Glossary entry
Zi Wei Dou Shu meaning: the three characters, read one at a time
Zi Wei Dou Shu — 紫微斗数 — is the method this site casts with. 紫微 names the star the chart is built around; 斗 is the Dipper; 数 is counting. Read together: counting the stars out from the pole star and the dipper.
Where the name comes from
The chart is laid out the way a court is: one star at the centre and the rest arranged around it. 紫微 is that centre, the fixed point near the pole, and it is the first of the fourteen main stars. The method is not named after a person — the name describes the astronomy it starts from.
Why the English names differ
"Purple Star Astrology" translates 紫微 and drops the rest; "Purple Emperor Astrology" reads 紫微 as the emperor of the chart; the transliteration "Zi Wei Dou Shu" keeps all three. None is standard — writers pick one and stay with it. This site writes the Chinese in the text and Zi Wei Dou Shu in English.
Questions
Is Zi Wei Dou Shu the same as Chinese astrology?
It is one school inside it, and the one this site uses. Chinese astrology also covers the birth-year animal, the five elements and other methods; the comparisons page sets out where they differ.
How old is the method?
The tradition is usually traced to the Song dynasty, about a thousand years back, with the books that survive being later. This site says a thousand years and stops there rather than naming a founder.
Zi Wei Dou Shu chart, free See a completed reading first The full glossary