The Four Transformations in Your Annual Spouse Palace: Your Focus in Love This Year

What the Spouse Palace Shows in an Annual Cycle

The Spouse Palace shows your values in love, who you hope to be in a relationship, and how you are treated in one. The stars and transformations in the Spouse Palace stand for attitudes and values, not for things that have already happened; what is really going on has to be checked against real life.

The natal Spouse Palace shows how you see love at your core. The annual Spouse Palace shows the influence your surroundings bring this year, an extra layer added on top of how you already see love.

The Four Transformations are changes a star goes through because of time and circumstance. If you picture a main star as a tree and a palace as a garden, the Four Transformations are like the four seasons. A transformation never exists on its own; it always comes from a particular star. Even the same Lu or Ji looks different depending on which star brings it. This article covers only what each situation has in common.

How to Find Your Annual Spouse Palace

Your annual Life Palace is the palace of that year's Earthly Branch. For example, in the Mao (Rabbit) year it is the Mao palace.

Once you have found your annual Life Palace, count counterclockwise in this order: Life Palace, Siblings Palace, Spouse Palace. The Life Palace counts as the first, so the third palace is that year's Spouse Palace.

The annual cycle starts on Lunar New Year (the first day of the first lunar month), not on January 1 and not at the Start of Spring (Lichun). FuSang Vision counts the year from Lunar New Year.

Six Situations

Lu (Prosperity) in the Annual Spouse Palace

Lu means "something extra." When it falls in your annual Spouse Palace, you may find some room and energy in love this year that you weren't expecting. Whatever comes in extra often goes toward filling the places where you feel something is missing.

Something to notice this year: where do you naturally want to put what comes in extra in love?

Quan (Power) in the Annual Spouse Palace

Quan means wanting to hold, control, and have. When it falls in your annual Spouse Palace, you will tend to want to take charge in love this year. You have firmer ideas about what the relationship should look like and how the two of you relate, and you hold on to them more tightly.

Something to notice this year: in love, what is the one thing you especially want to decide for yourself?

Ke (Fame) in the Annual Spouse Palace

Ke means letting things show and wanting others to know. When it falls in your annual Spouse Palace, your attitude toward love and who you are in a relationship are more likely to be seen and noticed this year, and you may also want others to know what you value in love. Being noticed is not necessarily a good thing. It simply brings things to the surface.

Something to notice this year: which side of you in love is more likely to be seen by others? Is that what you want people to see?

Ji (Obstacle) in the Annual Spouse Palace

Ji means a sense of something missing. When it falls in your annual Spouse Palace, you may easily feel this year that something isn't enough in love, that something is lacking, or that your heart is searching for something. An annual Ji means your surroundings bring you this sense of a gap here this year.

Still, feeling that there isn't enough doesn't mean there really isn't. When we feel low, it's often because we feel something is missing, not because it truly is. And that sense of a gap is exactly where drive comes from: because you feel something is missing, you want to fill it.

Something to notice this year: in love, what, specifically, makes you feel there "isn't enough"? Is it really missing, or does it only feel that way?

The Qing Yang Star in the Annual Spouse Palace

The Qing Yang Star is one of the challenging stars. There are four challenging stars: the Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo, and Ling Stars. They stand for four kinds of emotion that are hard to control. The annual Qing Yang Star and annual Tuo Luo Star count among them too.

Qing Yang feels like a blade: quick to act on impulse, decisive, firm once a decision is made, and steady in its drive. The other side is a tendency to go at your own pace, which can easily cause friction with others. When it falls in your annual Spouse Palace, your attitude in love will tend to be more direct and decisive this year. You act as soon as something occurs to you and hold firm once you decide, and you are also more likely to run into friction with others in love.

Something to notice this year: in love, are you more direct than usual and quicker to decide? How does that directness feel to the people around you?

The Tuo Luo Star in the Annual Spouse Palace

Tuo Luo feels like a spinning top turning in place: torn inside, slow to make up your mind. When Tuo Luo sits in a palace in your time cycles, you are more likely to make the wrong choice in that area during that time. When it falls in your annual Spouse Palace, you may go back and forth and hesitate in love this year, and you are also more likely to make choices about love that don't suit you.

Tuo Luo has another side as well: persistence and perseverance, the strength to get through hard times.

Something to notice this year: in love, is there something you keep turning over and can't seem to decide?

The Six Situations at a Glance

This table is for reference. In practice, a reading takes many more details into account.

All of the above are only places "you can look," not the one answer. Zi Wei Dou Shu doesn't divide things into good and bad; it compares. It never looks at just one palace or one star, and the more clues you can see, the closer you get to what's really there. If a sign on the chart doesn't show up in real life, go with real life.

Rough patches in love are simply normal. The Spouse Palace is like a street of food stalls: not every stall is good, yet we easily expect every one of them to be wonderful. Ups and downs in love don't mean your fate is bad.

Which four stars the Four Transformations fall on depends on the year. You can find them in the yearly overview, for example Zi Wei Dou Shu 2027 Forecast: The Four Transformations of the Ding Wei Year.

For what annual cycles and decade cycles are, see Decade Cycles and Annual Cycles in Zi Wei Dou Shu: The Focus of Ten Years and of One Year.

FAQ