The Twelve Palaces Are Twelve Areas of Life
The twelve palaces (Shi Er Gong) are the twelve cells of a Ziwei chart, and each one covers an area of your life. The stars in a palace describe your tendencies in that area. The fourteen major stars matter most.
Enter your birth date and hour in the free Ziwei Doushu calculator and find the cell labelled 命宮. That is the Life Palace, where the twelve palaces start. The chart labels are in Chinese.
These are not the twelve houses of Western astrology. Ziwei Doushu is a separate system, and the two do not line up.
See your Ziwei Doushu chart
Generate your natal chart to discover which stars shape your destiny and how they interact across your twelve palaces.
What Each of the 12 Palaces Means
Each palace stands for one area of life, from you yourself to money, work and parents. Two palaces also go by another name, shown in brackets.
| Palace | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Life Palace | Temperament, working style and life direction |
| Siblings Palace | Siblings, mother, close friends and partners |
| Spouse Palace | How you love, the partner you choose and married life |
| Children Palace | Your bond with children, fertility, creative output, and juniors |
| Wealth Palace | How you earn, spend and think about money |
| Health Palace | Constitution, the body systems that carry strain first, and the mind-body link |
| Travel Palace | Life away from home, public image, opportunity and helpful people |
| Friends Palace (also Servants) | Friends, colleagues, staff and network |
| Career Palace (also Official) | How you work, the fields that suit you and the shape of your career |
| Property Palace | Property, home life, family assets and savings |
| Fortune Palace | Inner life, pastimes, how you enjoy yourself and contentment |
| Parents Palace | Parents, elders and bosses, and luck with study and paperwork |
Click a palace to see how each of the fourteen major stars reads there.
The Order: Counterclockwise from the Life Palace
Find the Life Palace first, then count counterclockwise. Where the Life Palace lands depends on your lunar birth month and your birth hour. The order after it never changes: Life, Siblings, Spouse, Children, Wealth, Health, Travel, Friends, Career, Property, Fortune, Parents.
The twelve cells stay put on the chart. What moves is the palace names. So a different birth hour shifts the whole ring of names by one cell. If you were born near the edge of a two-hour block, correct it first with true solar time.
Four Groups to Help You Remember
The twelve palaces fall into four themes, which makes them easier to remember.
- Self and inner lifethe Life, Health and Fortune palaces: your character, body and state of mind.
- Family and peoplethe Siblings, Spouse, Children, Friends and Parents palaces: you and the people around you.
- Money and workthe Wealth, Career and Property palaces: income, work and family assets.
- The outside worldthe Travel Palace: chances and image away from home.
These groups are only a memory aid, not a classical scheme. In a real reading, you still look at a palace together with the palaces linked to it.
Opposite Palaces: Six Pairs Read Together
A palace's opposite is the one directly across the chart, and the two pull on each other. The twelve palaces make exactly six such pairs.
| Pair | What they weigh |
|---|---|
| Life / Travel | You, and how you come across out in the world |
| Siblings / Friends | Close siblings and peers, and wider friends and colleagues |
| Spouse / Career | Your partner and your work, which often sway each other |
| Children / Property | The next generation, and home and family assets |
| Wealth / Fortune | Earning and spending, and how content you feel |
| Health / Parents | Your own constitution, and support from parents and elders |
When you read a palace, also add the two palaces that form a triangle with it. Reading all four as a group is called the Three Directions and Four Squares (San Fang Si Zheng).
Empty Palaces: When a Palace Has No Major Star
An empty palace has none of the fourteen major stars, so you read it through the major stars of its opposite palace. Say your Spouse Palace is empty. You then read your love life through the stars in your Career Palace.
Any other stars or transformations in the empty palace still count. An empty palace does not mean that area of life is blank or bad. It just borrows the stars across the chart to tell its story.
Transformations, Decades, Years and the Palaces
Transformations, decades and years only mean something once they land in a palace. The Four Transformations are four tags a star can carry: Hua Lu (wealth), Hua Quan (power), Hua Ke (fame) and Hua Ji (obstacle). Wherever your birth-year tags land, that area tends to run smoother or get stuck.
A Decade Cycle (Da Xian) is a ten-year stretch of luck. Each new decade makes a different palace the Life Palace, and the twelve palaces are read again from there. The annual fortune works the same way, with a new Life Palace each year.
