Empty Palaces, borrowed stars and the Origin Palace

Why there are Empty Palaces

The fourteen main stars often share a cell in pairs, like Wu Qu with Tian Xiang, or Tian Ji with Tian Liang. With fourteen stars and twelve rooms, the more pairs there are, the more rooms are left empty.

The layout of the main stars is set by where Zi Wei sits, giving twelve chart layouts in all, and for each you can work out how many cells are empty:

• Zi Wei and Tian Fu together in Yin or Shen: no empty cells. Volume two of the *Quan Shu* notes that "only in Yin and Shen do Zi Wei and Tian Fu share a palace". These two layouts have just two pairs, Zi Wei with Tian Fu and Lian Zhen with Tian Xiang, so the fourteen stars fill all twelve cells exactly.
• Zi Wei and Qi Sha together in Si or Hai: four empty cells.
• The other eight layouts: two empty cells each.

So most charts have Empty Palaces. They aren't rare at all.

How the borrowing works

An Empty Palace has no main star to set its tone, so it borrows the main stars of its opposite palace, which is called borrowed stars. The practice goes back to the *Quan Shu*; volume two says, when discussing the Children Palace:

If this palace has no stars, look only at what stars are in the opposite palace.

That is, if the cell has no main star, read the stars across the way. The borrowed stars keep their personality but lose some strength; practitioners often say it's like looking through a pane of glass.

The *Quan Shu* adds one more layer for an empty Life Palace. The "Tan Xing Yao Lun" in volume three says that "if the Life Palace has no main star but helpful stars shine in from the Wealth and Career Palaces, wealth and rank are complete". Without a main star in the Life Palace, look at Wealth and Career; with good stars shining in from there, it can be just as strong. So an Empty Palace doesn't only borrow from across the way; read the whole San Fang Si Zheng.

Two more points when reading an Empty Palace:

• The auxiliary stars stand out more: with the owner away, the auxiliary and minor stars living there are more noticeable. With Wen Chang and Wen Qu in an Empty Palace, the cell has a scholarly air; with Qing Yang and Tuo Luo, there's more push and pull.
• It's more malleable: an Empty Palace is more influenced by surroundings and luck periods. People with an empty Life Palace often come across as adaptable and good at fitting in.

Empty doesn't mean unimportant

An empty Spouse Palace is often misread as a cool love life or little luck in love. In fact it just means no star sets your tone in advance, so how you are in love shifts more with the person and the setting: with a partner who speaks bluntly, you may become blunt too; with someone slow to warm up, you slow down as well. When you read an Empty Palace, treat the borrowed stars as "how you often are", not the only way you can be.

Palace stems and the Origin Palace

As Chapter 0 explained, besides its branch, every cell on the chart has its own palace stem, set from Yin onward using the "Qi Wu Xing Yin Li". There are ten stems and twelve cells, so the stems of the Zi and Chou cells repeat those of Yin and Mao.

The cell whose palace stem matches your birth-year stem is the Origin Palace. In most years only one cell matches; in Xin and Ren years two do, because in a Xin year both Mao and Chou carry Xin, and in a Ren year both Yin and Zi carry Ren. This school's rule is to skip Zi and Chou, so every chart has exactly one Origin Palace, and it never falls in Zi or Chou.

The Origin Palace isn't in the *Quan Shu*; it was developed later by schools that emphasize the transformations of palace stems. Practitioners of this school tend to read it as the intention you brought into this life: you care especially about that room's matters and are especially willing to put effort into them. In Career, a strong sense of vocation; in Spouse, love as a central life lesson; in Fortune, a lifelong search for inner calm.

Just treat it as a question: does this really matter especially to me?