Partner palace

Meaning

The partner palace, 夫妻宮 fūqīgōng, “the palace of husband and wife”, is the branch of the day pillar: the ground the Day Master sits on. The tradition reads it as the seat of the closest bonds, the place in a chart nearest the self, where the partner and the shared life are read. Ulune reads it for any close bond, of any two people, and calls it the partner palace for that reason.

In one chart, the palace is read by its branch and its hidden stems: what the self sits on, and which gods it holds. A palace that holds the Day Master’s resource sits on support; one that holds its output sits on what it gives; one that clashes with the month branch sits on ground that moves. The classics read all of these as the climate of close life, never as a verdict on it.

Between two charts, the palaces meet. Ulune’s Relationship lens puts it in a sentence: how two day branches meet colours how two people live side by side. Two palaces of the same branch stand on familiar ground; a harmony or a trine draws them together; a clash brings movement and difference to be worked with; two palaces that neither join nor clash leave each other free.

In practice

• In the Relationship lens, the partner palaces have a reading of their own: each person’s day branch, and how the two meet, the same, a harmony with its phase, a trine, a clash, a harm, a punishment or a destruction.
• In one chart, the day branch’s reading gives its animal, its phase and its hidden stems with their gods; its harmonies and clashes with the other branches are among the chart’s interactions.
• Never empty: the day’s own week always holds the day branch, so the partner palace is never one of the chart’s empty branches.
• In time, a luck pillar or a year whose branch meets the day branch, a clash or a harmony, is read as touching close life for its while; the Cycles lens names these meetings with the day pillar.
• The old rules read a partner through a particular god, Wealth for a man and the Officer for a woman; Ulune leaves them aside, and reads the palace the same way for everyone.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the same day branch is read as the spouse’s seat in Shichū Suimei and in saju, and comparing two day branches is part of every compatibility reading.
• In Chinese astrology the same branch is the day animal, the self with those closest, and the zodiac compares two people’s day animals second, after their year animals.
• In Western astrology the nearest idea is the seventh house and its Descendant, the place of partners, and synastry, which compares two charts point by point as the Relationship lens compares the palaces.

Origin and history

The Zi Ping school gave each pillar a circle of people, and the day branch, under the self, became the spouse’s place: the Song dynasty Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui read a person’s close life from it and from the gods it holds. The same books read a partner through the six kin, the gods that stand for family members, with different rules for men and women; modern teachers, and Ulune, keep the palace and read it for any bond. The Di Tian Sui, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary, and the Ziping Zhenquan both ask that it be read with the whole chart, never alone.

How Ulune calculates it

The partner palace is the branch of the day pillar, found with the day: on the birthplace’s clock, the day turning at 23:00 by default. Between two charts, Ulune compares the two day branches: the same branch; a harmony, with the phase it leans to; a trine, two branches of one counting between two people, as between two animals; and the clash, harm, punishment and destruction, as the relations define them.

Correspondences