Zi Wei Dou Shu Patterns: Names for Star Combinations

Anyone who studies Zi Wei soon meets a string of four-character names: Sha-Po-Lang, Ji-Yue-Tong-Liang, Jade Hidden in Stone, Pearl Rising from the Sea. These are patterns, names the old books gave to star combinations that are common and easy to spot. This series lays out each pattern’s conditions, its classical source and where the schools disagree, with a tool to check your own chart.

How to read a pattern: frame first, then helpers and Sha

The San He school reads patterns almost entirely from the Life Palace: which major star sits there, at which branch, and what the trines and opposite (Wealth, Career and Travel palaces) bring. We split each pattern into three layers:

1. Frame: are the right major stars in the right palaces? “Ju Men alone at Zi or Wu” is the frame of Jade Hidden in Stone.
2. Helpers: are Zuo Fu, You Bi, Wen Chang, Wen Qu, Tian Kui, Tian Yue or Lu Cun around, and the birth-year Hua Lu, Hua Quan or Hua Ke?
3. Breakers: are Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo Xing, Ling Xing, Di Kong, Di Jie or the birth-year Hua Ji around, or is the Life Palace star dim?

Almost every time a classic promises success for a pattern, it adds “without Sha” or “with helpers”. So when you find a pattern in your chart, the next step is always to look at the helpers and Sha stars, which is why the finder below lists both.

What our sample shows: patterns are common, clean ones are rare

How we counted: this site’s engine cast one Zi Wei chart for every day from 1960 to 2005 (birth hour drawn by a fixed-seed random sample), 16,802 charts in all, and checked each with the same pattern rules the finder on this page uses. These figures describe how chart structures are distributed; they say nothing about whether anyone’s destiny is good or bad.

Three charts in four have at least one favorable pattern, one or two on average; yet only 7.0% of those hits come with no Sha star and no Hua Ji around the Life Palace. Having a pattern is normal; having it form cleanly is the exception. Rather than celebrate or worry, read the helpers and Sha stars together.

All patterns

Click a name for the full explanation. The last column is the share of our 16,802 charts that meet the pattern.

How this site judges patterns

• The frame is what the sources share: stars and palaces that most sources agree on decide whether a pattern holds. Extra conditions from the Complete Book or a single source, such as a birth-year stem, are shown as a grade, not used to reject the pattern.
• Only the Life Palace: the classics often say “Body and Life”; we judge the Life Palace only, and an empty Life Palace does not borrow the opposite palace’s stars (except for patterns that require an empty palace, such as Pearl Rising from the Sea).
• Disagreements side by side: where schools define a pattern differently, as with Sovereign and Ministers, Heroic Star at Court, Sun and Moon Both Bright or Sword at the Horse’s Head, every version is given along with the one we use.
• No doom for challenging patterns: the classics can be harsh about them. We describe tendencies only and never quote lines about death, illness or lifespan.

Stars are placed by the Complete Book, as in our Zi Wei chart; the Geng stem gives Tian Tong Hua Ji and the Ren stem Wu Qu Hua Ji, so the “Punishment and Ji around the Seal” form with Tian Xiang Hua Ji cannot occur here.

Pattern families