Enter your birth details and get your Zi Wei Dou Shu chart in seconds: the twelve palaces, fourteen main stars, Four Transformations and ten-year periods, each palace explained in plain language. Completely free.
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Covers 1901–2050. Only know the two-hour block? That works too. You can also describe your birth in a sentence and confirm it before calculating.
Births from 23:00 count as the next day's Zi hour. Only know the two-hour block? You can still calculate.
Here's what a complete Zi Wei Dou Shu chart looks like (fictional example). Enter your birth details to get your own.
Fire 6 Bureau
Tap any palace to read it
LuLu · resources (化祿)QnQuan · leadership (化權)KeKe · recognition (化科)JiJi · attachment (化忌)
The birth-year Four Transformations (Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji) are marked with text and colour; labels such as Temple or Weak next to a star show its brightness in that palace.
Ten-year periods use East Asian age: you are one at birth and gain a year at each Lunar New Year. The starting age comes from your Five Elements class. As of 2026-09-30
Career (官祿宮): The roles that suit you at work, how you take on responsibility and your working style.
Traditionally, Tian Xiang in the Career Palace suggests support, administration and fair coordination within a team.
Traditionally, Zi Wei in the Career Palace suggests a preference for leadership and room to make decisions rather than a narrowly assigned role.
Life (命宮): Your core temperament, how you go about things and your first response to events.
Traditionally, Tian Fu in the Life Palace suggests stewardship, steadiness and a wish for security, with stability sometimes becoming inertia. The star is strong here, so its qualities tend to show more easily.
Traditionally, Wu Qu in the Life Palace suggests practicality, directness and execution, with care sometimes expressed more through actions than words. The star is strong here, so its qualities tend to show more easily.
Wu Qu (武曲) Quan · leadership (化權): Where you take the lead most naturally and are most willing to carry responsibility.
Wealth (財帛宮): How you earn, spend and manage resources.
Traditionally, Lian Zhen in the Wealth Palace suggests ambition around resources and an association of earning with expertise or relationships, with emotion-driven spending worth checking. The star is strong here, so its qualities tend to show more easily.
Travel (遷移宮): How you do away from home: travel, moving and dealing with the wider world.
Traditionally, Qi Sha in the Travel Palace suggests independent exploration of unfamiliar places, rather than a promise of success away from home. The star is strong here, so its qualities tend to show more easily.
A chart describes tendencies. Your choices, skills, people and circumstances shape how things actually go, so use these readings as a lens on yourself.
Zi Wei Dou Shu is a traditional interpretive system; don't use a single star to decide a career, income, wedding date or health matter. The free reading covers your natal chart and ten-year periods; annual readings, flying stars and patterns come later.
Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗數, often called Purple Star Astrology) is a Chinese astrology system more than a thousand years old, traditionally credited to Chen Xiyi of the Song dynasty. From your birth year, month, day and hour it places fourteen main stars, such as Zi Wei and Tian Fu, plus minor stars into twelve palaces. The resulting chart describes your tendencies across personality, love, career, money and more.
BaZi reads the balance of the Five Elements in your birth stems and branches. Zi Wei Dou Shu works more like a map: each palace covers one area of life, and which stars sit there, how bright they are and whether they carry a transformation tell you about that area. That is why many people find it more intuitive to start with.
The main star in your Life Palace sets your basic temperament: Zi Wei leans toward leading, Tian Ji toward thinking, Tai Yin toward sensitivity. If the palace is empty, borrow the star from the opposite palace.
How to read the Life PalaceTap any palace and the chart draws gold lines to its opposite palace and its two trine palaces. Read those four palaces together to see the whole picture.
The Travel Palace, opposite the Life PalaceThe chart marks the four stars carrying Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji. Hua Lu shows where things flow; Hua Ji shows what you care about most and need to tend.
What the Four Transformations meanEach ten-year period has its own theme. Find which palace you are in now to see which area of life this decade centres on.
How to read a Zi Wei Dou Shu chartBesides the Life Palace, your chart has a Body Palace (身宮). It is worked out from the same data as the Life Palace: start the first lunar month at the Yin (寅) palace and count forward to your birth month, then start the Zi (子) hour at that palace and count forward to your birth hour. Where you stop is the Body Palace (the Life Palace is found by counting backward instead). That is why the Body Palace can only fall in six palaces, and your birth hour decides which one.
A common view is that the Life Palace shows the character you were born with, while the Body Palace shows where you put your energy as life goes on, and it becomes clearer with age. Check your birth hour:
The ten-year period (大限) is the basic unit for reading luck in Zi Wei Dou Shu: each decade moves through one palace. The first period starts at the Life Palace, and the starting age is set by your Five Elements bureau (五行局): age 2 for the Water 2 bureau, 3 for Wood 3, 4 for Metal 4, 5 for Earth 5 and 6 for Fire 6. After that, the period moves to a new palace every ten years. These ages are counted the traditional way (虛歲), in which you are 1 at birth.
Which way the periods move depends on the yin or yang of your birth year and your gender. Men born in a yang year and women born in a yin year move forward, from the Life Palace toward the Parents Palace and the Inner Life Palace. Men born in a yin year and women born in a yang year move backward, from the Life Palace toward the Siblings Palace and the Spouse Palace. The chart on this site marks the age range of every ten-year period and shows which palace you are in now.
To read a ten-year period, treat its palace as the "Life Palace" of that decade, then look at its three-sided square (三方四正) and its Four Transformations. For example, when a period reaches the Wealth Palace, the decade tends to focus on earning and managing money; in the Spouse Palace, love and partnerships stand out; in the Health Palace, it is a reminder to take more care of your body and your routine.
A pattern is a combination formed by several stars in specific positions, and the classical texts list more than a hundred of them. Below are the most common ones, and the easiest to spot in your own chart. A pattern shows only a tendency: you still need to look at brightness, the Four Transformations and the ten-year periods, and you cannot judge a chart as good or bad from its patterns alone. The free chart on this site does not detect patterns automatically yet, so use the notes below to look for them yourself.
Both use the year, month, day and hour of birth, but they work differently. BaZi (八字) turns that time into Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and looks at the strength and interplay of the Five Elements, which makes it good at showing the overall rhythm of your luck. Zi Wei Dou Shu places stars into twelve palaces, each tied to an area of life, which makes it good at showing specific areas: what your personality, love life, career and wealth each look like.
Many people use both together: BaZi for the big picture and timing, Zi Wei for the details of each area of life. You can make both charts for free on this site and compare them after entering your birth details once.
We convert your birth details to the lunar calendar, find your Life and Body Palaces and Five Elements class, place the fourteen main stars and auxiliary stars, then add the birth-year Four Transformations and ten-year periods.
We use the common Tian Pan star placement. The year changes at Lunar New Year; the first 15 days of a leap month count as that month and the rest as the next; births from 23:00 count as the next day's Zi hour. If another site's chart differs, the cause is usually the birth time, time zone, true solar time, Zi-hour date change or leap-month handling.
iztro@2.6.1 · ziwei-tianpan-lny-half-leap-forward-zi-v1 · ziwei-default-ten-stems-v1 · iztro-2.6.1-brightness-v1
The birth-year Four Transformations depend on the heavenly stem of your birth year. Find the year stem on your chart, then see which four stars become Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji, and which palaces they sit in.
| Year stem | Lu · resources (化祿) | Quan · leadership (化權) | Ke · recognition (化科) | Ji · attachment (化忌) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 甲 | Lian Zhen (廉貞) | Po Jun (破軍) | Wu Qu (武曲) | Tai Yang (太陽) |
| 乙 | Tian Ji (天機) | Tian Liang (天梁) | Zi Wei (紫微) | Tai Yin (太陰) |
| 丙 | Tian Tong (天同) | Tian Ji (天機) | Wen Chang (文昌) | Lian Zhen (廉貞) |
| 丁 | Tai Yin (太陰) | Tian Tong (天同) | Tian Ji (天機) | Ju Men (巨門) |
| 戊 | Tan Lang (貪狼) | Tai Yin (太陰) | You Bi (右弼) | Tian Ji (天機) |
| 己 | Wu Qu (武曲) | Tan Lang (貪狼) | Tian Liang (天梁) | Wen Qu (文曲) |
| 庚 | Tai Yang (太陽) | Wu Qu (武曲) | Tai Yin (太陰) | Tian Tong (天同) |
| 辛 | Ju Men (巨門) | Tai Yang (太陽) | Wen Qu (文曲) | Wen Chang (文昌) |
| 壬 | Tian Liang (天梁) | Zi Wei (紫微) | Zuo Fu (左輔) | Wu Qu (武曲) |
| 癸 | Po Jun (破軍) | Ju Men (巨門) | Tai Yin (太陰) | Tan Lang (貪狼) |
Schools differ slightly on this table, most often for the Geng and Ren years; this site uses the table above. If another site shows different transformations, it's usually using a different table.
They are the same system. Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗數) is the Chinese name, also written Ziwei, Tzu Wei Dou Shu or ZWDS; Purple Star Astrology is the common English name, after the Zi Wei (Purple Star) itself.
Your birth date (Gregorian or lunar; tick leap month if it applies), birth time, gender and birthplace. For true solar time, also pick your birth city or enter coordinates.
You can still save your date, but the Life Palace, star positions and ten-year periods all depend on the hour. Check a birth certificate or ask family, then add it to see your full chart.
Choose Lunar and enter the date as recorded; tick Leap month if it applies. We convert it to the Gregorian date automatically and keep your lunar entry.
Yes. Births from 23:00 count as the next day's Zi hour. If you were born abroad, choose the local time zone; daylight saving is handled automatically. Turn on true solar time for extra precision.
The usual causes are a different birth time or time zone, true solar time, how the Zi-hour date change and leap months are handled, and which Four Transformations table is used. Our rules are listed under How the chart is calculated so you can compare them.
An empty palace has none of the fourteen main stars; traditionally it borrows the main stars of the opposite palace. The birth-year Four Transformations (Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji) mark where you tend to find resources, influence, recognition and attachment.
The chart, ten-year periods and plain-language reading for every palace are free. A paid deep reading is coming that covers career, relationships, finances and your current decade in depth, cross-checked with your BaZi.
Paste it into ChatGPT or another AI to ask questions, or keep it to compare with other sites. It includes your birth details, so remove them before sharing if you like.