Zi Wei's twelve palaces12 termsZi Wei Dou Shu 紫微斗數

The twelve palaces aren't twelve separate boxes; they're a coordinate system laid out from 命宮 as the origin. Its position is fixed by birth month and hour, and the other eleven follow in a set order running counter to the branches — so everything on the chart means what it means relative to this one.

That says what 命宮 is actually about: not your fortune but the default settings of the machine — how you react first, how you make sense of things. It's a viewpoint, not an outcome.

The tradition reads it together with the palace opposite, 遷移, because how someone sees themselves and how they're seen from outside are frequently not the same thing and both are true. A 命宮 with no main star isn't a misfortune either; it means the defaults are borrowed from opposite, and such a person often knows who they are more clearly out in the world than at home.

兄弟宮 sits immediately after 命宮, and the order itself says something: the closest people aren't parents or partner but the ones standing on your level. The tradition has it cover siblings, peers, colleagues and business partners, because structurally those are one category — no rank, only alongside.

So what it actually reports is how you handle equality: whether you can share, whether you can compete without falling out, whether you can move something with nobody outranking anybody. That's a lifelong difficulty for many people, because hierarchies come with rules and parallel relationships don't.

It's also the palace read for partnerships, for a practical reason: a partnership is peers by definition, and the trouble in peer relationships was never ability. It's division.

夫妻宮 sits three along from 命宮, and the tradition reads it with the palace opposite, 官祿. That pairing is famous in 紫微: intimacy and career sit directly across from each other, so weight moving on one side pulls at the other. That isn't a moral claim, it's the structure.

So what it reports is who you are in front of whoever is closest: which side you show, what you need, what you're afraid of. It frequently differs from 命宮, and the difference is itself information — plenty of people are one person outside and another inside a relationship.

Reading it as 'what your spouse will be like' is the common simplification. The defensible reading is that it describes the pattern of relationship you keep walking into — and a pattern, once recognised, doesn't have to repeat.

子女宮 covers more than its name: children, students, work, subordinates — anything that came out of you and then goes on existing independently of you. That definition is more precise than 'children', and it keeps the palace readable for people who don't have any.

Its direction differs from the palaces before it: 兄弟 is alongside, 夫妻 is opposite, 子女 is downward and outward — what you send out stops being under your control. So this palace is frequently about whether you can let go.

The tradition also reads romance and physical vitality here, which isn't an unrelated extra: in this system the force that produces things and the force that attracts people are one force.

財帛宮 is one of 命宮's trine (命, 財帛, 官祿 form the triangle), and that placement matters: in this system money isn't a separate subject but a facet of how you operate. The three are read together because how someone earns is bound up with who they are and what they do.

So this palace describes flow rather than stock: how it arrives (a salary or an opportunity), how it leaves (kept or not), and your default towards risk. Stock belongs to 田宅, which is a different question.

Which explains the familiar pattern of a strong 財帛 with a weak 田宅 — earning well and keeping little. That isn't a contradiction; it's two palaces reporting two different things.

疾厄宮's placement is worth noticing: it comes after 子女 and 財帛, in the lower half of the chart, which the tradition treats as 身 rather than 用 — the body that carries all of this rather than what it's used for.

What it reads isn't a diagnosis but where wear lands: under the same pressure one person loses sleep first, another's stomach goes first, another's mood goes first. This palace describes your particular first. That reading is useful, honest, and doesn't step over into medicine.

The tradition also ties it to emotion, which isn't superstition: sustained pressure leaks out at whatever is weakest, and the weakest place differs by person. What's worth reading here is the pattern, not the fear.

遷移宮 sits directly opposite 命宮, and that fact is its entire meaning. It faces 命宮 across the whole square, and the tradition never reads one without the other — because how a person sees themselves and how they're received once they walk out are frequently not the same thing.

So this isn't a palace about travel, it's your outward version: who you become in unfamiliar rooms and what people out there actually receive. Some charts have a brighter 遷移 than 命宮, and those people are more themselves outside than at home. The reverse pattern tires on contact.

When 命宮 has no main star, the stars it borrows are this palace's. That rule says a great deal on its own: when your defaults aren't pronounced, what defines you is how you meet the world.

交友宮 — 奴僕宮 in the older name — sits opposite 兄弟宮, and the pairing is telling: 兄弟 is the few, close, bound by feeling; 交友 is the many, loose, gathered by interest or circumstance. One is depth, the other is breadth.

So what it reports is your relationship with people in numbers: where a group puts you without being asked, what kind of person comes towards you, how much of your energy goes into other people. That's unusually practical now, since for most careers this palace bears on the outcome more than 命宮 does.

The old name is of its period; read today, the subject is a moving crowd — subordinates, clients, whoever you're surrounded by. A weak 交友 doesn't mean no friends. It usually means people come and go faster.

官祿宮 forms the trine with 命宮 and 財帛宮 — meaning that in this system who you are, how you earn and how you work are three corners of one triangle and don't come apart. A strong 官祿 with a weak 命宮 usually says you perform inside the right structure, which is useful information.

Its opposite is 夫妻宮, the most-quoted pairing in 紫微: career and intimacy face each other, and weight added to one pulls at the other. That isn't fate; it's the conservation of time and attention.

The practical way to read it is to ask what structure lets you run: a large organisation or a small team, steady or project-based, managed or not, with or without a stage. That's a far more precise question than which industry suits you.

田宅宮 and 財帛宮 divide the work cleanly: 財帛 is flow, 田宅 is stock. How money arrives belongs to one; how much is left and where it sits belongs to the other. That explains the familiar combinations — earning well and keeping little, or an ordinary income accumulating steadily.

Its scope is wider than the word: property and savings, and also your home, your workshop, the place you can return to. The tradition puts the idea of the storehouse here, and a storehouse means somewhere for what comes in to go.

It's also read for household environment and quality of living, which isn't a digression: whether someone has a place they can relax in affects every other palace over a long enough run.

福德宮 is the palace most often skipped and the one that best explains why somebody is unhappy. Its opposite is 財帛, and that pairing is worth sitting with: material flow and inner state face each other, and neither fills the other's hole.

What it reads is inner capacity: given the same circumstances, one person gets through and another doesn't; given the same success, one tastes it and the other feels hollow. This palace is that difference. It also covers interests, pleasures, and the quality of your time alone.

The tradition places ancestral blessing here; the modern reading doesn't need past lives to work. 福德 describes the machine's conversion rate — how much usable satisfaction you get out of the same input. That decides quality of life more than income does.

父母宮 is last of the twelve, which makes it the one immediately before 命宮 — go round the ring and you arrive back at yourself through it. The placement says plenty: where you came from sits one square ahead of you.

Its scope is every relationship above you: parents, teachers, bosses, institutions. The tradition also calls it 相貌宮, the palace of appearance, since looks and inheritance come from the same generation. Structurally those are one category — the layer you didn't choose and that shaped you deeply.

So the useful reading isn't grading your parents, it's recognising a pattern: facing authority, is your default to please, to fight, or to disappear? That reaction formed early and gets replayed on every manager since. Seeing it is the only thing that stops the replay.