Starpath · Time
Ten-year chapters
Life moves through the palaces in steps of about ten years.
Your first chapter starts in the Life palace, at the age given by your bureau: 2 for water, 3 for wood, 4 for metal, 5 for earth and 6 for fire. Every ten years the chapter moves on to the next palace.
Which way it moves depends on your birth year and gender. A man born in a yang year, or a woman born in a yin year, moves forward through the palaces; otherwise the chapters move backward.
Each chapter takes on the colour of its palace. A chapter in the Career palace tends to be about work and achievement; one in the Spouse palace about partnership.
Go deeper
Ages are counted the traditional East Asian way: you are 1 at birth and add a year at each lunar new year. That is why chart ages can be one or two years higher than the age you usually give.
Some schools also transform four stars for each chapter, from the stem of the chapter’s palace. Astravia follows the Ni Haixia line of its engine, which keeps the birth-year transformations fixed and reads a chapter by its palace; chapter transformations are shown for reference only.