Palaces, Na Yin and symbolic stars

Your four pillars are the main rooms of the house. The tradition adds a few extra details on top: two hidden rooms, a poetic name for each pillar, and small markers that light up when certain characters meet. You'll find all three on the Chart tab, under Symbols.

Palaces

There are two cards at the top.

• Life palace (命宮), also called Ming Gong. It's an extra pillar worked out from your birth month and hour. The tradition reads it as your character deep down. Without a birth time it can't be worked out, so the card shows a dash and Needs the hour.
• Conception palace (胎元), also called Tai Yuan. It's taken from your Month pillar and points, roughly, to the time of conception. The tradition reads it as your roots.

Each card shows the palace's two characters and its Na Yin. A note underneath reminds you that methods for calculating the palaces vary between schools. If another book or app gives you a different palace, that's probably why.

Na Yin

The sixty pairs of characters each have a poetic name from the tradition, like Metal in the sea, Lamp fire or Willow wood. That's the Na Yin (納音).

This block shows the Na Yin of each of your pillars, with its characters and its name in plain words. It's an image to think with, not a measure of strength. Some people like to read their Day pillar's Na Yin as a picture of themselves.

Symbolic stars

These aren't stars in the sky. They're markers the tradition looks for when certain characters meet in a chart. Each one hints at a theme: help from others, study, charm, movement.

The app shows each star by a plain name, like Helpful people (天乙貴人, the one classical books call the Nobleman), Charm and social pull (桃花) or Movement and change (驛馬). Under the name you'll see:

• Where it comes from: which character in your chart it's counted from, and which pillar it lands on.
• When it comes back: the years whose branch switches it on again, and the next one.

Tap a star to see the rule and the table behind it. The label at the bottom says Traditional reading.

If your chart has none of the stars the app uses, the screen says so. That doesn't mean something is missing. Many charts have only a few.

Switching on soon

At the end, a short list shows the next few years when a year switches on one of the more social stars for you: helpful people, study, charm, movement, celebrations and happy occasions. The current year is highlighted, with a note that it's happening now. On Today, the Active symbol card shows the same thing for this year.

How to read them

Read the stars as themes to notice, not as events that will come. A star of movement in a given year can be a trip, a move, or simply a restless feeling that asks for a change of air. What it turns into is up to you.