What is Flying stars (Fei Xing)?

Flying stars (Fei Xing) in Zi Wei Dou Shu are a way of reading the chart by applying the Four Transformations again with each palace's own Heavenly Stem: a palace's stem produces Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji, and wherever those four stars sit, that palace's attention is said to "fly" there. The birth-year transformations use the stem of the year you were born, while flying stars use each palace's own impulses, which makes them good at answering "where does the energy for this area of life flow?"

The short version:

• Formula: flying stars = look up a palace's stem in the transformation table; wherever the four resulting stars sit is where it flies.
• Reading: when palace A flies into palace B, palace A's attention, resources or worries flow toward B.
• Start with two lines: flying Lu (where a connection begins) and flying Ji (where it can't be let go), the idea called "Lu follows Ji."
• Source: flying stars come from the later flying-stars school, not the original Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu; the transformation table itself is the same one used for the birth year.

Every palace has a stem: the palace stem

Besides its fixed Earthly Branch, each of the twelve palaces carries a Heavenly Stem, called the palace stem. Palace stems are derived from your birth-year stem and run in order starting from the Yin palace, a method known as the Five Tigers rule. Volume two of the Quan Shu uses them when setting the Five Elements Bureau:

In Jia and Ji years, Bing comes first.

For people born in Jia or Ji years, the Yin palace is Bing Yin and the Mao palace is Ding Mao, and so on. So people born in Jia and Ji years have exactly the same twelve palace stems; Yi and Geng, Bing and Xin, Ding and Ren, and Wu and Gui each form a pair too:

With ten stems and twelve palaces, Zi and Chou share stems with Yin and Mao. Palace stems don't depend on your birth day or hour; what differs is which palace your Life Palace falls on. The full twelve-palace table is on the Origin Palace page, and the Life Palace's stem is also what you use to find the Five Elements Bureau.

The ten-stem transformation table

Once you have a palace's stem, use this table to find its four stars. It's the same table as the birth-year transformations, from the transformation verse in volume two of the Quan Shu, which opens:

Jia: Lian, Po, Wu and Yang keep company; Yi: Ji, Liang, Zi and the Moon cross in.

Schools differ a little on the Wu, Geng and Ren stems. Xingge follows the Quan Shu text: You Bi Hua Ke for Wu, Tai Yin Hua Ke and Tian Tong Hua Ji for Geng, and Tian Fu Hua Ke for Ren (many modern tables use Zuo Fu). See How Xingge casts a chart.

Flying stars aren't in the Quan Shu

The Quan Shu uses palace stems to work out the Five Elements Bureau and place Zi Wei. Looking up the transformation table with a palace stem and seeing where it flies is a method developed later by the flying-stars school, and it has become especially popular in recent decades. Xingge places it at the end of the beginner course as a supplementary magnifying glass: first understand the main stars and the birth-year transformations, then use flying stars to add "where this palace's attention flows."

How to calculate it

1. Find a palace's stem.
2. Look up that stem in the table to get its four stars for Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji.
3. Find which palace each of those four stars sits in; that palace is said to "fly" its Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji into those palaces.

If one of those stars sits in the same palace, that's self-transformation, read separately.

The core of the reading is: when palace A flies a transformation into palace B, palace A's attention, resources or worries flow toward palace B. The four kinds have different flavors:

A couple of other common combinations:

• The Spouse Palace flies Hua Ji into the Career Palace: in love you often worry about your partner's work, or love affects your pace at work.
• The Career Palace flies Hua Quan into the Life Palace: work pushes you to grow and makes you more decisive.

Working through one chart

Take a chart born on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month of 1984 (a Jia Zi year), in the Xu hour. The Life Palace is in Chen with Tian Tong; the Career Palace is in Shen with Tian Ji and Tai Yin; the Friends Palace is in You with Zi Wei and Tan Lang; the Travel Palace is in Xu with You Bi.

1. Find the stem: Jia years start at Bing Yin, so Yin is Bing, Mao is Ding, Chen is Wu. The Life Palace stem is Wu.
2. Look it up: the Wu stem gives Tan Lang Hua Lu, Tai Yin Hua Quan, You Bi Hua Ke and Tian Ji Hua Ji.
3. Find the stars:

Read together: warmth and goodwill often go to friends and colleagues (Lu into Friends); out in the world, this person finds helpers and keeps up appearances (Ke into Travel); and both the strongest push and the hardest-to-drop worry sit in work (Quan and Ji both into Career). People like this are often very decisive about their work and also very prone to taking it home in their heads.

Lu follows Ji

The flying-stars school uses flying Lu and flying Ji most, with the saying "Lu follows Ji": Lu is where a connection begins, and Ji is where it finally lands and can't be let go. In the example above, the connection starts with friends (Lu into Friends) and the worry ends up in work (Ji into Career). A common story is a career that begins through a friend's introduction or partnership, and then becomes all-consuming.

Another common idea is "Ji clashes": when Hua Ji flies into a palace, it also clashes with that palace's opposite palace. The Career Palace's opposite is the Spouse Palace, so one school would add that worrying about work tends to squeeze time with a partner. As a beginner, Lu and Ji are enough; add flying Quan and Ke once you're comfortable.

Flying stars vs. birth-year transformations vs. self-transformation

Interestingly, the palace whose stem equals your birth-year stem is the Origin Palace, and the transformations flying out of it are exactly your birth-year transformations.

Keeping it in proportion

Flying-stars details vary a lot between schools: whether to read inward self-transformation, whether to follow a flown star and fly it again, how the palaces read each other. It gets more complex the further you go. Xingge suggests this order:

1. First understand your Life Palace main stars and the San Fang Si Zheng.
2. Then see where the birth-year transformations land.
3. Last, use flying Lu and flying Ji on a few palaces you care about, to see where their attention flows.

Flying stars describe the direction of attention and effort, not upcoming events. Where Ji flies is where you find it hard to let go, not where something is bound to go wrong.

The full introduction is in the lesson an introduction to flying stars and self-transformation. After you draw your chart, Xingge works out where your Life Palace's transformations fly.