What is Life Master and Body Master?

The Life Master and Body Master are two "representative stars" on a Zi Wei Dou Shu chart: the Life Master is set by the branch of your Life Palace and stands for the base color of your inborn temperament, while the Body Master is set by the branch of your birth year and stands for the direction you put more effort into over time. They're stars, not palaces, so don't confuse them with the Life Palace or the Body Palace. Once a chart is cast, both usually appear in the information area in the center; you can see them when you draw your free chart.

The short version:

• Formula: Life Master = look up the Life Palace branch; Body Master = look up the birth-year branch. Each gives one star.
• Seven Life Masters: Tan Lang, Ju Men, Lu Cun, Wen Qu, Lian Zhen, Wu Qu and Po Jun, mirrored across the Zi-Wu axis.
• Six Body Masters: Huo Xing, Tian Xiang, Tian Liang, Tian Tong, Wen Chang and Tian Ji; opposing zodiac animals share one.
• Two schools: one school looks up the Life Master by birth year instead, so apps sometimes disagree on it; every school looks up the Body Master by birth year.

The Life Master table (by Life Palace branch)

Volume two of the Quan Shu gives the rule for the Life Master as:

Tan Lang for the Zi palace; Ju Men for the Chou and Hai palaces; Lu Cun for the Yin and Xu palaces; Wen Qu for the Mao and You palaces; Lian Zhen for the Shen and Chen palaces; Wu Qu for the Si and Wei palaces; Po Jun for the Wu palace.

That is, with the Life Palace in Zi, the Life Master is Tan Lang; in Chou or Hai, it's Ju Men. As a table:

The pattern is mirrored across the Zi-Wu axis: Chou matches Hai, Yin matches Xu, and so on. Only Zi and Wu each have a star to themselves.

The Body Master table (by birth-year branch)

Volume two's rule for the Body Master follows straight after, splitting birth years into six groups by branch, each a pair of opposing branches:

For the Zi-Wu group the original text actually reads "Huo Ling," naming Huo Xing and Ling Xing together; Xingge uses Huo Xing, and the table follows Xingge.

Years follow the lunar calendar: if you were born in January or February before Chinese New Year, your zodiac animal is the previous year's. The cycle repeats every twelve years, so 1996 and 2008 are also Rat years with Huo Xing as the Body Master.

Looking them up once

Take a chart born on January 27, 1990 (the first day of the first lunar month, a Geng Wu year) in the Hai hour:

1. Life Master: the Life Palace is in Mao, so the table gives Wen Qu.
2. Body Master: born in a Wu (Horse) year, so the table gives Huo Xing.
3. Find where the stars sit: right after the Life Master table, the Quan Shu adds:

For example, if the Life Palace is set in the Wu palace, look for which palace Po Jun is in; that is the Life Master.

In other words, once you know the Life Master, find where that star actually sits on the chart. On this chart:

The Life Master Wen Qu sits right in the Life Palace alongside Tai Yang and Tian Liang, so the eloquent, literary side shows clearly. The Body Master Huo Xing sits fallen in the Children Palace, which you could read as: the drive you grow into is often spent on the next generation, students or your own creations, just used a little hastily, so leave yourself some cushion.

How to read them

The Life Master is often described as your inborn base color: which star's temperament you were born with. The Body Master is who you grow into: the star in whose direction you'll put your effort later on. For example, with Wen Qu as Life Master and Tian Liang as Body Master, you might read someone born with eloquence and an artistic touch who grows more and more into a person who looks after others and holds to principles.

There are seven Life Masters and six Body Masters with no overlap, thirteen stars in all. The temperament each one carries:

The old writers put the Body Master near the top when reading a chart. Volume three's reading order says:

First, look at the Life Palace: its fortunes, its Miao and Wang, its good and bad transformations, what supports and restrains it. Next, look at the Body Master's fortunes and what supports and restrains it.

In modern readings, though, the Life and Body Masters weigh less than the Life Palace's main stars, so treat them as a supplementary note.

The Life and Body Master stars don't necessarily sit in your Life Palace or Body Palace. They're representatives: read the character of that star, and you can also check which palace it actually sits in on your chart, and its brightness.

Life Master, Body Master, Life Palace stars, Body Palace

Four similar names, one table:

In the example above, the Life Palace stars are Tai Yang and Tian Liang, the Life Master is Wen Qu, the Body Palace is the Spouse Palace and the Body Master is Huo Xing: four different things, which is very common.

The other way of finding the Life Master

There are two schools for the Life Master:

Both use the same lookup table (Zi Tan Lang, Chou and Hai Ju Men, and so on); they just look it up with a different branch. The example above is a Wu-year birth, so by the Zhongzhou method the Life Master would be Po Jun, not Wen Qu. That's usually why a Xingge chart and other software disagree on the Life Master; the Body Master is by birth year in every school and usually matches. Xingge's other differences from the Quan Shu or common practice are all listed on How Xingge casts a chart.

Common misunderstandings

• The Life Master isn't the Life Palace's main star. The Life Palace main star is the main star sitting in your Life Palace; the Life Master is a star looked up from a table, and the two often differ. For main stars, see each star's page, such as Zi Wei or Tian Ji.
• The Body Master isn't the Body Palace. The Body Palace is a palace; the Body Master is a star.
• Neither is good or bad. Lu Cun or Huo Xing can be your representative star; what you read is temperament, not good or bad.
• The Body Master isn't just your zodiac personality. Everyone with the same zodiac animal has the same Body Master, so go on to check where that star sits and how bright it is; that's where individual differences show.

Both stars are also covered in the lesson how your chart is cast; for how the Life Palace itself is set, see the birth chart.