The Four Transformations of Zi Wei Dou Shu: Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke, Hua Ji and Where They Land

Compiled by Haiyuan · AI-generated content · Updated 2026-10-07 · How we calculate

If the fourteen major stars are the cast, the Four Transformations are the plot. Tai Yang in the Life Palace with Hua Lu and Tai Yang in the Life Palace with Hua Ji describe two entirely different life lessons. The transformations show where the energy flows: where things run smoothly, where you want control, where you earn a name, and what you cannot let go of.

What Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji mean

Hua Ji is the most misunderstood. It does not mean “something will go wrong in this palace”; it means “this is the palace you cannot let go of”. With Hua Ji in the Wealth Palace you are unusually sensitive about money, which can make you a careful budgeter or a chronic money worrier; with Hua Ji in the Spouse Palace you invest deeply in love, and are more easily hurt in relationships. Ji is fixation, and fixation can be focus or it can be a knot; it depends on how you use it.

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The ten-stem transformation table

The transformations are set by a heavenly stem, and each stem has its own set of Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji. Birth-year transformations use the stem of the birth year, decade transformations use the stem of the decade palace, annual transformations use the stem of that year, and monthly and daily transformations use the stem of that month and that day. This is the version of the Complete Book used on this site:

Versions of the transformation table

Schools disagree mainly on two stems, and more than one star is affected:

Tian Fu and Tian Xiang need a word. In the Complete Book version used here, no stem transforms either of them; the other Ren version is the only one that gives Tian Fu a Hua Ke. None of the common versions transforms Tian Xiang. The “Tian Xiang Hua Ji” sometimes seen online usually mistakes the Ram and Ji Flanking the Seal pattern (Qing Yang on one side of Tian Xiang, Hua Ji on the other) for the star itself transforming; see Ram and Ji Flanking the Seal. If you compare our chart with another site, people born in Geng and Ren years are the ones most likely to see a difference.

Layer by layer: birth year, decade, year, then month and day

The birth-year transformations are the lifelong base layer and never change. Decade transformations change every ten years, set by the stem of that decade’s palace; annual transformations change every year, set by that year’s stem. Only the three layers together describe “this person, in this decade, in this year”.

Take our example chart (born 10 July 1990 at noon, a Geng-Wu year). Its birth-year transformations are Tai Yang Hua Lu, Wu Qu Hua Quan, Tai Yin Hua Ke and Tian Tong Hua Ji; of these, Tai Yang Hua Lu and Tai Yin Hua Ke both land in the Life Palace, while Tian Tong Hua Ji lands in the Spouse Palace. Having Hua Lu and Hua Ke together in the Life Palace draws both resources and reputation toward the person; Tian Tong Hua Ji in the Spouse Palace hints that in love he tends to keep things to himself, wanting peace and quiet rather than an argument. In the Bing-Wu year 2026 the annual transformations become Tian Tong Hua Lu, Tian Ji Hua Quan, Wen Chang Hua Ke and Lian Zhen Hua Ji, and the year’s focus moves to the palaces holding those stars.

Below the year there are two more layers. The month starts from the Dou Jun: count backwards from the annual Life Palace to your birth month, then forwards to your birth hour; that palace is the first lunar month of the year, and each month after moves one palace forward. The month stem follows the Five Tigers rule from the year stem. In our example chart the Dou Jun for 2026 is in the natal Travel Palace. The day starts with the 1st of the lunar month in that month’s Life Palace and moves one palace forward each day, with transformations from the day stem. In a leap month, days 1–15 count as that month and days 16 onward as the next.

The finer the layer, the faster it changes and the less it weighs: daily transformations change every day and are only good for picking which day suits a conversation; they never outweigh the natal chart and the decade. Every decade, the year 2026 and its twelve months are worked through on the example chart in decades, years and months; our Zi Wei wealth reading follows the same order from the natal chart down to month and day.

How the Flying Star school uses the transformations

This page follows the San He reading: see which palace and which star receive the birth-year, decade and annual transformations. The Flying Star school goes further, letting each of the twelve palaces fly its own Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji from its palace stem to trace cause and effect between palaces, with ideas such as self-transformation, the Ji clash and the Origin Palace; see Flying Transformations. The approach associated with Liang Ruoyu, which treats the transformations as a grammar for reasoning, is summarized in the Four-Transformation method.

Where the birth-year transformations land

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. These figures describe how chart structures are distributed; they say nothing about whether anyone’s destiny is good or bad.

The birth-year Hua Ji is spread almost evenly across the twelve palaces, around 8% each. In other words, everyone has a Ji palace; the only difference is where it sits. Rather than fear Hua Ji, it is more useful to know which area of your life your fixation lives in.

For the full readings palace by palace, see Hua Lu in the twelve palaces, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji.

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