Qi Zheng Si Yu: Charting a Chinese-Style Star Map with the Sun, Moon and Five Planets
A friend and I were talking charts, and when I mentioned "the sun, moon and five planets" he assumed I meant the Chinese way of saying Western astrology. It isn't. We are all looking up at the same sky, but the way earlier Chinese practitioners recorded and read it is a different system altogether, called Qi Zheng Si Yu.
What This Method Looks At
Qi Zheng, the "seven luminaries," means the sun, the moon and the five planets — Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn. Si Yu, the "four remainders," means four symbolic points: Rahu, Ketu, Qi and Yuebo. The method reads the positions of these bodies against the twenty-eight lunar mansions and the twelve palaces to infer life structure and life phases. It belongs to the Chinese star-chart family and is often treated as a stellar-fate school alongside the Three Styles.
What you need to prepare: the year, month, day and hour of birth, plus the birthplace — the calculation involves converting the positions of the celestial bodies.
How It Differs from a Western Chart
Both look at the same sky; the difference is the interpretive frame. A Western chart takes signs and houses as its skeleton and aspects as its core; Qi Zheng Si Yu takes the twenty-eight lunar mansions and the twelve palaces as its coordinates and puts weight on the relative positions and configurations among the luminaries. Neither system replaces the other. They simply speak different languages.
Its Limits
Qi Zheng Si Yu has circulated far less widely than Ba Zi or Zi Wei, surviving complete texts are relatively few, and technical details differ considerably from one lineage to the next. That makes it better suited to serving as a structural reference than to judging whether one specific thing will succeed or fail. If you do use it, confirm first which ephemeris and which conventions the chart was cast with.
FAQ
Q: Why is Qi Zheng Si Yu so rarely seen? Its calculations depend on the positions of celestial bodies and on calendar conversion, a higher bar than the stem-and-branch systems; its lineages are also scattered and openly usable material is scarce, so it is less popular than Ba Zi and Zi Wei.
Q: Can it be read alongside Ba Zi? Yes, the two can cross-reference each other: one reads the positions of celestial bodies, the other reads stem-and-branch structure. If the results disagree, explain each one on its own evidence rather than forcing them into a single sentence of conclusion.
Q: Why does Qi Zheng Si Yu ask for a birthplace? Because it looks at where the celestial bodies actually stood in the sky, and different longitudes and latitudes correspond to different horizons and hour angles. At the same moment, the converted positions differ from place to place, so the birthplace has to be given together with the birth time. Take an example: two people born at the same moment, one on the eastern coast and one in the inland west, do not produce the same conversion, and a chart cast from the time alone may not match the person at all.
Q: If Qi Zheng Si Yu and Ba Zi give different answers about the same thing, which one should I trust? They use different coordinates: one reads the positions of celestial bodies, the other reads stem-and-branch structure. Start by checking whether the two are even answering on the same level — if Qi Zheng is describing "the celestial pattern of the current period" and Ba Zi is describing "strength or weakness at the structural level," they were never addressing the same question, so they can be consulted side by side without choosing one. In practice, ask yourself first: do I want a sense of timing at the level of celestial patterns, or a judgment of strength at the structural level? Once the question is settled, which system to use becomes clear.
Where to Start
If you have complete birth information, you can go straight into the process here: describe what you want to ask in plain language, and the system will suggest a method. You can specify Qi Zheng Si Yu, then see the chart and the reading, and export it if you want to keep it. In the Zhanbu Mizhi process, the chart is generated from data, not filled in by hand.
Disclaimer: This article covers traditional culture and folk custom. It is for entertainment and self-reflection only, and does not constitute medical, psychological, investment, legal or marital decision advice. Please do not submit sensitive personal information such as ID numbers or detailed addresses. If you experience persistent insomnia, anxiety or physical discomfort, please consult a doctor or a qualified professional.
Sources
- Siku Quanshu Zongmu Tiyao (Annotated Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries), volume 108, Masters section, divination category, listed titles. Wikisource: https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/四庫全書總目提要/卷108 (accessed 2026-09-17)