The method available here
The palace chart implements one declared layer: resolved non-leap lunar month and day, year heavenly stem and hour earthly branch produce Ming palace, Body palace, twelve topic palaces, their stems, a five-element bureau and fourteen resident principal stars. The calculation follows the AFSI2006 published counting and placement examples. That attribution identifies the implemented rule set; it does not certify every Chinese or Vietnamese school.
AFSI2006 · Zi Wei Dou Shu Part1 ↗AFSI2006 · Zi Wei Dou Shu Part2 ↗
Keep the calendar and hour conventions visible
Enter the resolved lunar labels required by your source. The month is not a Gregorian month or a BaZi seasonal month. A lunar leap flag cannot be discarded. The current form requires a non-leap month and leaves calendar conversion, late-Zi date rollover and solar-time correction outside its calculation.
The Chinese calendar explorer can help compare entered local date, China date and year boundaries. A comparison result is not permission to mix a lunar month with a differently resolved year or hour. When the source convention is uncertain, preserve the uncertainty instead of choosing a convenient default.
Read a placement without overstating it
Select a palace to see the exact resident-star list and its attributed topic meaning. Body is an additional marker in an existing palace. An empty principal-star list means that this fourteen-star layer has no resident there; it does not mean a person lacks the life experience named by the topic.
A topic definition and a star’s general symbolism do not by themselves establish a fully sourced interpretation of their combination. Brightness, transformations, other stars, palace relationships and timing may matter in a particular practice. The workspace identifies what is available and leaves unsupported synthesis explicit.
Calculation evidence and reproducible reading
One published chart has been checked for all fourteen resident principal stars. Three further examples check Ming, bureau and the Zi Wei anchor. An Earth5 example combines two independently printed reference-table cells rather than reproducing a complete published birth chart. Together these cover examples of all five bureau numbers, not every input or every lineage.
Download the chart to retain its exact resolved inputs, calculation convention, resident-star output, selected palace reading and sourced glossary. These checks support reproducibility of the stated symbolic rules. They do not establish personality or predictive validity.
Word origin · etymology
Romanized Chinese system title: 紫微斗數.
Zǐwēi is the traditional astral name retained by the system; dǒu refers to the Dipper and shù to numbers or reckoning. Tử Vi is its Sino-Vietnamese counterpart.
How we know · epistemology
Traditional symbolic chart construction
Birth-calendar inputs and placement rules distribute named stars among palaces. Many labels are constructed roles rather than observed bodies; interpretation should preserve this system's own palace and transformation rules instead of borrowing Western chart meanings.
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Connected concepts
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Mentioned in 5 other entries
These links connect subjects and terminology. They do not establish a shared historical origin.
Sources & provenance
Use the citations beside each section to distinguish a calculation convention, a historical teaching and an editorial example.