Zi Wei Dou Shu star placement:
anchors before interpretation.

Direct answer: a Zi Wei Dou Shu star placement table is not a list you can use before the chart anchors are known. The lunar birth day and Five Element Bureau locate the Zi Wei anchor; the remaining major stars then follow fixed relative positions in the Zi Wei and Tian Fu groups. Supporting stars and Four Transformations use separate year, month, day, or hour anchors.

The inputs behind the placement table

Before placing a star, confirm the normalized local birth moment, lunar date, two-hour branch, Life Palace, palace stems, and Five Element Bureau. A wrong lunar day or bureau changes the Zi Wei anchor and therefore shifts the main sequence. That is why an isolated table copied without its assumptions can create a confident but incorrect chart.

The major-star placement sequence

The two major-star groups

The fourteen major stars are commonly organized into a six-star Zi Wei group—Zi Wei, Tian Ji, Tai Yang, Wu Qu, Tian Tong, and Lian Zhen—and an eight-star Tian Fu group—Tian Fu, Tai Yin, Tan Lang, Ju Men, Tian Xiang, Tian Liang, Qi Sha, and Po Jun. The group name helps explain the placement chain; it does not make every member identical in meaning.

What belongs in a useful placement table

Stage	Primary input	Output to verify
Palace board	Lunar month and hour branch	Life and Body Palaces
Bureau	Life Palace stem and branch	Five Element Bureau
Zi Wei anchor	Bureau and lunar day	Zi Wei branch
Major stars	Zi Wei and Tian Fu anchors	All 14 placements
Supporting stars	Year, month, day, or hour rule	Named star positions
Transformations	Relevant heavenly stem	Transformed star and source layer

Supporting stars are separate calculations

Stars outside the fourteen-major-star framework do not all share one formula. Some are anchored by the birth-year stem or branch; others use lunar month, lunar day, or the hour branch. A transparent calculator should preserve the evidence source for each placement instead of presenting every marker as if it came from the same table.

Four Transformations are modifiers, not locations

Lu, Quan, Ke, and Ji attach to particular stars according to a heavenly stem and the method layer being used. The star remains in its calculated palace; the transformation adds a traditional type of emphasis. Natal transformations must remain distinguishable from decade or annual transformations.

How to compare two star-placement results

Do not compare all stars at once. Find the earliest disagreement in the calculation chain. If the Life Palace differs, inspect month and hour handling. If the Life Palace matches but Zi Wei differs, inspect the bureau and lunar day. If only one supporting star differs, compare that star's specific anchor rule. This turns a vague accuracy debate into a reproducible test.

From placement to meaning

After the map is stable, interpret a major star through its palace, connected palaces, transformations, supporting stars, and timing layer. A placement table answers “where is the symbol?” It cannot answer “what will happen?” without context—and even a contextual symbolic reading should not be treated as a guaranteed outcome.

FROM GUIDE TO YOUR CHART

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Continue reading: the complete calculation method and the 14 major-star meanings.