What is Twelve Life Stages (Chang Sheng)?

Open your chart and every palace has a small label in its corner: Chang Sheng, Mu Yu, Guan Dai, and so on through Tai and Yang. These are the Twelve Life Stages (Chang Sheng). Twelve stages fill the twelve palaces exactly, and each one says how far a palace's energy has come in its cycle: just sprouting, in full strength, drawing back, or resting while the next round takes shape. The list includes Bing (Illness), Si (Stillness), Mu (Storehouse) and Jue (Severance), which sound heavy. In this system they are only stops on a cycle. They describe pace and strength, and have nothing to do with health or lifespan. To see which stage each of your palaces is in, draw your chart and compare it with the table below. The Twelve Life Stages lesson also maps them on your own chart.

The twelve stages, in order

The ancients borrowed the course of a life, from birth and growing up to a new conception, to put each palace's energy in order:

The twelve are easier to remember in four phases: Chang Sheng, Mu Yu and Guan Dai are sprouting; Lin Guan and Di Wang are full bloom; Shuai, Bing and Si are harvest; Mu, Jue, Tai and Yang are dormancy. After dormancy the cycle returns to Chang Sheng, so it is a circle with no end point.

How the Twelve Life Stages are placed

The starting point comes from the Five Elements Bureau

Where Chang Sheng sits is decided by your Five Elements Bureau. The verse in the An Shen Ming Li section (placing the Life and Body Palaces) of volume two of the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu (The Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu) reads:

For the Fire Bureau, start Chang Sheng at Yin. For the Wood Bureau, start Chang Sheng at Hai. For the Water Bureau, start Chang Sheng at Shen. For the Metal Bureau, start Chang Sheng at Si. For the Earth Bureau, start Chang Sheng at Shen.

(Quan Shu, volume two, An Shen Ming Li)

So Water 2 and Earth 5 start at Shen, Wood 3 at Hai, Metal 4 at Si, and Fire 6 at Yin. Earth starts at Shen just like Water, so for people in these two bureaus the twelve stages sit in exactly the same places.

The direction comes from yin or yang and gender

From the Chang Sheng palace, the count runs either forward or backward. The heading of that same section in the Quan Shu says "count forward for men, backward for women." The method in common use today, which Xingge also uses, follows the same rule as Decade Luck instead: in a yang year (birth-year stem Jia, Bing, Wu, Geng or Ren), men count forward and women backward; in a yin year (Yi, Ding, Ji, Xin or Gui), men count backward and women forward. For people born in a yang year the two rules give the same result; the difference is only for people born in a yin year. If another charting tool shows your stages in the opposite order, this is usually why.

One small pattern: whichever way you count, Chang Sheng and Bing always land in a pair of opposite palaces. If Chang Sheng is in Shen, Bing is in Yin.

How much weight they carry on a chart

The Twelve Life Stages are very light, lighter even than the minor stars. They don't change a main star's character; they only add a sense of pace to a palace. Take Wu Qu in the Wealth Palace: with Di Wang it pushes ahead hard, with Mu it saves slowly. When reading a chart, look at the main stars, the transformations and the auxiliary and challenging stars first. The Twelve Life Stages come last, adding one line about where that palace is in its cycle.

Start with the stage in your Life Palace: that is the pace at which you get things done. Then find where Di Wang and Lin Guan sit; those palaces are usually where you feel most sure of yourself. The palaces with Bing, Si or Jue simply move at a quieter pace in their own affairs, and every chart has those stages somewhere.

Two lines from the Tai Wei Fu in volume one of the Quan Shu are often used to talk about the Twelve Life Stages:

Born in the place of defeat, what blossoms is empty flower. Meeting life at the point of severance, the flower that grows does not fade.

(Quan Shu, volume one, Tai Wei Fu)

"The place of defeat" means the Mu Yu palace: what opens fast also fades fast. "Meeting life at the point of severance" means something broken off and joined again, and a flower grown that way lasts longer. Another line of the Tai Wei Fu, "in the place of defeat, support works wonders," says the same thing: in a weak stage, a helping hand from auspicious stars makes a particularly clear difference.

How they differ from the other three sets

A chart carries four sets of twelve spirits in all, each placed differently and used for different things:

Chang Sheng and Bo Shi are the two natal sets: Chang Sheng speaks to underlying strength, Bo Shi to the way you work. That is why, when a chart is read for the natal picture, Chang Sheng comes first and Bo Shi follows. Jiang Qian and Sui Qian are annual spirits that move with the year. See the three overviews, Twelve Erudite Gods (Bo Shi), Twelve General Gods (Jiang Qian) and Twelve Year Gods (Sui Qian), and the Bo Shi, Jiang Qian and Sui Qian lesson.

Natal only, unchanged in each year

On the Xingge chart the Twelve Life Stages are placed once, for the natal chart, and never move. When you switch to an Annual Luck, the sets that change to their annual versions are Jiang Qian and Sui Qian; Chang Sheng and Bo Shi stay where they are. So when reading a year, treat Chang Sheng as the background color. If the year's Life Palace reaches your natal Di Wang palace, that year's theme falls where you already have confidence. If it reaches your Jue palace, the year's theme falls where your pace is quieter and suited to sorting things out afresh.