Everything the wheel opens, one animal at the center
The Eastern wheel, your birth year's animal
The Western wheel, the sky on your birthday
The craft your Zodi Animal practices
五行 · featured system
The five phases that move through everything — now mapped to the seven chakras, each with its own yoga practice.
Four Pillars
Cast your charttoolBaZi八字 Bāzì · the Chinese readingSaju Palja사주팔자 · the Korean readingYour Day Master日主 RìzhǔThe Ten Gods十神 ShíshénTwo skies, read together
The Moon overhead, its phases, and the path they light.
紫微斗數 · Purple Star Astrology
Purple Star Astrology, also known as Zi Wei Dou Shu, maps one birth moment into twelve palaces, fourteen principal stars, and four transformations. Your Zodi Animal names the creature. Purple Star shows the court it walks through.
This page teaches you to read the whole court, in order: room by room, star by star, the way the old court offices did.
Court Novice · Level 1 of 8A beginner-friendly guide to the rooms, stars, forces, triangles, and timing gates of Purple Star Astrology.
Purple Star Astrology, also known as Zi Wei Dou Shu, is a Chinese birth chart system that maps a person's life into twelve palaces, fourteen principal stars, and four transformations. This guide teaches the system step by step for Western readers: first the rooms, then the stars, then the palace triangle, then timing.
Your Zodi Animal gives you the living symbol. Purple Star gives you the palace map behind it. One names the creature. The other shows the court it walks through.
Purple Star Astrology is for the shape of a life, not the mood of a day. Ask the court and it answers in tendencies: which life rooms tend to carry authority, where pressure gathers, where luck flows, what repeats, where conflict or inheritance sits, which strengths stay hidden until someone names them.
It does not replace choice. It hands you a map for asking better questions — of the chart, and of yourself. The chart is a map, not a prison.
Learning track Below: learn to read any chart, step by step, with a fully worked example. Add your birth date above for a reading of your own first — the method is the same.
A chart is twelve rooms read together. Select a room to hear its question and watch the rooms that answer with it light up: two triangle partners and one mirror across the court.
Loading the court…
Twelve rooms, one geometry. The figures who live in them come next.
Meet the principal starsThe teaser let you move one star through one room. Here is the grown-up version: any of the fourteen stars, any room, with the reading layered from a beginner's sentence down to a reader's note. A star's meaning is read across three rooms and its mirror, never one.
Drag a star into a room, or tap a star and then a room.
Pick a star to begin.
One placement is never the reading. The court answers together.
Every star bends to its room.
Open the Four Transformations化祿 the Flow, 化權 the Power, 化科 the Shine, and 化忌 the Hook. A birth-year stem re-colors four stars. Set a year or pick a stem and watch which four stars each force flies to. The forces attach to stars, not rooms.
For study orientation. A full chart needs complete birth data.
Forces attach to stars. Structure attaches to rooms.
Read the Triangle三方四正 Sān Fāng Sì Zhèng, taught by toggling rather than by paragraph. This is Mei's Career room. With every companion you add, watch the reading grow more careful and more accurate.
Reading with 1 of 4 rooms.
A verdict needs more than one room.
Write a chart sentencePick a star, a room, and, if you like, a transformation. Write the reading in your own words, then compare with how a beginner and a practitioner would put it, and see what evidence a full reading would still need. Your words are never scored by machine; the comparison is yours to make.
Sentences become readings when time enters.
Open the timing modelMei's chart runs a Fire Bureau, so her first Decade Door opens at age 6. Enter an age to open its door; the Year Wave shows where 2026 lands.
You will meet three timing systems on this site. They are different calculations from the same birth moment, and this hub never blends them.
Rates the day for everyone: lunar date, solar term, the Twelve Day Officers. Inherited calendar lore, a different system with different math.
See today's almanacBaZi also walks life in ten-year turns, counted from the month pillar instead of the Bureau. Two clocks that happen to share a tick.
See BaZi's luck pillarsThe almanac rates the day for everyone. Your decade doors belong to your chart alone. Two clocks, two calculations, no mixing.
You are reading this oneMethod beats memory.
Walk a full reading in the Reader's SchoolEach door below opens one full room of study. Take them in this order and the system builds itself.
The summit is not a certificate. It is the ability to teach the foundations in plain English and to read a chart responsibly. Practice the teach-backs, learn the phrasebook, then sit the Imperial exam.
Pick a prompt, write your answer, then reveal the model answer and score yourself honestly. The model teaches; it does not grade you.
Twenty questions across the whole path. Score 18 or better, with your teach-backs submitted, and the store seats you as Imperial Astrologer. Retakes are always open, no cooldown.
Eight levels, from naming the parts to reading a whole chart responsibly. Nothing here is locked and no account is needed. Take them in order and the system builds itself.
Both grow from the same cosmological tradition. Both begin at your birth moment. They answer different questions.
Element flow, seasonal balance, energetic timing. The climate you were born into, and how it tends to move.
Palace placement, star characters, life domains, chart relationships. The rooms of a life, and how they answer each other.
BaZi tells you the weather. Purple Star gives you the map.
Four systems, one birth, no blending. When you want the weather, read the Four Pillars at the BaZi hub.