Life Master, Body Master and Notes on Chart Setup

This line works as a subheading. Xingge shows the Life Master and Body Master on the chart, in the form 'Life Master: such-and-such star, Body Master: such-and-such star'. Keep this straight: the Life Master is not the main star in the Life Palace but a star assigned by the Life Palace's branch, and it need not be in the Life Palace at all.

These seven stars, in order, are the seven stars of the Northern Dipper: Tan Lang, Ju Men, Lu Cun, Wen Qu, Lian Zhen, Wu Qu, Po Jun. They begin with Tan Lang at Zi and are shared out symmetrically on both sides, ending with Po Jun at Wu, so Zi and Wu each have a star of their own and every other star is shared by two palaces. With the Life Palace in Chou, for example, the Life Master is Ju Men; in Yin, Lu Cun.

The Quan Shu only says how to place the Life Master, not how to use it. Later writers mostly treat the Life Master as the base colour of one's inborn temperament, carrying far less weight than the stars in the Life Palace itself.

The use described here: once you know which star is the Life Master, find the palace that star occupies on the chart and judge the good and bad of that palace. With the Life Palace in Wu and Po Jun as Life Master, for example, find where Po Jun is; if it is in a Miao or Wang position with lucky stars, the Life Master counts as strong.

The third entry of the Quan Shu's Essentials of Reading the Stars is 「次看身主吉凶生剋」 (see the original), the same approach: find the star, then look at its position and what it meets. On Xingge the chart names the Life Master, but you have to find its position among the twelve palaces yourself.

Another subheading. The Body Master is set by the birth-year branch and has nothing to do with the position of the Life Palace, so everyone born in a year with the same branch has the same Body Master. Xingge shows the Body Master on the chart right after the Life Master.

The six Body Masters are Huo Xing, Tian Xiang, Tian Liang, Tian Tong, Wen Chang and Tian Ji. Compared with the chapter Star Elements and the Northern and Southern Dippers, all six belong to the Southern Dipper or to both Dippers, while the seven Life Masters above all belong to the Northern Dipper. So the ancients' arrangement is: the Life Master taken from the seven Northern Dipper stars, by the Life Palace; the Body Master taken from the Southern Dipper, by the birth year; one north, one south.

It is used like the Life Master: find where the Body Master sits on the chart and judge it there. People born in a Zi or Wu year, for instance, have Huo Xing as Body Master, so look at which palace Huo Xing falls in and how bright it is. The Quan Shu treats the Body Master more concretely than the Life Master, and Essentials of Reading the Stars puts it as the second step in reading a chart.

The Golden Lock and Iron Snake Barrier is a 'barrier' for judging whether a small child will be hard to raise. It counts through four layers, year, month, day and hour, alternating direction: year forward, month backward, day forward, hour backward. The Quan Shu gives this method only here and does not use it in any other chapter.

Barriers like this reflect an age when infant and child mortality was extremely high and parents needed some way to guard against it in advance. Xingge does not place this barrier; today it is read mainly to understand the old method.

A worked example (reading 'at the day's palace start the hour', see the text note): born in a Yin year, start the Zi year at Xu and count forward to Yin, which reaches Zi. Start the first month at Zi; born in the first month, it stays at Zi. Start the first day at Zi and count forward; born on the second day, it reaches Chou. Start the Zi hour at Chou; born in the Zi hour, it stays at Chou. Landing in Chou means, by the original, 「病有救」, illness that can be saved.

The original gives only two outcomes, Chou or Wei (can be saved) and Chen or Xu (death); it says nothing about the other eight palaces. This is an old method for judging small children, with very absolute conclusions, and it should not be applied to real children today. The Quan Shu also has Children's Charts, which judges whether a child is hard or easy to raise from the brightness of the stars.

A line that works as a subheading. The 'bamboo-vine three lucks' is an unlucky luck period found only in the Quan Shu. The 'imperial bureau example' mentioned in the next segment has no matching passage in the surviving Quan Shu, so the method can no longer be fully reconstructed.

The part that can be understood: a luck period with Qi Sha and Po Jun in its San Fang Si Zheng is called the bamboo-vine three lucks. Qi Sha and Po Jun both belong to the Sha Po Lang set and are always in trine with each other, so the San Fang of a palace with Qi Sha always contains Po Jun and Tan Lang. Taken literally, then, any luck period where Qi Sha or Po Jun sits or shines in counts, which is actually a very wide net.

The half-sentence 'the same as the earlier imperial bureau example, only going backward' describes a layout whose earlier text is lost, and commentators do not agree on it. This passage is best read only as a reminder to be careful when Qi Sha and Po Jun shine on a luck period.

This line divides the danger of the bamboo-vine lucks into two levels: with malefic stars like Ju Men (transformed qi: darkness) added, judge by the San Fang Si Zheng; with the Decade Luck and Minor Luck both arriving there at once, judge it a death luck. The Quan Shu develops the same 'only bad when several layers pile up' logic more fully in Qi Sha Met Twice, which states plainly 「七殺逢吉曜眾亦轉凶化吉，不可一概論凶」.

When reading death-luck verdicts like this, remember the Quan Shu's consistent conditions: whether the natal chart has a rescuing star, whether the luck period has lucky stars, and whether the Annual Luck is bad at the same time. Without all of these, no verdict can be drawn.

A line that works as a subheading. The Quan Shu divides the twelve palaces into strong and weak ones, listing men's and women's charts separately; the next two segments are the lists.

In a man's chart the strong palaces are Wealth, Career, Fortune, Travel and Property, roughly the work, property and good fortune of a man making his living in the world in old times; Siblings, Children, Friends and Parents are listed as weak. The Life Palace is not on the list because it is the master of the whole chart; the Spouse and Health Palaces are not classified.

A 'strong palace' is one where the good or bad of the stars has more effect. The Quan Shu uses the term this way elsewhere too, as in the Zi Wei question: 「遷移雖是強宮，更要相佐」. This division reflects the role of men in old times; today the weight of each palace still depends on the person's circumstances.

In a woman's chart the strong palaces are husband, offspring, Wealth, Property and Fortune. Husband and children come first, reflecting women's family-centred role in old society; even the Career and Travel Palaces are filed under 'all the rest are weak'.

That is simply how the original ranks them. Today women's careers, travel and friendships are no different from men's, and this passage can be read as a historical source: it explains why the Quan Shu's verdicts on women's charts always look first at supporting the husband and benefiting the children. The Quan Shu also has a chapter on the differences between men's and women's charts, Men's and Women's Charts Compared.

A line that works as a subheading. 'Falling idle' means a star landing in a palace where it sits unused and cannot exert itself; the next two segments list the idle palaces of eight stars.

Note that an idle palace is not the same as a Xian (Fallen) position. Compare the Miao-Wang table in the setup charts: Zi Wei is Wang in Hai and De in Chen, Tan Lang is even Miao in Chen, and Qi Sha is Miao in Chen too, yet all are listed as idle. So idle palaces are a separate judgement, probably meaning that the star is not weak there but has no field in which to use its strength.

Other chapters of the Quan Shu often use the term, for instance 「天機化忌落閑宮」 in The Nature of Tian Ji, and Lian Zhen in the Life Palace falling in an idle palace in The Nature of Lian Zhen. When you meet such lines, come back to these two segments to see which palaces are meant.

The second half of the eight stars: Tian Liang in Si and You, Tian Ji in Si, Po Jun in Si and Shen, Wu Qu in Shen. Against the Miao-Wang table, only Tian Liang in Si is Xian; the others are mostly Ping or De. Wu Qu is worth a word: in the Quan Shu's Miao-Wang table Wu Qu has no Xian palace at all, so the 'fallen position' mentioned in The Nature of Wu Qu cannot be found on a chart, and the idle palace Shen is one of the few weak positions that can actually be pinned down.

The Gu Sui Fu's 「武曲閑宮多手藝」 (see the original) uses this idea. Xingge does not mark idle palaces on the chart; check them against these two segments yourself.

This example can be checked. For a man born in a Jia Zi year, the Minor Luck starts at Xu (Shen-Zi-Chen group) and runs forward: age one in Xu, age two in Hai, returning to Hai every twelve years; in the Ji Chou year he is twenty-six by traditional reckoning, and the Minor Luck is exactly in Hai. In a Ji Chou year the annual Lu is in Wu and the annual Qing Yang in Wei; Wei is in trine with Hai, so the Minor Luck is said to see Qing Yang. Look at the natal chart as well: in a Jia year natal Qing Yang is in Mao, also in trine with Hai, so natal and annual Qing Yang shine in together, which is what the Quan Shu calls Qing Yang and Tuo Luo stacked.

When a Xingge chart is switched to an Annual Luck, the annual Lu, annual Qing Yang and annual Tuo Luo are marked in the palaces, so this kind of stacking can be seen directly.