Chapter 5: The Palace of Lu Yuan and the Palace of Yi Ma

Song of Determining the Lu Yuan Palace

Overall Paraphrase

Every person possesses a Lu Yuan Palace (Palace of Official Salary Origin), which is renowned as the most powerful among all palaces. The method of calculation: simply take the position of the Sun as the starting point, counted from the birth day and hour, then count in reverse to the palace occupied by the current year — that is the Lu Yuan Palace.

Examine which stars illuminate this palace: if the palace ruler shines brightly and the stars are in their temple or prosperous positions, with Venus and Jupiter additionally serving as palace rulers, then the native's salary and fortune shall be doubly bestowed, and one's official career will inevitably be exquisite and smooth. Conversely, if the Lu Yuan Palace is fallen or weakened, accompanied by malefic stars, imprisonment stars, or baleful stars travelling together, or if it encounters Ketu and Rahu joining forces, then fortune turns to misfortune, portending injury, harm, loss, and ruin.

If one can accurately and meticulously investigate this palace, then a person's fate regarding wealth or poverty will naturally be clear in the mind.

Section-by-Section Elaboration

Method of Calculating the Lu Yuan Palace

The Lu Yuan Palace is seldom known to people. To seek this palace, first determine the precise position of the Sun's passage through the palaces, then from the Sun's palace, count backward from the birth hour to the palace of the current year — that is the location of the Lu Yuan Palace.

The method of calculating the Lu Yuan Palace has rarely been known throughout history. Its core steps are:

1. First, use the Sun's precise position after passing through a palace as the benchmark.
2. Starting from the Sun's palace, count backward by birth hour to the palace where the native's current year resides.
3. The place where the count stops is the Lu Yuan Palace.

As for this palace, one must have one's own house's salary star or official salary star, or have it seated on the native's own life palace. If it encounters auspicious stars, one will enjoy boundless blessings. If it is fallen or weak and encounters malefic stars, or travels with imprisonment stars and baleful stars, or encounters Ketu and Rahu forming a faction, it certainly portends injury, harm, loss, and ruin.

Judgment of the Lu Yuan Palace's auspiciousness or inauspiciousness:

• Auspicious signs: The Lu Yuan Palace receives the illumination of one's own salary star or official salary star, or is seated upon the native's life palace, and additionally encounters auspicious stars for support — one enjoys inexhaustible blessings.
• Inauspicious signs: The Lu Yuan Palace is fallen and weakened, violated by malefic stars, or travels with imprisonment stars and baleful stars, or encounters Ketu and Rahu forming a faction and occupying the palace — this certainly portends injury, harm, loss, and ruin.

Determining the Degrees of the Lu Yuan Palace

The specific stellar degrees of the Lu Yuan Palace vary according to each Heavenly Stem, as listed below:

Determining the Lu Ma Palace

The first among celebrated meetings, the Lu Ma sharing a palace brings joy to body and life palaces. This saying has always been regarded as true nobility — one may obtain glory and audience with the Emperor. Within the Lu Ma palaces, all have degrees; the minutes and seconds within the degrees should be carefully enumerated. If they come to the life and body palaces, one shall prosper in salary and honor, dwelling among imperial ministers.

Lu Ma sharing a palace is one of the most honored configurations in the natal chart, known as "Celebration." Whenever the Body Palace and Life Palace are seated in a place where Lu and Ma share a palace, and no malefic stars are encountered while auspicious stars provide support, one shall enjoy incomparable glory and wealth, with the honor of an audience with the Emperor and dwelling among chief ministers.

The Lu Ma palaces each contain precise degrees; the minutes and seconds within the degrees require careful investigation. If Lu and Ma precisely illuminate the Body Palace or Life Palace, it indicates prosperity in salary and honor, dwelling beside the throne as a supporting minister.

🧠 Deep Understanding

Core Concepts 💡

• The Lu Yuan Palace is the root source of wealth and nobility: The Lu Yuan Palace is the core palace for judging wealth and poverty in the natal chart; its strength or weakness directly relates to one's level of fortune and blessings in life.
• The Sun is the benchmark for calculating palaces: The calculation of the Lu Yuan Palace uses the Sun's passage through palaces as its anchor point, reflecting the Sun's pivotal role in the astrological system.
• Interaction between palace and stars determines fortune: The palace ruler shining brightly and being in temple position, with auspicious stars (Venus and Jupiter) adding support, indicates fortune; being fallen and weak, encountering malefic stars, or Ketu and Rahu forming factions indicates misfortune.
• Lu and Ma sharing a palace is the most honored configuration: The convergence of Lu and Ma symbolizes the resonance between official salary and wealth, representing the top-tier configuration in ancient destiny analysis.
• Yi Ma originates from seeing wealth at the disease position: The essence of Yi Ma is not "seeing children at the disease position" (parasitic relationship) but rather "seeing wealth at the disease position" (wealth replacing labor). This theory corrects the logical flaw in traditional explanations.

Modern Interpretation 🌟

• The Lu Yuan Palace can be analogized to the innate resource position in modern destiny analysis — every person possesses natural talents and opportunity windows in specific domains. Accurately identifying this position enables targeted development of advantages.
• "When the palace ruler is exalted and stars are in temple" conveys the core idea that talent requires environmental support. In modern terms, personal advantages must be placed within suitable industries and platforms to be maximized.
• Lu Ma sharing a palace corresponds in modern terms to a high degree of overlap between ability and opportunity — possessing not only professional competence (Lu) but also the mobility and action power (Ma) to convert it into tangible results.
• Yi Ma as "wealth at the disease position" reveals a profound practical logic: life's greatest turning points often emerge at the most difficult junctures. The disease position (place of difficulty) is precisely where wealth (turning point) resides.

Practical Value ⚡

• Career planning reference: By identifying the Lu Yuan Palace, one can recognize one's innate talent domains as a reference for career selection and deep cultivation.
• Mobility decisions: Those with strong Yi Ma are suited for work requiring mobility and expansion (such as business development, international trade, logistics and transportation); those with weak Yi Ma are best suited for stable, deep cultivation.
• The revelation of "wealth at the disease position": When facing career bottlenecks or life troughs, one may regard them as opportunities for the Yi Ma to activate — difficulties often harbor new paths to wealth and turning points.
• Methodology for judging fortune and misfortune: When judging any configuration, one must not look at a single indicator alone, but must synthesize palace strength, star temple or fall positions, and the ratio of auspicious to malefic stars among multiple factors.

Philosophical Reflection 🤔

• The dialectical relationship between Lu and Ma: Lu represents the resource for stability, while Ma represents the power of movement. The two appear contradictory but are in fact complementary — without Lu, Ma has nothing to carry; without Ma, Lu cannot circulate. This reflects a fundamental proposition of human life: the balance between preservation and advancement.
• The deep structure of "wealth at the disease position": Yi Ma being placed at the "disease position" essentially proclaims a philosophical proposition — the vitality of life is precisely born from places of lack. Just as trees root more deeply in barren soil, humans often unleash their strongest creativity in adversity.
• The cosmology with the Sun as the benchmark: The Lu Yuan Palace uses the Sun's passage through palaces as its calculation basis, reflecting the supremacy of yang and the foundation of the Sun in the cosmological hierarchy of the ancient astrological system. The Sun represents the source power of life, from which all calculations of fortune unfold.
• Lu Ma sharing a palace and "unity of Heaven and humanity": Lu Ma sharing a palace is regarded as "celebration," whose deeper meaning is the perfect resonance between heavenly mandate and temporal fortune — one's innate endowments precisely aligning with acquired temporal and spatial opportunities. This is precisely the supreme state that Chinese destiny philosophy pursues.

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Determining the Degrees of the Yi Ma Palace (Also Known as Gui Yuan or Ma Yuan)

The specific stellar degrees of the Yi Ma Palace are determined according to the San He Ju (Triple Harmony Groups), as listed below:

On Tian Ma and Di Yi

Paraphrase of the Original Text

The calculation method for Tian Ma (Heavenly Horse) and Di Yi (Earthly Post Station) is based on the Tian Yuan Lu ruler within the Yi Ma Palace. For example:

• For those born in Shen-Zi-Chen years, the Yi Ma is at Yin, and the hidden Jia salary is at Yin. Jia uses Fire as the Tian Yuan Lu, therefore Fire is the Tian Ma, and Jia Wood is the Di Yi.
• For those born in Yin-Wu-Xu years, the Yi Ma is at Shen, and the hidden Geng salary is at Shen. Geng uses Water as the Tian Yuan Lu, therefore Water is the Tian Ma, and Geng Metal is the Di Yi.
• For those born in Si-You-Chou years, the Yi Ma is at Hai, and the hidden Ren salary is at Hai. Ren uses Ketu as the Tian Yuan Lu, therefore Ketu is the Tian Ma, and Ren Water is the Di Yi.
• For those born in Hai-Mao-Wei years, the Yi Ma is at Si, and the hidden Bing-Wu salaries are at Si. Bing uses Wood as the Tian Yuan Lu, and Wu uses Earth as the Tian Yuan Lu, therefore Wood and Earth are the Tian Ma, and Bing Fire and Wu Earth are the Di Yi.

Calculation method: After determining the position of the primary star's Tian Ma palace, count in reverse across palaces for zero years, then count forward, moving one palace per year. If the current year's transit arrives at a position where the Yi Ma approaches the palace of official salary, there will be joyous events or transfers. If Saturn, Ketu, Mars, or Lunar Apogee are mixed within, this is a mixed horse approaching the official palace, which occurs only once every thirty years, and its verification may not be pure.

The Debate on the Essence of Yi Ma

The San Che Yi Lan states: "Yi (驿) is a post station. Ma (马) has the merit of substituting labor. It is seeing children at the disease position." For example, the Shen-Zi-Chen Water Bureau becomes diseased at Yin and obtains Wood as its child to substitute its labor, hence it is called Yi Ma.

However, the author raises objections to this theory: if this logic is followed, the Yin-Wu-Xu Fire Bureau becomes diseased at Shen, and one should take Earth rather than Metal as the horse — this theory fails to be coherent.

The author proposes a new theory instead: The theory of Yi Ma is that one sees wealth at the disease position, not that one sees children at the disease position.

• The Shen-Zi-Chen Water Bureau becomes diseased at Yin and obtains Bing Fire as wealth, serving as the horse to substitute its labor.
• The Yin-Wu-Xu Fire Bureau becomes diseased at Shen and obtains Geng Metal as wealth, serving as the horse to substitute its labor.
• The Si-You-Chou Metal Bureau becomes diseased at Hai and obtains Jia Wood as wealth, serving as the horse to substitute its labor.
• The Hai-Mao-Wei Wood Bureau becomes diseased at Si and obtains Wu Earth as wealth, serving as the horse to substitute its labor.

The ancients used official rank as Lu (salary) and wealth as Ma (horse); never has one heard of using children as the horse. Yin-Shen-Si-Hai are the four clash positions, hence the Yi (post station) is placed at the clash position; the presence of a horse within the Yi also adopts the meaning of longevity (Chang Sheng).

🧠 Deep Understanding

Core Concepts 💡

• The dual-layer structure of Tian Ma and Di Yi: Tian Ma is the transformed horse of qi (the star transformed from the Tian Yuan Lu ruler), while Di Yi is the material post station of form (the Tian Yuan Lu ruler itself). One is the source of momentum, the other is the vessel of manifestation.
• The essence of Yi Ma = seeing wealth at the disease position: This is the most precise definition of the Yi Ma concept — seeking the wealth star at the Five Elements' disease position, using wealth to substitute labor, and activating momentum. This theory corrects the logical flaw of "seeing children at the disease position" in the San Che Yi Lan.
• The principle of placing the post at four clash positions: Yin-Shen-Si-Hai are the four birth and four clash positions; placing the post at the clash position symbolizes the cosmic rhythm of growth within turbulence and seeking wealth through change.
• The theory of mixed horses: When the Tian Ma palace is contaminated by Earth, Ketu, Fire, and Lunar Apogee, the Yi Ma is impure, and the response of transfers is greatly delayed (occurring once every thirty years), emphasizing the importance of purity in configurations.

Modern Interpretation 🌟

• The modern correspondence of Tian Ma and Di Yi: Tian Ma can be understood as inner drive and natural inclination, while Di Yi represents practical action paths and resource carriers in reality. Only when the two cooperate can potential be converted into actual achievement.
• The realistic mapping of "wealth at the disease position": The patterns of modern career transformation confirm this ancient wisdom — people often stimulate their greatest earning power at the edges of their competence and comfort zones. Those seemingly "weak" domains (disease positions) often conceal new sources of wealth (wealth stars).
• Yi Ma and mobile professions: Those with strong Yi Ma are naturally suited for industries requiring movement, communication, and expansion. In modern society, the "movement" of Yi Ma has expanded from geographical displacement to the activity level of information flow, capital flow, and interpersonal relationship flow.
• The warning of mixed horses: Even with the Yi Ma illuminating one's chart, if disturbed by mixed stars (such as indecisiveness, scattered energy, or pursuing multiple fronts simultaneously), opportunities for advancement are greatly reduced. This reminds modern people: focus itself is a resource in destiny analysis.

Practical Value ⚡

• Career direction reference: Those with Yi Ma at Yin-Shen-Si-Hai are suited for outward-facing, expansion-oriented work; those whose Yi Ma is restrained or contaminated should enhance focus and deep cultivation in mobile work environments.
• The action guide of "wealth at the disease position": When feeling inadequate in certain abilities, it need not be a reason for avoidance. The logic of destiny analysis suggests: precisely this "disease position" may become the source of wealth — the weak point is the opportunity.
• Timing judgments for transfers: When the current year's transit brings the Tian Ma to the official position, it is often a favorable window for requesting promotions, position changes, or development in other locations. If a mixed horse approaches the official palace, one must patiently await a longer cycle.
• The principle of chart purity: When judging any configuration, whether it is contaminated or not is the key variable determining the force of verification. In modern decision-making, this translates to: simple and focused strategies are superior to complex and changeable plans.

Philosophical Reflection 🤔

• The transforming logic of disease and wealth: Yi Ma being placed at the disease position implicitly contains the core Chinese philosophical idea of "reversal is the movement of the Dao". Disease is deficiency, wealth is supplementation; the place of deficiency is precisely where life force is most actively complementing itself. This is in the same vein as the dialectics of "misfortune is that upon which fortune depends."
• The existential theory of movement and stillness: Lu is stillness (preservation, accumulation), while Ma is movement (advancement, circulation). The complete form of human life necessarily encompasses both movement and stillness, balancing defense and attack. The philosophy of Yi Ma teaches us: the meaning of life lies not in static possession but in dynamic creation.
• The symbolic significance of the four clash positions: Yin-Shen-Si-Hai are the four growth positions and four deviated positions, representing "unstable creative power" in the cosmos. Yi Ma being placed here means that true opportunity never lies in the center but rather at the periphery and the boundaries.

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📚 Related Knowledge

Related Concepts

Further Reading

• "San Che Yi Lan" (三车一览): The original source of the Yi Ma discourse, advocating the "seeing children at the disease position" theory — an important document for comparative research.
• Other chapters of "Xing Xue Da Cheng" (星学大成): The calculation of Lu Yuan Palace degrees and Yi Ma Palace degrees must be judged in combination with the complete natal chart; reading the entire work is recommended to establish a complete astrological framework.
• "Li Xu Zhong Ming Shu" (李虚中命书): One of the early theoretical sources on the Lu Ma relationship, with detailed elaboration on "using official rank as Lu and wealth as Ma."
• "San Ming Tong Hui" (三命通会): The discourse on Lu and Ma in the Zi Ping method, which can be cross-referenced with the stellar method to compare their similarities and differences.

Modern Research

• Research on the correlation between destiny patterns and career tendencies: Modern researchers have attempted statistical correlation analysis between Lu Ma configurations and career mobility and entrepreneurial tendencies, with preliminary findings that those with strong Yi Ma have significantly higher career change frequencies than ordinary people.
• Psychological confirmation of "wealth at the disease position": The concept of "post-traumatic growth" in positive psychology is highly consistent with the logic of "wealth at the disease position" — people often develop unique core competencies precisely in the process of responding to challenges and compensating for deficiencies.
• Stellar degrees and ancient astronomy and calendrics: The degrees of the Lu Yuan and Yi Ma Palaces involve precise degrees of the 28 lunar mansions such as Yi, Ji, and Zhen, and their calculation methods are closely related to the ancient astronomical observation system — an important topic for interdisciplinary research between the history of astronomy and destiny analysis.
• Five Elements generation and control and decision-making models: The Five Elements logic of Yi Ma's "wealth at the disease position" (such as the Shen-Zi-Chen Water Bureau diseased at Yin, obtaining Bing Fire as wealth) provides modern people with a "weakness is opportunity" decision-making framework, which has reference value in business strategy and personal development planning.