Essentials of Reading the Stars

This line puts the first checkpoint of the chapter on Lu Cun and Tian Ma: the two govern sources of money and drive, and once they share a palace with an 'emptiness', the ancients held that they are a name without substance. The Quan Shu grades the weight: the original's 天空 (in the Quan Shu this means Di Kong) and Jie Kong are heaviest, Xun Kong lighter. On a Xingge chart, Lu Cun and Tian Ma appear among the minor stars; Di Kong is one of the Six Malefic Stars; Jie Kong is split into two minor stars, Jie Lu and Kong Wang; and Xun Kong is also among the minor stars, shown in the detailed chart. Note that Xingge's minor stars include a separate Tian Kong placed by the birth-year branch, which is not the Tian Kong meant here. The Quan Shu has names for these combinations: see Lu Feng Kong Jie (Lu Meets the Voids) and Lu Feng Xun Kong (Lu Meets Xun Kong).

From this line on is the Quan Shu's order for reading a chart, and the first step is always the Life Palace. There are four things to check: whether the star itself is lucky or malefic; its brightness, Miao and Wang or Xian; whether it carries Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke or Hua Ji; and whether the element of the palace and the element of the star generate or overcome each other. The first three can all be read off a Xingge chart, which shows each star's brightness and transformation. The fourth, 「生剋」, is not marked on the chart: the ancients compared the star's element (Zi Wei is earth, Tian Ji wood, for example) with the element of the palace's branch, a finer skill that beginners can leave until the first three are familiar. The same order is where the lesson on the Life Palace begins.

「身主」 can be read two ways, as the note says. Read as the Body Palace, it means that after the Life Palace comes the palace that holds the body, which a Xingge chart marks as the Body Palace. Read as the Body Master star, it is the star set by the birth-year branch, which the chart shows together with the Life Master. The Quan Shu has a rhyme for placing the Body Master in its chapters on chart setup, so the Body Master star was a current idea at the time; but this chapter keeps pairing 'body and life' further on, so reading it as the Body Palace fits the context better. Either way the point is the same: the Life Palace sets the inborn pattern, and the Body Palace or Body Master adds where one's effort goes later in life.

The third step is the 'three palaces': Wealth and Career form a trine with the Life Palace and Travel stands opposite, and the four positions together are the San Fang Si Zheng. The ancients' logic was that the stars of the Life Palace do not act alone; the stars of the trine and the opposite palace 'shine' in. Harm, clash, overcoming and damage mean, respectively: punishing stars such as Qing Yang; a clash from the opposite palace; the elements overcoming one another; and the waste of Po Jun or Hua Ji. On a Xingge chart, the Life Palace's San Fang Si Zheng are the palaces to read together with it. The Life Palace shows the person, the three palaces their surroundings, money and career, and if the surroundings are under clash on every side, even good personal qualities count for less. See San Fang Si Zheng.

The fourth step is the Fortune Palace, and the reason is spelled out: 「以福德宮對財帛宮」, the Fortune Palace faces the Wealth Palace. They are opposite palaces, so what is good or bad in Wealth is reflected from the Fortune side. Hence the check for Hua Quan and Hua Lu (money with a source, and able to enjoy it), for Di Jie and Di Kong (plans coming to nothing, unable to hold on), and for Miao or Xian. Today the Fortune Palace is often read as spirit, attitude and the capacity to enjoy, which runs along the same line as the ancients' 'whether there are blessings to enjoy'. On a chart, the palace opposite Fortune is Wealth, and the two are read facing each other.

Six palaces called 'eight seats' do not add up, as the note points out. Keep apart Xingge's minor star Ba Zuo (paired with San Tai and placed by the birth day): that is a star and has nothing to do with the 'eight seats' used here as a name for six palaces, so do not mix them up when checking a chart. The condition here is 「俱在成照」: the six palaces linked into one whole by trine and opposition, gathering lucky stars and good transformations. That is a very high bar: Life, Wealth, Career and Travel are one San Fang Si Zheng, and adding the Body and Fortune palaces means the whole backbone of the chart must be good. Charts with all six good are rare in practice; the line is best taken as describing the upper limit, not a common case.

Set against the previous line: all six palaces fallen, gathering malefic stars and Hua Ji, gives solitude, widowhood and a short life. It is a heavy verdict the Quan Shu records as it is, and there is no need to dodge it, but the condition is that all six are fallen; one or two bad palaces do not count. 「若卯酉時生人尤外」 is unclear. One clue worth considering: by the rule for placing the Body Palace, anyone born in the Mao or You hour has the Body Palace in the Travel Palace, directly opposite the Life Palace, and the ancients may have set such charts apart for that reason. This is only a guess; the text does not say. On a Xingge chart, those born in the Mao or You hour will see the Body Palace marked on the Travel Palace. The last sentence says Property and Health are discussed elsewhere, meaning the two chapters in volume two, the Property Palace and the Health Palace.

The Parents, Spouse and Children Palaces are the main palaces of one's closest kin. This line requires all three to have Di Jie or Di Kong, killing stars or Hua Ji before giving 「僧道之命」, the life of a monk or priest. In the old days, leaving home for religion meant leaving the family, so a chart with every kin palace damaged was read as not entering ordinary family life. A modern reading can widen this to 'thin ties with family, independent, perhaps living alone', but the original meaning is leaving home for religion, and otherwise solitude and poverty, and that should be stated plainly. The Quan Shu says the same thing again, almost word for word, in Men's and Women's Charts Compared. On a Xingge chart, open each of the three palaces and check for the Six Malefic Stars and Hua Ji.

「命無正曜」 is a Life Palace with none of the fourteen main stars; Xingge shows such an empty palace together with the main stars borrowed from the opposite palace. The Quan Shu takes a lenient view here: as long as lucky stars shine in from Wealth and Career, wealth and rank are still complete. But it adds a judgement about origins: the person may be born of a concubine. The Quan Shu makes this link again and again; the section on Jie Kong and Shang Shi puts it more plainly: no main star in the Life Palace means surviving under another surname, or being adopted out, following a remarried mother, marrying into the wife's family, or born of a secondary mother. The Gu Sui Fu, on the other hand, says 「命無正曜，夭折孤貧」, an empty Life Palace means early death, solitude and poverty. The two differ in weight and should be read together: an empty Life Palace is a weakness in itself, and whether lucky stars in the three palaces catch it is what decides.

Continuing the previous line: an empty Life Palace with malefic stars clashing in from the three palaces calls for 'surviving under another surname' and 'leaving the ancestral home'. In old society, fostering, adoption, following a remarried mother and marrying into the wife's family all meant changing surname or leaving one's own family, and the ancients saw this as a hard-fated person needing a change of surroundings to survive. Today it can correspond to not growing up in one's birth family, or leaving home early to make one's way, but it should not be treated as a family event that must happen. On the chart: the Life Palace is empty and borrows the Travel Palace's main stars; then check Wealth, Career and Travel for Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo Xing, Ling Xing, Di Kong and Di Jie. The Quan Shu's Parents Palace chapter has many sayings of the same kind for comparison.

From here the Quan Shu sorts charts into four grades, highest, next-highest, middle and lowest, by just three things: whether the Life Palace has a lucky main star, its brightness and good transformations, and whether the three palaces meet lucky stars. The highest grade has all three. Note 'lucky main star': not all fourteen main stars count as lucky; old books often class Qi Sha, Po Jun, Lian Zhen, Tan Lang and Ju Men as malefic or neutral, so the meaning here is the likes of Zi Wei, Tian Fu, Tai Yang, Tai Yin, Tian Tong, Tian Ji, Tian Liang and Tian Xiang. When a Chart Fits a Pattern grades 'fitting a pattern' with almost the same structure and is worth reading alongside.

「上次之命」 is the lower step of the upper grade. Taken apart, the condition is: no lucky main star in the Life Palace (it may be empty, or hold a star of the Sha Po Lang kind), but lucky stars in the three palaces. This matches the earlier 'no main star, Wealth and Career shining in, wealth and rank complete', and again shows how heavily the Quan Shu weighs the three palaces when reading the Life Palace: it is not just the star that sits there. In practice, look across the Life Palace's San Fang Si Zheng for lucky stars: Zuo Fu, You Bi, Wen Chang, Wen Qu, Tian Kui, Tian Yue, Lu Cun, and Hua Lu, Hua Quan or Hua Ke.

The middle grade has two descriptions: Life Palace stars neither lucky nor malefic, or good and bad mixed; and 'middling stars' in the three palaces too. The Quan Shu never defines a middling star; roughly, it means no obvious lucky or malefic stars and brightness neither high nor low (Ping, De or Li in Xingge's brightness). The passage reminds readers that most charts fall in this grade; ordinary is normal. Nor is the middle grade a bad thing: no great rises or falls, and much of a life's colour depends on where the Decade Luck goes.

This is the second kind of middle grade: the Life Palace's star is in Miao or Wang and could have formed a pattern, but malefic stars in the three palaces break it. The key word is 「破格」, breaking the pattern; volume two has a whole chapter, Stars in Fallen Positions: Broken Patterns, listing the conditions. On the chart: the Life Palace's brightness is Miao or Wang, but Wealth, Career or Travel holds Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo Xing, Ling Xing, Di Kong or Di Jie, or Hua Ji shines in. People with such charts commonly have good qualities of their own but keep getting held back by their surroundings, their money or their work.

This is the third kind of middle grade, the reverse of the last: the Life Palace's main star is Xian, with Qing Yang, Tuo Luo and Hua Ji, which would be the lowest grade, but 「十干祿元」 guarding it pulls it back to the middle. The stem's Lu is Lu Cun, in Yin for Jia and in Mao for Yi, set by the birth-year stem. Note a structural fact: Qing Yang and Tuo Luo are always on either side of Lu Cun, so when Lu Cun is in the Life Palace they flank it from the neighbouring palaces and can never share its palace. Since the text has both 'Qing Yang and Tuo Luo added' and 'the stem's Lu guarding', it makes more sense to read Qing Yang and Tuo Luo as being in the Life Palace's three palaces or on either side. Some read 「十干祿元」 as the birth year's Hua Lu instead; both readings work, and both mean there is a Lu to relieve the chart.

The conditions for the lowest grade are spelled out in full: no lucky stars in the Life Palace, malefic stars and Hua Ji present, no Lu (neither Lu Cun nor Hua Lu), and the star fallen. All four must hold at once. Check them one by one on a Xingge chart: is the Life Palace's brightness Xian or Bu, are any of the Six Malefic Stars there, is there Hua Ji, is there Lu Cun or Hua Lu beside the main star. Charts that hit all four are actually few, which shows that the Quan Shu's bar for the lowest grade is not low: one malefic star does not make it.

A lowest-grade Life Palace with lucky stars in the three palaces is given the middle grade by the Quan Shu, but with three reservations: small first and great later, unable to last, and in the end judged by success, failure and early death. That is, the surroundings can lift the person for a while, but the foundation is weak and will not hold for long. This describes a life raised up by circumstances and helpers: very smooth while things go well, hard to sustain once the setting changes or the Decade Luck turns bad. When reading such a chart, watch the Decade Luck closely: the stretch when it passes through palaces with lucky stars in the three palaces is the 'great later' phase, and once it moves on, care is needed.

This is the heaviest verdict in the chapter: the Life Palace's star Xian, malefic stars and Hua Ji added, and the three palaces meeting Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo Xing, Ling Xing, Di Kong and Di Jie, judged the lowest grade, poor and base, the life of a servant, or else early death, even 「六畜之命」, the life of livestock. These are the words of a society of fixed ranks: a servant was a legal status, and livestock is a figure for an utterly lowly life. Read them as meant; there is no need to turn them into something prettier. For such a chart today, the practical reading is that the Life Palace and its three palaces offer almost no support: a low starting point and heavy resistance throughout life. All the conditions must hold together, and a chart with a Xian Life Palace, Hua Ji, and the Six Malefic Stars gathered across the three palaces is rare in practice. For 'surviving under another surname', see segment 10 above.