For beginners, it is more practical to learn key palaces first rather than memorizing every star at once.
A chart is built from twelve palaces. Starting at the self palace, they run through siblings, spouse, children, wealth, health, travel, friends, career, property, fortune, and parents, and each is read as covering a different area of life. Learning what those twelve slots cover comes before learning star names.
Start with self and relationship palaces, then connect career and finance layers for practical interpretation.
A single palace is not read in isolation. It is read together with the palace directly opposite it and the two that form a trine, a grouping usually called the three-and-four view. Think of it as a safeguard against drawing an outsized conclusion from one position alone.
The heavenly stem of your birth year attaches four transformations to four stars, commonly rendered as wealth, power, status, and obstruction. The last one is more useful when read as a signal that attention and pressure concentrate in that area, that is, a recurring assignment, rather than as a verdict of misfortune.
The most widely cited source is the Ming-era compendium of Zi Wei Dou Shu, and later lineages diverged on how stars are placed and weighted. That is why the same birth data can produce slightly different charts depending on the school being followed.
Code Destiny uses summary-first explanations followed by deeper details for easier learning.
One caveat: the self palace is fixed by birth time, so an uncertain hour can shift the whole arrangement. Treat the reading as material for reflection rather than a settled forecast.