Fú Dé

Counted backward from 命宮, 福德 is the eleventh, which puts it only two palaces forward of 命宮. It faces 財帛 and forms a triangle with 夫妻 and 遷移. The 身宮 can settle here, and on a forward-running chart under the default setting this palace comes as the third ten-year period.

福 is blessing and 德 is moral virtue, and the pairing carries the old idea that the two go together. The book names 天同 as lord of the palace and also describes 化祿 as the spirit of 福德. In modern writing this palace is often taken to be about inner contentment and the quality of a person's leisure, and that reading is offered here as a modern one because no passage in the book explains the palace that way.

The entries measure ease against toil. The usual vocabulary is 享福, the enjoyment of blessings, set against 劳心费力, the wearing out of mind and strength, and many entries add a note on whether the later years are calm. Some harsher lines in this section rest on a judgment about women's lives in the book's own time, and they are left out here. Like 財帛 and 田宅, this palace is strong on both of the book's lists.