System
What is Zi Wei Dou Shu?
Draft — page expanding
Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗數, “the Purple Star's Calculated Numbers”), or Purple Star Astrology, is one of the two most widely practised systems of Chinese natal astrology, alongside Bazi. Where Bazi reads the four pillars of time, Zi Wei Dou Shu reads the twelve palaces of life as a star map: the 14 main stars are placed into a 12-palace chart from the lunar birth date and hour, and the Four Transformations are assigned to specific stars from the birth year's Heavenly Stem, marking each palace's fortune, authority, recognition, and obstruction. Star brightness modulates each archetype's strength; decade and yearly luck cycles move the transformations across the palaces over time. The system takes its name from the Zi Wei star, the celestial region around the north pole associated with the emperor. In Divination Nexus it is the “where in life” engine: which domains are lit up, and which archetypes are active there.
What job does it do?
Chart, Today. Epistemic badge: constitutional.
What is traditional, and what is our interpretive layer?
Traditional: the 12-palace chart, the 14 main stars, the stem-driven Four Transformations, and the star brightness grades. Interpretive: Divination Nexus’s mapping of each palace onto the 12 Inner Alignment Dimensions, its “lightweight mode” daily quick-read, and its color/direction/gem remedy layer drawn from the Wu Xing are the CelestialNexus layer, not classical Zi Wei Dou Shu.
Traditional mechanic, tables, and named sources live in the vault file Celestial-ZiWeiDouShu.md.
What is it not?
It is not a tropical Western natal wheel. It is not a fake cast from a date unless the engine is honestly computational. Harm-capable historic verdicts are documented, not performed.