The Friends Palace (交友宫, Jiāo Yǒu Gōng) is one of the twelve palaces of a Zi Wei Dou Shu chart. Your wider circle — friends, staff, followers — and whether the crowd around you is a resource or a leak.
What the Friends Palace governs
The Friends Palace (older name: Servants Palace, 仆役宫) covers the wider network beyond peers: friends, employees, subordinates, followers, the crowd you can mobilize. It answers a blunt question: when you need help at scale, who actually shows up? For anyone who leads — managers, founders, creators — this palace reads as clearly as the Career Palace.
How a reader reads this palace
Benefics with assistants (Zuo Fu/You Bi, Tian Kui/Tian Yue) read as a network that delivers: loyal staff, friends who mobilize. Malefics or Hua Ji read as leaks through people — betrayal, freeloading, employees who cost more than they produce; the classic advice is then "lead small and choose slow". An empty Friends Palace borrows the Siblings Palace: the network behaves like an inner circle — few, intense, family-like bonds instead of a broad crowd.
- Children Palace — juniors and followers share one axis
- Parents Palace — authority up and authority down — the full chain of command
- Siblings Palace (opposite) — inner circle vs. outer crowd — together they map the whole social life
When these stars sit here
Questions, answered
For anyone who hires, it reads as the staff palace: benefics mean teams that deliver, malefics or Hua Ji warn of leaks through people — churn, freeloading, divided loyalty. The classic remedy is hiring slow and keeping the core small.
Siblings is the inner circle: equals who share your risk (siblings, co-founders). Friends is the outer crowd: the wider network you mobilize. They sit opposite each other, and a chart often trades one for the other — strong inner circle, thin crowd, or the reverse.
See your own Friends Palace
Your chart places real stars in all twelve palaces. The full Zi Wei reading calculates the map, matches it to classical verdicts, and writes each palace in plain language.
Get my Zi Wei reading