Tian Shang: move the Life palace and the branch moves

The palace stays, the branch moves

Tian Shang (天伤) is always in the Friends palace, which is why its "palace" is the same on every chart. What changes from chart to chart is the branch that palace sits on.

Open the full-size diagram

Landings come from the site engine (iztro 2.6.0, default settings) and agree with the palace-name rule in the verse on placing Tian Shang and Tian Shi in juan 2.

The article on the Friends palace has already counted the position along the palace order. Here it is moved to branches: count forward from the branch of the Life palace, and the fifth place is Tian Shang, the seventh is Tian Shi, and the sixth is the Travel palace between them. The twelve rows in the picture are the twelve places a Life palace can take.

Three charts, one Life palace

The three charts below differ in birth date, in sex, and in year pillar and Five Phases bureau; they share only a Life palace on Dog. See whom Tian Shang and Tian Shi follow:

The result is plain: under the default setting Tian Shang and Tian Shi read only the Life palace, whatever the year or sex. A different placing method changes that, and that is the subject of the Tian Shi article.

The book's example: Shang on Rat, Shi on Tiger

In its passage on the decade and year limits, juan 3 of the Quan Shu gives an example of the "flank":

Tian Shang on Rat, Tian Shi on Tiger, the limit on the Ox palace: this is a double flank.

The rule above can be run backward on it. Tian Shang on Rat, five places back, puts the Life palace on Goat. Seven places ahead of Goat is Tiger, which agrees with the book's Tian Shi; six places ahead of Goat is Ox, the palace the example calls "the limit on Ox". A chart with Life on Goat, laid out in the engine, confirms it: Tian Shang on Rat, Tian Shi on Tiger and Travel on Ox, all three matching.

When something enters the flank

The flanked palace is always Travel, so the question becomes when something reaches the Travel palace. A chart has three cases.

The body palace: it sits in Travel only for births in the Rabbit hour and the Rooster hour; the other ten hours put it elsewhere. The decade: the age span of the Travel decade depends on the Five Phases bureau, as follows:

The year: when the branch of the year is the branch of the Travel palace, once every twelve years. Put together, the flank mostly comes late in life, or is settled once by the birth hour (the body palace).

From the spirit of loss to the limits: where the book's talk lands

Juan 1 gives the two stars a question of their own and begins by naming this one:

Tian Shang is the spirit of wasting and loss above.

Most of the discussion after that is about entering a limit: the decade, the minor limit and the year pass through their position or the places they flank, and each entry is followed by a string of conditions on the stars in the same palace. That is the book's own system of verdicts; the site's chart page differs and marks only where Tian Shang is.

1. 1

   Find the Life branch

   See which of the twelve branches carries the Life palace.

2. 2

   Count five and seven

   Five ahead is Tian Shang, seven ahead is Tian Shi, six ahead is the Travel palace between them.

3. 3

   Then see who enters the flank

   Check whether the body palace, a decade or a year lands on Travel; only those can be flanked.

For the other star, read Tian Shi; how the Travel palace itself is read is in the Travel palace; and the difference between flanking and opposite palaces is in opposite, flanking and converging palaces.