Flying Star Calculator: Annual and Monthly Charts with the Year’s Taboo Directions

Compiled by Haiyuan · AI-generated content · Updated 2026-10-14 · How we calculate

Pick a year and a solar-term month to see where the nine stars land that year, which monthly star sits on top, and where that year’s Grand Duke, Year Breaker, Three Killings, Five Yellow and Hidden Sword fall. Every chart is calculated by the same flying star engine used for the 2027 flying star overview.

What the Zi Bai flying stars are

The Zi Bai (“purple and white”) flying stars, also called the nine-palace flying stars, are the most basic layer of Xuan Kong feng shui: nine stars, 1 White to 9 Purple, rotate through the nine sectors of a building along the Luo Shu path, year by year and month by month. Which star sits in which sector this year is a fact you can calculate; whether that star is good and what to do about it is where the schools interpret. This calculator does only the first part, and shows the method so you can check it.

The star names come from the seven stars of the Big Dipper plus two attendants: 1 White Tan Lang, 2 Black Ju Men, 3 Jade Lu Cun, 4 Green Wen Qu, 5 Yellow Lian Zhen, 6 White Wu Qu, 7 Red Po Jun, 8 White Zuo Fu, 9 Purple You Bi. The colors come from the old nine-palace diagrams; “purple and white” refers to 1 White, 6 White, 8 White and 9 Purple, traditionally the auspicious four.

Flying stars read the directions of a building; BaZi reads a person’s birth chart. The two systems rest on different premises, and this site keeps their conclusions apart.

Reading the annual chart: the center star, forward flight, Li Chun

Step one: find the center star. In 1864, the upper-era jia zi year, 1 White entered the center; since then the center star steps back one place per year on a nine-year cycle: 2024 3 Jade, 2025 2 Black, 2026 1 White, 2027 9 Purple, 2028 8 White, and so on. As a formula: take the year modulo nine, subtract it from eleven and fold the result back into one to nine.

Step two: fly forward. The center star sits on Luo Shu 5 and the rest follow the Luo Shu numbers: Center → Qian (Northwest) → Dui (West) → Gen (Northeast) → Li (South) → Kan (North) → Kun (Southwest) → Zhen (East) → Xun (Southeast), the number rising by one each step and wrapping from nine to one. Annual and monthly stars always fly forward; backward flight belongs only to the mountain and facing stars of a full Xuan Kong house chart.

Step three: check the year boundary. The annual chart changes at Li Chun, not on 1 January and not at Chinese New Year. Li Chun usually falls on February 3–5: January 20, 2027, for example, still uses the 2026 chart (1 White in the center), and the 2027 chart (9 Purple in the center) only starts on February 4, 2027. The “Back to today” button applies this rule for you.

Each cell reads, top to bottom: direction and trigram, star, the star’s classical name, period standing. The colored top edge shows the period standing; red is reserved for the out-of-season 5 Yellow.

Reading the monthly chart: solar-term months and three rules

The monthly chart changes at the solar terms, not on the first of each calendar month and not at the lunar new moon: the Yin month starts at Li Chun, the Mao month at Jing Zhe, and so on to the Zi month at Da Xue and the Chou month at Xiao Han. That is why the menu says “Yin month (about 2/4–3/5)”, and why the result lists the exact dates for the year you choose.

The monthly center star depends on the year branch: in Zi, Wu, Mao and You years the Yin month starts with 8 White; in Chen, Xu, Chou and Wei years with 5 Yellow; in Yin, Shen, Si and Hai years with 2 Black, and it steps back one place each month. “Monthly stars fly backward” refers to this month-to-month step; inside any single monthly chart the stars still fly forward.

Read the monthly chart on top of the annual one: the annual chart sets the tone of the year, and the monthly chart shows when a given star is under extra pressure. When the monthly center star matches the annual one, the two charts coincide completely: in 2026 that is the You month, in 2027 the Wei month. Whether that “doubles” anything is a matter of school; we only mark the fact.

The nine stars at a glance

“Classical character” is the nature of the star itself; “period standing” is how far the star sits from the current period (Period 9, 2024–2043). They are two different rulers.

Period standing follows the common grading. In Period 9: 9 Purple rules, 1 White is growing, 2 Black advancing, 8 White receding, 7 Red declining; 3 Jade, 4 Green and 6 White are dead, and the out-of-season 5 Yellow is hostile. “Dead” means out of season and without force, not “bad”: 6 White and 4 Green are still classically favorable stars, which is why only the 5 Yellow is shown in red here.

The star–palace relationship compares the star’s element with the sector’s element, in five ways: same element, palace feeds star (the star is strengthened), palace controls star (the star is restrained), star drains into palace (the star gives its strength away) and star controls palace (the star presses on the sector, so the matters of that sector are held back). The last two are often confused, but they run in opposite directions: one is the star spending itself, the other is the star bearing down on the sector.

The 2026 and 2027 charts

2026, Bing Wu year: 1 White (Tan Lang) in the center

From Li Chun on February 4, 2026 to the day before Li Chun on February 4, 2027. 5 Yellow in the South, 2 Black in the Northwest, 8 White in the East. Groundbreaking taboos: Grand Duke South (Wu), Year Breaker North (Zi), Three Killings in the north (Hai, Zi, Chou), Five Yellow South, Hidden Sword North.

2027, Ding Wei year: 9 Purple (You Bi) in the center

From Li Chun on February 4, 2027 to the day before Li Chun on February 4, 2028. 5 Yellow in the North, 2 Black in the West, 8 White in the Southeast. Groundbreaking taboos: Grand Duke Southwest (Wei), Year Breaker Northeast (Chou), Three Killings in the west (Shen, You, Xu), Five Yellow North, Hidden Sword South. The sector-by-sector reading is on the 2027 flying star overview and its nine sector pages.

Twelve years at a glance: 2024–2035

Every year starts at Li Chun. Directions are the eight sectors; the Grand Duke and Year Breaker each cover one mountain (15°), the Three Killings three mountains (75°), and the Five Yellow and Hidden Sword a whole sector (45°).

How the Grand Duke, Year Breaker, Three Killings, Five Yellow and Hidden Sword are found

These five are the directions where major construction is avoided each year. They are a separate layer from the nine-palace stars, but the calculator lists them together:

• Grand Duke (Tai Sui): the mountain of the year branch. In 2027, a Ding Wei year, it sits at Wei (Southwest, 202.5°–217.5°). The saying is “sit with the Grand Duke, never face him”.
• Year Breaker (Sui Po): the clash of the Grand Duke. Wei clashes with Chou, so in 2027 the Year Breaker is in the Northeast.
• Three Killings (San Sha): set by the three-harmony frame of the year branch. In Shen, Zi and Chen years they lie in the south (Si, Wu, Wei); in Hai, Mao and Wei years in the west (Shen, You, Xu); in Yin, Wu and Xu years in the north (Hai, Zi, Chou); in Si, You and Chou years in the east (Yin, Mao, Chen). The three parts are the Robbery, Calamity and Year Sha. The saying is “face the Three Killings, never sit in them”.
• Five Yellow: the sector where the annual 5 Yellow lands.
• Hidden Sword (An Jian Sha): the sector opposite the Five Yellow; in years when the 5 Yellow sits in the center there is none.

Avoiding groundbreaking in the Five Yellow sector is a broad consensus across schools; what they disagree on is whether to place a cure and which one. We only say where groundbreaking is avoided, and leave cures out. “Groundbreaking” means work that touches the structure, such as digging, knocking down walls or major renovation; moving a desk, changing a lamp or cleaning does not count. If the work cannot be moved, the usual answer is to choose the start date, which is a date selection question. For how to measure directions and where the 2027 taboos overlap, see the 2027 groundbreaking table.

How this calculator fits with the rest of the site

• This page: the chart for any year from 1900 to 2100 and any solar-term month, plus that year’s groundbreaking taboos. No annual forecasts, no cures.
• 2027 flying star overview: 2027 only, but in depth: a page for each of the nine sectors, zodiac planning pages that connect directions to each sign, and a month-by-month chart table.
• Eight Mansions (Ming Gua): whether a person (life trigram) and a house (house trigram) suit each other. The result is fixed for life and does not change by year; it is a different school of direction reading.
• San Yuan Jiu Yun: the twenty-year periods of a 180-year cycle. We are in Period 9, ruled by 9 Purple, and that is where every cell’s period standing comes from.