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The craft your Zodi Animal practices
五行 · featured system
The five phases that move through everything — now mapped to the seven chakras, each with its own yoga practice.
Four Pillars
Cast your charttoolBaZi八字 Bāzì · the Chinese readingSaju Palja사주팔자 · the Korean readingYour Day Master日主 RìzhǔThe Ten Gods十神 ShíshénTwo skies, read together
The Moon overhead, its phases, and the path they light.
The Siblings Palace · Sibling Court · Palace 02 of 12
The Peer Circle is the siblings palace: the room of brothers, sisters, and the close peers who stand beside you as equals rather than above or below you.
The palace name is written 兄弟宮 xiōng dì gōng. The first two characters are the everyday word for brothers, 兄弟 (xiōng dì): an elder brother and a younger brother, stood side by side. Take them apart and the name stops being a label and starts telling you what the room is for.
Put the three together and 兄弟宮 xiōng dì gōng reads, character by character, as the palace of brothers: the room that holds siblings, and with them the peers you count as equals. 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 are 兄 (xiōng) and 弟 (dì), elder brother and younger brother.
The Peer Circle covers the people who stand beside you as equals: brothers and sisters first, and then the close peers, classmates, and colleagues you count as your own generation.
Its core is siblings. A reader looks here for the number and standing of brothers and sisters, the birth order, and above all the quality of the bond: whether siblings back each other, keep their distance, or pull in different directions. In the older texts this was quite literal, a reading of the family a person is born into alongside them.
From there the tradition widens the room. The same palace covers the people you treat as equals rather than as superiors or dependents: close friends of your own age, study partners, and workmates. That is why the site calls it the Peer Circle. It reads the horizontal relationships in a life, the ones that stand shoulder to shoulder with you, as against a boss above or a child below. The plain question it answers is who is beside you, and do they help you or compete with you.
Reading the Peer Circle uses the same short routine as any palace. 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 Peer Circle. Treat each as a starting sketch, not a verdict: brightness and the court can shift any of them a long way.
紫微 (zǐ wēi), the Emperor star, in the Peer Circle points to a sibling or peer of real standing. Often it marks an elder or a leading sibling who is capable and used to being looked up to, or a set of peers with weight to them. The bond carries dignity and you can lean on it.
The catch is that an emperor likes to lead. The relationship runs smoothest when you meet that sibling as an equal and let them take the front seat where it makes sense; strained, it can feel like being managed by a brother or sister rather than standing level with them.
太陽 (tài yáng), the Sun, in the Peer Circle reads as a warm, giving, outward bond, and it often points to a prominent brother or to male peers who stand out. This is the generous sibling who shows up, shares what they have, and takes the lead in looking after others.
Brightness matters here. A bright Sun reads as steady warmth and support; a dim one can mean a sibling who gives past their own strength or shines for others while running low themselves, so a reader checks the strength level before deciding which.
天同 (tiān tóng), the Harmony star, in the Peer Circle reads as gentle, easy, affectionate bonds. Siblings and close peers get along, help each other without keeping score, and the room feels comfortable rather than competitive.
The soft side of the same star is that the bond can be a little passive: long on comfort and short on push, with everyone content to keep the peace. A reader looks at the court to see whether that ease has any backbone behind it.
巨門 (jù mén), the Dark Gate, is the star of the mouth and of words, so in the Peer Circle it points to friction that runs through talk: misunderstandings, arguments, gossip, or things left unsaid between siblings and peers.
It is not a verdict of bad relationships. Handled well, with things said plainly and doubts aired, the same star can read as honesty and a bond that can take hard conversations. Handled badly, it slides into cold spells and distance, so a reader watches how the room communicates.
Some charts have no major star in the Peer Circle at all. Rather than read an empty room, the tradition borrows the stars sitting in the opposite palace, 奴僕宮 nú pú gōng (Friends), and reads them into the peer bond.
In plain words, an empty Peer Circle often points to siblings who play a smaller part in the story, with the friends and equals you choose for yourself mattering more than the ones you were born beside. It reads as a peer life shaped by the wider circle, so the opposite palace and the court carry more of the weight.
In Chinese thought the bond between siblings is not a minor one. It sits among the relationships a life is built on, and the palace name carries that weight.
The whole system, 紫微斗數 zǐ wēi dǒu shù, literally the Purple Star and the Dipper, maps a life onto the layout of an imperial court, so each area of life is given its own room, or 宮 gōng. That siblings get a room of their own, this early in the twelve, tells you how the tradition ranks them.
Classical ethics gives brotherhood a named virtue. Alongside filial respect for parents sits 悌 tì, the respect a younger sibling owes an elder and the care an elder owes a younger. There is also a common saying that brothers are as close as 手足 shǒu zú, hands and feet: parts of one body that act together and cannot easily be replaced. Read that idea onto a chart and this room is asking a plain question, how strong and how willing are the hands and feet a person has beside them.
This is also why the palace reaches past blood siblings so naturally. The word 兄弟 xiōng dì is used in daily speech for close friends and comrades, not only for the children of one's parents, so a Chinese reader hears siblings and trusted equals in the same breath. The Peer Circle keeps that width: it reads the family you were born beside and the friends you chose as one kind of bond, the people who stand level with you.
The Peer Circle 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. These palace pages are being built; the links point to them.
Once you know which star sits in your Peer Circle, its brightness, and its court, everything on this page becomes a reading of your own siblings and peers rather than a lesson.
Cast your chart