The Life palace: the start of the twelve palaces

The twelve palace names count from Life

Numbering starts at the Life palace. Siblings, Partner, Children and the other eleven palaces are named by counting one box at a time from it.

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Sketch: palace names run backward along the branches, but here the ring is drawn clockwise for readability; the gaps (opposite is six places, trine is four) do not depend on direction.

In the picture Life sits at the top and the other names follow around the circle. The Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu (紫微斗数全书) writes the word "reverse" straight into the title of its section on setting out the palaces and tells readers, for male and female charts alike, to go backward and not to count forward. The names therefore run against the order of the branches. If Life is on the Ox, Siblings is on the Rat and Partner on the Pig. Which branch Life itself lands on comes separately from the birth month and hour; see the Life and Body palaces.

The three colors in the picture are three kinds of neighbor. The palace straight across, Travel, is the opposite palace. Wealth and Career, which form a triangle with Life, are the trine (三合). The four boxes together are called the three sides and four directions (三方四正; see the four palaces read together). Wherever Life lands, those four names are always Life, Travel, Wealth and Career.

The book's reading order starts at Life

The opening of "Tan Xing Yao Lun" (談星要論, a section on reading a chart) in juan 3 of the Quan Shu gives a sequence, the closest thing in the book to a reading procedure:

First look at the Life palace: its fortune, its brightness, the transformations, the generating and restraining. Then look at the Body Ruler. Third, look at the stars on the three sides of Travel, Wealth and Career, for punishment, clash and breaking.

The fourth step is the Wellbeing palace, and the book spells out that it is read "as the palace opposite Wealth", six places away in the order. The text then names the six spots of Body, Life, Travel, Wealth, Career and Wellbeing together "the eight seats", adds separate remarks for Parents, Partner and the like, and says of Property and Health only that they are "recorded further on", without expanding on them here.

This sequence is about what to collect first: copy out Life, then the three sides, then Wellbeing. Whatever stars turn up still have to be explained against the whole chart; the order itself is not a scoring table.

After the palace, two stars: Life Ruler and Body Ruler

The Life palace is a position, while the Life Ruler (命主) is a star looked up from the branch of that position. Keep the two apart.

The section "An Ming Zhu" (安命主) in juan 2 gives a seven-row table. The branch the Life palace sits on picks the star:

Only the branch of the Life palace is needed. Life on the Goat falls in the "Snake · Goat" column, so the Life Ruler is Wu Qu; Life on the Dragon gives Lian Zhen. The Body Ruler (身主) ignores the Life palace and uses the branch of the birth year instead: Rat and Horse years give Huo Xing (the book writes "Huo Ling Xing"), Ox and Goat give Tian Xiang, Tiger and Monkey give Tian Liang, Rabbit and Rooster give Tian Tong, Dragon and Dog give Wen Chang, and Snake and Pig give Tian Ji.

The year Tai Sui reaches the Life palace

Every year has a branch, and that branch names the year's Tai Sui (太岁). When the year branch equals the branch of the Life palace, Tai Sui has arrived at Life.

The first entry under "Lun Liu Nian Tai Sui Ji Xiong Xing Sha" (論流年太歲吉凶星殺) in juan 3 reads:

To judge Tai Sui, look at which stars face it on the three sides and whether they are favorable, then settle the outcome. When Tai Sui travels through the Life palace the matter presses all the harder. For example, with Life on the Rat, Tai Sui arrives on the Rat.

The sentence has two layers. To judge a year, first read the palace where Tai Sui lands together with its three sides. When that palace is Life, the book says the matter presses harder, which we read as a call to go through the facing stars more closely. The example that follows is Life on the Rat, Tai Sui on the Rat.

The arithmetic is short. 1984 was a Jia Zi year, and the Rat comes round every twelve years after that. For a chart with Life on the Rat, Tai Sui reaches Life in 2020 (Geng Zi, 庚子) and 2032 (Ren Zi, 壬子); with Life on the Horse, in 2026 (Bing Wu, 丙午) and 2038 (Wu Wu, 戊午). Where the year changes, at the lunar new year or at the Start of Spring, depends on the setting; check it before converting a date near the start of a year.

Between two visits the other eleven years carry Tai Sui through the remaining palaces in turn. When reading a year, keep apart the natal Life palace and where that year's Tai Sui sits; only where the two layers coincide do we get the year described above. See natal, decade and annual layers for how the layers stack.

Life palace, Life Ruler, Body Ruler: which layer each one is

To close, here are the words that tend to blur together, set out by what each one is and how it is obtained:

To follow the palace order to the next box, read the Siblings palace; for the full set of twelve, go back to the map of palace topics.