Disciplines
Zi Wei Dou Shu
Also Known As Ziwei
Divinatory Disciplines
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Origin from 960
Zi Wei Dou Shu, the astrology of the purple star, named for the pole star Ziwei, is a major system of Chinese astrology quite distinct in method from Ba Zi. Instead of weighing the five agents across four pillars, it constructs a chart of twelve palaces, each governing a domain of life such as career, wealth, marriage, health or travel, and it places a set of named stars, of which the emperor-star Ziwei is the chief, into these palaces according to the birth data. The reading interprets the character and interaction of the stars falling in each palace, together with transformations that sharpen or afflict them, to build a detailed picture of a life and its phases. It is regarded as one of the most intricate of Chinese astrological arts, and it is read alongside or as an alternative to the Four Pillars.
Facts
Open Questions
Attributed Author / CompilerThe attribution cannot be verified 1 The ascription to Chen Tuan is traditional and cannot be checked. No text surviving from his lifetime describes the method, and the earliest manuscripts that do postdate him by centuries. Nobody has proposed a rival author, so there is no competing account to weigh. Attributed Author / CompilerTraditionally ascribed to the Daoist adept Chen Tuan (c. 871-989) 1 The ascription to Chen Tuan is traditional and cannot be checked. No text surviving from his lifetime describes the method, and the earliest manuscripts that do postdate him by centuries. Nobody has proposed a rival author, so there is no competing account to weigh. Creator / OriginatorNot established. The traditional ascription names the Song dynasty figure Chen Tuan, but no source contemporary with him documents the system.
The earliest surviving Zi Wei Dou Shu texts postdate Chen Tuan by centuries; no source closing that gap could be located. Origins
Origin Periodfrom 960 1Tradition: Purple Star astrology Place of Origin Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Learn More
The Twelve Palaces
A Zi Wei Dou Shu chart is a wheel of twelve palaces laid around the twelve Earthly Branches. Each palace governs one department of a life, and the reading is built by seeing which stars fall into which palace. One palace is fixed as the Life palace (Ming), the anchor from which the other eleven are counted, and a second marker, the Body palace (Shen), overlays one of the twelve to show where a life's effort and later development concentrate.
The twelve palaces, counted from the Life palace, are:
- Ming (Life, Self), the core character, destiny and the chart's keynote.
- Xiong Di (Siblings), brothers and sisters, close peers, and one's manner among equals.
- Fu Qi (Spouse, Marriage), the marriage partner and the pattern of intimate union.
- Zi Nu (Children), offspring, students and creative issue.
- Cai Bo (Wealth), income, money handled, and the flow of material fortune.
- Ji E (Health), the body, its weaknesses and the pattern of illness.
- Qian Yi (Travel, Migration), movement, the world outside the home, and opportunity abroad.
- Nu Pu (Friends, Subordinates), friends, colleagues and those one directs or relies on.
- Guan Lu (Career, Office), profession, status and public standing.
- Tian Zhai (Property), home, land, real estate and the family estate.
- Fu De (Fortune, Wellbeing), the inner life, temperament, pleasures and mental ease.
- Fu Mu (Parents), father and mother, elders, and inherited circumstance.
No palace is read alone. Each is weighed against the palace directly opposite it and against the two palaces that trine it, a set the tradition calls the san fang si zheng, the three directions and four correct positions, so that a domain of life is always read as a field of four palaces rather than a single cell.
The Fourteen Major Stars
The chart is populated first by the fourteen major stars, the principal actors whose character colours whatever palace they occupy. They fall into two families drawn from two celestial dippers, with the two great luminaries counted alongside them.
The Zi Wei group (Northern Dipper)
- Zi Wei, the Purple Star, the emperor and pole star: dignified, authoritative and stabilising.
- Tian Ji, the strategist: quick, clever, restless and given to planning and change.
- Tai Yang, the Sun: radiant, giving, public-spirited and outward, a luminary on the middle axis.
- Wu Qu, the general of wealth: decisive, hard-working, blunt and money-minded.
- Tian Tong, the child: gentle, contented, easygoing and pleasure-loving.
- Lian Zhen, the disciplinarian: principled and controlled, but prone to conflict and passion.
The Tian Fu group (Southern Dipper)
- Tian Fu, the treasury: generous, stabilising, cautious and conserving.
- Tai Yin, the Moon: receptive, nurturing, private and refined, the other luminary on the middle axis.
- Tan Lang, the peach-blossom star of desire: sociable, ambitious, sensual and versatile.
- Ju Men, the great gate: eloquent, sceptical, probing and argumentative.
- Tian Xiang, the minister: loyal, dignified, fair-minded and service-oriented.
- Tian Liang, the elder: protective, moral, cautious and inclined to counsel.
- Qi Sha, the seven killings: forceful, independent, decisive and pioneering.
- Po Jun, the breaker of armies: disruptive, bold, and given to sweeping change.
A star is never read by its nature alone. Its brightness in the palace it sits in, from brilliant through bright to dim, strengthens or weakens what it brings, and its meaning shifts again with the companion stars beside it and with the palace's place in the chart.
The Four Transformations
Over the fixed field of palaces and stars runs a second, moving layer: the four transformations, si hua, triggered by the Heavenly Stem of the birth year and, in deeper work, by the stems of each palace and each cycle of years. The birth-year stem causes four particular stars to transform, sharpening or afflicting the palaces they sit in.
- Hua Lu (Transformation of Prosperity), brings wealth, resource, smoothness and good fortune to the star and palace it touches.
- Hua Quan (Transformation of Power), brings authority, drive, capability and control.
- Hua Ke (Transformation of Status), brings reputation, learning, recognition and a helpful name.
- Hua Ji (Transformation of Obstruction), brings friction, loss, fixation and difficulty, the one affliction among the four.
Because the transformations move with the year and the cycle, the same chart reads differently across a life: a star blessed by Hua Lu at birth may be struck by Hua Ji in a later decade. Much of the art of Zi Wei Dou Shu lies in tracking these transformations through the san fang si zheng, the field of four palaces, rather than reading any single palace in isolation.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed To
What is not known, and what would settle it. Zi Wei Dou Shu is traditionally traced to Chen Tuan, but the attribution appears only in later lineage accounts and not in anything written in his own tenth century. Whether Chen Tuan devised the system himself, whether it was assembled later under his name, or whether it grew out of an earlier tradition he is credited with transmitting cannot be settled from the surviving record.
Originates in Language
Related To
Zi Wei Dou Shu takes its name from Ziwei, the pole star of the Purple Forbidden Enclosure.
Studied By
He wrote the standard English language account of Chinese mathematical astrology, the tradition Zi Wei Dou Shu belongs to.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Who actually devised Zi Wei Dou Shu, and does the traditional ascription to Chen Tuan hold up?
The system is traditionally ascribed to the Daoist adept Chen Tuan, c. 871-989, but the attribution cannot be verified against any surviving text from his lifetime, and the earliest manuscripts describing the method postdate him by centuries.
What would resolve this A textual historical study tracing the earliest surviving Zi Wei Dou Shu manuscripts and comparing their content and terminology against securely dated Chen Tuan texts.
Sinology; history of Chinese astrology; textual criticismHo Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the Stars
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