Children Palace in Zi Wei Dou Shu: How to Read It

Counting from the Life Palace, the Children Palace is the fourth. It covers children and the younger generation: your children's leanings, your style as a parent and how close or distant the relationship feels. People without children read it too, for how they teach, mentor new colleagues, care for pets or even nurture a project or a brand.

It describes the relationship between you and your children, not their fate. A child has a chart of their own; yours only says what you tend to feel and care about most when you are together.

The Property Palace sits opposite, forming the children and property axis. Property is the home, Children the next generation in it; read together they show how the household shapes the children and how children change the household. A calm Property Palace with a lively Children Palace often means the child is the family's ray of sunshine; a restless Property Palace can mean moves and school changes.

The trine palaces are Friends and Parents. Friends is your social world and Parents the older generation, and with the Property Palace opposite they make up the three sides and four squares. It explains something familiar: grandparents' and friends' opinions really do shape how you bring up your children.

With no major star here, borrow the stars of the Property Palace opposite. They work more weakly, and minor stars or transformations inside, such as Wen Chang, Tuo Luo, Hua Lu or Hua Ji, weigh more. An empty Children Palace does not mean no children or a weak bond; the relationship simply takes a flexible shape that changes with the child's age and the family's circumstances.

The borrowed pair depends on the branch. Empty in Zi or Wu, the opposite always holds Tian Tong with Tai Yin: a tender, emotional bond. Empty in Chou or Wei you borrow Tian Tong and Ju Men, Tai Yang and Tai Yin, or Wu Qu and Tan Lang; in Mao or You, Tai Yang and Tian Liang, Zi Wei and Tan Lang, or Tian Ji and Ju Men. Borrowing Zi Wei with Tan Lang, for example, suggests an opinionated, gifted child who needs clear house rules.

Zuo Fu and You Bi make children helpful and give you support when you lead a team or a class; Wen Chang and Wen Qu bring clever, artistic children; Tian Kui and Tian Yue mean your children find mentors, or that you are one for your students. With Lu Cun here, Qing Yang always sits in your Spouse Palace and Tuo Luo in your Wealth Palace; tradition speaks of few but fine children and careful parenting. Tian Ma suggests children who study or work far from home early.

Tuo Luo in the Children Palace is a common question. It brings delay and tangled feelings, so worries between parent and child are hard to voice, and tradition adds a saying about children arriving later. Qing Yang brings head-on clashes, Huo Xing and Ling Xing quick tempers, and Di Kong and Di Jie unusual ideas or heavy spending on the children. These show where to put care, not good or bad fortune.

Old texts do count children from the stars here: bright stars with helpers mean many, malefics or Hua Ji mean few or late. Those rules come from an age with very different medicine and families. Treat them as cultural tradition; they cannot predict pregnancy, the number of children or a child's sex.

Whether and when to have children depends on health, medical care, your partner and your own choices. What the Children Palace offers is a look at your hopes and habits as a parent. For any question about fertility or family planning, please see a gynaecologist or fertility specialist.

Yin men and yang women move counterclockwise, so their fourth decade enters the Children Palace, roughly between ages 32 and 45 depending on the bureau. Yang men and yin women move clockwise and reach it only as the tenth decade, after about 92. In a Children Palace decade, children, students, creative work or a partnership tend to take centre stage.

For a single year, count four palaces counterclockwise from the yearly Life Palace. Hua Lu or Tian Xi there is traditionally a year of family happiness and good bonds with the young; Hua Ji usually means a year of worrying about the children, and a good time for more presence and conversation.