The nine stars 九星

What the nine stars are

The nine stars 九星 are one of three layers on a Qi Men Dun Jia plate. If the gates are the kind of action a square supports and the spirits are its tone, the stars are closest to its weather: the conditions in play, rather than what you might do about them.

Each star has a home palace it belongs to, and it carries the element of that palace. That is not a separate table someone wrote down. It is derived, which is why the element of a star and the element of its home always agree.

Every cast carries all nine

A plate is a permutation, not a selection. Every Qi Men Dun Jia cast contains all nine stars somewhere on the board, so the question is never which stars appeared. It is where each one landed, and which of them fell on the palace that matters to the question.

That is worth saying plainly because it changes how this page should be read. Nothing here is rare. A reading is not looking for the presence of a star; it is looking at the arrangement.

A name is not a verdict

Several of these names are dramatic in translation, and one of them reads clinically. The practice this site follows keeps the names as they are and neutralises the meanings instead.

The reasoning is that a component name is a fixed structural label, in the same way a chess square is called a square rather than a threat. Renaming 天芮 would not make a plate say anything different; it would only make the vocabulary harder to check against any other source. So the name stands, and the line beside it describes ground rather than making a claim about a person.

The centre

One star sits apart. 天禽 belongs to the centre palace, which is the only one of the nine that does not take part in the rotation, so 天禽 lodges with 天芮 at the second palace when the plate turns.

That is a construction rule. What the centre palace means for timing a plate is a separate question this practice has deliberately left open rather than answered on a guess.

Common questions

Notes

Are these the same stars as in Zi Wei Dou Shu?

No, and the overlap in the word is the only thing they share. Zi Wei Dou Shu places fourteen major stars in twelve palaces of a birth chart. These nine belong to a Qi Men Dun Jia plate, which is cast for a moment rather than for a person, and they move on a different principle entirely.

Why is one of them called Grand Sickness?

Because the classical name 天芮 carries that sense, and this practice keeps component names intact rather than sanitising them. What is neutralised is the meaning: 天芮 reads as slow, heavy going where things take longer than they should, and never as a statement about anybody's health.

Does every plate contain all nine?

Yes. A plate is a permutation rather than a selection, so every cast carries all nine stars, all eight gates and all eight spirits. What changes from one moment to the next is where each one sits.