The Twelve Palaces

A Zi Wei Dou Shu chart is a wheel of twelve palaces laid around the twelve Earthly Branches. Each palace governs one department of a life, and the reading is built by seeing which stars fall into which palace. One palace is fixed as the Life palace (Ming), the anchor from which the other eleven are counted, and a second marker, the Body palace (Shen), overlays one of the twelve to show where a life's effort and later development concentrate.

The twelve palaces, counted from the Life palace, are:

• Ming (Life, Self), the core character, destiny and the chart's keynote.
• Xiong Di (Siblings), brothers and sisters, close peers, and one's manner among equals.
• Fu Qi (Spouse, Marriage), the marriage partner and the pattern of intimate union.
• Zi Nu (Children), offspring, students and creative issue.
• Cai Bo (Wealth), income, money handled, and the flow of material fortune.
• Ji E (Health), the body, its weaknesses and the pattern of illness.
• Qian Yi (Travel, Migration), movement, the world outside the home, and opportunity abroad.
• Nu Pu (Friends, Subordinates), friends, colleagues and those one directs or relies on.
• Guan Lu (Career, Office), profession, status and public standing.
• Tian Zhai (Property), home, land, real estate and the family estate.
• Fu De (Fortune, Wellbeing), the inner life, temperament, pleasures and mental ease.
• Fu Mu (Parents), father and mother, elders, and inherited circumstance.

No palace is read alone. Each is weighed against the palace directly opposite it and against the two palaces that trine it, a set the tradition calls the san fang si zheng, the three directions and four correct positions, so that a domain of life is always read as a field of four palaces rather than a single cell.