How to Read a Qimen Dunjia Chart: Nine Palaces, Eight Gates, Nine Stars, and Eight Spirits

Most charts on this site belong to a person or a building. A Qimen Dunjia chart belongs to a moment. A reader casts it for the hour a question is asked, studies how a set of turning layers lands across nine fixed palaces, and answers from that landing pattern. Two hours later the chart has changed and the same question would meet a different board.

That speed is the first thing to grasp, because it separates Qimen from its neighbours. The BaZi chart reading guide on this site reads a birth hour forward across decades. The Flying Stars guide reads a house across years and months. Qimen shares parts with both, the same ten Heavenly Stems as BaZi and the same Lo Shu square as Flying Stars, then runs its clock faster than either. Teachers group it with Da Liu Ren and Tai Yi Shen Shu as the Three Styles, the three board systems of classical Chinese divination, and they describe Qimen as the one pointed at situations: a journey, a negotiation, a search, a decision with a date attached.

This guide explains how the board is built and how a reader works it. It names every layer, gives the full tables, and reads one schematic palace in the open. It stays inside the tradition framing throughout: these are the categories teachers use, presented as cultural practice. No palace in these pages promises money, health, love, or a safe journey, and the limits section at the end draws that line in full.

The name carries the method

Qimen Dunjia, written 奇門遁甲 in traditional characters and 奇门遁甲 in simplified, breaks into three pieces, and each piece names a working part.

Qi, the 奇 in the first syllable, points at three of the ten Heavenly Stems: Yi, Bing, and Ding. Teachers call them the San Qi, the three wonders. They keep their own names on the board and carry favourable weight in a reading when they land well.

Men, the 門, means gates. The eight gates form the human layer of the chart, the layer teachers read for action, movement, and approach.

Dunjia, 遁甲, means hidden Jia. Jia is the first stem, the commander in the system telling, and it never sits on the board under its own name. Six stems called the Liu Yi, the six instruments, cover it in turn: Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, and Gui. Which instrument does the covering depends on the ten-day Xun cycle running at the time. A reader who wants Jia finds the covering instrument for that cycle and tracks Jia through it.

So the full name says: wonders and gates read over a board where the commander stays concealed. The concealment is bookkeeping, not mystique. It lets one stem stand for authority in the chart without crowding the ring, and it gives the reader a first job, locating the cover, before any interpretation starts.

The board: nine palaces on the Lo Shu square

The board never moves. It is the Lo Shu, the 3 by 3 magic square in which every row, column, and diagonal adds to 15. Written with south at the top, as Chinese charts are drawn, it runs:

Each outer palace pairs a number with a trigram, a direction, and an element. The pairings follow the Later Heaven arrangement of the trigrams, the same arrangement the bagua map room-by-room guide lays over a floor plan:

Two rows, 4, 9, 2 and 3, 5, 7 and 8, 1, 6, each total 15. So do the three columns and the two diagonals. That arithmetic is the whole claim the square makes for itself: nine numbers, one balance point, no row privileged. Everything else in Qimen is traffic over this still grid.

The centre, palace 5, needs a rule of its own. It has no direction and no gate. When a star or a stem would land there, teachers lodge it with palace 2, the Kun palace in the southwest. The star Tian Qin, whose home is the centre, rides with Tian Rui in palace 2 under this rule. Readers call it Ji Gong, lodging in a palace. Forget the rule and half the charts a beginner checks against a teacher key will disagree at exactly one palace, which is a useful diagnostic: a single-palace mismatch usually means the centre was handled twice or not at all.

A home reader meets this square twice on this site. Flying Stars puts year and month numbers into it for a building. Qimen puts stems, stars, gates, and spirits into it for an hour. The compass reading guide shows how to stand in a home and take the direction a palace assumes; Qimen borrows the same eight directions and asks a time question of them instead.

Four layers over the still board

A finished chart stacks four layers into each palace. Teachers separate them because each answers a different kind of question, and mixing them produces mush.

The earth plate is the base. It carries one ring of Heavenly Stems laid across the palaces in a fixed order set by the Ju. This ring does not turn with the hour. It is the ground of the chart, the situation as given.

The heaven plate turns. It carries a second ring of stems plus the nine stars, and it rotates so that a chosen stem, set by the hour, comes to sit where the hour demands. The gap between the earth stem and the heaven stem in one palace is where much of the reading lives: what the moment adds to what the situation already held.

The human plate carries the eight gates. Gates describe approach and movement in the system language: whether a course runs open, rests, grows, stalls, or meets a shock. A gate shares its palace with one star and two stems, and teachers read the bundle, never the gate alone.

The spirit plate carries the eight spirits, also called the eight deities. This is the thinnest layer and the one schools argue about most. It colours a palace with a cast of named presences, and a reader treats it as seasoning on the star and gate rather than as a verdict.

Under all four sits the palace itself, with its element. A Wood palace feeds a Fire star and controls an Earth gate under the five-element cycles the five elements balancing guide sets out in full. Readers weigh those feedings and clashes palace by palace. The cycles are arithmetic inside the system: Wood feeds Fire, Fire feeds Earth, Earth produces Metal, Metal collects Water, Water feeds Wood, and each element also controls the one two steps ahead. A chart read without them is a list. A chart read with them is an argument, which is why two teachers can face the same board and emphasise different palaces.

The stem rings: three wonders and six instruments

Ten stems exist. The board shows nine at a time in each ring, because Jia hides and the centre lodges. The nine, in the order the earth ring lays them, are the three wonders and the six instruments together: Yi, Bing, Ding, and Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui.

The layout direction depends on the Dun. In Yang Dun the ring runs forward through the palaces in Lo Shu flight order. In Yin Dun it runs backward. The starting palace depends on the Ju number, which the next section covers. A beginner does not need to spin this ring by hand to read these pages, but needs the pairing habit: every palace ends up holding two stems, one from the earth ring below and one from the heaven ring above, and teachers read the pair as a small sentence. Bing over Wu says something different in the system than Geng over Xin, and the classical literature is mostly a long commentary on such pairs.

The Xun cycle decides Jia cover. The sexagenary cycle of sixty stem-branch pairs divides into six ten-day Xun, each opening with a Jia day: Jia Zi, Jia Xu, Jia Shen, Jia Wu, Jia Chen, Jia Yin. Each opening lends its instrument: Wu covers the Jia Zi cycle, Ji the Jia Xu, Geng the Jia Shen, Xin the Jia Wu, Ren the Jia Chen, and Gui the Jia Yin. Teachers call the covering stem the Xun head, and its earth-plate palace anchors the turning layers. The hour stem then tells the heaven plate how far to rotate from that anchor. This is the mechanical heart of the casting, and it runs on calendar facts anyone can check: the day stem-branch, the hour stem-branch, and the solar term in force.

The nine stars

The heaven plate carries nine stars. Each has a home palace where it rests when the chart sits in its neutral position, and each carries a character in the tradition:

Stars answer the heaven side of a question: the weather of the moment rather than the ground. A medical question inside the tradition leans on this plate, with Tian Rui and Tian Xin doing most of the talking. A reputation question leans on Tian Ying. The star plate turns with the hour, so the same star visits different palaces across a day, and a reader notes both the star and the palace it currently tenants. A strong star in a palace whose element controls it reads, in the system, as a good instrument in poor housing.

The eight gates

The human plate carries eight gates. There is no gate for the centre. Their resting palaces, before the hour turns them, are:

Two gates share the sound Jing in pinyin and differ in character and meaning. The Scenery gate at palace 9 is 景, a view or prospect. The Fright gate at palace 7 is 驚, a startle. English charts that print JING twice without characters invite a mix-up that teachers warn beginners about in the first month.

Gates carry the action reading. Travel, meetings, launches, and searches inside the tradition start here, then get qualified by the star and stems sharing the palace. Open, Rest, and Life hold the friendly reputations, and the table keeps that word, reputation, on purpose: a Life gate under a clashing stem pair and a hostile spirit reads, in teacher language, as growth with a bill attached. The gate proposes. The palace disposes.

The eight spirits

The spirit plate carries eight named presences. The list most schools print runs: Zhi Fu, the chief; Teng She, the serpent; Tai Yin, the shaded helper; Liu He, the harmoniser; Bai Hu, the tiger; Xuan Wu, the dark warrior; Jiu Di, the nine earths; and Jiu Tian, the nine heavens.

Zhi Fu anchors the set. Its palace is found from the Xun head, and the other seven follow in order, running forward under Yang Dun and backward under Yin Dun. Schools differ on small points of order and on a few palace assignments, and printed charts from two lineages can disagree on this layer while agreeing on stars and gates. A reader comparing sources should expect that and should not treat a spirit-layer mismatch as proof a whole chart is wrong.

Inside a reading, spirits tint rather than decide. Liu He over a gate softens a negotiation reading in the system language. Xuan Wu raises a caution about hidden dealing. Jiu Tian favours display and distance, Jiu Di favours quiet and storage. Teachers reach for this layer last, after stems, star, and gate have said their piece, and a reading that leads with spirits usually marks a performer rather than a practitioner.

Ju, Yin Dun and Yang Dun, and the 1,080 boards

Every chart belongs to one Ju, one bureau numbered 1 to 9. The Ju sets where the earth stem ring starts. Three facts decide it: the solar term in force, which of the three Yuan periods inside that term the date falls in, and whether the half of the year calls for Yang Dun or Yin Dun.

Yang Dun covers the stretch from the winter solstice to the summer solstice. Yin Dun covers the stretch from the summer solstice back to the winter solstice. Under Yang Dun the rings lay forward. Under Yin Dun they lay backward. Each solar term governs three Ju in sequence, one per Yuan, and the full table of term, Yuan, and Ju is the part of Qimen a student memorises first and looks up forever after.

The count of possible hour charts falls out of the parts: 2 Dun, Yang and Yin, times 9 Ju, times 5 stem groups, times 12 double-hours gives 1,080 configurations. Classical telling matches the arithmetic with a story: the Yellow Emperor received 4,320 configurations in legend, Jiang Taigong cut them to 72, and Zhang Liang cut them to the 18 Dun, 9 Yang and 9 Yin, from which the 1,080 hour boards unfold. The legend is a legend, and this guide files it where teachers themselves file it when they are being careful: as the system memory of its own past, not as dated history. The 1,080, by contrast, is combinatorics, and any reader can recount it from the formula above.

Two chart manners dominate modern practice. Shi Jia Qimen, the hour school, casts for the double-hour of asking and serves most question work. Other schools cast for the day or the year. The method compared page on this site, Chinese fortune telling methods compared, sets Qimen beside BaZi, Zi Wei, face reading, and palm reading on input, timescale, and what each claims to read. Qimen input is the thinnest of the set, a moment and a question, and its claims expire the fastest.

How a reader works a chart, step by step

Printed charts hide the labour. Teachers do the labour in a fixed order, and the order is the audit trail. A reader checking another reader chart walks the same steps and stops at the first one that fails.

1. Fix the moment. Write the date, the double-hour, and the clock time the question was asked. Note whether the local tradition uses solar time correction; schools differ, and the note settles arguments later.
2. Take the calendar facts. Day stem-branch, hour stem-branch, solar term, and Yuan. These four come from an almanac, not from judgement.
3. Set the Dun and the Ju. Solstice half gives the Dun. Term and Yuan give the Ju.
4. Lay the earth ring. Place the nine stems from the Ju palace, forward for Yang and backward for Yin.
5. Find the Xun head. The day Xun names Jia covering instrument. Its earth palace anchors the turn.
6. Turn the heaven plate. Rotate stars and heaven stems until the hour stem sits over its required palace. Lodge anything landing at the centre with palace 2.
7. Place the gates and spirits. Gates turn by their own rule from the same anchor. Spirits run from the Zhi Fu palace, forward or backward with the Dun.
8. Choose the Yong Shen, the use spirit. This is the focus symbol for the question: a gate for action, a star for health matters inside the tradition, a named stem for a named person. The choice comes before interpretation, and changing it mid-reading to reach a happier answer is the classic beginner cheat.
9. Read palace by palace. For each relevant palace: element against the use spirit element, heaven stem against earth stem, star temper, gate reputation, spirit tint. Note Fu Yin, where a layer sits at home and the system reads stillness, and Fan Yin, where it sits opposite home and the system reads reversal, when either appears.
10. Answer in the system terms, with the tradition framing spoken aloud. A careful reader says what the chart pattern is inside the system and stops there.

One schematic palace, read in the open

What follows is a teaching diagram, not a cast chart. No date was converted and no almanac consulted. The placements are supposed, in the open, so the reading grammar shows without borrowing authority from a real hour.

Suppose an hour chart, drawn for a question about whether to sign a lease on a small shop this week, places the Life gate in palace 8, the Gen palace in the northeast. Tian Ren, the steady star, tenants the same palace from the heaven plate. The earth stem there is Ding, one of the three wonders, and the heaven stem arriving with the turn is Xin. Liu He, the harmonising spirit, tints the palace.

A reader works the bundle in order. Palace first: Gen is Earth, and Earth is the Life gate own ground at its resting home 8, so gate and palace agree; the system reads that as a door standing in its own house. Star second: Tian Ren carries steadiness and support in the tradition, a quiet star, no drama. Stems third: Ding below is a wonder, read as a favourable sign inside the system, and Xin above carries a harder edge, metal that Earth produces, so the palace feeds the arriving stem rather than fighting it. Spirit last: Liu He softens dealings in the system language.

The same reader then checks the palace holding the use spirit for the asker, and the palace for the landlord side, and the element traffic between them, before saying anything at all. Only after those checks would the reader speak, and the speech, kept inside the tradition, sounds like this: the chart pattern for the signing question shows the growth gate at home with a steady star and a wonder underneath, a configuration teachers read as supportive for starting on new ground, with the Xin stem warning that terms need a slow read. Full stop. No sentence about whether the shop will prosper follows, because the system, handled carefully, describes a pattern for reflection. The lease still stands or falls on rent, foot traffic, the break clause, and the roof.

Notice what the schematic refused to do. It refused a real date, so nobody can mistake it for a verdict on an actual week. It refused an outcome. And it sent the money questions to documents. A chart that survives those refusals is being used as teachers describe using it: a structured way to think about timing and approach before the real evidence gets its say.

Qimen beside its neighbours

The Zi Wei Dou Shu chart guide and the I Ching casting guide work their systems at the same layer-by-layer pace. A reader who has done one of them already owns the two habits Qimen demands: separate the layers before blending them, and fix the question focus before admiring the pattern.

For a home, Qimen sits sideways to feng shui rather than inside it. Feng shui judges the building a household will live with for years. Qimen, in household use, gets asked about moments: a moving day, a signing, a first night, a renovation start. Practitioners who use both keep the jurisdictions separate, building first by compass and stars, timing second by hour chart, and neither chart is allowed to overrule a surveyor, a lease, or a budget. That separation is the household version of the schematic lesson above.

Limits, stated plainly

Qimen Dunjia is a symbolic system with a long paper trail and no demonstrated power to predict events. Its history is real: Three Styles scholarship, court astronomers in Ming and Qing who kept such boards, a commentary literature that runs for centuries. Its charts are checkable as constructions, which is why the step order above can be audited. None of that converts a pattern into knowledge about next week.

Three practical limits follow. First, schools disagree on details that matter to a casting: solar time correction, centre lodging habits, spirit order, and the Mao Shan method against the split-and-supplement method for Ju at term boundaries. Two careful readers can cast two different charts for one hour and each defend the work inside a lineage. Second, the reading step is interpretation all the way down; the same palace bundle supports a bold summary and a cautious one, and the reader temperament does the choosing. Third, no chart reading is advice. Health questions belong to clinicians, legal questions to lawyers, money questions to the documents and the arithmetic, and property questions to inspections, titles, and comparable sales.

Use the system the way this site uses every system in the pillar: as a cultural frame that some households find useful for pausing, framing a question, and thinking about timing, with the real decision made on evidence that can be checked by someone who has never seen a chart.

Sources and further reading

The structure above, Three Styles membership, plate names, the 1,080 configurations, and the solstice split between the Dun halves, follows the summary in the Qimen Dunjia entry on English Wikipedia, read for this guide, which in turn rests on Ho Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology (Routledge, 2003), and Ole Bruun, Fengshui in China (University of Hawaii Press, 2003). Star, gate, and spirit lists and the 2 by 9 by 5 by 12 count were cross-checked against two open implementation references, the qimen_dunjia calculation notes and the stem-branch Qimen research notes on GitHub, read for this guide. The Lo Shu row sums and Later Heaven palace pairings match the square as printed in the University of Hawaii Lo Shu teaching page. Where schools differ, the guide says so rather than picking a winner.