Starpath · 星径

Zi Wei Dou Shu Guide for Beginners

Learn to read a Zi Wei Dou Shu chart: the twelve palaces, fourteen stars, four transformations, ten-year periods and Chinese calendar. Free lessons with sources.

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What Zi Wei Dou Shu is, and how to read it well.

What is Zi Wei Dou Shu?
A Chinese way of reading the moment you were born as a map of twelve areas of life, filled with named stars.
How it differs from Western astrology and BaZi
The same wish to understand a life from its first moment, drawn as very different maps.
How to read a reading
A chart describes tendencies and seasons. What you do with them is yours.
Common questions
Short answers to what people ask most when they first meet Zi Wei Dou Shu.
Your first look at a chart
Three steps: your Life palace, the palaces that support it, and the time you are in.

Reading a chart

Palaces, stars, and how they work together.

The shape of a chart
Twelve cells around an empty centre, each fixed to one of the twelve earthly branches.
How your palaces are placed
Your birth month and hour decide where your Life palace sits; the other palaces follow in order.
The twelve palaces
Twelve rooms of a life. Each is a point of view, not a verdict.
Reading palaces together
A palace is read with the one opposite it and the two that form a triangle with it.
The fourteen principal stars
Fourteen characters in two families. Their palace decides where each one shows up.
Supporting stars
Smaller stars add help, friction and movement to the principal stars.
How bright a star is
The same star works more easily in some cells than in others.
Four Transformations: Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji and the Ten Stems
In every chart, four stars are “transformed”: tinted with flow, drive, recognition or a knot to work through. They show where life tends to move.

Time

Ten-year chapters and single years.

Ten-year chapters
Life moves through the palaces in steps of about ten years.
A single year
Each year puts one palace in focus and lights up four stars.
How Astravia reads your years
Open rules, on the same engine as your chart.

Culture and history

The calendar and ideas underneath it.

Where it comes from
A legend from the 10th century, books from the 16th, and a revival in our time.
The Chinese calendar
Months follow the moon; the year keeps pace with the sun.
Stems and branches
Ten stems and twelve branches pair up into a cycle of sixty.
The twelve double-hours
A day of twelve two-hour periods, each named for a branch.
True solar time
The clock is a convention; the sun is the reference.
Yin, yang and the five elements
Two complementary forces and five phases: the shared vocabulary of Chinese cosmology.