The Origin Palace: where this life begins
Your birth-year stem always finds a palace on your chart with the same stem. The Flying Star school calls it the Origin Palace (Lai Yin Gong, literally “the palace of the coming cause”): the root of this life, the theme you keep circling back to. Its earthly branch depends only on your birth-year stem, but which of the twelve palaces it turns out to be depends on where your Life Palace is.
The ten-stem Origin Palace table
| Birth-year stem | Jia | Yi | Bing | Ding | Wu | Ji | Geng | Xin | Ren | Gui |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origin Palace branch | Xu | You | Shen | Wei | Wu | Si | Chen | Mao | Yin | Hai |
Under the Five Tigers rule each of the ten stems appears exactly once from the Yin palace to the Hai palace, so every year stem has exactly one match in that range. For Xin years (Mao) and Ren years (Yin) the stem appears again in Chou or Zi; the usual rule is that Zi and Chou are never the Origin Palace, so Xin takes Mao and Ren takes Yin.
The birth year changes at Lunar New Year. Lineages differ in how much weight they give the Origin Palace, and some do not use it.
Each palace as the Origin Palace
| Origin Palace in | Common reading |
|---|---|
| Life Palace | You are your own starting point: self-made, led by what you want |
| Siblings Palace | Siblings, peers and business partners shape your path; household cash flow matters to you |
| Spouse Palace | Love and partnership are a main thread; many decisions follow the relationship |
| Children Palace | The younger generation, students, joint ventures and outside activities often set things in motion |
| Wealth Palace | Earning is the main theme; how you make money steers your direction |
| Health Palace | Traditionally about constitution; we read it only as “you tend to put the effort in yourself” and make no health reading |
| Travel Palace | The outside world, moving away and what happens on the road shape your life |
| Friends Palace | Friends, colleagues and networks are where things begin; you get things done through people |
| Career Palace | Work is the axis of life; what you do decides where you go |
| Property Palace | Home, family and where you live are your roots |
| Mind Palace | Your inner life, interests and state of mind lead your choices |
| Parents Palace | Elders, bosses, paperwork and study set your starting point |
Treat it as a hint about the theme of a life, not a limit on it. Also look at which stars sit in the Origin Palace and where its stem flies: the lines leaving the Origin Palace are often read as how that theme unfolds.
The example chart
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 birth year is Wu-Chen, stem Wu, so the table puts the Origin Palace in Wu; on this chart that is the Friends Palace (Wu-Wu), holding Qi Sha and You Bi. It reads as friends, colleagues and networks being where things begin. The Friends stem Wu sends Lu to the Parents Palace and Ji to the Mind Palace, which tells you where the chances and the worries that come through people end up.
What 16,802 charts show: every palace is equally likely
How we counted: our engine cast one Zi Wei chart for every day from 1960 to 2005, with the birth hour drawn by a fixed-seed random sample and sexes alternating, 16,802 charts in all. Palace stems, flights and self-transformations come from this site's engine, which we checked chart by chart against the open-source iztro library.
Which palace becomes the Origin Palace depends on the birth-year stem and the position of the Life Palace, which are roughly independent, so each palace gets about one twelfth. Claims that an Origin Palace in the Life Palace means a luckier life have no particular basis.
The Origin Palace is the Life Palace.
They coincide in only about 8.3% of charts. The Origin Palace follows the birth-year stem; the Life Palace follows the birth month and hour.
An Origin Palace in the Health Palace means a sickly life.
We make no health readings. We read it only as a habit of putting the effort in yourself.
A straight word: flying transformations are a way of reasoning, not a verdict
The Flying Star school reads a chart as a web of cause and effect between palaces. That makes it good at breaking a question into where it starts, how it unfolds and where it lands. But there are many lineages, their terms and readings differ, and two teachers can tell two different stories from the same Ji line. We only describe the skeleton the lineages share, write readings as tendencies, never make doom calls, and never read health or lifespan. A chart is a map; which road you take is still up to you. Everything on this site is for reference and entertainment.
Find your Origin Palace
The interactive chart frames the Origin Palace with a dotted line; tap it to see its four lines.
Origin Palace: FAQ
How do I find my Origin Palace?
Take the stem of your birth year (the year changes at Lunar New Year): Jia is in Xu, Yi in You, Bing in Shen, Ding in Wei, Wu in Wu, Ji in Si, Geng in Chen, Xin in Mao, Ren in Yin, Gui in Hai. Then see which palace that branch is on your chart.
Why are the Zi and Chou palaces never the Origin Palace?
Their stems repeat those of Yin and Mao, and the usual rule takes only the match between Yin and Hai. Only Xin years (Mao and Chou) and Ren years (Yin and Zi) meet a duplicate.
Which Origin Palace is best?
None. Each palace comes up about 8.3% of the time. It tells you which area of life carries the main theme; the stars and flights there tell you more.