What this position describes. The Eastern square is not built from the birth date as documents write it, but from the same day written in the Chinese calendar. What sits between the two calendars is a table rather than a formula: the year there does not begin on the first of January, the months are counted by the moon, and one life ends up with a second date — a different day, a different month and a different year. It is the digits of that second date that go into the square, which is why it almost never matches a grid built from the passport date. This is the one figure in the document that cannot be checked by addition on paper, so it is stated first and out loud instead of being buried inside the calculation.

Your birth date is 24.03.1988. The same day written in the Chinese calendar is 07.02.4686, and it is the digits of that second date that go into the square: 0 7 0 2 4 6 8 6.

The conversion comes from a calendar table rather than from any addition, which makes this the one line in the document you cannot check on paper. Everything after it is a tally of digits and the geometry of the square.

A zero does not enter the square: there are nine palaces and they run from one to nine.

A question to sit with: Put the two dates side by side: which digits appeared in the second one, and which disappeared from it?

This is a general description. What it means in a specific situation is what a practitioner works through with you.

What this position describes. The tradition calls the nine cells palaces and arranges them in the Later Heaven order: every palace has its own trigram and its own compass direction, and the middle one has no trigram at all. A digit lands in its palace as many times as the Chinese-calendar date contains it, and repetition is read as a theme that presses harder — more noticeable to the person and more noticeable to everyone around them. Harder is not better: the date holds eight characters, so an extra repeat in one palace always means emptiness in another. What follows describes what the tradition places in each occupied palace, not what a person with this date is like.

The date filled five of the nine palaces.

The palace of mind. South-east, the trigram Xun, the element wood. This palace is about the cast of a person’s thinking and about study: whether they go deeper into one field or take up a new one each time the old stops being interesting. The tradition describes both as workable and both as costly, rather than choosing between them.

The palace of poise. South-west, the trigram Kun, the element earth. This palace describes evenness — how a person holds themselves when the ground moves, and how quickly they come back after a row, a rush or bad news. What is read here is a manner rather than steadiness as a virtue: too even and too easily shaken are described in equal detail.

The palace of gift. West, the trigram Dui, the element metal. What goes here is what arrives without being learned: words, an ear for how other people speak, the knack of putting something complicated briefly. A gift in this method describes ease rather than promising success — the tradition uses the same word for leaning on what is easy long enough that there is no time left to learn anything.

The palace of obligation. North-east, the trigram Gen, the element earth. This palace is about responsibility for other people’s affairs and about standing among them: who takes on the organising by default, and what happens to them when there was nobody else to take it. The tradition describes both sides at once — reliability, and the habit of carrying what nobody asked to be carried.

The palace of home. North-west, the trigram Qian, the element metal. This palace describes the household order: whether a person has their own idea of how things should be arranged, and whether they keep it up themselves rather than requiring it of others. The tradition reads both hospitality here and its reverse — the habit of treating one’s own order as the only possible one. The digit fell twice.

A question to sit with: The palace where the digit fell more than once — is that the theme other people most often mention to you?

This is a general description. What it means in a specific situation is what a practitioner works through with you.

What this position describes. An empty palace in this method is neither a shortfall nor a diagnosis. It is read as a theme with no default setting: what other people fall into by instinct is here done by decision and by attention. Everyone has empty palaces, always — the Chinese-calendar date holds eight characters, a zero does not enter the square, and there is simply not enough to occupy all nine. So the list below describes how the square is built, not what a person is missing. The tradition passes no judgement here and makes no promise that an empty palace ever fills.

Four of the nine palaces stayed empty.

The palace of fire. South, the trigram Li, the element fire. Pace and visibility belong here: how quickly a person catches, how visible they are from outside, and how fast they spend themselves. Fire in this description is not an amount of health and not a stock of luck, but a manner of spending, with a quick side and a price for the quickness.

The palace of response. East, the trigram Zhen, the element wood. This is where the tradition puts the ability to notice someone else’s state before it is said aloud — that a person in the room is already upset, that a conversation has changed its subject. Nothing medical belongs here and nothing medical is meant: what is described is sensitivity to people, and no line of this palace is a statement about anyone’s health.

The middle palace. The centre of the square, the element earth, and the only palace with no trigram: it faces no direction because every other palace passes through it. Self-command sits here — the capacity to hold to something chosen once holding has become inconvenient. That is also why it is read alongside its neighbours rather than on its own: will with no subject cannot be described.

The palace of provision. North, the trigram Kan, the element water. The tradition puts a working relationship with provision here: where money comes from, how many sources it has, and how much of the day is arranged around keeping them. This is about a way of handling provision rather than its size — the method counts nobody’s income and says nothing about it.

A question to sit with: The theme of an empty palace — do you genuinely work at it on purpose, or does it simply fall outside what you attend to?

Numbers describe how a date is put together. They say nothing about where you are now, who is beside you, what you have already tried and how it ended. That is usually exactly where the question sits that reports like this get opened for — and no page here answers it.

What this position describes. Beyond the single palaces, the square is read in threes: three rows, three columns and two diagonals — eight lines, each of which adds to fifteen. That is a property of the arrangement itself and not of anybody’s date. Two extremes are read. A line whose three palaces are all occupied is described as three themes that travel together and usually pull the same way. A line whose three palaces are all empty is described as the mirror of that: none of the three works by default, and whatever gets done in them is done deliberately. Lines that are part occupied and part empty are not read separately — they are the majority, and that is the ordinary state of affairs.

Complete:

The right column. Poise, gift and home. Three themes that show up close in — among one’s own people, at home, one to one — rather than in public.

Empty throughout:

The middle column. Fire, will and provision. A column about motion: what a person gets going on, what keeps them going, and what it finally runs up against at the level of making a living.

A question to sit with: If a line of yours came out complete — would you have put those three themes next to each other yourself?

This is a general description. What it means in a specific situation is what a practitioner works through with you.