Zi Wei Dou Shu Chart
Zi Wei Dou Shu maps the structure and changes of life through the Twelve Palaces, stars, and Four Transformations. AI offers interpretation and an ongoing dialogue.
What is Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star Astrology)?
Zi Wei Dou Shu — Purple Star Astrology — is traditionally attributed to Chen Tuan around the turn of the 10th century. It maps your birth year, month, day, and hour onto a chart of twelve palaces populated by fourteen major stars, then reads the Four Transformations and ten-year Luck Cycles that move through them. Where BaZi describes elemental flow, Zi Wei describes life as a set of scenes.
The Twelve Palaces: twelve facets of a life
A Zi Wei chart divides life into twelve palaces. The stars and transformations that land in each palace describe that domain:
Life & Body Palace
Your innate structure and where you actually invest your energy. The Life Palace sets the tone; the Body Palace shows the emphasis.
Siblings · Spouse · Children
Peers and partnerships, marriage and partner, children and creativity — your closest circle.
Wealth · Health · Travel
Money patterns and how you handle it, constitution and health tendencies, movement and encounters away from home.
Friends · Career · Property
Network and subordinates (classically the Servants Palace), profession and standing, real estate and household.
Fortune · Parents
Inner life and enjoyment, plus parents, elders, and matters of documents.
The stars: the language of the chart
A natal chart places 70 stars, each with a distinct role:
14 Major Stars
Zi Wei, Tian Ji, Tai Yang, Wu Qu, Tian Tong, Lian Zhen, Tian Fu, Tai Yin, Tan Lang, Ju Men, Tian Xiang, Tian Liang, Qi Sha, Po Jun — they set each palace’s character.
6 Lucky & 6 Malefic
Wen Chang & Wen Qu, Zuo Fu & You Bi, Tian Kui & Tian Yue are the six lucky stars; Qing Yang & Tuo Luo, Huo Xing & Ling Xing, Di Kong & Di Jie are the six malefics — the forces that add and subtract.
Four Transformations
Hua Lu (wealth), Hua Quan (power), Hua Ke (fame), and Hua Ji (obstacle), triggered by Heavenly Stems — the most flexible and decisive mechanism in the system.
Minor stars & the twelve spirits
Hong Luan, Tian Ma, Hua Gai, Xian Chi and other minor stars, plus four sets of twelve spirits (Chang Sheng, Bo Shi, Sui Qian, Jiang Qian), fill in the detail.
How to Read Your Zi Wei Chart
A Zi Wei chart is built from a few stacked layers. Each of the items below can be traced on your own chart.
Life Palace & Five Element Class
The Life Palace is located from your birth month and hour (count forward from the Yin palace to your month, then backward from your birth hour). The Na Yin element of the Life Palace’s stem-branch fixes your Five Element Class — Water 2, Wood 3, Metal 4, Earth 5, or Fire 6 — which in turn places the Zi Wei star and sets the age your Luck Cycles begin.
The Twelve Palaces ExplainedThe fourteen major stars
Zi Wei is placed from the Five Element Class and birth day; the other thirteen major stars follow by fixed relationships. Which palace each lands in — and how bright it is — is the skeleton of the whole reading.
The Fourteen Major Stars ExplainedStar brightness (Miao / Wang / Xian)
The same star carries different force in different palaces, graded across 7 levels from Miao (temple) down to Xian (trapped). We maintain 732 brightness data points across 61 stars, so brightness is never estimated.
The Four Transformations
Your birth-year stem triggers four transformations, marking innate flow and friction. Beyond birth-year transformations, we compute palace-stem transformations for every palace — self-transformation when a palace’s own stem transforms a star within it, and inward transformation from the opposite palace. That is flying-star depth most calculators skip.
Luck Cycles & annual charts
Each Luck Cycle runs ten years, starting at an age set by your Five Element Class, moving forward or backward by gender and year polarity. We compute 5 levels of transit — Luck Cycle, Minor Limit, annual, monthly, and daily — each flying its own transformations and placing 16 transit stars.
Purple Star Astrology guideAccuracy
Why Our Charts Are Accurate
From the leap-month convention to star brightness — exactly how we place every star, which classical text we follow, and how you can verify it.
Three Gates Behind an Accurate Zi Wei Chart
Give the same birth data to different Zi Wei calculators and you can get different charts. The disagreements almost always come from three places: how the birth time is corrected, which month a leap-month birth belongs to, and which brightness table the stars are read against.
Here is exactly what we do at each of the three gates — specific, verifiable rules rather than a vague claim of professionalism.
Gate 1 · Correcting the birth time
Zi Wei shares one timekeeping engine with our BaZi calculator: historical time zone and daylight saving rules for 124 countries and regions, true solar time computed from your birthplace’s legal standard meridian, and an optional early/late zi-hour convention. The pipeline order is fixed — daylight saving, then true solar time, then the zi-hour rule, then the chart — and every step is inspectable. The Zi Wei side alone carries 8 time zone integration tests asserting standard meridians, DST corrections, and true-solar results.
Gate 2 · Which month a leap-month birth belongs to
A leap-month birth can shift the Life Palace by a whole position, because the classical schools disagree: one treats the leap month as the current month, another as the following month, and the Wang Tingzhi (Central Prefecture) school splits it at the fifteenth day. We implement all 3 conventions, default to the most widely used current-month rule, and leave the choice with you. 29 dedicated tests guard this behavior, including three real leap-month charts from 2017, 2020, and 2023.
Gate 3 · Which brightness table the stars follow
Brightness is the intensity scale of every Zi Wei reading, yet copies of the tables disagree with one another. Ours follows the Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu, then verifies against 24 authoritative reference charts as full-chart snapshots — every star in every palace checked, 1462 assertions in total, with charts ranging from 1875 to 2017. This is not a table copied from a book; it is a table checked star by star against real charts.
An Engine You Can Audit, Not Just Trust
Claims of professionalism are cheap; engineering practices are checkable. These are the ones behind every chart cast on this page.
700,000+ charts calculated for 70,000+ users on FateMaster
An algorithm that keeps getting upgraded — currently v12
The Zi Wei engine is versioned, currently v12. That number tracks how far the algorithm has climbed: a full set of 16 transit stars across the major and annual cycles, true solar time resolved against the birthplace's standard meridian, and historical time-zone rules for 124 countries and regions — the algorithm keeps reaching deeper and wider, and every upgrade is logged in the source code. What you store is your birth data, not one version's output: after an upgrade, your chart picks it up the next time you open it.
65 test files, 711 automated test cases
Star placement, brightness, transformations, Luck Cycles and Minor Limits, annual/monthly/daily transits, Life and Body lords, the four sets of twelve spirits — each layer has its own tests, and a coverage test ensures no star goes untested.
Real reference charts spanning 151 years: 1875–2026
Verification charts run from 1875 through 2026, including five consecutive years from 1895 to 1899 and a dense month-by-month, day-by-day, hour-by-hour sweep within 1899 — covering leap months, midnight crossings, and daylight saving edge cases.
The classical formulas are in the code
Life Palace, Body Palace, the Zi Wei star, the Five Tigers month-stem rule, the Na Yin element class — the code comments quote the classical formula each step follows, so anyone with the books can check our implementation.
The Classical Sources Behind the Rules
The rules in this engine are not improvised. The Four Transformations formula, the brightness tables for the fourteen major stars, and the Northern/Southern Dipper assignment of Life and Body lords all follow the Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu, with the original verses quoted in the source comments.
The Sui Qian and Jiang Qian twelve spirits follow the conventions of mainstream professional charting software, with the specific version pinned in the comments. The twelve palaces use the modern name "Friends Palace", with the classical "Servants Palace" noted alongside.
- Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗数全书)source for transformations, brightness, and placement formulas
- Complete Book · Life Palace Verses (论命宫诀)the direct source of our fourteen-star brightness tables
- Yuanhai Ziping (渊海子平)shared source for stem-branch Na Yin and the Five Element system
Get started
Get Your Zi Wei Chart
What the reading covers, how to use the calculator, and answers to common questions.
Comprehensive Chart Analysis
In-depth analysis of the twelve palaces and transformation structure, offering perspective on your life choices
Overall structure
Life Palace stars, Five Element Class, and full-chart distribution — your innate tone and the level of your chart
Career & wealth
Stars and transformations in the Career and Wealth palaces — professional path, money patterns, and financial tendencies
Love & family
Spouse, Children, and Parents palaces — relationship traits, affinity with children, and family dynamics
Health & inner life
Health and Fortune palaces — constitutional tendencies and how you settle your inner world
Luck Cycles & annual timing
Transformations triggered in your current Luck Cycle and year — the rhythm and the windows
*This service is based on traditional Chinese metaphysics, for reference and entertainment only. Important decisions should consider multiple factors comprehensively
How to Use
Four simple steps to your Zi Wei chart analysis
Enter basic information
Fill in name, gender, and other basics
Select birth time
Birth date and time down to the hour
Generate the chart
The system casts the chart and places every star
Read the analysis
Work through the detailed interpretation
Frequently Asked Questions About Zi Wei Dou Shu
Why is an accurate birth time required?
Zi Wei locates the Life Palace and every star from the birth hour. One hour off shifts the Life Palace by a whole palace, and the distribution of stars across all twelve palaces changes with it. This is where Zi Wei differs most from BaZi: a BaZi chart without a birth hour still yields three usable pillars, but a Zi Wei chart without one does not stand up at all.
I was born in a leap month. Which month does my chart use?
Leap months are the single biggest source of disagreement in Zi Wei charting. The classical schools split three ways: treat the leap month as the current month, as the following month, or (in the Wang Tingzhi Central Prefecture school) split it at the fifteenth day. The three conventions can produce different Life Palaces. We implement all 3, default to the most widely used current-month rule, and let you switch and compare. 29 dedicated tests guard this, including real charts from 2017, 2020, and 2023.
How is Zi Wei Dou Shu different from BaZi?
BaZi uses eight characters to describe the flow of five elemental forces — it is strong on structure and momentum. Zi Wei divides life into twelve palaces and uses stars and transformations to describe each domain concretely — it is strong on detail and scene. Same roots, different methods, and they complement each other: many practitioners read both, taking the tone from BaZi and the specifics from Zi Wei.
How is star brightness determined?
The 7 brightness levels — from Miao (temple) down to Xian (trapped) — describe how much force a star carries in a given palace. Our tables follow the Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu · Life Palace Verses, cover 732 data points across 61 stars, and have been checked star by star against 24 authoritative reference charts in 1462 assertions.
Do you only compute birth-year transformations?
No. Beyond the birth-year transformations, we compute palace-stem transformations for every palace: a self-transformation when a palace’s own stem transforms a star sitting in it, and an inward transformation when the opposite palace’s stem transforms a star into it. Luck Cycles, Minor Limits, and annual, monthly, and daily transits each fly their own transformations as well.
What does the AI analysis produce?
It reads your chart structure, major stars, and transformations, then covers overall pattern, career, wealth, relationships, health, and near-term timing, with actionable suggestions. The chart itself is cast by deterministic code — AI only writes the interpretation on top of the finished chart, and never decides where a star lands.
What if I don't know my exact birth hour?
You can cast a chart with your best estimate as a rough reference. Where possible, confirm the time from records or family memory. If you only know the approximate window, try the two adjacent hours and compare the resulting Life Palaces to see which chart fits your life experience better.
How early or late a birth date can you chart?
We support births from 1800 to 2100, including lunar leap months. Our verification charts reach back to 1875, and those historical charts are checked star by star just like the modern ones.
Go Deeper
Every concept used on this page has a full guide. Start with the ones behind your own chart.
- Purple Star Astrology Guide
- The Twelve Palaces Explained
- The Fourteen Major Stars Explained
- Pattern Dictionary
- Marriage Palace explained
- Wealth Palace explained
- Career Palace explained
- Calculation Methodology
- True Solar Time
- The Zi Hour Debate
- The Five Elements
- The Ten Heavenly Stems
- The Twelve Earthly Branches
- The Sixty Jiazi
- Na Yin Five Elements
- Four Pillars of Destiny