Qi Men Dun Jia

Qi Men Dun Jia is a Chinese divinatory method centered on timing, direction and practical action. It casts a nine-palace chart for the moment a question is asked, placing the Eight Gates, Nine Stars, Eight Deities and two layers of Heavenly Stems to show where the matter sits, how the surrounding forces are arranged and which times or directions favor action.

The rules are already in the name

Each of the four words points at something specific, and once you have them the chart is half understood.

Qi — the stems Yi, Bing and Ding, called the Three Wonders: Yi the Day Wonder, Bing the Moon Wonder, Ding the Star Wonder. These are the most welcome symbols on the chart; met with an auspicious Gate and Deity, matters go smoothly.

Yi — the stems Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui, called the Six Rituals. Yi means ceremonial guard: they are the retinue of the six Jia.

Men — the Gates — are the eight: Rest, Life, Harm, Delusion, Scenery, Death, Fear and Open. A gate is exactly what the word says: a way in and out. Whether a matter is open or blocked at the human level, whether you can get in at all, which road to take — that is what the Gates answer. This layer governs Man.

Each Gate has a home palace: Rest at Kan 1, Life at Gen 8, Harm at Zhen 3, Delusion at Xun 4, Scenery at Li 9, Death at Kun 2, Fear at Dui 7, Open at Qian 6; Palace 5 at the centre has no Gate. Once a chart is cast the Gates rotate through the palaces with the hour, so they rarely sit at home.

Open, Rest and Life are the three auspicious Gates; Death, Fear and Harm are inauspicious; Delusion and Scenery are neutral. Judging a palace starts with which Gate landed there — though a Gate's quality is never absolute, since it also depends on how its element stands to the palace's. That comes further down.

Dun Jia — the most interesting piece of design in the system. Of the ten Heavenly Stems, Jia is the most honoured, and the honoured do not show themselves lightly. So Jia never appears directly; it hides beneath the Six Rituals: Jia Zi within Wu, Jia Xu within Ji, Jia Shen within Geng, Jia Wu within Xin, Jia Chen within Ren, Jia Yin within Gui. This is why you will never find the character Jia on a Qi Men chart. When the Day or Hour Stem happens to be Jia, you locate it through the Ritual it hides within.

The nine palaces: four layers at once

The chart is a three-by-three grid arranged by the Luo Shu directions:

Each palace carries four layers, read from the top:

Layers in the abstract only go so far. Here is a real chart — what actually sits in each of the nine palaces:

Several markers matter too: the Chief palace (the core and master of the whole chart), the Duty Gate palace (the executor of the matter), the Void (hollow, unable to land), the Travelling Horse (movement), and the Lodged palace (the central fifth has no Gate or Deity, so its stem must lodge elsewhere — on this site the Earth Plate stem goes to Gen 8 in a Yang chart and Kun 2 in a Yin one, while the Heaven Plate stem travels with the Tian Qin star. Schools differ on this).

Gates, and the relation between Gate and palace

The Three Wonders, Six Rituals and the Gates are covered above. Two layers remain: the Stars and the Deities.

The Nine Stars govern Heaven — whether the larger tide is with you or against you. Each Star has a home palace, and once a chart is cast they rotate through the palaces with the hour. Reading a palace's Star tells you what climate the matter sits in.

The Eight Deities govern Spirit — the help or hindrance you cannot see, the subtlest layer on the chart. Their order never changes, laid out forwards in a Yang chart and backwards in a Yin one. The Chief leads them, and the palace it occupies is the heart of the whole chart.

Gate and palace

As noted above, Open, Rest and Life are the auspicious Gates, and Death, Fear and Harm the inauspicious ones. What matters more is that a Gate's quality is never absolute — it also depends on how its element stands to the palace it occupies. The same Open Gate is a bonus in a palace that nourishes it, and gets nothing done in one that controls it. The four relations:

So how do you tell nourishing from controlling? By their phases: each Gate has one, each palace has one, and you read them off the two chains below.

For instance the Open Gate is Metal. Landing in Kan 1 (Water), Metal nourishes Water — the Gate nourishes the palace, which is Harmony. Landing in Li 9 (Fire), Fire controls Metal — the palace controls the Gate, which is Gate Restraint. The four relations:

This layer is the easiest to get backwards, and it is exactly what decides the Man factor. The Dun Jia Yan Yi puts it plainly: "The palace restraining its Gate is not oppression; the Gate restraining its palace is oppression indeed … Gate producing palace is Harmony, palace producing Gate is Duty."

Rotating plate or flying plate: how the chart moves

Casting a chart fixes the Earth Plate — once its stems are laid down they stay put. What moves is everything above: the Nine Stars, the Eight Gates, the Eight Deities, and the Heaven Plate stems. There have always been two accounts of how they move.

The rotating plate is the mainstream. The Stars, the Gates and the Deities each turn as one rigid ring around the Luo Shu circuit. How far they turn follows the Chief and Duty rules, but wherever they end up, the order within the ring never changes.

The flying plate works differently: each element flies to its own palace by the flying-palace rules, with no rigid rotation, so the original cyclic order is broken up. There are hybrid schools too — flying stems and rituals, flying Gates and Stars, but rotating Deities.

The consequence is concrete: for the same moment, a rotating plate and a flying plate can put the Gates in entirely different palaces, and the reading changes with them. So any chart ought to state which plate it uses. Guanyitang uses the rotating plate, as noted in the footnote on the casting page.

Structuring: why the same moment can give different charts

The first step in casting is fixing the structure — Yang Escape or Yin Escape, and which of the nine numbers. The structure decides which palace the Earth Plate begins from; get it wrong and everything after it is wrong.

A solar term runs about fifteen days, and Qi Men cuts it into three yuan of five days each; every one of the twenty-four terms has its own three structure numbers (for instance "Winter Solstice and Awakening of Insects, one-seven-four" — Yang Escape structures 1, 7 and 4 for the upper, middle and lower yuan).

The real divergence is over how a given moment is assigned to a term and a yuan. Three approaches are current:

The leading day is the nearest preceding Jia or Ji day. Its branch decides the yuan: Zi, Wu, Mao and You are upper; Yin, Shen, Si and Hai are middle; Chen, Xu, Chou and Wei are lower. Zhi Run goes further and asks whether the upper leading day (Jia Zi, Jia Wu, Ji Mao, Ji You) comes before or after the term: on the same day is aligned, leading day first is ahead, term first is behind. When it runs too far ahead — usually beyond nine days — the classical method repeats a run of three yuan after Grain in Ear or Great Snow, called the intercalary.

This is why different tools disagree. Any Qi Men chart should state the method it used, or there is nothing to compare.

Reading: Heaven, Earth, Man, Spirit

Reading begins by fixing the focal stems — the Day Stem stands for the person asking, the Hour Stem for the matter asked about. Find the palace each falls in, then look at that palace on four levels:

1. Heaven — the Star present and its vigour, showing whether the larger tide runs with you. Vigour is graded against the phase of the current month: same phase as the month is Assisting, what the month produces is Prospering, what produces the month is Spent, what the month controls is Trapped, and what controls the month is Resting. Prospering and Assisting carry real force; the other three do not — the same auspicious Star is a genuine help in one month and little more than a name in another. The chart marks this for every palace, so you never have to work it out yourself.
2. Earth — the element of the palace, and the pairing of Heaven Plate over Earth Plate stem.
3. Man — the Gate present, and how Gate stands to palace (oppressed, restrained, harmonious, dutiful).
4. Spirit — the Deity carried, showing whether unseen help is at hand.

Beyond the four, check whether the palace falls Void (the matter is hollow), enters the Tomb (its force is buried), or meets the Punishment (setback and obstruction).

Timing: when will this actually happen

Once the chart tells you whether a thing will come off, the next question is almost always when. Qi Men calls this the timing of response.

The reasoning runs like this: find what is currently holding the significator up, and the moment that obstruction is released is your timing. Four approaches are in common use.

• Clashed, wait for the union; united, wait for the clash. If the significator is being scattered by a clash, wait for the branch that binds it; if it is held fast by a union, wait for the branch that breaks the union open.
• Void waits to be filled. A significator that falls into the Void makes the matter hollow — it cannot land. You wait for the year, month, day or hour that fills that branch in.
• What needs nourishing waits for the nourishing day; what needs controlling waits for the controlling day.
• Read its strength. A significator in growth or prosperity responds quickly; one in death, tomb or extinction drags, and you wait for the tomb to be broken open.

Which level you read — year, month, day or hour — depends on the scale of the question. A matter that unfolds over years is not read at the same grain as whether a contract gets signed tomorrow.

One honest caveat. Timing is the least settled part of Qi Men. The four approaches above are the common ground; below that, schools diverge sharply, and two readers can take the same chart and name different dates. Treat any confident, to-the-hour prediction with reserve. A Guanyitang reading will show you the reasoning behind a timing, but it will not promise you a date.

Formations: where the craft shows

What makes Qi Men a professional instrument rather than a mood reading is its formations. Two families matter most:

• The 81 Ten Stems combinations — every Heaven Plate stem paired with every Earth Plate stem, each pairing carrying its own name and verdict. Bing over Wu is the Flying Bird Falls Into the Nest (every undertaking auspicious); Geng over Yi is Tai Bai Meets Tian Peng (withdrawing auspicious, advancing not); Yi over Xin is the Green Dragon Flees (servants abscond, livestock harmed).
• Rule-based formations — the Punishment of the Six Rituals, the Three Wonders Entering the Tomb, the Three Wonders Restrained, the Three Deceits and Five Ruses, the Nine Escapes, Gate Oppression, the Hour of Non-Encounter, Defiance, the Hour of Heaven's Manifestation, and others, each with a defined trigger and verdict.

Formations are explicable: each one can say why, rather than pronouncing vaguely on fortune. Which is also why the accuracy of the verdicts matters so much — every formation verdict on this site is checked against classical text and corroborating sources, and nothing unverified is published.

How Qi Men divides labour with BaZi and Zi Wei

The best use is both together: read the natal chart to understand your own range and rhythm, then cast an event chart for the problem actually in front of you.

Sources and transmission

Legend traces Qi Men to the Yellow Emperor's war on Chi You, elaborated by Feng Hou. That is myth rather than history. Among transmitted texts, Cheng Daosheng's Dun Jia Yan Yi (Ming) is the most important for the formations — the Ten Stems table and most rule-based formations on this site are verified against it. The Yan Bo Diao Sou Ge sets out three-yuan structuring and the main formations in verse, and is the standard thing to memorise first. The Qi Men Dun Jia Mi Ji Da Quan compiles a great many formation details. The Dun Jia Fu Ying Jing, of the Song Jingyou era, is the earliest text to record all three structuring methods together.

One caution

Qi Men Dun Jia belongs to the study of Chinese tradition and divinatory arts. It may serve self-reflection and decision support; it is not medical, legal or financial advice. Treat with distance any presentation of Qi Men as a way to "change your luck", "dissolve calamity" or "avert loss". What it can genuinely offer is a different angle on a situation — what is driving it, what is obstructing it, and whether the moment is ripe.

Cast a chart at Guanyitang

The Qi Men calculator defaults to the present moment; you can change the time, apply a true solar time correction for where you are asking from, and switch between the Chai Bu, Zhi Run and Mao Shan structuring methods, with the method stated on the chart. Every Gate, Star and Deity in the nine palaces can be clicked for its meaning and sources. The formation panel lists every formation the chart matched, each with its verified classical verdict. The reading is generated from those verified verdicts, and you can keep asking follow-up questions.

FAQ

How is Qi Men different from BaZi and Zi Wei Dou Shu?

They do different jobs. BaZi and Zi Wei are natal charts, cast from your birth moment — one chart for a lifetime, answering who you are and what your grain is. Qi Men is an event chart, cast from the moment you ask — one chart per matter, answering what the situation is now and what to do about it. So the natal systems are low-frequency and Qi Men is high-frequency: the same person may cast several Qi Men charts in a day for different matters. Used well, you read the natal chart to understand yourself, and the event chart to handle the problem in front of you.

What do the four words 'Qi Men Dun Jia' actually mean?

Taken apart: Qi means the Three Wonders — Yi, Bing and Ding, called the Day, Moon and Star Wonders, the three most auspicious symbols on the chart. Yi means the Six Rituals — Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui, the honour guard of the six Jia. Dun Jia means that Jia, the most honoured of the ten Heavenly Stems, does not appear on the chart at all but hides (dun) beneath the Six Rituals — which is why you will never see the character Jia on a Qi Men chart. Together: the Three Wonders and Six Rituals set among the nine palaces and eight gates, with Jia concealed within.

Why do different calculators give different structure numbers for the same moment?

Usually the software is not wrong — the structuring method differs. Three are common: Chai Bu (solar term first, the leading day fixing the yuan; the usual modern choice), Zhi Run (the classical method, where the leading day takes precedence over the solar term, with an intercalary insertion when it runs too far ahead), and Mao Shan (ignore the leading day entirely and simply cut the fifteen days of a solar term into three). All three can give different structures for the same moment, so any Qi Men chart should state the method it used. Guanyitang defaults to Chai Bu and lets you switch.

What is Qi Men used for, and is it accurate?

Traditionally for choosing timing and direction, and for reading a specific matter: when to act, which way to go, whether it will come off, where it is stuck, whom to approach. Its strength is that it breaks a situation into four layers — Heaven (the star), Earth (the palace), Man (the gate) and Spirit (the deity) — and yields a direction to act on rather than a vague verdict. As for accuracy: because it is an event chart, it can be checked. Note down afterwards what actually happened and compare it with the reading — which is why this site provides a follow-up field. It is offered as cultural study and decision support, and is not professional advice.

References

• Cheng Daosheng, Dun Jia Yan Yi (Ming dynasty) — the classical source for the formations; most of this site's Ten Stems and rule-based formations are verified against it
• The Yan Bo Diao Sou Ge — the verse compendium of three-yuan structuring and the principal formations
• Qi Men Dun Jia Mi Ji Da Quan — a transmitted compilation covering the Nine Escapes, Three Deceits and Five Ruses, and much else
• Guanyitang Qi Men accuracy protocol — every verdict cross-checked against two independent sources; nothing unverified is published