The Wealth palace: fifth, facing Wellbeing

Fifth in the order, Wellbeing across the ring

Count from Life, pass Siblings, Partner and Children, and the fifth box is the Wealth palace (财帛宫); its subject is how resources are obtained and put to use.

Open the full-size diagram

Palace ring: Wealth is no. 5 in the order; opposite and trine palaces are computed from the order, which assigns no branches. The branches depend on where Life falls in each chart.

In the picture Wealth sits on the lower right. The brown line runs to Wellbeing directly across (the opposite palace), and the purple lines run to Life and Career (the trine). For the counting rule behind opposite and trine, see three sides, four directions.

The book draws this line itself. In juan 3, in the "Tan Xing Yao Lun" (谈星要论) passage that lists what to look at, the note on the Wellbeing palace says that Wellbeing is across from Wealth, which treats Wellbeing as the opposite palace of Wealth. How Wellbeing reads is covered in the Wellbeing palace.

Twenty-three entries, four kinds of words

The "Wu Cai Bo" (五财帛) section of juan 2 has twenty-three entries: twenty-two arranged by star name, and Dou Jun last. Each entry is a star name followed by several clauses, and the words that keep returning in those clauses fall into four kinds.

Counted that way, the words for "how much is stored" appear 20 times, while the three kinds that speak of how a household is started, how it rises and falls and what it costs add up to nearly 50. The section is more about where money comes from and where it goes than about amounts.

One word stands apart: "nao zhong" (闹中), literally "amid the bustle". It appears 7 times, in the entries of Tian Ji, Wu Qu, Lian Zhen, Ju Men, Qing Yang and Tuo Luo, as in "makes wealth amid the bustle" or "seeks it amid the bustle". The section does not explain it further.

One star, two lines: Bright and Fallen

Twelve entries in this section use "fallen palace" or "fallen ground". Five of them (Tai Yang, Tai Yin, Tan Lang, Tian Liang and Ling Xing) put Bright and Fallen in the same entry, and the same star reads almost in reverse at the two ends of brightness.

How brightness is looked up for the Sun and Moon, branch by branch, is tabulated in the Parents palace: the Sun is Bright on Rabbit and Fallen on Rat and Pig. So with the Sun in the Wealth palace, a Wealth palace on Rabbit points at the Bright column, and one on Pig points at the Fallen column. The full ladder of grades has its own article.

One entry taken apart: seven clauses under Zi Wei

The Zi Wei entry has the most clauses in the section, so it makes a good one to open up:

Zi Wei: plentiful, with full storehouses. Joined by Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo Xing, Ling Xing, Kong and Jie, it does not flourish. With Po Jun, hard at first and easy later. With Tian Xiang, wealth is stored up. With Tian Fu, plentiful and kept for life. Joined by Zuo Fu and You Bi, an official of wealth. With Qi Sha and auspicious stars, wealth comes in sudden gains.

The first clause is Zi Wei's own line, and the six after it are each "condition, result". The conditions come in only two forms: "with a star" means sharing the palace with another major star, and "joined by" means helpers or malefics meeting it.

Across the twenty-three entries, fourteen contain "with" and sixteen contain "joined by". The string of six names that the book writes as Yang Tuo Huo Ling Kong Jie appears nine times, written as one run. Since an entry is a list of conditions, quoting it means quoting the conditions too; quoting only the result throws half of it away.

The Sun-and-Moon flank: it flanks Children and Health

Juan 3 records a pattern under the Wealth heading named "Ri Yue Jia Cai" (日月夹财), "if auspicious stars join, then rich if not noble", and the note gives an example:

For example, when the Wealth palace stands on Wei with Tian Fu guarding it, the Sun on Wu and the Moon on Shen are flanking the wealth. The rest follow this pattern.

In the book's branch names, Wei is Goat (未), Wu is Horse (午) and Shen is Monkey (申). So the Wealth palace is on the Goat with Tian Fu inside, the Sun is next door on the Horse and the Moon on the other side on the Monkey. Put back into the palace order, which runs backward along the branches, a Wealth palace on the Goat means Life on the Pig (亥), the Horse place is the Health palace and the Monkey place is the Children palace.

Juan 1 has a line for the same pattern, in the "Ding Fu Ju" (定富局) list of rich patterns:

Wu Qu guarding Life, with the Sun and Moon coming to flank it. The Wealth palace is likewise.

Juan 1 speaks of Wu Qu guarding Life, with the Sun and Moon flanking it, and ends with "the Wealth palace is likewise". The middle star differs between the two places, Wu Qu in one and Tian Fu in the other, but the skeleton is the same: one palace in the middle and a Sun or a Moon on each side. How flanking differs from opposing and converging is set out in opposite, flanking and converging palaces.

Three more juan 3 lines that name the Wealth palace

The same passage has three more sentences whose conditions name the Wealth palace:

Each line carries its own premise: which palace, who shares it, and on which two branches Life stands. Drop one condition and the sentence no longer holds, and moving it onto another chart has no basis at all.

Fix the branch, count the neighbors, state the conditions

1. 1

   Fix the Wealth branch first

   From Life count to the fifth place, which is four branches back; Wellbeing stands directly across, six places away.

2. 2

   Then count the two neighbors

   The Children branch is one more than the Wealth branch and the Health branch is one less. These are the two palaces a Sun-and-Moon flank needs.

3. 3

   State the conditions when quoting

   Say which entry of the Wealth section or which juan 3 line, how bright the star is, and which stars share or join it.

Once the positions are worked out, the next box is Health.