Palace stems: how each palace flies Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji

There is only one set of birth-year transformations, fixed by the stem of your birth year. Palace stem transformations come in twelve sets, one per palace. Nearly every line of Flying Star reasoning starts with “this palace’s stem transforms that star, which sits over there.” This page walks from finding the stems to reading a single line.

Step 1: the Five Tigers rule

Palace stems use the same rule as the month stem in BaZi, called the Five Tigers: the birth-year stem fixes the stem of the Yin palace, and the other palaces follow in order of the ten stems.

In Zi Wei the birth year changes at Lunar New Year (unlike BaZi, which uses the Start of Spring).

Twelve palaces share only ten stems, so the last two palaces, Zi and Chou, repeat the stems of Yin and Mao. That means every chart has two pairs of palaces whose transformations are identical: Zi with Yin, and Chou with Mao. In the example chart below, the Siblings Palace (Jia-Zi) and the Parents Palace (Jia-Yin) share a stem and fly exactly the same four lines. For those pairs you tell them apart by the meaning of the palace and its stars, not by the flights.

Step 2: the ten-stem transformation table

Versions differ for the Geng and Ren stems. We follow the Complete Book: Geng gives Tai Yang, Wu Qu, Tai Yin, Tian Tong; Ren gives Tian Liang, Zi Wei, Zuo Fu, Wu Qu. If another chart program disagrees with ours, these two stems are the usual reason.

Step 3: reading a flying line

A line has three parts: the palace it leaves, the transformation it carries, and the palace it lands in. The basic reading is that the starting palace puts its attention into the landing palace, and the transformation colors that attention:

Self palaces and other palaces

Many Flying Star readers split the twelve palaces into two groups: self palaces that concern you directly (Life, Wealth, Health, Career, Property, Mind) and other palaces tied to other people (Siblings, Spouse, Children, Travel, Friends, Parents). A self palace flying into an other palace reads as you giving to or caring about others; an other palace flying into a self palace reads as others affecting you. The split and its names vary by lineage; we use it simply as a handy angle.

Example: the four lines from the Career Palace

Example chart: a woman born on 15 June 1988 at 10:00 (a made-up birthday), Wu-Chen year, Si hour, Metal-4 bureau, with the Life Palace in Yi-Chou holding Tai Yang and Tai Yin. The Career Palace is Ding-Si with Tian Liang; its stem Ding transforms:

Career sends its Lu into the Life Palace: work feeds back into the self, so achievement comes naturally. Its Ji goes into the Mind Palace: work worries come home and stay on the mind. With the Ji in the Mind Palace, the opposite Wealth Palace is clashed, so a Flying Star reader would ask next: does the worry about work also shape how money gets spent? That habit of following the question is the subject of Ji Clash & Chains.