How the chart is built
Zi Wei Dou Shu (“Purple Star Astrology”) is traditionally attributed to the Tang-dynasty astronomer Yixing. Instead of four pillars it produces a fixed board of twelve palaces, each tied to a branch, a stem and a set of stars.
- Soul palace — the reference palace. Its stars describe the chart's own temperament.
- Body palace — where the chart is said to express itself most after the mid-thirties.
- Major stars — fourteen major stars, placed from the lunar date and the hour. Their brightness changes how strongly each one reads.
- Four transformations — prosperity, power, fame and obstacle that mark which stars carry the chart's real emphasis.
- Ten-year cycles — ten-year cycles, one per palace. Their direction comes from the five-element class and the gender.
Reading a single cell
Every cell in the chart above carries four different pieces of information, and they are easy to mix up. Read one cell in this order:
- The palace name — what the cell is about (Career, Wealth, Spouse, Health…). Twelve palaces, one life area each.
- The branch and stem — Zi through Hai along the top-right corner of the cell. This is the board position, the same fixed grid every Zi Wei chart uses.
- The stars — a star, then its brightness, then any transformation. “Tan Lang · Desire · peak” means the star Tan Lang, traditionally glossed as Desire, sitting at its strongest brightness.
- The age band and growth phase — “36–45 · Bing Chen · Decline” means this palace governs the decade from 36 to 45, and its tone in that decade is labelled Decline.
The twelve growth phases, briefly
| Phase | Chinese | Rough sense |
|---|---|---|
| Birth | 長生 | Something starting, still small but alive |
| Bath | 沐浴 | Forming, unsteady, easily influenced |
| Cap | 冠帶 | Coming of age, taking on a role |
| Office | 臨官 | Holding a position, doing the work |
| Peak | 帝旺 | Full strength — and the point where decline begins |
| Decline | 衰 | Past the high point, energy easing |
| Sickness | 病 | Strained, needing care rather than force |
| Death | 死 | Ended in its current form, not a literal death |
| Tomb | 墓 | Stored, quiet, kept rather than active |
| Cut-off | 絕 | A break with what came before; the thinnest point |
| Conception | 胎 | A new form beginning, not yet visible |
| Nurture | 養 | Being fed and prepared before it starts again |
The fourteen major stars, one line each
These are the traditional one-line senses, not verdicts. A star's meaning in a specific chart depends on the palace it sits in, its brightness and the transformations attached to it — which is exactly where practitioners disagree, and why this page does not auto-generate a reading.
| Star | Gloss | Traditionally read as |
|---|---|---|
| 紫微 Zi Wei | Emperor | Authority, the centre everything else is arranged around |
| 天機 Tian Ji | Strategist | Movement, calculation, the mind that plans |
| 太陽 Tai Yang | Sun | Visibility, generosity, giving outward |
| 武曲 Wu Qu | Finance | Money, execution, the hard edge of getting things done |
| 天同 Tian Tong | Comfort | Ease, enjoyment, the wish not to struggle |
| 廉貞 Lian Zhen | Principle | Rules, boundaries, and the trouble they cause |
| 天府 Tian Fu | Treasury | Reserve, stability, holding rather than spending |
| 太陰 Tai Yin | Moon | Receptivity, interiors, care that is not announced |
| 貪狼 Tan Lang | Desire | Appetite, curiosity, wanting more of everything |
| 巨門 Ju Men | Discourse | Speech, argument, the gate things pass through |
| 天相 Tian Xiang | Minister | Support, mediation, making the system work |
| 天梁 Tian Liang | Shelter | Protection, seniority, help that arrives late but arrives |
| 七殺 Qi Sha | Vanguard | Direct force, the first one through the door |
| 破軍 Po Jun | Breaker | Upheaval, demolition, rebuilding from what is left |
How to read your own chart in four steps
- Start at the Soul palace. It is marked SOUL and is the reference point: the stars there describe the chart's own temperament before anything else is considered.
- Find the Body palace. Marked on its cell, it is said to express itself more strongly after the mid-thirties. Charts where the two coincide read differently from charts where they do not.
- Look for the four transformations. Prosperity, Power, Fame and Obstacle attach to specific stars and mark where the chart's real emphasis sits. A single transformation can outweigh a whole palace of minor stars.
- Then find the decade you are in now. The age band on each cell tells you which palace governs the present period. Reading a chart only for the current decade is a defensible way to start.
What this order discourages is the common mistake of reading one dramatic star as a verdict — “Breaker in my Wealth palace, so I will lose money”. Stars are read against their palace, their brightness and their transformations. One word is never the whole sentence.
Zi Wei versus the Four Pillars
They are not two views of one thing. BaZi works from the sexagenary pillars and solar terms; Zi Wei works from the lunar date, the hour and a fixed palace board. The two systems use different year boundaries, so the same birth can look “inconsistent” between them — that is normal, not an error.
What this page does not do
- No interpretation layer. The chart is exact; the reading is not generated. Star-by-star interpretation is where practitioners differ most, and inventing a confident English reading would be worse than leaving it to a human.
- No yearly horoscope. iztro can produce one; it needs the year and the four transformations at that level, and the output is dense enough that it deserves its own page and its own testing.
- No fixed-hour guessing. If the hour is unknown, the Soul palace cannot be placed honestly.
Hours accepted: 00:00–00:59 (early Zi) through 23:00–23:59 (late Zi). The late Zi hour (23:00–23:59) is treated as its own slot, which is the convention iztro uses.
Questions people ask
What is Zi Wei Dou Shu?
A separate Chinese system built on twelve palaces rather than four pillars. Each palace holds stars, and the position of those stars is computed from the lunar calendar, the birth hour and the five-element class of the year. It shares vocabulary with BaZi but not its arithmetic.
Do I need an exact birth hour for a Zi Wei chart?
Yes — more than BaZi does. The whole board is laid out from the hour, so a wrong hour moves the Life palace and every star with it. This page refuses to build a chart without an hour rather than guessing one, because a guessed hour produces a confident, wrong chart.
Can a Zi Wei chart and a BaZi chart disagree?
Yes, and that is expected rather than an error. They are different models: one reads branches and stems against the seasons, the other reads palaces and stars by position. Where they agree the reading is stronger; where they do not, the honest answer is that two traditions are describing different things.
What is an empty palace?
A palace with no major star sitting in it. Traditional practice reads it through the palace opposite, borrowing that palace's stars. It is a normal configuration, not a defect, and this page marks it so you are not left wondering why one box looks emptier than the others.