Bazi House Of Life Pillar

The house of life (命宫) is a supplementary pillar that can be erected from a person’s bazi to look deeper into the reading. It is created after an individual is born.

It can sometimes be referred to as the life palace or later heaven palace and is usually tabulated together with the house of conception.

This is because it can also be used for the same purposes as the house of conception.

However, the main purpose of the house of life is usually to ascertain the influence ancestors would have on one’s 4 pillars. It can also offer a peek into a person’s career outlook.

When we go into Chinese astrology, the house of life can also be a representative of the position of the sun at the time when a person was born.

To generate the house of life pillar, the it’s earthly branch should be determined first.

This can be done by referring to the below table.

The rows refer to the month branch in bazi, and the columns refer to the hour branch.

Legend of the symbols can be found here.

It must be noted that the top row starts at E3 because that represents the first month of the solar calendar.

By referring to the above table, a person with a month branch of E7 and hour branch of E8 would have E5 as the earthly branch on the house of life.

Something important to note is that in traditional practice, when a person is born in the second half of the birth month, the branch of the life palace should rightfully be the next branch after the one indicated in the table above. This is because it has to account for the energy shift in the mid-month.

However, many modern practitioners skip this step as they find it unnecessary.

With this branch identified, and using the year stem, refer to the table below to identify the heavenly stem of the house of life.

So if a person has a year stem of H10, then by referring to the row E5, which is the branch of the house of life identified earlier, we get H3.

The house of life will therefore be H3-E5.

Just like the house of conception, the house of life palace is not a necessary pillar to erect when doing basic bazi for feng shui of a house.

It is usually only referred to when it is necessary to look deeper into a person’s bazi for specific reasons.