Free Zi Wei Dou Shu Chart Calculator

Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗數, "Purple Star Astrology") is one of the two great systems of Chinese astrology, alongside BaZi. Traditionally attributed to the Song-dynasty sage Chen Xiyi, it maps a set of symbolic stars — led by Zi Wei, the Emperor Star, together with thirteen other major stars and dozens of minor and support stars — onto twelve palaces derived from your year, month, day and hour of birth.

Where BaZi reasons through the interactions of the five elements, Zi Wei Dou Shu reads more like a map of your life: each of the twelve palaces governs one domain — personality, wealth, marriage, career, health, friendships — and the stars that land in each palace, their brightness, and their "four transformations" (Lu wealth, Quan power, Ke reputation, Ji obstacle) describe how that domain tends to unfold. Its clear structure has made it enormously popular in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Chinese communities across Southeast Asia.

One thing worth saying plainly: a chart describes tendencies and structures, not a fixed destiny. The same chart lived in different circumstances, with different choices, produces very different lives. Treat it as a mirror for self-understanding rather than a verdict.

Step 1: enter your birth date in the solar (Gregorian) calendar. The tool converts it to the Chinese lunisolar calendar automatically — you never need to look up the lunar date yourself. If you only know your lunar birthday, convert it to the solar date first.

Step 2: enter your birth time. Zi Wei Dou Shu places the Life Palace and the time-based stars by the traditional two-hour period (時辰) of birth — for example 23:00–00:59 is the Zi hour. If your birth time crosses into a different two-hour period, the whole chart changes, so use the most accurate time you have. The exact minute matters less than which period it falls in.

Step 3: enter your birth city and pick a suggestion — the time zone fills in automatically (you can adjust it under advanced options). Choose your gender (it determines whether your decade cycles run forward or backward), then press the button. Your chart renders right on the page.

This tool follows the widely used San He school procedure: solar-to-lunisolar conversion, Life Palace placement from the birth month and hour, star placement from the five-element class, and four transformations from the birth-year stem. In the spirit of honesty, here is exactly what the calculation does and does not do.

The chart is cast from the local clock time you enter — no true solar time correction is applied. True solar time (when the sun actually crosses the local meridian at noon) can differ from clock time by several minutes up to more than an hour, depending on your birthplace's longitude within its time zone and the season (the equation of time). Most practitioners cast by clock time, but if your birth time sits near a two-hour-period boundary (say 12:58 or 01:02), the true-solar difference could shift your hour branch.

To adjust manually: find your birthplace's longitude, and for every degree it differs from your time zone's central meridian (e.g. 120°E for Taiwan), add or subtract 4 minutes (east of the meridian adds, west subtracts); then apply the equation of time for your birth date (between roughly −14 and +16 minutes). Enter the corrected time in the birth-time field. Example: Taipei at 121.5°E gives a correction of about +6 minutes.

Also, if you were born during a daylight-saving-time period (Taiwan used DST in several years between 1945 and 1961, and again in 1974–1975 and 1979; many other countries still do), subtract one hour from the recorded clock time before entering it.

Life Palace (命宮): the pivot of the whole chart — your core character, talents and overall life pattern. Always start here: the major star in the Life Palace, its brightness and transformations set the tone for reading everything else.

Siblings Palace (兄弟宮): your bond with siblings and close peers; by extension, partnerships and cash flow.

Spouse Palace (夫妻宮): romance and marriage — who attracts you, how you behave in relationships, the stability of a marriage. Read it together with the Life and Fortune palaces rather than in isolation.

Children Palace (子女宮): your bond with children and parenting style; traditionally also creativity and romantic charm.

Wealth Palace (財帛宮): how you earn and handle money — steady salary versus volatile windfalls, employment versus entrepreneurship. Note it describes earning style; accumulated assets belong to the Property Palace.

Health Palace (疾厄宮): constitutional strengths and weak points, and how your emotions find an outlet.

Travel Palace (遷移宮): fortune away from home and your public image — whether leaving your birthplace favors you, and how outsiders perceive you. It sits opposite the Life Palace, forming the chart's most important axis.

Friends Palace (交友宮): the help and burden of friends, colleagues and subordinates; your standing within groups.

Career Palace (事業宮): the type of work that suits you, your working style and the height of your achievements. It sits opposite the Spouse Palace — the career-family tension often plays out along this axis.

Property Palace (田宅宮): real estate, family fortune and your capacity to store wealth — the chart's "treasury".

Fortune Palace (福德宮): inner life and blessing — how you enjoy life, your peace of mind, quality of later years. Opposite the Wealth Palace: one governs making money, the other whether spending it makes you happy.

Parents Palace (父母宮): your bond with parents and elders, the support you inherit, and by extension your relationship with bosses and institutions.

The fourteen major stars divide into the Zi Wei series (Zi Wei, Tian Ji, Tai Yang, Wu Qu, Tian Tong, Lian Zhen) and the Tian Fu series (Tian Fu, Tai Yin, Tan Lang, Ju Men, Tian Xiang, Tian Liang, Qi Sha, Po Jun). A major star is the protagonist of its palace: Zi Wei in the Life Palace suggests a natural leader; Tian Ji, an agile strategist; Tan Lang, versatile and strong-willed; Tian Liang, a wise elder's bearing.

A palace without any major star is an "empty palace" — not a bad omen. You read it by borrowing the major stars of the opposite palace; its nature is simply less fixed and more shaped by environment. Each star also carries a brightness level (from temple 廟 to fall 陷): bright placements express the star's virtues easily, dim ones ask you to manage its shadow side.

The four transformations of your birth year — Hua Lu (opportunity and wealth), Hua Quan (power and drive), Hua Ke (reputation and mentors), Hua Ji (attachment and life lessons) — attach to specific stars and animate the whole chart. A practical tip: find where Hua Ji lands first; that palace usually marks this life's recurring homework.

The five-element class (五行局) shown in the chart's center — Water-2, Wood-3, Metal-4, Earth-5 or Fire-6 — is derived from the Life Palace's stem-branch pair. It does two jobs: it fixes where Zi Wei itself is placed, and it sets the age your first decade cycle begins (age 2 for Water-2, 3 for Wood-3, and so on).

Decade cycles (大限) are Zi Wei Dou Shu's ten-year units of timing. The age range printed in each palace (e.g. 24–33) marks the decade when that palace serves as your "decade Life Palace": for those ten years its star combination becomes the main theme of your life. Cycles run forward for yang-year males and yin-year females, backward otherwise — the tool sequences this automatically from the gender you select.

The Soul star (命主) and Body star (身主) are two additional pointer stars derived from your Life Palace branch and birth-year branch: the Soul star echoes the core of your innate character, while the Body star hints at where your acquired effort concentrates.

The chart engine computes your chart at the moment you press the button; birth data from anonymous visitors is not stored. For the full account of our placement rules and calendar conversion, see our methodology page at /methodology. If this tool disagrees with another calculator, the cause is almost always an hour-boundary difference, leap-month handling, or a school-of-practice difference (e.g. transformation tables) — we're happy to hear reports.