ONE MOMENT, ONE CHART
Qi Men Dun Jia Chart, Cast Online
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How this chart is built
- The hour is the whole input. The traditional day divides into twelve two-hour periods. The period you are in and the day it falls on are all the calculation takes. Charts here run on Hong Kong time, the home of this site's temple tradition.
- The solar term sets the season. The year divides into twenty-four solar terms of roughly fifteen days. Each term divides again into three five-day periods: upper, middle, and lower.
- The half of the year sets the direction of travel. From the winter solstice to the summer solstice the stems are laid clockwise, the yang arrangement. From the summer solstice back around, counterclockwise, the yin arrangement.
- Term, period, and direction select the chart number. The combination picks one of nine numbered arrangements, and that fixes where the six Yi and the three Qi stand across the palaces.
- Jia hides, and the six Yi stand in for it. The sixty pairs of stem and branch run in six cycles of ten. The pair that opens the current cycle decides which of the six Yi covers Jia. That substitution is the thing the method is named after.
- The Duty Chief and Duty Envoy rotate to the hour. The star and gate on duty move to the palace of the hour's stem, and the remaining stars and gates follow them around the board.
Every step above is table lookup over a chart computed in advance, so the same two-hour period always returns the same board. The arrangement used here is the hour-chart rotating method with intercalation, cross-checked against an independent implementation across 228 two-hour periods. The board is fixed arithmetic; only the written reading of your question is composed per cast, and it is checked against this same board before it reaches you, so it can never name a direction the chart does not carry.
Why the chart hides Jia
The method is named for something you will not find on the board. Look through all nine palaces and the ten heavenly stems come up one short: Jia, the first stem and the commander, never appears. It hides beneath the six Yi that stand in for it, while the three Qi, Yi and Bing and Ding, move around them. Dun Jia means the hiding of Jia. You can check this against any chart this page casts.
Why south sits at the top
The board reads south at the top, north at the bottom, east to the left. Chinese chart diagrams have been drawn this way since long before north-up maps became the convention. It is a diagram of the eight directions, not a picture of the ground. When a palace points you toward a direction, resolve it against your actual room with a compass; where that palace sits on your screen tells you nothing about where to walk.
Common questions
- What is Qi Men Dun Jia?
- Qi Men Dun Jia is one of the three classical Chinese arts of calculation, alongside Tai Yi and Liu Ren. It arranges a moment into nine palaces and places heavenly stems, eight gates, nine stars, and eight gods across them. Reading the arrangement is a way of laying out the structure of a situation: where the pressure sits, what is hollow, and which direction still has room to move. This page casts by the hour-chart rotating method with the intercalation rule, the most widely used of the several schools.
- Is the chart about me, or about the hour?
- About the hour. Everyone casting in the same two-hour period anywhere in the world gets the same nine palaces. Nothing about your birth, your name, or your history enters the calculation. What makes a chart yours is the question you hold while reading it, which is why the tradition insists on one matter per chart.
- Why does the board put south at the top?
- This board follows the traditional south-up convention used in many Chinese cosmological diagrams. The board gives you a direction, not a screen position. If a palace points northeast, use a compass in your actual room. The corner of the screen tells you nothing about where to walk.
- What are the gates, stars, and gods?
- Three layers over the same nine palaces. The eight gates are the human layer, the action available in that position. The nine stars are the heaven layer, the quality of the influence there. The eight gods are the hidden layer, the disposition surrounding it. A palace is read by how its three layers agree or pull against each other, together with the heavenly stems standing in it.
- What do jixing, kong, and menpo mean?
- They are the chart's stress markers, and a reading usually starts at them. Jixing, clash and punish, means the stem in that palace is punished by it. Kong, void, means the palace falls on one of the two branches left out of the current ten-day cycle, so whatever sits there has not become substantial yet. Menpo, gate pressed, means the gate's element overcomes its palace's, so the gate cannot act freely where it stands.
- Why one matter, one chart?
- A chart answers the question you were holding when it was cast. Hold two and the reading blurs across both. Cast again and again on the same question and you have stopped reading the chart and started shopping for the answer you wanted. The discipline belongs to the method, and this page caps casts instead of leaving the button open.
- How is this different from a birth chart?
- A birth chart, whether Zi Wei Dou Shu or Ba Zi, is cast from your birth moment and describes a long arc. A Qi Men chart is cast from now and describes one situation in one hour. The first is a portrait; the second is a photograph of the room you are standing in. For questions about your nature, or about the shape of a whole year, read a birth chart instead.
- What is free, and what is paid?
- Casting is free, with no sign-in. You get the full nine-palace board, its gates, stars, gods, stems and stress markers, plus a short reading for your question. The full reading is a one-time $2.99 unlock. It uses the same board to show what to check in your space, one action you can take today, and the change that means the matter is ready to close. There is no subscription.