The 12 Palaces of Zi Wei Dou Shu: Order, Groups and Meaning

Every palace is read with its opposite and its two trine palaces; the four together are its three sides and four squares. Counting the palace itself as the first, the fifth and ninth palaces are the trines and the seventh is the opposite. For the Children Palace, the trines are Friends and Parents and the opposite is Property, which together describe children, juniors and family life.

This splits the twelve palaces into four trines: Life, Wealth and Career; Siblings, Health and Property; Spouse, Travel and Fortune; Children, Friends and Parents. The stars in each trine echo each other. For how auspicious stars, malefic stars and transformations add up across the four palaces, see the three sides and four squares guide.

Besides its branch, each palace carries a heavenly stem. The birth-year stem sets the stem of the Yin box by the five-tiger rule, and the rest follow clockwise: Jia and Ji years start the Yin box with Bing; Yi and Geng with Wu (戊); Bing and Xin with Geng; Ding and Ren with Ren; Wu (戊) and Gui with Jia. Ten stems over twelve boxes means Zi repeats the stem of Yin and Chou repeats the stem of Mao. As always, the year stem changes at Lunar New Year.

Palace stems do three jobs. The Life Palace stem and branch give the element bureau through nayin. The palace whose stem matches the year stem, leaving out Zi and Chou, is the Origin Palace. Most important, every stem transforms four stars, which then fly into whichever palaces hold them: the flying transformations. A palace with a Jia stem, for example, sends Hua Lu to Lian Zhen, Hua Quan to Po Jun, Hua Ke to Wu Qu and Hua Ji to Tai Yang; when the star sits in that same palace it is called self-transformation. Tap any palace in our chart to see where its stem flies.

The natal twelve palaces are your base for life; time lays new layers on top. The decade moves one palace every ten years, starting from the Life Palace at the age given by the bureau number, clockwise for yang-year men and yin-year women and counter-clockwise for yin-year men and yang-year women. Wherever the decade sits becomes the decade Life Palace, a full set of decade palaces follows from it, and that palace's stem supplies ten years of decade transformations.

The year layer follows the year's branch. 2026 is a Bing Wu year, so the year Life Palace sits in the Wu box, a fresh set of year palaces follows, and the Bing stem gives the year transformations: Tian Tong Hua Lu, Tian Ji Hua Quan, Wen Chang Hua Ke and Lian Zhen Hua Ji. Stack the three: natal for the foundation, decade for the stage of life, year for now. When the natal, decade and year Wealth palaces all receive Hua Lu at once, money is the clear theme of that year.