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Create your free account奴僕宮 Nú Pú Gōng · Friends and helpers · Palace 08 of 12
The Friends palace is the room of the people around you: friends, subordinates, colleagues, and the helpers who work with and for you. Its old name means servants; a modern chart reads it as your network.
The palace name is written 奴僕宮 nú pú gōng. The first two characters, 奴 nú and 僕 pú, both mean servant, and together they name the servants and retainers of a household. Take the three characters apart and the name stops being a label and starts telling you what the room is for.
Put the three together and 奴僕宮 nú pú gōng reads, character by character, as the palace of 奴僕 (nú pú): the room that holds the servants and helpers of a life. Every one of the twelve palaces ends in 宮 (gōng), one room of the chart. The characters in front say which room, and here they name the people who stand around you rather than the self at the center.
The Friends palace covers everyone in your life who is neither family nor partner: friends, subordinates, colleagues, staff, followers, and the helpers you rely on to get things done.
In plain reading terms, this palace answers a simple question: who is around you, and are they a help or a drain. The stars that sit here describe the kind of people you draw to your side, the loyalty and quality of your support, whether you lead a wide circle or a small trusted few, and how much you can count on others when it matters. It reaches from close friends to the people who work under you, since in the old picture they were the same class of person: the ones who serve alongside a life rather than share its center.
Because it is about others rather than the self, this palace is often read as a measure of support. A strong Friends palace points to loyal, capable people who back you up; a troubled one points to fickle friends, unreliable staff, or help that costs more than it gives. It is also read for balance against the self: a person with a modest Command palace but a strong Friends palace can go far on the strength of the people around them.
Reading the Friends palace is a short, fixed routine. You look at four things, in order, and you never read the room on its own.
Here are five worked examples of what a reader might say when a given star sits in the Friends palace. Treat each as a starting sketch, not a verdict: brightness and the court can shift any of them a long way.
貪狼 (tān láng), the Desire star, in the Friends palace gives a wide, lively social world. This person collects people easily, moves between circles, and is often the one who knows someone in every room. Connections tend to be plentiful and useful.
The catch is depth. A reader checks whether the breadth of the circle comes with real loyalty or just company, since this star can gather many acquaintances and few who stay when things get hard.
天同 (tiān tóng), the Harmony star, in the Friends palace gives warm, easygoing relationships. Friends are gentle and supportive, the atmosphere around this person tends to be kind, and helpers stay because they are treated well.
The softer side is a tendency to lean on the group for comfort and to avoid conflict even when a friendship or a staff problem needs a firm hand. A reader looks at the court to see whether the ease turns into genuine backing or into pleasant company that never quite delivers.
太陽 (tài yáng), the Sun, in the Friends palace gives generous, outward-facing relationships. This person often gives more than they take, draws prominent or influential people to their side, and is known as someone who helps others get ahead.
Brightness matters here. A bright Sun reads as a genuinely helpful, well-connected circle; a dim one can read as pouring energy into friends and staff who give little back, so a reader checks the strength level before deciding which way it runs.
破軍 (pò jūn), the Vanguard, in the Friends palace gives a circle that changes often. Friendships and working relationships tend to form fast and break sharply, and the people around this person shift with each new chapter of life rather than staying fixed.
A reader reads the court carefully here, because that turnover can clear out the wrong people and bring in the right ones, or it can leave a person repeatedly without steady support. The Siblings axis and the wider court tell you which.
Some charts have no major star in the Friends palace at all. Rather than read an empty room, the tradition borrows the stars sitting in the opposite palace, 兄弟宮 xiōng dì gōng (Siblings), and reads them into the friends and helpers.
In plain words, an empty Friends palace usually points to relationships shaped by circumstance rather than by one fixed pattern: the people around you change with where you are and what you are doing. It often reads as adaptable rather than weak, and it makes the opposite palace and the wider court matter even more than usual.
The name of this palace carries its history on its face. It was built for a world of households and retainers, and it has been quietly widened to fit the one we live in now.
When the system took shape, the people around a person of standing were servants and retainers. The word 奴僕 nú pú names exactly that class: the staff of a household, the hands that did the work, the ones who served rather than shared the seat of command. So the palace that covered everyone outside your family and your marriage was, plainly, the servants palace. It sat opposite the Siblings palace because both are palaces of peers and dependents, the near circle of people who are neither you nor your parents nor your spouse.
Modern readers kept the palace but changed the frame. Few people today employ retainers, and the palace had always reached past literal servants to friends, followers, and anyone who works alongside you. So most contemporary charts rename it 交友宮 jiāo yǒu gōng, the friends palace, and read it as your support network: friends, colleagues, staff, and helpers of every kind. The older name 奴僕宮 nú pú gōng stays in the classical texts and on traditional charts, and this page keeps it as the primary name because it is the one the old sources use.
The shift is worth holding in mind, because it changes the tone of a reading. Read as servants, the palace asks whether the people below you serve you well. Read as friends, it asks whether the people beside you stand with you. Both questions live in the same room, and a careful reader hears both.
The Friends palace is never read alone. Three other rooms are always read with it: the opposite palace and the two triangle partners. Together they make the court, 三方四正 sān fāng sì zhèng. Some of these palace pages are still being built; the links point to them.
Once you know which star sits in your Friends palace, its brightness, and its court, everything on this page becomes a reading of the people around you rather than a lesson.
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