Friends 僕役
pú yì · Also written 交友Friends, networks, and the wider social field with its support and its friction. The palace of everyone beyond your close circle.
What the Friends palace covers
僕役 is the wider social field: friends, networks, colleagues at a distance, and the people whose support or friction reaches you without being close in.
Classical practice reads both directions at once here. What the network gives you and what it costs are the same subject, and a reading that only counts the support has read half the palace.
Read it with Siblings opposite it
This palace faces 兄弟 Siblings, and the pairing is a matter of range.
Siblings is the near circle, the equals close enough to be in your business. Friends is everyone past that. Reading the two together shows where a chart’s social weight actually sits, and the interesting charts are usually the lopsided ones, busy at one range and quiet at the other.
Its trine palaces, Children and Parents, complete the 三方四正 influence set reaching this palace.
The star supplies the tendency, the palace supplies the subject
The palace supplies the subject and the stars supply the tendency, as everywhere in the system.
A commanding star here describes a different relationship with a network than a reserved one does, and neither is a better result. What a reading produces is the shape of that relationship, not a headcount.
When it is empty
An empty 僕役 palace does not describe loneliness, and reading it that way is an overreach.
空宮 means no major star landed there. It is read through Siblings opposite, borrowing those stars, and the result is indirect and weaker than a direct read. Where a palace matters to the question being asked and is empty, a good reading names that limitation instead of talking around it.
Which stars are in yours depends on your birth hour, and you can draw the chart free.
Common questions
NotesWhy does this palace have two names?
僕役 and 交友 are both used for the same cell. The older 僕役 carries a sense of subordinates that modern practice has largely dropped, and 交友, meaning making friends, is the form many lineages and our own knowledge notes prefer. The engine draws the chart with 僕役, so that is the character shown here, with the alternative named rather than hidden.
What is the difference between this and the siblings palace?
Distance. 兄弟 covers the handful of people close enough to argue with; 僕役 covers the network past that. They sit opposite each other precisely because they are one subject read at two ranges.
Does a busy friends palace mean I am popular?
It suggests the social field is an active part of the chart, which cuts both ways. Classical practice reads this palace for support and friction together, and a crowded one can describe someone who gets a great deal from their network and also spends a great deal on it.
What reaches Friends from across the chart
Computed · 三方四正A palace is never read alone. The one directly opposite informs it, and two more reach it from across the square at a hundred and twenty degrees. Together those four cells are its influence set, and a star transformed in any of them is felt here.
At this level the triangle is used lightly, mainly to notice when a palace is reinforced from across the chart. It is not turned into a full geometric audit.
What is in your own Friends palace
Draw your twelve palaces free →This page describes the palace. A reading draws your plate from your birth hour, names the stars actually sitting in this one, weighs how brightly they sit, and reads it against the palace facing it rather than in isolation.
Still working out which system answers your question? All twelve palaces
Method and sources
The order of the twelve, the palace opposite this one and its two trine palaces are computed from a chart drawn by the same engine the readings use, never typed. What each palace covers follows the classical text listed below.
Read against the classical treatment of the stars and the twelve palaces:
- 紫微斗數全書 Ziwei Doushu Quanshu The Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu