What is Twelve Life Stages?

The Twelve Life Stages on a Zi Wei Dou Shu chart are twelve phase names, Chang Sheng, Mu Yu, Guan Dai, Lin Guan, Di Wang, Shuai, Bing, Si, Mu, Jue, Tai and Yang, that borrow the cycle of a living thing from birth through growth and aging to new conception to describe which phase the energy of a palace is in. The twelve stages fill the twelve palaces exactly, so every chart has a Di Wang and every chart has Bing, Si and Jue; these names describe pace and strength, and have nothing to do with health or lifespan.

The short version:

• Formula: Twelve Life Stages = start Chang Sheng at the point set by your Five Elements Bureau, then lay the twelve stages one per palace until all twelve are filled.
• Start point: Yin for Fire, Hai for Wood, Si for Metal, and Shen for both Water and Earth.
• Direction: Xingge and common modern practice use yin-yang and sex, with yang men and yin women forward and yin men and yang women backward. The Quan Shu's own text has men forward and women backward; the two differ only for people born in yin years.
• Weight: light. The stages add a sense of rhythm to a palace and never outweigh the main stars and transformations.

The twelve stages at a glance

Think of it as a plant, sprouting, going dormant and growing again:

The classics call Mu Yu a "weak position": something that has only just broken through isn't steady on its feet yet and is easily carried along.

Seeing Si written in a palace doesn't mean you're unluckier than others; it only means your pace in that area is quieter. For example, Si in the Friends Palace may mean you rarely reach out first and your circle changes slowly; Di Wang in the Career Palace means work is where you push hardest. And Di Wang isn't "the more the better": with too much drive, you sometimes don't hear others.

How they're placed

Volume two of the Quan Shu gives the rule:

For a Fire bureau, Chang Sheng starts at Yin. For a Wood bureau, Chang Sheng starts at Hai. For a Water bureau, Chang Sheng starts at Shen. For a Metal bureau, Chang Sheng starts at Si. For an Earth bureau, Chang Sheng starts at Shen.

The starting point is set by your bureau, with Earth starting from Shen just like Water. The starting palace is Chang Sheng, and the stages follow one per palace from there. Placed forward, the twelve stages of each bureau land on these branches:

Placed backward, Chang Sheng stays where it is and the other eleven stages run the other way: for Water 2 backward, Shen is Chang Sheng, Wei is Mu Yu, Wu is Guan Dai, and so on round to You as Yang.

There are two views on direction. The heading of this section in the Quan Shu notes that men count forward and women backward. The common modern method, Xingge's included, follows the same rule as the Decade Luck, by yin-yang and sex. Years with the stems Jia, Bing, Wu, Geng and Ren are yang years; Yi, Ding, Ji, Xin and Gui are yin years:

For people born in yang years both views give the same result; the difference is for people born in yin years. So if another app shows the order reversed, this is usually why. When volume two of the Quan Shu places the twelve Bo Shi spirits, it writes "yang men and yin women turn forward, yin men and yang women flow backward," and common practice applies that same rule to the Life Stages. Xingge's other conventions are on How Xingge casts a chart.

Placing them once

Say someone is born on the 2nd day of the first lunar month of a Jia year, in the Yin hour, with the Life Palace in Zi. In a Jia year the Zi palace is Bing Zi, whose Na Yin is Water in the Stream, so the bureau is Water 2 and Chang Sheng starts at Shen. In the order of the birth chart's palaces, Shen is the Wealth Palace and Zi is the Life Palace.

For a man (a yang man), the stages run forward: Chang Sheng in Wealth, Mu Yu in Children, Guan Dai in Spouse, Lin Guan in Siblings, and the Life Palace lands exactly on Di Wang. For a woman born at the same moment (a yang woman), they run backward: Wealth is still Chang Sheng, but going the other way, Di Wang falls in the Career Palace and the Life Palace lands on Mu.

Same birth moment: the man's Life Palace at Di Wang is a rhythm of pushing forward on his own; the woman's Life Palace at Mu with Career at Di Wang is a rhythm of holding back day to day and finding her footing once work begins. Neither is better; the strength simply goes to different places.

How the classics use it

The Tai Wei Fu says:

Born in a weak position, the flowering is empty. Meeting growth where all was severed, the flowers do not fade.

Volume three gives an example for each line. Born in a weak position: for Water and Earth bureaus, Chang Sheng is in Shen, so placed forward, the next palace, You, is Mu Yu, the weak position; a Life Palace in You that also meets challenging stars like Qing Yang or Tuo Luo blooms fast and fades fast, though with Lu Cun the old writers say it turns favorable. Growth where all was severed: for Water and Earth bureaus, Jue is in Si; a Life Palace in Si is a severed position, but if that palace holds a Metal star, Metal feeds Water and the energy reconnects, and the old writers say flowers grown this way don't fade.

Another line in the Tai Wei Fu says the same:

If it meets a weak position, support brings remarkable results.

In a weak stage, help from good stars makes an especially visible difference. In daily life this is a good lens for low periods: what goes smoothly right from the start doesn't always go far, while what reconnects after seeming to break off is often steadier.

The Life Stages vs. other sets of twelve

The corners of a chart often hold several sets of twelve small spirits. The one most often confused is the Bo Shi set, and Ba Zi has its own twelve stages as well:

Zi Wei Dou Shu lays one set of Life Stages per chart, filling all twelve palaces; Ba Zi's twelve stages match the day stem against each pillar's branch. The names are the same, but the method and the use are not.

Tips for reading

• First see which stage your Life Palace is in; that's the rhythm of your energy.
• Then find where Di Wang and Lin Guan fall; those are usually where you feel most confident.
• The palaces with Bing, Si, Mu and Jue are where your pace is quieter and slower to warm up, not where trouble is coming.
• The Twelve Life Stages are light; they add a sense of rhythm to a palace and never outweigh the main stars and transformations.

The full lesson is the Twelve Life Stages. After you draw your chart, each palace's stage is written in its corner.