Also called: Seal pattern · Guo yin wen · Gong yin wen · National seal mark · Official's seal · Square of office

Where on the hand: Classically in the Qian palace (Mount of Luna), the Gen palace (Mount of Venus), the Dui palace (Upper Mars) or the central Ming Tang.

What it looks like: A clean closed rectangle standing on its own — the shape of the character 囗, a carved official seal seen from above. It must be complete on all four sides and not formed by other lines crossing.

The mark of authority conferred rather than earned by trade: rank, office, a government post, a command. Chinese sources call the version in the Qian palace 'heaven's seal and salary' and read it as a life of great honour; the version in the central palace is read as authority at the level of the state. A related reading assigns the seal in the Luna, Venus and Upper Mars palaces to military or executive command and elsewhere to civil office.

Read with care: Western palmistry reads a plain square as a mark of protection or, on a line, of confinement — not of office. The 'seal' reading is specific to Chinese practice and to a bureaucratic society in which a seal literally conferred power. Correction: the 武官/文職 split offered here as 'a related reading' is actually the 寶鏡紋 rule, transposed. PROVENANCE. This term is genuine and circulating in Chinese palmistry, but it could not be traced past two modern Chinese listicles ('六種富貴紋' and '九大掌紋') that propagate across content sites. No classical attestation was found. Direct access to 神相全編 and 古今圖書集成 was blocked, so this is 'not established' rather than 'not classical'.