The Twelve Palaces of Zi Wei Dou Shu: What Each One Covers, and Why You Read Four at a Time

Zi Wei Dou Shu divides life into twelve boxes: one for character, one for love, one for work, one for money, and so on. You go to the box that matches your question. In practice, though, you rarely read just one. Every palace has an opposite palace and two trine palaces, and only the four together tell the whole story.

What each palace covers

The palaces start at the Life Palace and run counter-clockwise around the chart. The “opposite” column is the palace directly across; the two are like two sides of a mirror and pull on each other. Older texts use different names for some palaces, listed under “also called”.

The opposite pairs make sense in themselves: Life faces Travel, “who you are” against “how you appear out there”; Spouse faces Career, and love and work often trade off against each other; Wealth faces Mind, and how you earn cannot be separated from how you feel about spending.

How the palaces are laid out

The outer ring of a chart is a fixed set of twelve boxes, one per earthly branch. The top row, left to right, is Si, Wu, Wei, Shen; the bottom row, left to right, is Yin, Chou, Zi, Hai. To cast a chart you first find which branch holds the Life Palace, from the birth month and hour, then count counter-clockwise for Siblings, Spouse and so on up to Parents. So everyone’s Life Palace sits in a different box, but the order of the twelve palaces never changes. For how the Life Palace is found, see how a Zi Wei chart is cast.

Three sides and four directions: to read one palace, read four

The “three sides” are the palace itself plus its two trine palaces (four boxes forward and four back); the “four directions” add the opposite palace. For the Life Palace, that is the Life, Wealth, Career and Travel palaces. The diagram uses our example chart (born 10 July 1990 at noon), whose Life Palace is in Chou:

This chart has Tai Yang and Tai Yin together in the Life Palace. In Chou, Tai Yang is weak and Tai Yin is exalted, so the character leans inward and sensitive. If you read the Life Palace alone, the story ends there. Read the whole group and you find the Wealth and Travel palaces empty and Tian Liang fallen in the Career Palace: his stage out in the world and his way of earning both rely on borrowed strength, and the star of his career palace is not in its best position either. The same star tells a very different story in a different set of four palaces, and learning to see that is the most basic skill of Zi Wei reading.

The same goes for every palace. For love, read the Spouse Palace with its group (Career, Travel, Mind); for money, the Wealth Palace with Career, Life and Mind. In our chart tool, tapping any palace highlights its three sides and four directions for you.

The Body Palace is not a thirteenth palace

One box on the chart is also marked “Body”. The Body Palace does not take a box of its own; it sits on top of one of the twelve palaces, and only ever on the Life, Spouse, Wealth, Travel, Career or Mind palace. It shows where your centre of gravity moves in midlife; see Life Palace and Body Palace.

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