Reference · System 03 of 5

Zi Wei Dou Shu 紫微斗數

紫微斗數 zi wei dou shu: the purple star astrolabe, read as twelve palaces.

Twelve palaces, one per area of a life, each with its own stars sitting in it. Zi Wei Dou Shu sorts a life by area rather than by element.

What it is

Zi Wei Dou Shu places twelve palaces from a birth moment, one for each area of a life: the self, career, wealth, the people closest to you, health, travel and the rest. Fourteen major stars are distributed across them, and a palace is read by which stars landed in it and how brightly they sit there.

People who find element counting abstract usually find this easier to receive, because it arrives already sorted into the parts of life they think in anyway.

The fourteen major stars

A star supplies the tendency and the palace supplies the subject, so the same star reads differently in each of the twelve. Each of the fourteen has a page giving what it governs and the tendency that comes with it.

This is the one system here that cannot be read without a birth time. The palaces are placed from the hour, so with no hour there is no astrolabe to draw.

Method and sources

Charts are computed with deterministic libraries, corrected for true solar time at the birth longitude, and interpreted against the classical texts listed below.

Read against the classical treatment of the stars and the twelve palaces:

  • 紫微斗數全書 Ziwei Doushu Quanshu The Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu