Purple Star Calculator

Enter your birth moment to place the stars across the twelve palaces of life.

Time zone of birthplace

The chart uses the date and clock at your birthplace.

Sex at birth

This sets the direction of your ten-year cycles.

Sample chart: 15 June 1990, 08:30, Shanghai

Your Life Palace holds Qi Sha

Ages 105–114
Ages 115–124
Ages 5–14
Ages 15–24
Ages 25–34
Ages 35–44Now
Ages 45–54
Ages 55–64
Ages 65–74
Ages 75–84
Ages 85–94Body Palace
Ages 95–104
土五局Earth Five BureauLife Palace 寅 · Body Palace 戌Lunar date: month 5, day 23庚午 year

Brightness from the Quan Shu廟 Exalted旺 Strong得 Favourable利 Beneficial平 Neutral不 Weak陷 Fallen

Understanding Purple Star

Purple Star Astrology, or Zi Wei Dou Shu, places stars across twelve palaces. Each palace stands for an area of life, such as career, wealth or marriage. Unlike Western astrology, its stars are calculated from the calendar and not observed in the sky.

How it is calculated

  1. Lunar dateYour birth date becomes a lunar date, and your birth time a double hour.
  2. Life PalaceCount the lunar month forward from the Tiger palace, then the hour backward. That sets the Life Palace.
  3. BureauThe stem and branch of the Life Palace set one of five element bureaus.
  4. StarsThe bureau and lunar day place Zi Wei. The other major stars follow in fixed steps.
  5. TransformationsYour year stem turns four stars into the Wealth, Power, Fame and Trouble markers.

How to read it

  1. Start at the Life PalaceIts stars set the main tone of the chart.
  2. Check the opposite palaceOpposite palaces influence each other, so read them together.
  3. Find the Four TransformationsThese markers show where energy gathers or gets stuck.
  4. Follow the ten-year cyclesEach palace governs ten years of life, shown as an age range.

Our method

Year boundary
The year turns at lunar New Year, not at Start of Spring.
Late Zi hour
A birth from 23:00 counts as the next day.
Leap months
A leap month counts as the month after it, as the Quan Shu says.
Birth place
The chart uses the birthplace's own date and clock.
Age
Ten-year cycles use nominal age, which counts birth as age one.
Star brightness
Grades come from the palace lists in volume 2 of the Quan Shu, for the fourteen major stars, Wen Chang and Wen Qu. Nine cells have no grade in the text, so we leave them blank.

Common questions

What if I do not know my birth time?

This system needs the hour, so we cannot draw a chart without it. Four Pillars can work with the date alone.

Why do charts differ between sites?

Schools place some stars and transformations differently. This page names the rules it follows.

Are these real stars?

No. They are calculated points in a calendar system, not objects in the sky.

Is my birth data stored?

No. The chart is calculated in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server.

Sources

  • 紫微斗數全書 Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu