Qimen Nine Stars: Reference Table

Stars: what heaven gives

For the same matter, the gate says whether and how you can move; the star says what kind of matter it is and whether the wider environment helps you. The star cannot be changed; the gate can be chosen.

Nine stars at home

The home palace of each star is simply its trigram's own imagery, so the element tells you most of it. The names are the same nine Dipper stars used in feng shui and Zi Wei Dou Shu, so the systems can be cross-checked.

Four auspicious stars, three inauspicious stars, and the neutral two

• Four auspicious stars: Fu, Qin, Xin, Ren
• Three inauspicious stars: Peng, Rui, Zhu
• Neutral: Chong (mildly auspicious) and Ying (mildly inauspicious, hollow rather than solid)

Stars worth remembering

• Tian Rui: the illness star. Read it for illness; for other matters it tends to mean delay and decline. It is also the teacher and the friend.
• Tian Xin: the healing star. To seek treatment read Tian Xin, not Tian Rui: Tian Rui is the illness, Tian Xin is the cure.
• Tian Fu: the literary star. Read it for exams, study, writing and education.
• Tian Ying: attractive but not sturdy. It stands for publicity, visibility and reputation, not tangible gain.
• Tian Peng: the most inauspicious, yet it stands for cunning. Read it for schemes, unorthodox paths and speculation.

Tian Qin: the extra ninth star

There are only 8 gates and the center has none, but there are 9 stars and Tian Qin's home is center 5. Since the center does not rotate, in the chart: Tian Qin lodges in Kun 2 and travels with Tian Rui, wherever Tian Rui goes. A very auspicious star and a very inauspicious one are bound in the same palace, and both must be weighed.

School difference: the flying-plate school lets Tian Qin fly into the center as an independent star instead of lodging in Kun. This site follows the rotating-plate school.

How stars and gates turn, and two orderings

Gates and stars travel along the same eight-node ring (Kan 1 → Gen 8 → Zhen 3 → Xun 4 → Li 9 → Kun 2 → Dui 7 → Qian 6), but are driven differently:

So on one chart the star offset and the gate offset are usually different. There are two orderings of the stars: the movement order (along the eight-node ring) Peng, Ren, Chong, Fu, Ying, Rui, Zhu, Xin; and the recitation order (by palace number 1 to 9) Peng, Rui, Chong, Fu, Qin, Xin, Zhu, Ren, Ying.