Tian Shou: counted from the Body palace

The start moves to the Body palace

There are two starting points to trace for Tian Shou (天寿): it is counted out from the Body palace, once for each step of the birth-year branch, and the Body palace itself is fixed by the birth hour.

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Ring sketch: the order of the palace names is the usual twelve-palace order, and the six possible places of the Body palace follow from the engine's rule for placing the Body palace. The source for Tian Shou is still to be verified.

The Body palace is not a thirteenth palace; it borrows one of the twelve. The ring lists the twelve names from Life along the branches, and the six colored ones are where the Body palace can sit: Life, Wellbeing, Career, Travel, Wealth and Partner. The start of Tian Shou can only be one of those six. How the two starts differ is covered in Life and Body palaces compared.

The method has the same shape as Tian Cai, with the start changed from Life to Body. Work through the chart of 18 September 2003, Tiger hour:

How the hour fixes the Body palace

The Body palace lies "2 × hour number" steps after Life, with the Rat hour as 0 and the result taken modulo 12. Doubling has a direct consequence: the step count is always even, so the Body palace can only fall 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 steps after Life. That gives exactly six names:

This table looks at neither the birth month nor the year. When the birth month moves the Life palace, the Body palace moves with it and the gap between them stays the same, so names counted out from Life depend on the hour alone.

How many steps apart the two stars are: the hour decides

Tian Cai is counted from Life and Tian Shou from Body, each by the year-branch number. Under one year branch, the extra steps Tian Shou takes beyond Tian Cai equal the extra steps the Body palace takes beyond Life, which is 2 × the hour number. Four charts bear it out:

For births in the Rat and Horse hours the two stars coincide, in the same palace on the same branch. For any other hour the gap is one of 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 steps, always even.

Where Tian Shou lands, given the Body palace and the year

The palace name can also be looked up directly: take the name of the Body palace, add the year-branch number, and count on in the order of the names. The table uses four year branches, Rat, Rabbit, Horse and Rooster; the others follow by adding steps:

The Rat-year column is the simplest: number 0, so Tian Shou sits in the Body palace. For other branches add steps; with the Body palace in Career and a Goat year, Career is number 4, adding 7 gives 11, which is Siblings, in agreement with the 2003 chart above.

1. 1

   Fix the Body palace first

   The birth hour gives how many steps after Life the Body palace lies; then read off its name.

2. 2

   Then the year number

   Take the year branch only once the birth date is past the lunar new year, and look up its number on the Rat-to-Pig list.

3. 3

   Count on from Body last

   Add the year-branch number to the Body palace, find the landing point on the chart and read its name.

Another star whose landing point follows from the hour is Feng Gao; each hour later moves its branch one step forward too.