The Friends palace: three names, kin on its axes

One seat, three names

The Friends palace is the eighth of the twelve, and the sources you will open give this one seat three different names.

Open the full-size diagram

Around Friends (green): Siblings across (brown), Children and Parents on the trine (purple), all kin palaces; the neighbors Travel and Career stay outside the set.

The Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu (紫微斗数全书) lists this seat in its palace order as "the eighth, servants," the iztro chart software prints "attendants" on its charts, modern articles mostly write "friends," and this site's chart pages say "Friends palace." The seat is identical; the words differ by era, and the meaning shifted with them. A servant is someone who waits on a master, "attendant" is a milder word for the same thing, and "friends" describes dealings between equals.

The picture marks the four directions of this palace: the Siblings palace at no. 2 is directly across, and the Children palace at no. 4 and the Parents palace at no. 12 sit four places away on either side.

No outsider among the four directions

The four directions of the Friends palace are the palace itself plus three others: one opposite and two trine. Lay them out and a curious pattern shows:

The four directions of Friends (the opposite palace and the two trine ones) are Siblings, Children and Parents, which is to say kin, while the two palaces right beside it are Travel and Career, which are about going out and work. This is a fact of position that comes from the palace order, and the book draws no verdict from it. Its use is to keep "other people" from being lumped together: a different kind of person calls for a different palace.

The book's ledger of master and servant

Servants is the eighth entry in the book's palace-by-palace listing. Its 24 paragraphs each name a star and then say whether that star brings people to the palace and whether they pull their weight. Four words recur most:

Together these words make a ledger of master and servant. "Capable" and "lacks effort" ask whether someone pulls their weight; "turns on the master" and "resents the master" ask whether they will leave or hold a grudge. The entries also use "a call, a hundred answers" (4 times) and "runs off" (8 times in two forms). The Quan Shu describes Po Jun (破军) in this system as the star that governs "spouse, offspring and servants," and juan 1 says so outright.

This vocabulary has a social background: it writes the palace as the household's servants. This site's reading does not carry that frame over, taking the palace as friends, colleagues and cooperation. When quoting the book you can keep literal words such as "capable" and "lacks effort," as long as the object is replaced with today's relationships.

Tian Shang lands in this palace

The Friends palace has a very clean placement rule, from the star-placement verse of the same volume:

Six places before Life is Tian Shang; six places after Life, Tian Shi is placed.

In counting, the book treats the Life palace as the first place. Counting backward along the palace order, Life, Parents, Wellbeing, Property, Career and Friends make six, so Tian Shang lands in Friends; counting forward, Life, Siblings, Partner, Children, Wealth and Health make six, so Tian Shi lands in Health. The iztro output for four charts with different birthdays agrees: Tian Shang is always in Friends and Tian Shi always in Health.

So "Tian Shang in the Friends palace" is a fact common to every chart and sets one reader apart from no other. How Tian Shang is read depends on what the book and the school say about this minor star, and is not to be read off the word "harm" in its name. How the neighboring Travel palace sits between Tian Shi and Tian Shang is covered in its own article.

Keeping the "others" apart: siblings, partner, friends

The Siblings, Partner and Friends palaces all concern other people, but each sits in its own place and reads a different relationship:

Siblings and Friends are opposite palaces, directly across from one another, so they are often consulted together: peers by blood and peers by relationship look at each other on the chart. The Partner palace lies to one side of Friends and is not opposite, and the fact that both concern other people is no reason to merge them.

1. 1

   Ask which kind of "other" first

   Siblings, partner, friends and business associates each have their own entry, so do not begin with "do people like me."

2. 2

   Then look at the four directions

   The opposite palace of Friends is Siblings and the trine palaces are Children and Parents; record them on the same page as the home palace.

3. 3

   Name the term when quoting

   "Servants," "capable" and "turns on the master" are the book's own words; present-day relationships need the matching modern wording.

After this palace, read its neighbors Travel and Career and the opposite palace Siblings. How four directions are taken is in the three sides and four directions; the division of labor among all twelve is in the twelve-palace overview.