What kind of book is the Quan Shu

A classic under an assumed name

The *Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu* is the most often quoted classic of Zi Wei Dou Shu. The book credits its origins to Chen Xiyi (Chen Tuan), a Daoist of the early Song dynasty, but the edition we read today was printed in the Ming. Old books on divination were often "attributed" to famous figures to lend them weight, so the safer description is: a Ming dynasty compendium of Zi Wei Dou Shu, attributed to Chen Xiyi.

"Luo's Preface" at the start of volume one is signed by Luo Hongxian, "on an auspicious day in the third month of spring in the Gengxu year of Jiajing", which is 1550. Luo says he visited the shrine of Master Xiyi at Mount Hua and met a Daoist in his twenties named Liaoran, an eighteenth-generation descendant of Master Xiyi, who showed him this book. He tried it out on his own birth data and said the result "matched without a hair's difference". Whether the preface itself is genuine has been questioned too, so read it as a story.

What's in the book

The edition on Wikisource is divided into three volumes:

• Volume 1: theory and rhymes. Verse pieces like the "Tai Wei Fu", the question-and-answer "Zhu Xing Wen Da Lun" introducing each star, the condensed "Gu Sui Fu", and collections of patterns of wealth and nobility.
• Volume 2: the operating manual. How to place the Life and Body Palaces, how to place each star, how the transformations change, and verdicts for each star in each of the twelve palaces.
• Volume 3: advanced notes. On the ranking of patterns, on Decade and Annual Luck, and special topics such as children's charts and doing good to extend one's years.

The Wikisource transcription has many passages in simplified characters in the second half of volume one and in volumes two and three. Whenever Xingge quotes the original, it converts to traditional characters, keeping the wording exactly as written without polishing it.

Why Xingge follows it

Zi Wei Dou Shu has many schools, each differing slightly in how stars are placed and how transformations work. Xingge chose the most widely circulated classic, whose original text anyone can read, as its reference: brightness on the chart is checked cell by cell against the brightness table in volume two; the Life Palace, the main stars and the Six Auspicious and Six Malefic Stars are placed by the original text; and the transformations follow the rhyme in volume two. The years where schools differ most are Wu, Geng and Ren, and Xingge follows this edition: You Bi Hua Ke in Wu years, Tai Yin Hua Ke in Geng years, Tian Fu Hua Ke in Ren years.

Where Xingge differs from the Quan Shu

In a few places Xingge follows today's common practice, stated plainly here:

• Decade Luck: the original says "for yang men and yin women, start from the palace before Life and go clockwise" and "for yin men and yang women, start from the palace after Life and go counterclockwise", so the first Decade Luck starts next to the Life Palace. Xingge, like most modern chart software, starts from the Life Palace.
• Twelve Life Stages: the original heading notes "men count forward, women count backward"; Xingge uses yin-yang male and female, in the same direction as the Decade Luck.
• Leap months: the original says "for those born in a leap first month, place Body and Life within the second month", treating the whole leap month as the following month. Xingge follows most modern software: up to the fifteenth of a leap month counts as that month, and from the sixteenth on as the following month.
• Late Zi hour: for births after 11 p.m., the original doesn't say which day counts; Xingge counts it as the next day.
• Small stars added later: Xian Chi, Tian Cai, Tian Shou, Tian Chu, En Guang, Tian Gui, Gu Chen, Gua Su, Hua Gai, and the whole set of Jiang Qian Twelve Spirits are absent from the original's placement rhymes. Xingge places them by the common method and notes this in the lessons.

That way, every setting you see in Xingge either has a source, or you know why it differs. When you compare with other apps, the Decade Luck and the Twelve Life Stages are the most likely to differ, usually for the two reasons above.

Reading it with today's eyes

This book was written five hundred years ago and carries the outlook of its time. On women's charts it often centers on the spouse and children, on personality it uses words like "poor and lowly", "licentious" and "short-lived" outright, and it likes to use historical figures as examples.

Xingge's approach:

• Keep the ancients' observations, such as which traits each star stands for.
• Rewrite verdicts as tendencies and reminders, phrased as "how practitioners tend to see it".
• Don't carry over outdated values; every quote from the original comes with a plain-language version and a reading for today.

The classic is a source, not a verdict. We read it to know where this language comes from.