ZI WEI DOU SHU · PALACE BOARD
How stars are placed
in twelve positions
Zi Wei Dou Shu uses lunar birth month and hour to locate the Life Palace, then the Five Element Bureau and birth day to locate Zi Wei, and places the other stars by rules. We show these positions without judging luck or personality.
YOUR PALACE BOARD
Calculation results
What placement rules were used?
Life Palace and Body Palace
Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu starts the first lunar month at Yin, advances by birth month, then moves backward by birth-hour branch to locate the Life Palace. Moving forward by the hour from the same position gives the Body Palace. The remaining eleven palaces follow around the cycle.
Palace stems and Five Element Bureau
The Five Tigers rule assigns palace stems from Yin using the year stem. The Life Palace's stem-branch nayin element determines Water 2, Wood 3, Metal 4, Earth 5 or Fire 6 Bureau.
Zi Wei and the other stars
Zi Wei's position comes from dividing the lunar birth day by the Bureau number. Its star group moves backward; the Tian Fu group moves forward. For auxiliary stars, only the month-based Zuo Fu/You Bi and hour-based Wen Chang/Wen Qu placement formulas are used.
Annual Four Transformations
The Four Transformations formula assigns Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji to stars by year stem. Our original Quan Shu text and the Chinese Wikipedia table differ for Geng and Ren years, so both editions are shown for those years.
What was and was not verified
- 147 of the original text's 150 Zi Wei placement cells matched the formula. The three differences appear to be copying errors, but were not checked against an original edition.
- The original example (Jia year, Life Palace in Yin, Fire 6 Bureau, first lunar day placing Zi Wei in You) was reproduced exactly.
- The original text places the twelve palaces backward for both men and women. This screen follows that rule. The original third palace is named ‘Wives and Concubines’; the screen uses today's common ‘Spouse Palace’.
- An independently implemented Vietnamese Zi Wei module matched all placements across 49,680 combinations.
- Korean and Chinese lunar dates differ on 868 days in 1960–2026. Both calendar charts are shown on those days.
- Schools differ about post-11 p.m. dates, leap months and Lunar New Year versus Beginning of Spring year boundaries. We calculate all rather than choosing one.
- Recorded clock time is used without longitude/apparent solar-time correction. If born during Korean daylight saving time in 1987 or 1988, also check one hour earlier.
- Malefic and minor stars, major periods, annual fortunes, chart configurations and luck judgments are not calculated. Schools also differ in star counts and placements.