies in the structure of the verse: the branch of the Body palace equals the branch of Feng Gao plus (month − 1) steps. So someone born in lunar month 1 has Feng Gao and the Body palace on the same branch, and someone born in month 2 has the Body palace one step after Feng Gao.

Keep three layers apart in your notes

The information about Feng Gao comes from three different places, and written together it is easy to mix up:

Another star placed from the hour alone is Wen Chang, with a different starting point and direction. For the full placement of its partner, see Tai Fu.