Zi Wei Flying Transformations: every palace flies
The usual way to read a Zi Wei chart is to look at the stars in the Life Palace, the stars in its three supporting palaces, and where the four birth-year transformations fall. The Flying Star school takes one more step. Each of the twelve palaces has its own heavenly stem, and each stem turns four stars into Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji. So a chart is not just twelve boxes of stars; it also holds forty-eight lines, each leaving one palace and landing in another.
San He school vs Flying Star school
Both schools use the same chart: the Life Palace, the bureau and the positions of the fourteen major stars are identical. The difference is in how the chart is read. San He (Three Harmonies) focuses on star combinations and brightness; the Flying Star school focuses on cause and effect between palaces. Many lineages taught in Taiwan and Hong Kong under different names belong broadly to the Flying Star family, each with its own terms.
| San He school | Flying Star school | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of reading | The stars in one palace plus its three supporting palaces | Lines of transformation between palaces |
| Where the four transformations come from | The stems of the birth year, the decade and the year | All of that, plus the stem of each of the twelve palaces |
| Minor stars | Used heavily | Mostly just the fourteen major stars plus Wen Chang, Wen Qu, Zuo Fu and You Bi |
| Typical question | Are the stars in this palace strong or weak? | Where does this matter start, where does it land, what does it clash? |
| Strength | Vivid pictures of character and potential | Step-by-step reasoning about why and when |
The chart tool on this page uses San He star placement, and the transformations are calculated on that same chart.
The three basic steps
- Find the palace stem. Starting from the Yin palace, the Five Tigers rule assigns a heavenly stem to each palace based on your birth-year stem. See Palace Stems.
- Look up the four transformations. Each stem turns four specific stars into Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji.
- Find where they land. The palace each of those stars sits in is where that transformation “flies into”. The palace opposite the Ji is said to be clashed.
Example: the four lines from the Life Palace
Example chart: a woman born on 15 June 1988 at 10:00 (a made-up birthday), Wu-Chen year, Si hour, Metal-4 bureau, with the Life Palace in Yi-Chou holding Tai Yang and Tai Yin.
| Transformation | Star | Lands in | Plain reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lu | Tian Ji (天機) | Mind Palace | the Life Palace gives freely to the Mind Palace and finds affinity there |
| Quan | Tian Liang (天梁) | Career Palace | the Life Palace wants control over the Career Palace and puts effort in |
| Ke | Zi Wei (紫微) | Property Palace | the Life Palace brings order and good manners to the Property Palace, and looks for a graceful way out there |
| Ji | Tai Yin (太陰) | Life Palace (self) | cares a lot, yet cannot hold on; grip first, let go later |
Where the Life Palace sends its Ji is traditionally read as what a person finds hardest to let go of. In this chart the Ji lands on Tai Yin in the Life Palace itself, a “self-transformed Ji”, and that same Tai Yin also carries the birth-year Quan. One star holding both a birth-year Quan and a self-transformed Ji reads as: wanting to keep things firmly in hand, then loosening the grip at the last moment. More in Self-Transformation.
Free flying-transformation chart: tap a palace, see where it flies
Enter your date of birth, birth time and sex to cast a Zi Wei chart with the heavenly stem of all twelve palaces. Tap any palace and the chart marks where its Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji land, which palace the Ji clashes, and lists self-transformations, the Ji chain and the turned-chart equivalents. The Origin Palace has a dotted frame. Add a birthplace to correct for true solar time. Everything is calculated in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Stars are placed by the San He method of the Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu. Palace stems follow the Five Tigers rule starting from the Yin palace, so the Zi and Chou palaces repeat the stems of Yin and Mao. For the Geng stem we use Tai Yang, Wu Qu, Tai Yin, Tian Tong; for Ren, Tian Liang, Zi Wei, Zuo Fu, Wu Qu. If you only know the two-hour period, enter its midpoint (for the Si period, 10:00).
What 16,802 charts show: self-transformations and clashes are normal
How we counted: our engine cast one Zi Wei chart for every day from 1960 to 2005, with the birth hour drawn by a fixed-seed random sample and sexes alternating, 16,802 charts in all. Palace stems, flights and self-transformations come from this site's engine, which we checked chart by chart against the open-source iztro library.
Self-transformation and “Ji clashing the Life Palace” are often talked about as alarming. Cast a large sample and they turn out to be ordinary: the average chart has 4.01 self-transformations, not a single chart has none, and 62.2% of charts have at least one palace whose Ji clashes the Life Palace. What matters is which palace and which matter they are tied to, not whether they exist.
Three common misconceptions
The Flying Star school casts a different chart.
Star placement is the same. The Flying Star school simply also uses the stems of the twelve palaces.
A self-transformation spoils the chart.
Every chart has them, 4.01 on average. A self-transformation says the energy of that palace flows out by itself; whether that is good depends on which one and where.
Ji means disaster, and a Ji clash means trouble.
The Flying Star school reads Ji as fixation, care, a sense of owing: a place where there is work to do. A clash means the opposite palace gets pulled in, not that something bad happens. We never make doom calls from a clash.
Keep reading
A straight word: flying transformations are a way of reasoning, not a verdict
The Flying Star school reads a chart as a web of cause and effect between palaces. That makes it good at breaking a question into where it starts, how it unfolds and where it lands. But there are many lineages, their terms and readings differ, and two teachers can tell two different stories from the same Ji line. We only describe the skeleton the lineages share, write readings as tendencies, never make doom calls, and never read health or lifespan. A chart is a map; which road you take is still up to you. Everything on this site is for reference and entertainment.
Try the other side of Chinese astrology
BaZi (Four Pillars) reads the same birth moment through the Day Master and the five elements. Our free chart and 12-part reading are built on the same honest principles.
Flying transformations: FAQ
What are flying transformations in Zi Wei Dou Shu?
A Flying Star school technique: every palace has a heavenly stem, each stem turns four stars into Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji, and each transformation “flies” into the palace where that star sits. Readers use these palace-to-palace lines to reason about events.
Which is more accurate, San He or Flying Star?
They use the same chart and read it differently: San He focuses on star combinations, Flying Star on cause and effect between palaces. Many readers use both, San He for character and potential, flying transformations for the story behind an event.
How are palace stems worked out?
From the birth-year stem, using the Five Tigers rule from the Yin palace: Jia or Ji years start with Bing-Yin, Yi or Geng with Wu-Yin, Bing or Xin with Geng-Yin, Ding or Ren with Ren-Yin, Wu or Gui with Jia-Yin. The Zi and Chou palaces repeat the stems of Yin and Mao.
Is a self-transformation bad?
Not necessarily. In our sample the average chart has 4.01 of them and every chart has at least one. Self-transformed Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji each mean something different, and the palace matters.