The Twelve Palaces: How the Grid Is Laid Out
A Zi Wei Dou Shu chart divides a life into twelve palaces. They start at the Life Palace and run counter-clockwise, and each one covers a different area of life. When you read a chart, the basic unit is not one palace on its own. It is that palace plus its opposite palace plus the two trine palaces: the set the tradition calls sanfang sizheng.
The names and the order
Starting from the Life Palace, the twelve run counter-clockwise:
Life Palace → Siblings → Spouse → Children → Wealth → Health → Travel → Friends → Career → Property → Fortune → Parents, and then back to the Life Palace.
Some texts use different names for a few of them. The Friends Palace is also called the Servants Palace, and the Career Palace is also called the Business Palace. The names differ; the positions do not.
| Palace | Area of life |
|---|---|
| Life Palace (Ming Gong) | Core temperament and self-positioning |
| Siblings Palace | Peers, brothers and sisters, close equals |
| Spouse Palace | Partnership, marriage, intimacy |
| Children Palace | Children, students, creative output |
| Wealth Palace | How resources come in and go out |
| Health Palace | The body and its stress patterns |
| Travel Palace | The outside world, moving, what you show others |
| Friends Palace | Colleagues, subordinates, networks |
| Career Palace | Work, position, public role |
| Property Palace | Home, assets, the base you build |
| Fortune Palace | Inner life, enjoyment, what restores you |
| Parents Palace | Parents, mentors, authority figures |
The opposite palace: one-to-one, straight across
The twelve palaces sit in six fixed opposite pairs:
| Palace | Opposite |
|---|---|
| Life Palace | Travel Palace |
| Siblings Palace | Friends Palace |
| Spouse Palace | Career Palace |
| Children Palace | Property Palace |
| Wealth Palace | Fortune Palace |
| Health Palace | Parents Palace |
Traditional practice holds that opposite palaces restrain and supplement each other. In practice that means a reading of one palace almost never leaves its opposite out of the sentence.
Sanfang sizheng: the actual reading unit
"Sanfang" means the palace itself plus its two trine palaces, which sit four cells away on each side. "Sizheng" adds the opposite palace. For the Life Palace, the set is:
Life Palace, Wealth Palace, Career Palace, Travel Palace.
This is why traditional practice is against reading a single star in isolation. A star in the Life Palace still has to be checked against what answers it in Wealth, Career and Travel before the structure can be described at all. Concluding from one cell is a methodological error, not a matter of skill.
The Body Palace: where effort lands
There is one more palace beyond the twelve, the Body Palace. It is fixed by the birth hour, and it can only fall in one of six palaces: Life, Spouse, Wealth, Travel, Career, Fortune.
The tradition treats the Life Palace as the innate tendency and the Body Palace as where effort actually lands later. So "Life and Body in the same palace" and "Life and Body in two palaces" are two different structural settings, not two grades of the same thing.
Common misunderstandings
"Twelve palaces means twelve equal shares of luck." The palaces divide life into areas, not luck into portions.
"An empty palace means something is missing." A palace with no major star is read by borrowing from its opposite palace and checking the trine. It does not mean absence.
"Reading the Life Palace is enough." Sanfang sizheng is the basic unit. One palace cannot carry a conclusion.
What this looks like on a real chart
Take a chart with Wu Qu (Warrior) and Tian Fu (Treasury) in the Life Palace. On its own, that reads as practical and good at holding what is earned. Add the other three: Qi Sha (Marshal) in Travel, Lian Zhen (Judge) in Career, Zi Wei (Emperor) with Tian Xiang (Minister) in Wealth.
Now the description changes. Inside, the person is steady and calculating. Outside, they come across as forceful. At work they want rules and control. With money they care about presentation. None of that was visible in the Life Palace alone.
That is the point of the four-palace unit: it turns a personality label into a description of how someone operates.
Where the method stops
Sanfang sizheng handles four-palace interaction only. It does not handle adjacent-palace pressure, distant support, or clash patterns; those are read with different rules. It also does not produce outcomes. A structure describes tendencies, not whether a particular thing will happen. And it depends on an accurate birth hour: shift the hour by one and the Life Palace moves, which re-sorts every palace in the set.
Questions people ask
Is the order clockwise or counter-clockwise? Counter-clockwise from the Life Palace: Life, Siblings, Spouse, Children, Wealth, Health, Travel, Friends, Career, Property, Fortune, Parents.
What exactly is sanfang sizheng? Sanfang is the palace plus its two trine palaces, four cells away. Sizheng adds the opposite palace. For the Life Palace: Life, Wealth, Career, Travel.
What is the Body Palace? An extra palace fixed by the birth hour. It can only fall in Life, Spouse, Wealth, Travel, Career or Fortune, and the tradition treats it as where effort lands.
This page is an introduction to a traditional method. It is not a prediction, and it is not advice on any decision.