Zi Wei Dou Shu · twelve palaces, fourteen stars.
Your full Purple Star chart — 12 palaces on a 4×4 board, 14 main stars, the Four Transformations (Lu · Quan · Ke · Ji), and the Da Xian 10-year cycles radiating out from your Ming palace.
Your 12 palaces appear here.
Enter your birth date, time, city, and polarity, then compute. 12 palaces with their main stars, the Four Transformations, and your Da Xian decades will appear in this panel.
How we compute this
◆ The methodConvert to lunar calendar
Zi Wei Dou Shu runs on the Chinese lunar calendar. Your Gregorian birth date + time + timezone is converted via lunar-javascript — leap months and day boundaries handled per the Hong Kong Observatory tables.
Solar → Lunar (year · month · day · leap-month flag) · hour branchDerive Ming Palace + Bureau
The Ming (命) Palace — your Life Palace — is placed from lunar month and hour-branch index. The Bureau Number (Water 2, Wood 3, Metal 4, Earth 5, Fire 6) comes from Ming Palace position and birth-year stem, and indexes the star placement tables.
Ming = (2 + lunarMonth − 1 − hourBranch + 24) mod 12Place stars + activate transformations
The Zi Wei (紫微) Emperor Star is placed using lunar day and bureau, then the 13 remaining main stars follow by classical formulas. The Four Transformations (Lu / Quan / Ke / Ji) activate specific stars from the birth-year stem — life-long signature of opportunity and obstacle.
14 main stars on 12 palaces + 4 transformations from year stemThis same date, in other systems
◆ Cross-referenceTerms used on this page
Frequently asked questions
What does a Zi Wei Dou Shu chart show?
A Zi Wei Dou Shu chart maps your life across 12 palaces — Self, Spouse, Wealth, Career, Children, Travel, and so on. Each palace contains some subset of the 14 major stars and dozens of auxiliary stars. The chart also shows the Bureau number (which element grounds the chart), the Ming and Body palaces (your core identity), the Four Transformations (Lu / Quan / Ke / Ji activated by your birth-year stem), and the Da Xian 10-year decade cycles radiating outward from Ming.
Do I need exact birth time for a Zi Wei chart?
Yes — within roughly 30 minutes is ideal. The Hour Branch (the 2-hour window of birth) determines which palace becomes your Ming Palace, and the Ming Palace anchors the entire 12-palace structure. A wrong hour shifts every palace label by one slot, which corrupts every downstream reading. If you only know a rough time-of-day (morning / afternoon / evening), the calculator will still produce a chart but treat the palace labels as approximate.
What is the difference between Si Hua and San He schools?
San He (三合) is the older mainland school that emphasises star combinations and triangular palace relationships. Si Hua (四化) is the Taiwan-led modernised school that emphasises the four transformations triggered by Heavenly Stems, especially in time-cycles. Both schools agree on the 14 major stars and 12-palace layout; they differ in which interpretive layer they foreground. K A X A N T A returns both — the calculator output names which school the layout follows, and your Architect chat reads both layers when relevant.
This is one of nine systems.
Zi Wei reads your structural fate. Your Ba Zi reads your elemental material. Your Human Design tells you how to decide. Get the synthesis — your full blueprint, free.