What You Are Looking At
Your ZWDS chart is a grid. Twelve boxes arranged in a square. Each box is a palace. Each palace governs a specific domain of your life. The stars inside each palace describe how that domain operates for you specifically.
The palaces do not change. Every person has the same twelve palaces. What changes is which branch each palace sits on, which stars land inside it, and how bright those stars are. Two people born an hour apart can have completely different star configurations across the same twelve palaces. That difference is the reading.
This page explains what each palace governs. Once you understand the rooms, the stars inside them start making sense.
How The Palaces Are Assigned
Your Life Palace (命宫) position is calculated from your birth month and birth hour. Once the Life Palace is placed on one of the twelve branches, all other palaces follow in a fixed counterclockwise sequence.
This means your Career Palace, your Wealth Palace, your Partnership Palace — all of them land on specific branches determined by when you were born. The branch determines the palace's Heavenly Stem. The stem determines which transformations (四化) that palace generates during each decade.
You do not choose where the palaces land. They were assigned at birth. You choose what you do inside each room.
The Twelve Palaces
← How The Palaces Are Assigned
命宫 · Life Palace · Who You Are
The centre of the chart. Everything else radiates from here. The stars in your Life Palace describe your fundamental nature — not who you became through experience, but who you were born as. Your constitutional personality. Your default mode.
A Life Palace with 紫微 (Emperor Star) carries natural authority. A Life Palace with 天机 (Strategist Star) carries analytical intelligence. A Life Palace with 天马 (Heavenly Horse) alone carries pure forward motion with nothing anchoring it to any one place.
The Life Palace is read first. Always. Without it, nothing else in the chart has context.
兄弟宫 · Siblings Palace · Who Stands Beside You
Your peers. Your siblings. Your colleagues at the same level. The people who are not above you or below you but beside you. The quality of your lateral relationships.
Strong stars here: capable peers. A network of equals who support each other. Difficult stars here: competitive peers. Sibling rivalry. Colleagues who take rather than give.
The Siblings Palace also describes business partners who are equal stakeholders. If you are starting a venture with a co-founder, this palace describes that dynamic.
夫妻宫 · Partnership Palace · Who Sits Across From You
The most intimate relationship. Your spouse. Your life partner. The person who sees you without the performance.
This palace describes the quality of your most important intimate relationship. Not who your partner is — that depends on their chart. What the partnership dynamic is. The structural energy of the bond.
The Partnership Palace is where 身宫 (Body Palace) often lands. When 身宫 sits in the Partnership Palace, it means the body's destination — the deeper self's ultimate orientation — points toward intimate connection.
子女宫 · Children Palace · What You Pass Forward
Children. Legacy. Creative output. What outlasts you.
This is not only about biological children. The Children Palace describes everything you create that carries forward. The book. The company. The student you mentored. The product that lives after you stop working on it. Whatever you make that has a life of its own.
财帛宫 · Wealth Palace · How Money Works For You
Your relationship with money. Not how much. How.
Some people have Wealth Palaces that describe steady accumulation. Others describe volatile swings. Others describe wealth through unconventional means. The palace does not predict the number. It describes the mechanism.
The Wealth Palace is part of the 命宫 power triangle (命宫 + 财帛 + 事业). These three palaces form the core identity-money-career axis.
疾厄宫 · Health Palace · Your Body's Story
Physical constitution. Health tendencies. The body as an instrument with specific strengths and vulnerabilities.
The Health Palace does not predict disease. It describes constitutional tendencies. Which systems run hot. Which systems run cold. Where the body stores stress. What kind of exercise, nutrition, and medical attention the constitution responds to.
迁移宫 · Migration Palace · How The World Receives You
Your external environment. Travel. Relocation. How you are perceived and received outside your home territory.
The Migration Palace is the mirror of the Life Palace — directly opposite it in the chart. The Life Palace is who you are. The Migration Palace is who you are when you leave home.
Strong stars here: the world opens for you. Travel brings opportunity. Weak stars here: the external world is resistant. Success is more likely close to home.
交友宫 · Friends Palace · Your Social Network
Your social circle. Subordinates. The people who work for you and the people you spend time with by choice.
This palace describes the quality of your network. Not the size. The quality. The Friends Palace also describes employees and subordinates if you run a team or a company. The quality of people who work for you is structural.
事业宫 · Career Palace · Your Professional Life
Work. Vocation. What you do in the world that has professional weight.
The Career Palace describes the nature of your career, not the specific job. The Career Palace activates during specific decades. When your decade luck rotates into the Career Palace, career becomes the primary theme. Decisions made during this decade have disproportionate impact on the entire arc.
田宅宫 · Home & Foundation Palace · What You Build And Hold
Home. Property. Fixed assets. The foundation.
In classical ZWDS, 田宅 meant land because land was the only fixed asset that existed. In modern reading, it covers all fixed assets: property, business equity, intellectual property, infrastructure. The structural base of everything you own and hold.
If a practitioner tells you 田宅 means "buy property" and you have $500 in the bank, the interpretation failed the floor test. The star is right. The translation needs updating.
福德宫 · Blessings Palace · Your Inner Life
Mental health. Spiritual quality. The inner world.
This is the palace most people ignore and the one that determines quality of life more than any other. A person can have strong Career, strong Wealth, strong Partnership — and if the Blessings Palace is empty or under difficult stars, the inner experience of all that success is hollow.
父母宫 · Parents Palace · Where You Came From
Parents. Family of origin. Inherited patterns.
This palace describes the quality of the parental relationship. Not whether your parents were good or bad. What the structural energy of the family dynamic was.
The Parents Palace also describes what you inherited beyond genes: the family's relationship with education, with authority, with structure. The patterns you carry forward from the people who raised you — whether you repeat them or rewrite them.
How Palaces Talk To Each Other
No palace stands alone. Every palace is part of a network.
Power Triangles (三方四正): Every palace has three partners that form a triangle across the chart, plus the palace directly opposite. These four palaces together tell the complete story of any domain.
The Life Palace triangle: 命宫 + 财帛 + 事业 + 迁移 (opposite). Your identity is read through your money, your career, and how the world receives you. All four together.
A strong star in your Career Palace means nothing if the rest of the triangle is empty. An unsupported career is a palace with power and no infrastructure. The triangle tells the truth.
Opposite Palaces (对宫): The palace directly across the chart creates a tension axis. What happens in one directly affects the other.
命宫 ↔ 迁移: who I am versus how the world sees me. 夫妻 ↔ 事业: marriage versus career. 财帛 ↔ 福德: money versus inner peace. 子女 ↔ 田宅: children versus home. 兄弟 ↔ 疾厄: peers versus health. 交友 ↔ 父母: social network versus family legacy.
When a palace is empty (no main star), the opposite palace shines across and provides its energy. An empty palace is not absent. It is receiving rather than generating.
How Decades Activate Palaces
← How Palaces Talk To Each Other
Your decade luck rotates through the twelve palaces. Every ten years, a different palace becomes the temporary Life Palace. When this happens, all twelve palaces shift accordingly.
If your Career Palace becomes your decade Life Palace, then for ten years your identity is experienced through career. Decisions are professional. Energy is vocational. The world meets you as your work.
If your Home Palace becomes your decade Life Palace, then for ten years your identity is experienced through foundation. Building. Accumulating. The world meets you as what you own and construct.
The natal stars do not move. They stay in their birth positions. But the lens through which they are read shifts every decade. The same stars in the same positions tell different stories depending on which decade palace is active.
This is why the same person can feel like a completely different version of themselves every ten years. They are. The palace has changed. The stars are being read through a different room.
What The Reading Does With All Of This
← How Decades Activate Palaces
When 知己 reads your ZWDS chart, it processes all twelve palaces, all star placements, all brightness ratings, all transformations, all decade activations — simultaneously. The reading names what is most important right now. Not everything. The one thing.