Zi Wei Dou Shu

Zi Wei Dou Shu
Traditional Chinese紫微斗數
Simplified Chinese紫微斗数
Literal meaningPurple Star Astrology
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZǐwēi Dǒushù

Zi Wei Dou Shu (simplified Chinese: 紫微斗数; traditional Chinese: 紫微斗數; pinyin: Zǐwēi Dǒushù; lit. 'Purple Star Astrology'), also romanised as Ziwei Doushu or Purple Star Astrology, is a form of Chinese astrology and fortune-telling that uses a twelve-palace chart populated with over one hundred named stars to analyse an individual's destiny based on their date and time of birth. It is one of the two most widely practised systems of Chinese natal astrology, alongside the Four Pillars of Destiny (八字, BaZi).

The system takes its name from the star Zǐwēi (紫微), which refers to Polaris or the Purple Forbidden enclosure (紫微垣, Zǐwēi Yuán) in Chinese astronomy — the celestial region surrounding the north celestial pole, symbolically associated with the emperor and the centre of the heavens. Dǒushù (斗數) means "star calculation" or "star enumeration", reflecting the system's method of distributing named stars across a chart for interpretive analysis.

Zi Wei Dou Shu is traditionally attributed to the Song dynasty Daoist sage Chen Tuan (陳摶, c. 871–989) and has been practised continuously in China and across East and Southeast Asia for over a thousand years. It is particularly popular in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.