Zi Wei Dou Shu
Purple Star Astrology
One of the most detailed systems in Chinese astrology. ZWDS maps your life across twelve palaces and a sky of stars — each one adding texture to your strengths, tendencies, and timing.
Zi Wei Dou Shu, or Purple Star Astrology, is a classical Chinese astrology system that places a set of stars, led by Zi Wei, the Purple Star, into twelve palaces, each covering an area of life, according to the lunar date and hour of birth. On Sheng Pin Kai, Zi Wei Dou Shu is covered as reference material: guides to the twelve palaces, the main and supplementary stars, the Four Transformations and the Body Palace. Sheng Pin Kai does not offer Zi Wei Dou Shu consultations; its private AI consultations use the Four Pillars of Destiny (BaZi) and Hellenistic astrology.
What Is Zi Wei Dou Shu?
Zi Wei Dou Shu — often translated as Purple Star Astrology — arranges your birth details into a chart of twelve palaces. Each palace covers an area of life: career, wealth, relationships, health, and more. A set of stars then falls into those palaces, led by Zi Wei, the Purple Star, and the mix in each palace is what gives each chart its depth and detail.
The Essentials
The 12 Palaces in ZWDS
What the 12 Palaces represent in ZWDS: explore your life themes, career, wealth, and relationships through Purple Star Astrology's natal chart.
Read more →The 14 Main Stars in Zi Wei Dou Shu — Pairings, Brightness & Meanings
Complete guide to the 14 major stars in ZWDS — Zi Wei, Tian Fu, and their paired series. Covers each star's nature, brightness ratings by palace, and how pairings shape chart interpretation.
Read more →Supplementary Stars in Zi Wei Dou Shu
The auxiliary stars that make or break a ZWDS chart — Lu Cun, Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Tian Kui, Tian Yue, and the four Hua stars. How they affect the 14 main stars.
Read more →ZWDS Four Transformations (Si Hua 四化) — Complete Table by Heavenly Stem
The complete Si Hua transformation table for all 10 heavenly stems — Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke, Hua Ji. Learn how the Four Transformations shape your Zi Wei Dou Shu chart across natal, decade, and annual cycles.
Read more →ZWDS Birth Year & Body Palace — How to Determine Yours
How to find your Ming Gong (Life Palace) and Shen Gong (Body Palace) in Zi Wei Dou Shu using your birth year, month, and hour. Includes lookup method and palace meaning.
Read more →Questions about Zi Wei Dou Shu
Zi Wei is the Purple Star, the emperor star that leads the chart, and Dou Shu means reckoning by the stars of the Dipper. In English the system is usually called Purple Star Astrology.
The twelve palaces are the twelve areas of life a chart is divided into, among them the Life, Wealth, Career, Marriage and Health palaces. The stars that fall into each palace describe the tendencies of that area of life.
Both are classical Chinese systems built from the moment of birth. BaZi interprets the balance of the five elements across four pillars set by the solar terms, while Zi Wei Dou Shu places named stars into twelve palaces using the lunar calendar date and the birth hour.
The Four Transformations are Prosperity, Authority, Recognition and Obstruction. A heavenly stem, such as the stem of the birth year, assigns each one to a particular star, and the transformation colors the palace where that star sits.
No. The Zi Wei Dou Shu pages are reference guides. The private AI consultations on Sheng Pin Kai use the Four Pillars of Destiny (BaZi) and Hellenistic astrology, both computed from your exact birth details.
The date of birth on the Chinese lunar calendar, the exact birth hour and gender. The lunar month and the birth hour together locate the Life Palace, which sets where every other palace falls, so an accurate birth hour matters.
Curious what your own chart shows?
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Related Reading
A Detailed ZWDS Breakdown of a Young Woman's Love Life
A worked example: reading the palaces and stars of a real chart to understand one person's relationship patterns.
Read →Explore More
Four Pillars of Destiny (BaZi)
The classical Four Pillars system, computed from the Chinese calendar.
Explore BaZi →Hellenistic Astrology
Western astrology from its source texts — your birth chart, read the classical way.
Explore Astrology →