The Partner palace: names, questions and Tian Ma

One box, three names

One position has gone by several names in the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu; today it is called the Partner palace, the third box in the order, covering partnership and close relationships.

Open the full-size diagram

Sketch: the highlighted Partner palace faces Career across the center and forms a triangle with Travel and Wellbeing; the ring is drawn clockwise, while on a real chart the names run backward, so Partner's branch comes two places before Life's.

In the picture Partner is the third box in the order, the second one after Life: Siblings and Children flank it, Career faces it across the ring, and Travel and Wellbeing complete its trine. How to place it on one chart and read it with the rest is covered in how the Partner palace connects to the whole chart. Here we look at the names.

"Wife and concubine" carries the marriage customs of its time and is not copied over today. For how the twelve names were renewed, see the map of the twelve palace topics.

Four questions juan 2 puts to this palace

The juan 2 entry, "San Qi Qie" (三妻妾), goes through one star per line, and its vocabulary is tightly bunched. The opening line is a good sample:

Zi Wei: marries late, grows old together, firm in temper. With Tian Fu: grows old together. With Tian Xiang: youthful.

"Marries late" means the match is arranged later, "grows old together" means a lasting harmony, and "youthful" means a spouse who is younger. Sorting the words of the whole entry gives roughly four kinds of question:

The four kinds of word shift with the star, its brightness and the other stars in the palace. The entry is assembled from parts and has no fixed verdict about a person. Today the palace is usually widened into a topic of relationships, how far depends on the method that is named, and that is not the same matter as the "timing and age" the entry asks about.

Tian Ma in the Partner palace: which birth years

Juan 2 has one rule that belongs to the Partner palace and ties it to Tian Ma (天马). Its first half is a pure position condition:

If Life is on Dragon, Dog, Ox or Goat and Tian Ma is in the Partner palace on Tiger, Monkey, Pig or Snake…

With Life on Dragon, Dog, Ox or Goat, the Partner palace is two places back from Life and must fall on Tiger, Monkey, Pig or Snake, so "Life on Dragon, Dog, Ox or Goat" and "Partner on Tiger, Monkey, Pig or Snake" are really one condition. With Life on the Dragon, for example, Partner is on the Tiger. One question remains: is Tian Ma in that box? Tian Ma is placed by the branch of the birth year. Juan 2, "An Tian Ma Xing Jue" (安天马星诀), says: for Tiger, Horse and Dog years the horse is at Monkey; for Monkey, Rat and Dragon years at Tiger; for Snake, Rooster and Ox years at Pig; for Pig, Rabbit and Goat years at Snake.

Working through the four Life branches gives a small table:

Male and female orders: where the palace ranks

"Lun Nan Nü Ming Tong Yi" (论男女命同异, male and female charts compared) in juan 3 gives one reading order for men and another for women, and the same Partner palace sits in different places in them:

In the male order, Parents, Partner and Children are the group looked at last; in the female order the husband palace is the third step, right after Wellbeing. The female passage opens like this:

For a woman, first look at the fortune of Body and Life… next look at the Wellbeing palace… third look at the husband, fourth at the children, wealth and property.

Further on the same passage states a social assumption of its day, that "a woman rises through her husband". Such lines reflect the situation of that era; when quoting them, give the source and the period together, and do not treat them as a conclusion about a reader today.

Three steps: Life branch, Partner, Tian Ma

1. 1

   Write down the Life branch

   First get the branch of Life from the birth month and hour; see the article on the Life palace.

2. 2

   Count two places back

   The Partner palace is the second position after Life, and its branch comes two places before the Life branch.

3. 3

   Look up Tian Ma for the birth year

   Tiger, Horse and Dog years put it on Monkey, Monkey, Rat and Dragon years on Tiger, Snake, Rooster and Ox years on Pig, Pig, Rabbit and Goat years on Snake; see whether it meets the Partner branch.

To learn about the star itself, read Tian Ma: position and role of an auxiliary star; the previous box is the Siblings palace and the next is the Children palace.