[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":239},["ShallowReactive",2],{"article:zi-wei-star-placement:en":3,"article-topic:zi-wei-dou-shu:en":125,"related-articles:en:zi-wei-dou-shu:zi-wei-star-placement:zi-wei-dou-shu":201},{"slug":4,"title":5,"description":6,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":11,"noindex":12,"summary":13,"sections":14,"references":90,"relatedTools":105,"seo":106,"contentImage":111},"zi-wei-star-placement","One Star Decides Thirteen: How 紫微 Finds Its Palace","紫微's palace comes from the bureau number and the lunar day, and the other thirteen main stars follow at fixed offsets from 紫微 and its mirror 天府. Twelve layouts exist in total, and the classical rule reproduces every one.","Zi Wei Dou Shu","zi-wei-dou-shu","","chen-jun","2026-10-26",false,"Take the lunar day as dividend and the bureau as divisor, round up, then step back for an odd addition and forward for an even one. Checked against 1,932 charts with no mismatch, the rule shows the twelve positions are not equally likely.",[15,20,26,67,72,77,82],{"heading":16,"body":17},"One star's position decides the other thirteen",[18,19],"In a Zi Wei chart the fourteen main stars are not placed one at a time. 紫微 is placed first, 天府 is placed as its mirror, and the remaining twelve sit at constant offsets from those two. The whole star ring is therefore determined by a single position.","The chain runs in four steps: the lunar month and hour give 命宫; 命宫's stem-branch pair gives its 纳音 element, which is the 五行局; the bureau number and the lunar day give 紫微's palace; and the rest of the ring follows. Change any one of the four and the ring changes; nothing else in the birth data touches it.",{"heading":21,"body":22},"The bureau and the day, as arithmetic",[23,24,25],"The classical rule uses the bureau number and the lunar day. Take the day as the dividend and the bureau as the divisor. If the day divides evenly, the quotient is the count. If it does not, add the smallest number that makes it divide, take that quotient, and then compensate: an odd addition steps back that many palaces and an even one steps forward. Counting starts at 寅.","A worked case: 金四局, lunar day seven. Seven does not divide by four; add one, giving eight, quotient two. Count two palaces from 寅, which lands on 卯, then step back one because the addition was odd. 紫微 sits in 寅.","The rule reproduces a modern calculator exactly. Checking 1,932 charts across all five bureaus and a spread of lunar days produced no mismatches, which is worth knowing before treating the rule as approximate.",{"heading":27,"body":28,"table":29},"Five bureaus against the first twelve days","Reading the rule across bureaus shows why some positions are common and others are not:",{"headers":30,"rows":44},[31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43],"Bureau","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","10","11","12",[45,54,56,60,63],[46,47,48,48,49,49,50,50,51,51,52,52,53],"水二局","丑","寅","卯","辰","巳","午","未",[55,50,47,48,51,48,49,52,49,50,53,50,51],"木三局",[57,58,50,47,48,59,51,48,49,47,52,49,50],"金四局","亥","子",[61,52,58,50,47,48,53,59,51,48,49,62,47],"土五局","申",[64,65,52,58,50,47,48,66,53,59,51,48,49],"火六局","酉","戌",{"heading":68,"body":69},"The twelve positions are not equally likely",[70,71],"The same palace appears on different days within one bureau — 金四局 puts 紫微 in 寅 on both day four and day seven — and the twelve positions do not receive equal shares of the calendar. Over 1,200 charts the branch 子 carried 紫微 in 4.6 percent of cases and 辰 in 11.3 percent.","That unevenness propagates. Since the count of empty palaces depends on where 紫微 sits, the frequencies of zero-empty and four-empty charts follow the frequencies of the branches that produce them rather than a clean twelve-way split.",{"heading":73,"body":74},"天府 is the mirror, and the other twelve follow at fixed steps",[75,76],"天府 is placed as 紫微's reflection across the 寅–申 axis: those two branches are fixed points and the remaining ten pair off symmetrically. 紫微 in 寅 puts 天府 in 寅; 紫微 in 申 puts 天府 in 申; 紫微 in 子 puts 天府 in 辰; 紫微 in 午 puts 天府 in 戌. Twelve 紫微 positions produce twelve 天府 positions and no others.","From there the offsets are constant. The 紫微 series runs backward from 紫微: 天机 one palace back, 太阳 three, 武曲 four, 天同 five, 廉贞 eight. The 天府 series runs forward from 天府: 太阴 one, 贪狼 two, 巨门 three, 天相 four, 天梁 five, 七杀 six, 破军 ten. Fourteen stars, two anchors, fixed steps.",{"heading":78,"body":79},"Twelve layouts, and no thirteenth",[80,81],"Because the ring is generated from one position and that position has twelve values, there are exactly twelve main-star layouts. Hashing the star-per-palace signature across several hundred charts returns twelve distinct results and no more.","The variation between two people therefore comes from somewhere else. 命宫 is placed independently from the month and hour, so one ring can be read from twelve vantage points. Auxiliary stars follow their own placement rules. The four transformations depend on the year stem and on palace stems. Brightness changes with the palace a star occupies. None of these alter the ring; all of them alter what the ring means.",{"heading":83,"body":84,"bullets":85},"What the arithmetic settles","The placement rule is a lookup, and it is worth keeping separate from everything layered on top of it.",[86,87,88,89],"Given the bureau and the lunar day, 紫微's palace is determined and the other thirteen follow. There is no interpretive step in the placement.","The bureau is not an element label for the person. It is the 纳音 of 命宫's stem-branch pair, and its number serves as the divisor.","A wrong birth date moves the ring; a wrong birth hour moves 命宫. The two failures look different and should be reported differently.","Twelve layouts is a small space. A chart presented as uniquely fitted to one person is describing the interpretation, not the placement.",[91,99],{"id":92,"kind":93,"title":94,"detail":95,"publisher":96,"url":97,"accessedAt":98},"ziweiQuanshu","traditional","Zi Wei Dou Shu Quanshu (紫微斗數全書)","A classical source for the twelve palaces, the main stars, and the four transformations that Zi Wei Dou Shu terminology is built on.","Wikisource digital text","https:\u002F\u002Fzh.wikisource.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E7%B4%AB%E5%BE%AE%E6%96%97%E6%95%B8%E5%85%A8%E6%9B%B8","2026-10-14",{"id":100,"kind":93,"title":101,"detail":102,"publisher":96,"url":103,"accessedAt":104},"sanmingTonghui","Sanming Tonghui (三命通会)","A historical compilation used to cross-check traditional BaZi concepts; it is not scientific validation.","https:\u002F\u002Fzh.wikisource.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E4%B8%89%E5%91%BD%E9%80%9A%E6%9C%83","2026-07-14",[8],{"title":107,"description":108,"path":109,"type":110},"How 紫微 Is Placed in Zi Wei Dou Shu","The bureau-and-day arithmetic behind 紫微's palace, 天府 as its mirror across the 寅–申 axis, and why only twelve star layouts exist.","\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-star-placement","article",{"src":112,"srcByLocale":113,"alt":115,"width":116,"height":117,"altByLocale":118,"captionByLocale":121},"\u002Fimg\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-star-placement.svg",{"tw":114},"\u002Fimg\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-star-placement-tw.svg","Five-step derivation from lunar month and hour through the bureau to the twelve possible main-star layouts.",1280,960,{"zh":119,"tw":120},"五步推导：从农历月与时，经五行局，到十二种主星布局。","五步推導：從農曆月與時，經五行局，到十二種主星布局。",{"en":122,"zh":123,"tw":124},"The bureau is the 纳音 of 命宫, and its number is the divisor. Given the bureau and the lunar day, 紫微 has exactly one home.","五行局就是命宫的纳音，那个数字充当除数。局数与农历日一定，紫微只有一个落点。","五行局就是命宮的納音，那個數字充當除數。局數與農曆日一定，紫微只有一個落點。",{"topic":126,"articles":161,"tools":195},{"slug":8,"title":7,"eyebrow":127,"description":128,"relatedTools":129,"articleIdeas":130,"seo":135,"sections":139},"Twelve palaces, one ring","A chart of twelve palaces and fourteen main stars, built by counting rather than by judgement. Where 命宫 comes from, why the reading set is always four palaces, how the star ring has only twelve possible forms, and where the calendar this system uses parts from the one BaZi uses.",[8],[131,132,133,134],"The Twelve Palaces in Zi Wei Dou Shu","Empty Palaces in Zi Wei Dou Shu","Zi Wei Dou Shu vs BaZi","How 紫微 Is Placed",{"title":136,"description":137,"path":138},"Zi Wei Dou Shu Guide: Palaces, Stars and Boundaries","How a Zi Wei Dou Shu chart is built: 命宫 placement, the four-palace reading set, twelve star layouts, the 五行局 divisor, and where its calendar parts from BaZi.","\u002Ftopics\u002Fzi-wei-dou-shu",[140,143,146,149,152,155,158],{"heading":141,"body":142},"What a chart is made of, before it is a reading","A Zi Wei chart has three parts and nothing else. There is a ring of twelve palaces, a set of fourteen main stars placed into that ring, and a set of four transformations attached to stars by the year stem and by palace stems. Everything else on a printed chart — auxiliary stars, brightness grades, the twelve growth phases, the decade ranges — is a layer added on top of those three. The reason to separate them is that the first part is arithmetic and the last part is interpretation, and a chart read without that separation cannot tell you which one it is doing. A palace name is a position. It is not a description of a person.",{"heading":144,"body":145},"The ring is fixed, and 命宫 only decides where it starts","The twelve palaces sit in one order: 命宫, 兄弟, 夫妻, 子女, 财帛, 疾厄, 迁移, 交友, 官禄, 田宅, 福德, 父母. Nothing reorders them. 命宫 is counted from 寅 by lunar month and then back by hour, and once it lands, the other eleven follow in sequence. Two inputs set 命宫 and neither is the year or the day, which is why two people born decades apart in the same lunar month and hour share a 命宫 palace even when every star in it differs.",{"heading":147,"body":148},"The reading set is always four palaces, at four, eight and six steps","The palaces read together with 命宫 are found by fixed offsets: 官禄 at four steps, 财帛 at eight, 迁移 at six. Those offsets are not a convention to be memorised but a consequence of branch relations — four and eight land on the two branches that form a three-harmony combination with 命宫, and six lands on its clash partner. The set is closed at four because no fifth palace relates to 命宫 by the same two relations. One result follows immediately and is easy to check on any chart: 夫妻 sits two steps from 命宫 and therefore directly faces 官禄, in every chart ever drawn. 身宫 adds a second structural restriction — shifted from 命宫 by the birth hour, it can reach only six of the twelve palaces and never lands in one about a relative.",{"heading":150,"body":151},"The star ring has twelve possible forms, and empty palaces are part of the arithmetic","The fourteen main stars are not placed one at a time. 紫微 is placed from the bureau number and the lunar day, 天府 is placed as its mirror across the 寅–申 axis, and the remaining twelve sit at constant offsets from those two anchors. Because one position generates the whole ring and that position has twelve values, there are exactly twelve main-star layouts. Fourteen stars into twelve palaces also cannot divide evenly, so every chart carries empty palaces: measured across 1,200 charts, 67 percent have two, 16.5 percent have none and 16.3 percent have four, while 命宫 itself is empty in 16.8 percent. An empty palace is a remainder, and the convention for reading it — borrow from the palace six steps away — is a reading convention, not a transfer of stars.",{"heading":153,"body":154},"The bureau is a divisor, not a label for the person","五行局 is the 纳音 element of the 命宫 stem-branch pair, and its name carries a number: 水二, 木三, 金四, 土五, 火六. That number does two jobs. It is the divisor in the star-placement rule, and it is the age at which the first decade begins, which is why two people born on the same day can enter their first decade years apart. It is not a statement that a person is a water type or a fire type. Reading it as an element label for the personality skips the two mechanical roles it actually performs.",{"heading":156,"body":157},"This system and BaZi do not share a calendar","BaZi turns the year at 立春 and the month at each solar term. Zi Wei turns the year at the lunar new year and takes the lunar month as its month unit. The two boundaries coincide only by accident, and in the gap they disagree: on 22 January 2023 Zi Wei read 癸卯 甲寅 while BaZi still read 壬寅 癸丑, and on 6 February 2024 the positions reversed, with BaZi on 甲辰 丙寅 and Zi Wei still on 癸卯 乙丑. 命宫 moves on the new moon, not on 立春. Both systems also advance the day pillar at 23:00, but Zi Wei names the hour that straddles the change instead of folding it silently into the next day.",{"heading":159,"body":160},"Where to start, and where a reading stops","Start with the ring, not with the stars. If the birth date, hour and gender are ready, the chart tool prints the twelve palaces, the bureau, and the decade ranges, and the first thing worth checking is where 命宫 landed and whether it is empty. From there the structural articles go in order: the palace ring, the empty palaces, the placement arithmetic, and the calendar comparison with BaZi. What none of them support is a claim about a specific outcome. A palace and a star label describe a position in a system; they do not establish health, wealth, relationship quality, or a future event, and a reading that presents them as doing so has moved past what the arithmetic can carry.",[162,172,181,192],{"slug":163,"title":164,"description":165,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":166,"summary":167,"relatedTools":168,"seo":169},"zi-wei-twelve-palaces","The Twelve Palaces: What 命宫 Fixes and What It Cannot","The twelve palaces are one fixed ring and 命宫 only sets where it starts, because its two inputs cancel. The twelve questions, the 4\u002F8\u002F6 offsets, and why 命宫 plus 身宫 still leaves two birth moments.","2026-11-01","命宫 is counted from 寅 by lunar month and hour, and because the month counts forward while the hour counts backward the two cancel: 正月 子时 and 二月 丑时 land in the same palace. 身宫 reaches only six palaces, and the pair still narrows the birth moment to two candidates.",[8],{"title":164,"description":170,"path":171,"type":110},"How the twelve palaces form one ring: 命宫 placement and its cancellation, the twelve questions, the four-eight-six offsets, and the six palaces 身宫 can reach.","\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-twelve-palaces",{"slug":173,"title":174,"description":175,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":11,"summary":176,"relatedTools":177,"seo":178},"zi-wei-empty-palace","An Empty Palace Is Arithmetic: Fourteen Stars, Twelve Palaces","Fourteen main stars cannot fill twelve palaces evenly, so every chart carries empty palaces. Two is the normal count at 67 percent, and how many there are follows 紫微's position rather than chance.","Across 1,200 charts, 16.5 percent have no empty palace, 67.2 percent have two and 16.3 percent have four. A palace never holds three main stars, and 命宫 itself is empty in 16.8 percent of charts.",[8],{"title":132,"description":179,"path":180,"type":110},"Why every Zi Wei chart has empty palaces, how the count follows 紫微's position, and how borrowing from the opposite palace works.","\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-empty-palace",{"slug":182,"title":183,"description":184,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":11,"summary":185,"relatedTools":186,"seo":188},"zi-wei-vs-bazi","Two Systems, Two Years: Where BaZi and Zi Wei Disagree","BaZi turns the year at 立春 and Zi Wei turns it at 正月初一, and the gap between them runs from a few days to a fortnight. In 2023 and 2024 the two systems handed the same week two different year pillars.","On 2023-01-22 Zi Wei read 癸卯 甲寅 while BaZi read 壬寅 癸丑; on 2024-02-06 the positions reversed. The month boundary diverges the same way, and 命宫 moves on the new moon rather than on 立春.",[8,187],"bazi-four-pillars",{"title":189,"description":190,"path":191,"type":110},"Zi Wei Dou Shu vs BaZi: Year and Month Boundaries","The 立春 and 正月初一 year boundaries, the lunar month against the solar term, and the thirteen time slots Zi Wei uses instead of twelve.","\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-vs-bazi",{"slug":4,"title":5,"description":6,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":11,"summary":13,"relatedTools":193,"seo":194},[8],{"title":107,"description":108,"path":109,"type":110},[196],{"slug":8,"title":197,"shortTitle":7,"description":198,"category":199,"status":200},"Zi Wei Dou Shu Chart","Enter a Gregorian birth date, time branch, and traditional chart-direction rule to see 12 palaces, stems, branches, stars, transformations, body palace, and decade ranges without personality or event predictions.","Chinese Astrology","live",{"articles":202},[203,215,227],{"slug":204,"title":205,"description":206,"category":7,"topicSlug":207,"legacyPath":208,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":209,"updatedAt":210,"summary":211,"relatedTools":212,"seo":213},"zi-wei-marriage-compatibility","Zi Wei Marriage Compatibility","Understand Zi Wei marriage compatibility through spouse palace, life palace, transformations, timing, and relationship patterns.","zi-wei-advanced","\u002Fpages\u002Farticles\u002Fziwei-hunyin-peidui.html","2025-11-14","2026-10-23","Zi Wei compatibility can highlight relationship dynamics and timing, but it should support communication rather than replace it.",[8],{"title":205,"description":206,"path":214},"\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-marriage-compatibility",{"slug":216,"title":217,"description":218,"category":7,"topicSlug":207,"legacyPath":219,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":220,"updatedAt":166,"summary":221,"relatedTools":222,"seo":223},"zi-wei-four-transformations","Four Transformations in Zi Wei Dou Shu: A 40-Cell Table, Not a Rhyme","The Four Transformations attach labels to stars, not extra stars. Write the ten-stem table out and count it: fifteen stars, eight holding both a Lu and a Ji, and four stems where lines of practice disagree.","\u002Fpages\u002Farticles\u002Fziwei-sihua-jiangjie.html","2025-12-30","Hua Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji are four labels on existing stars. The table is one row per stem; most stars carry none, and eight carry both the best and worst label depending on the birth year.",[8],{"title":224,"description":225,"path":226},"Four Transformations in Zi Wei Dou Shu: The Table Counted","Why the Four Transformations are a lookup table not a rhyme: the ten-stem chart, the uneven star spread, the four contested stems, and the four cast layers.","\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-four-transformations",{"slug":228,"title":229,"description":230,"category":7,"topicSlug":207,"legacyPath":231,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":232,"updatedAt":233,"summary":234,"relatedTools":235,"seo":236},"zi-wei-star-combinations","Zi Wei Dou Shu Star Combinations and Meanings","An in-depth exploration of major star combinations in Zi Wei Dou Shu — how stars interact, enhance, or conflict with each other, and what these combinations mean for interpretation.","\u002Fpages\u002Farticles\u002Fziwei-xingyao-zuhe.html","2026-01-01","2026-10-16","Star combinations in Zi Wei Dou Shu create nuanced meanings that go beyond individual star definitions. Understanding combinations is key to accurate reading.",[8],{"title":229,"description":237,"path":238},"Explore star combinations in Zi Wei Dou Shu: interactions, enhancements, conflicts, and interpretive meanings.","\u002Farticles\u002Fzi-wei-star-combinations",1793614153444]