Li Palace

The palace layer of a chart is the ground a matter stands on — the surroundings the person asking is in, the space they live and work in, the compass direction, and the part of the body that answers to it. Li holds the due south and belongs to Fire. Its trigram is hollow in the middle, a broken line held between two solid ones: bright on the outside, empty at the centre. All of it gathers into a single word — radiance: light, beauty, and the state of being looked at. And the shape of the trigram is the caution built into it, because the brighter a thing here gets, the more it depends on being fed. A fire is visible from a long way off; it is also over the moment nothing is left to burn.

• Places and settings: bright ground, ground meant to be looked at, ground that has fire in it — famous sites and holy places, grand streets, public squares, cinemas and theatres, exhibition halls, museums, libraries, galleries; television stations, advertising towers, printing works; and kitchens, kilns and furnaces, smelting and welding shops, and the scene of a fire.
• People and affairs: the middle daughter; those who appear in public on their looks or their talent (beauties, actors and stars, artists, scholars and writers, beauticians); those who work by the written word and by the eye (editors, reporters, authors, painters, inspectors and investigative analysts); and the roles that handle paper of value — finance, banking, securities.
• Objects: calligraphy and paintings, newspapers and books, maps, contracts, certificates and seals, currency and securities — anything written down and visible as proof tends to belong to Li; along with lamps and lighting, cameras and imaging equipment, cosmetics, and glass doors and windows.
• The body: the eyes and the head, the heart, the small intestine, the red blood cells, and the throat and the upper burner.

The hollow middle is the most important thing this trigram says about itself: the brighter the outside, the emptier the centre. So the splendour of Li comes with a question attached — can it be kept up? That is the structure of the trigram, not a verdict of good or bad fortune.

Nature

A wish to be seen and recognised, and a fine sensitivity both to self-worth and to how other people are looking. The urge to perform runs strong and affirmation is genuinely wanted. The brighter it looks from outside, the emptier it can feel to the person involved from inside.

Style

Willing to stand at the front, good at putting a view into words, and at their best under a light. Work tends to be judged by how it comes across, and applause lifts this person exactly as far as a flat room drops them.

Strength

A natural at broadcasting and at teaching — able to take something complicated and make it land, and able to light other people up in the process. Media, education, public speaking and brand work are where the person involved fits.

Impression

There is light on this person; wherever they go, eyes find them. Confident, warm, expansive to look at. It is only later that it becomes clear how much the brightest people need something underneath holding them up.

Pitfall

Too much rests on approval from outside. Keeping the image up means producing without a break, and the person involved forgets to go back and put anything into their own reserves. When the applause stops, the confidence comes down with it.

Read for a dwelling, the Li cell gives two things: how the whole house presents itself when Li energy is in season and when it has fallen out of season, and which kinds of place outside the house belong to Li.

• When the energy is strong: the building is fresh and good-looking, and its lines are clean.
• When the energy is weak: perfectly ordinary, with nothing about it that stands out.
• Outside the house, what belongs to Li: ground that faces the sun, famous monuments, holy places and churches, grand streets; cinemas, television stations, art museums, painting academies, libraries, printing works, advertising towers, tram stops; and smelting plants and radiography rooms.

The strong-energy and weak-energy descriptions characterise the whole building, not one room inside it, and the "places" are types of environment out of doors. At the palace layer there is still no table matching a palace to a particular room indoors.

When the indicator lands in this palace, the direction you take is South. This mapping is fixed and does not vary by matter.