Methodology

By DailyAstro · Last updated 2026-09-10

These are the rules DailyAstro actually runs — all of them. Where each point comes from, when a day is vetoed outright, and where each scale tops out. Every line you see behind the “why” button in the app is one of the rules below.

1. Wealth stem (Module 1)

Your birth date gives the day pillar of the sexagenary stem-and-branch cycle (opens in a new tab); its heavenly stem is your day master. The element your day master controls is your wealth element. Same polarity is indirect wealth (偏財), opposite polarity is direct wealth (正財). The candidate day's stem sets the base score.

Example: a 癸 (yin water) day master controls fire. 丁 is yin fire — same polarity, so indirect wealth. 丙 is yang fire — opposite polarity, so direct wealth.

2. Branch bonus (Module 2)

Only the highest single match applies. The table is evaluated in order and stops at the first hit. “Your natal branches” means your day branch and month branch.

The three-harmony and six-harmony pairings are not ours; they are properties of the twelve earthly branches (opens in a new tab), tabulated pair by pair in the Chinese-language reference on 地支〈組合〉 (opens in a new tab). What we chose is which of them score, and by how much.

3. Clash and punishment veto (Module 3)

This module never adds points; it only removes days. If the candidate day's branch has any of the relationships below with your day or month branch, the day is dropped entirely, no matter how high it scored.

Clash 沖, punishment 刑, self-punishment 自刑 and harm 害 (which the compatibility lenses further down also use) come from those same branch-relationship tables (opens in a new tab); treating them as a hard veto is our stance, not the table's. Self-punishment fires when the candidate day branch is one of those four and the same character appears in your day or month branch. Purpose dates use this veto exactly as written; golden-hour selection has its own clash filter, but it compares against a different pair of branches — see the next section. Your year branch is not part of this module; it enters through the almanac gate in section 5 (the zodiac clash).

4. Golden hour (Module 4 · 五鼠遁)

The 五鼠遁 (opens in a new tab) rule (日上起時, the hour-stem rhyme; reference in Chinese) derives the stems of the candidate day's twelve two-hour periods from that day's stem. Each hour is scored and the best one is kept. First, elimination: an hour whose branch clashes or punishes your day branch or the candidate day's own branch, or that clashes your year branch, is discarded. The surviving hours accumulate the points below — several rules can fire at once.

A stem cannot be both your wealth and your output element, so the wealth-stem and output-stem rules never fire together. The hour therefore tops out at 50 + 30 + 10 = 90. If all twelve hours are vetoed, the day shows “all hours clashed” and the hour bonus is 0.

5. Almanac gate (Module 5 · 通勝把關)

Classical date selection reads the almanac first, the chart second. Modules 1–4 look only at your chart and the candidate day's pillar, so a day pillar that recurs six times a year would score identically six times — and could land on a day the almanac calls broken. This module reads the day's traditional almanac (通勝, Tung Shing) (opens in a new tab) from lunar-javascript (opens in a new tab) (the 建除 day officer (opens in a new tab), the 黃道／黑道 auspicious and inauspicious twelve spirits (opens in a new tab), the 吉神/凶煞 lists, the 宜/忌 lists) in two layers: a deliberately tiny set of hard vetoes, and otherwise signed adjustments so that days rank rather than vanish — the list is never empty.

Hard vetoes (wealth days, purpose dates and first working days alike)

Adjustments (wealth days and purpose dates)

Note that this layer is asymmetric: it adds at most +25 but subtracts as much as −60 (wealth) or −50 (purpose), and more than half of all days come out net negative. The almanac is mostly a gate and a penalty, not a bonus. The 100-point line is judged after adjustments; the bands are unchanged. Every adjustment that fired is listed on its own line behind “why”, and the sheet ends with “已過關：破日／大耗 · 沖生肖 · 歲破 · 刑沖” — every day you can see has cleared those gates. Separately, if your year branch clashes this year's 太歲 (a 子 year person in the 2026 丙午 year, say), the Today and Dates screens show 今年沖太歲 · 宜靜不宜動 — a notice only, worth zero points.

A technical note: lunar-javascript serves its 建除, spirit and 宜/忌 terms in simplified Chinese (闭, 满, 执, 开, 天仓, 纳财, 开市 …). The rules match the simplified forms and the display converts to Traditional, which is why you see 閉日, 天倉, 忌納財.

Total and bands

Total = wealth stem + branch bonus + golden hour + almanac adjustments.

Suitability labels

• Indirect wealth day → 博彩投機 speculation
• Indirect wealth day whose golden hour includes 食神生財 or 傷官生財 → also 投資部署 strategic positioning (output generates wealth)
• Direct wealth day → 正職簽約 salaried work and contracts

Purpose dates: the almanac gates first

For opening a business, signing, moving, marrying and travelling the logic is reversed: the traditional almanac decides which days are usable, and only then does your chart sort them. Daily 宜 (suitable) and 忌 (avoid) lists — the substance of the Tung Shing (通勝) almanac, cited in section 5 above — come from the lunar-javascript (opens in a new tab) library's almanac data:

1. Almanac gate — the day's 宜 list must contain one of those terms. Base 50.
2. Almanac veto, term by term — where a purpose has several terms (signing = 立券 + 交易, moving = 移徙 + 入宅) each term is judged on its own: it counts only if it appears in the day's 宜 list and that same term is absent from the day's 忌 list. At least one term must survive for the day to qualify, and the list — and its “why” view — shows only the terms that actually survived. So a day marked 宜移徙 / 忌入宅 still qualifies for moving on 移徙 alone, and 入宅 is never shown for it.
3. Personal veto — if the day's branch clashes or punishes your day or month branch, the day is out (same as Module 3).
4. Almanac hard vetoes — a broken day / great loss (V1), your zodiac clash (V2) or a 歲破 day (V3) is out, exactly as for wealth days.
5. 100-point qualifying line — the score (50 + branch bonus + golden hour + almanac adjustments) must reach ≥ 100 to qualify; anything lower is dropped just the same.

Score = 50 + branch bonus + golden hour + almanac adjustments. The branch bonus uses the same module, but since this is not a wealth query the “wealth element +10” rule never fires — only three-harmony +50, six-harmony +20 and +15 remain; and if that three-harmony group is the authority element for your day master it scores −20 instead of +50. The golden hour likewise counts harmony only (full three-harmony +50 / half-harmony +30), with no wealth-stem, output-stem or wealth-branch points: moving house is not a money question. The almanac adjustments are the 黑道 / 建除 / 吉神 rules; 忌納財 and 忌開市 are not applied, because purpose dates already gate on their own term's 宜/忌.

Compatibility: seven relationships, not one

The same two birthdays do not give the same answer for a boss and for a domestic helper. So this is not one table but seven lenses: spouse 配偶, dating 情侶, friend 朋友, colleague 同事, business partner 合夥, boss 上司, and subordinate / helper 下屬／工人. Each lens runs the same body of rules with its own weights and its own verdict vocabulary — one unchanged pair scores 78 遇貴人 through the boss lens and 62 一般 through the helper lens. That 16-point spread is the whole reason the lenses exist.

What every lens shares: only the year branch, day stem and day branch are used, so no birth time is needed for either person. Base 50, clamped to 0–100. Each rule is judged independently and all matches accumulate. The almanac plays no part here — whether two people get on has nothing to do with the date.

The seven lenses

The bottom band is whatever is left in each row. Note that the spouse floor is 多磨 (a hard road) and not 相沖 (clash): a couple can reach that band through 害 and 刑 alone, with no 沖 anywhere in the breakdown, and a band literally named “clash” would contradict the very sheet the reader opens next. 多磨 is true in every case that reaches it.

Structural rules: harmony, clash, punishment, harm

Eleven structural rules, one set of weights per lens. 天合地合 fires only when the day-stem combination and the day-branch six-harmony both do; it is a named condition in 合婚 practice, so it gets its own small row — naming it in the breakdown is worth more than the points. 年支相害 (year-branch harm) is the folk marriage rhyme 「自古白馬怕青牛，羊鼠相逢一旦休…」, whose six animal pairs are the 六害 table exactly.

Several of those differences are deliberate rather than noise. For the couple lenses six-harmony outranks three-harmony — 六合 is 私情, one-to-one, exactly a couple; for partner and colleague it flips, because 三合成局 forms a shared objective and a 局 is literally a company. For colleagues, punishment and harm are heavy relative to clash: 刑 is 內耗、暗鬥、官非 (attrition, covert conflict, litigation) and 害 is 穿心 (backstabbing) — both precise descriptions of workplace friction — whereas an open clash between peers who share no palace is comparatively survivable. The partner lens carries the deepest punishment penalty of the seven (−20) because 刑主官非訴訟 and the failure mode of a partnership is a lawsuit over the break-up. And the boss lens is the only one whose year-branch clash (−16) is heavier than the helper lens's: clashing your boss's zodiac sign is a live folk workplace concern in a way that clashing your subordinate's is not.

十神: the same star reads differently in each relationship

The ten gods (opens in a new tab) (比肩 peer, 劫財 rival peer, 食神 / 傷官 output, 偏財 / 正財 wealth, 七殺 / 正官 authority, 偏印 / 正印 support) are read day stem against day stem. The same star is simply not the same thing in different relationships:

• Spouse / dating — 男以財為妻、女以官為夫: a man reads 財 as the spouse star, a woman reads 官. 正財 steady vs 偏財 volatile; 正官 orderly vs 七殺 severe; 印 = being looked after; 劫財 = a third party competing.
• Friend — 比肩 is the friend star, 同聲相應同氣相求, and scores highest of the ten here; 劫財 = a good friend who costs you money; 食傷 = they take your lead; 官殺 = their company is stressful. “They are my wealth” is a control reading and a category error between friends, so it flattens to roughly zero.
• Colleague — 比肩 = equals; 劫財 = competing for the same credit; any control in either direction is friction, because peers have no authority structure to resolve it with.
• Business partner — a partnership is 共財, shared money: 比肩 = an even split (good) and 劫財 = 奪財, an uneven one (the single worst row of the lens). These two were one undivided row in the old engine. 七殺 = a partner who dominates you; 印 = a partner who brings resources.
• Boss — 正官 = a legitimate superior worth following; 七殺 = harsh but you learn; 印 = mentor, patron; controlling your boss = 犯上, insubordination, and 財破印 spoils your own patronage; 傷官見官為禍百端 is the classical formula for antagonising authority.
• Subordinate / helper — 財為我所控制之物與人, so controlling them is the good configuration here; 官殺 = 下犯上, hard to manage; 印 = they look after you; 劫財 = losses and turnover.

Dating uses exactly the same 十神 columns as spouse; only the structural magnitudes differ. A mutual lens produces one 十神 row, not two: the star you see in them and the star they see in you are each looked up in their own column, averaged and rounded. 比肩 and 劫財 read identically from both sides, so they are shown once as 「比肩同氣（雙向）」. A directional lens (boss, helper) reads your side only.

The 十神 rows are deliberately small (±10 at most) while the harmony and clash rows run to ±30. That is not timidity: 《滴天髓·夫妻》 (opens in a new tab) makes the spouse-star reading conditional on 喜忌, which requires a reliable hour pillar and a strength assessment that most profiles here cannot supply. The layer we can compute reliably should outweigh the layer we are approximating.

The spouse star, gender, and the neutral column

男命以財為妻、女命以官為夫 is the classical spouse-star rule. Without a gender, a woman evaluating her husband hits “they control me” as a penalty — the exact inverse of the classical reading. So spouse and dating read gender, and only those two lenses do; the other five never look at the field.

Why same-sex pairs get the neutral column. Take two men. Applying 男以財為妻 in both directions demands that A control B and B control A at the same time, which the five elements forbid. The rule is not merely awkward for same-sex pairs, it is arithmetically unsatisfiable: it descends from a gendered social model rather than from the generation/control mechanics, so there is no principled way to extend it. The honest move is to fall back to the layer that is gender-free to begin with.

That fallback is not invented — it is 納音 (opens in a new tab)合婚 from the almanac tradition: 相生為上婚、比和為中婚、相剋為下婚, graded with no reference to gender at all. Averaged across both directions it reproduces that ordering exactly: generation +6 > same element +4 > control −2. When the neutral column is in use the app says so in one line rather than silently producing different numbers, because a reader who knows the tradition would otherwise assume it is broken.

One classical variant is deliberately rejected: some renderings of 呂才合婚法 penalise a woman controlling a man more heavily than the reverse. That is a value judgement about who should defer to whom rather than a mechanic, and shipping it would mean scoring the identical elemental configuration worse depending on which partner is the woman. With both directions averaged, the classical preference falls out on its own anyway — the 十神 row is +10 for 男甲 × 女己 and 0 for 女甲 × 男己: a preference, not a punishment.

Household

Only the subordinate / helper lens averages a household (yours counts twice, each other member once), because a live-in helper genuinely has to get on with everyone. The same arithmetic applied to a spouse does not hold up: measured on this engine, a candidate you score 68 夾 yourself comes out at 55 一般 once three relatives are averaged in — your own verdict dragged 13 points across a band boundary, with your own vote down to 40% of the total. So the spouse lens scores just the two of you, and the rest of the family appears separately as 屋企人提示 — “your mother and this person have a year-branch clash” — as named rules with no number, never averaged in. Dating, friend, colleague, partner and boss score the two people only.

Under every lens, a day-branch clash or punishment between the two people is flagged on its own ⚠ regardless of how good the total looks — no average and no verdict label can bury it.

Where these numbers come from

Every sign and ordering above has a basis: 日支 as the spouse palace (《淵海子平·六親總篇》 (opens in a new tab)), 男命以財為妻／女命以官為夫 (《三命通會·論六親》 (opens in a new tab)), 比劫 as siblings, friends and peers and 比劫奪財 (《淵海子平》論比劫 (opens in a new tab)), 傷官見官為禍百端 (《淵海子平·傷官格》 (opens in a new tab)), 印 as mother, teacher and patron (《三命通會》卷六〈論印綬〉 (opens in a new tab)). The 六害 marriage rhyme and the 納音 上／中／下婚 grading are folk almanac material, not 子平正法, and are labelled as such above.

But every integer is an engineering choice of ours. No classical text says “day-branch six-harmony, 22 points”. What we did was hold the base of 50, the 0–100 clamp and the band spacing fixed, then calibrate against a batch of sample charts until the verdicts read sensibly. If anyone tells you these numbers come from a classical text, do not believe them — ourselves included, which is why this paragraph is here.

Two simplifications worth stating rather than hiding. First, the 十神 are read day stem against day stem. Classically you read wealth and authority as stars within your own chart — position, exposure, seasonal strength, whether they help or harm you — not by comparing two day stems. The day-pillar shortcut is normal 合婚 practice and is all this data model supports, but it is a shortcut. Second, the month and hour pillars are never read — 合婚 practice does look at the month branch and the hour branch (the children's palace); this version does not.

First working day

To pick a start date, the day must clash with neither the employer's nor the candidate's day or month branch; each chart must separately clear the almanac hard vetoes — broken day / great loss (V1), its own zodiac clash (V2), 歲破 (V3); and the almanac's 宜 list must contain 開市 or 納財 — judged term by term as above, so a term counts only if that same term is absent from 忌, and one surviving term is enough. The branch-bonus module is then applied to both charts.

Score = almanac 50 + the employer's branch bonus + the candidate's branch bonus, with no almanac adjustments. Each chart can contribute at most 50, so this list tops out at 150. It is deliberately not graded good / strong / exceptional, because it is a different ruler again — never compare it against a wealth score or a purpose score.

Each row also carries a suggested hour. It is scored on harmony only, exactly as for purpose dates (full three-harmony and half-harmony; no wealth-stem, output-stem or wealth-branch points). Hours that clash or punish any of the four natal branches across both charts — the employer's and the candidate's day and month branches — or that clash either chart's year branch, or the chosen day's own branch, are discarded; the highest-scoring survivor is shown. If no survivor carries any harmony, the first hour that clashes nobody is shown with the reason 平 (neutral); if all twelve are discarded the row simply shows no hour. The suggested hour is display only and never counts toward the score.

The natal chart tab: the full 八字 and the luck cycles

The 命盤 tab reads one birth date through several methods. The 八字 table lists, per pillar, the ten god of each stem seen from the day master (the same function the compatibility lenses use), the stem and branch, the hidden stems with their own ten gods, the 納音, the twelve life stages (長生 … 養) and the void branches (旬空), plus 命宮／身宮／胎元 — the standard columns of a Four Pillars chart (Wikipedia, Chinese) (opens in a new tab), read from lunar-javascript and shown in traditional characters. None of them changes a score.

Luck cycles (大運) run forward for 陽男／陰女 and backward for 陰男／陽女, with the start counted from the birth day to the nearest solar term (Wikipedia (Chinese): 大運 (opens in a new tab)). So without a stated gender there is no luck cycle: we do not guess it, for the same reason we do not invent an hour pillar. The first eight ten-year periods are listed with the current one marked, and the current period's yearly stems and branches. 命宮／身宮／胎元 need the birth hour and stay empty without it.

The daily card: five-element bridging

The 今日開運 card answers what to wear, carry, count and face today, and what to do. The method is two tables. First, today's day stem is read from your day master as a ten god (Wikipedia, Chinese) (opens in a new tab) and grouped into five patterns; each pattern names the element to reinforce — when two elements control each other, the one between them on the generating cycle, so the clash flows instead of hits (五行: the generating and controlling cycles (opens in a new tab)):

Second, what each element means. Colours and directions are the classical set; the numbers are the 河圖 pairs (Wikipedia, Chinese) (opens in a new tab); items and activities are our own reading of each element's character, not a classical text:

“What to do today” is assembled in a fixed order: the wealth-day labels and golden hour when today is one (Modules 1–4), the element's activity, then the almanac's first six 宜; the first four 忌 are listed separately. No line is invented; 點解 shows the rule behind each.

The recommendation grid: several methods, one table

The six tiles on the daily card (wealth / career / love / health / travel / study) and the six at the foot of the annual reading come from one engine. Each method scores a domain (+2, +1, −1, −2); the sum reads 宜 at +2 or more, 慎 at −1 or less, 平 between. The dots on a tile are agreement: how many distinct methods voted the verdict's way (two signals from one method count once). The weights are ours and all published: for a day, a 財日 (+2 wealth); the 格局 (財 +1 wealth; 官殺 +1 career and −1 health; 印 +1 study; 食傷 +1 love; 比劫 −1 wealth); the day branch clashing the natal day branch (−1 travel and love) or combining with it (+1 love); the almanac's 宜 terms by group (marriage terms → love, market and contract terms → wealth, travel and moving → travel, medical → health, schooling → study, +1 each, the same 忌 terms −1) and a 破日／大耗 day (−1 everywhere); the 紫微 daily palace in 財帛／官祿／夫妻／疾厄／遷移 (+1 that domain), and the 化祿／化忌 star's natal palace in the same five (+1 / −1); the transit sun in your 2nd / 10th / 7th / 6th / 9th / 3rd house (+1 the matching domain), a full moon (−1 love) and a new moon (+1 study). For a year the same table reads the year stem's ten god, the branch relations, the 大運×流年 interaction and the 紫微 year palace and transformations; the month strip colours by that month's verdict for the domain you care about most. Agreement between methods is agreement, nothing more; no tile ever says 一定. The AI button receives this table and the server keeps the verdicts exactly as the engine wrote them.

奇門遁甲: one chart per double-hour

The 奇門時盤 card on 今日 is 時家奇門: one chart per 時辰, cast by the qimen-dunjia library (拆補 定局, 定氣 solar terms, the nine palaces in 洛書 order, each with its heaven and earth stems, door, star and spirit; 值符 and 值使 marked). Three things are stated rather than assumed: the 23:00–00:59 hour keeps the same day pillar as the rest of the app (the library's default flips the day at 23:00; we pass 當日 so one moment never shows two 日柱); the input is your device's local time, which the library reads as UTC+8 wall-clock (Hong Kong time, no DST, no true solar time); and the judgements are the library's — 81 十干克應 and eleven named patterns, each with its classical source (奇門旨歸, 統宗, 寶鑑御定, 法竅 …), the 吉凶 tag being the library's reading of the verdict — of which we show the verdict and the book, never the passage. The directions are our own 用神 table, read off the chart: wealth = 生門 with 戊／己 or a 三奇 stem (else any 生門); travel = 開門 with 值符 (else any 開門); love = 六合 with 乙 (else any 六合); career = 開門 with a 三奇 (else 開門, else 景門); avoid = the 死門 and 驚門 palaces plus the palaces of the hour's two 空亡 branches. The recommendation grid reads the current hour the same way (+1 wealth, career, travel or love when the pairing is on the board; −1 everywhere when 值使 is 死門 or 驚門).

Tarot: the draw is random, and we cannot make it otherwise

The 占卜 card on 今日 is tarot, and unlike everything above it is not computed from the birth data. The daily card comes from a random seed kept in this browser plus the date — the same card all day here, a different one on another device — not from the day having a card. 問塔羅 shuffles with the browser's crypto.getRandomValues (Fisher–Yates), reversed with probability one half, and nothing in the app can influence the result. The 78 cards are the Rider–Waite–Smith deck (1909, public domain) by name and iconography; the upright and reversed keywords and the one-line meanings are ours, in that tradition, not quotations. Two spreads: past · present · future, and situation · action · outcome. The card faces are the site's own assets: original drawings generated one card at a time with an AI image tool (OpenAI gpt-6-astra) in the Rider–Waite iconographic tradition, neither scans nor restyled copies of any modern deck, with no text in the art. The AI reading receives only the spread, your question and the drawn cards — no chart — and is asked to read each position, then the whole, without 一定 and without medical or financial directives. Cultural reference.

Annual reading: the year against the chart

The 流年運程 section on the 命盤 tab reads one year against the natal chart, all by table: the year stem's ten god from the day master sets the theme (wealth star → wealth; authority → career and pressure; resource → learning and support; output → expression; peer → competition and cooperation); the year branch gets one relation with each natal branch, in the order same-branch (伏吟) › clash › punishment › six-harmony › three-harmony › harm › break › none (harmony above harm and break, for the reason given under the zodiac year); the 太歲 relation is the zodiac-year one; the luck cycle for that year is read against the year as 天合／天剋 (five-combination or control between the stems) and 地合／地沖 (between the branches); and the twelve months are the year's solar-term month pillars (五虎遁: a 甲／己 year starts at 丙寅, 乙／庚 at 戊寅, 丙／辛 at 庚寅, 丁／壬 at 壬寅, 戊／癸 at 甲寅), each related to the day branch, with the related months listed by severity. The months belong to the year, not the person, so they need no gender; the luck cycle does. With a birth hour, the 紫微 year line is added: the palace the year falls in, that stem's four transformations, the year's transient stars by palace, the natal majors in the year's 命宮, and this month's palace.

紫微斗數: the chart is the library's, the reading is yours

The Zi Wei Dou Shu (opens in a new tab) square on the 命盤 tab is placed by the open-source library iztro (opens in a new tab) (MIT), with its default 中州派 star placement and leap-month handling. This site adds exactly two things: the hour mapping (the stored 時辰 onto the library's thirteen — early 子, 丑 to 亥, late 子, with late 子 kept on the same day) and the gender.

Hence the same two lines as for 八字: no birth hour, no chart (the 命宮 is counted from the hour, and we do not assume 子時), and no stated gender, no 大限 (the ten-year periods run forward or backward by gender; checked star by star on two charts, the stars themselves do not depend on it, so they are shown and the ranges are left blank). Each palace lists its major stars with brightness and the four transformations, its minor stars and its stem and branch; the centre gives the 五行局, the 命主 and 身主, and which palace this year and today fall in with that stem's four transformations. Nothing feeds a score. Schools differ in placement; we use one source and do not pretend to a consensus.

Zodiac year: the 太歲 relation

Your year branch against this year's Tai Sui (opens in a new tab) (the year branch, changing at 立春 like the almanac's 歲破 veto). One relation per year, first match wins: same branch (值) › clash (沖) › punishment (刑) › harmony (合, six- or three-harmony) › harm (害) › break (破) › none. 值, 沖, 刑, 害 and 破 are the folk 犯太歲; harmony outranks harm and break because 寅亥 and 巳申 are both a six-harmony and a six-break pair and are read as harmony by convention (巳申 is caught by punishment first). The six-break pairs (子酉 丑辰 寅亥 卯午 巳申 未戌) are used here only. Information, not a score.

Western zodiac: the sun-sign method

Only the sun sign, from the birth date, with cusps as lunar-javascript draws them (other tables move a cusp by a day; Wikipedia: Zodiac (opens in a new tab)). Each sign shows its element, modality and ruling planet. “Today's house” is the newspaper-column rule (sun sign astrology (opens in a new tab)): count from your sign to the sign the sun is in today, 1 to 12 — self, money, communication, home, creativity, work and health, partners, shared resources, travel and study, career, friends, rest. The moon phase is read from the lunar day (lunar phase (opens in a new tab)): a calendar reading, not an astronomical instant. No planetary positions, no ascendant, no aspects — that needs an ephemeris this app does not carry.

The daily almanac, the zodiac day and 小六壬

The 每日通勝 card on 今日 and the public daily almanac pages read lunar-javascript's almanac as printed: lunar date and pillars, the solar terms either side, the day's clash and 煞 direction, 建除, the day spirit and its 吉／凶, 吉神 and 凶煞, the full 宜 and 忌 lists, the five directions (wealth god, joy god, fortune god, the two nobles), the day's 九星, and the twelve double-hours (early and late 子 apart) with each hour's 吉／凶 and what it is 宜 for. All lookup, one source; almanac editions differ. The zodiac day is the day branch against your birth-year branch (值／沖／刑／害／破／合／平, the zodiac-year order), one line per relation. 小六壬 counts from 大安 through the lunar month, then the lunar day, then the hour (子 = 1) around six palaces: arithmetic, identical for everyone at that hour, with the common street readings.

Feng shui directions: flying stars and 八宅

Flying stars: the year chart changes at 立春 and the month chart at each 節; the centre star is lunar-javascript's 九星, and the other eight palaces follow the forward flight 中 → 乾 → 兌 → 艮 → 離 → 坎 → 坤 → 震 → 巽, one star higher each. Period 9 (2024–2043) reads 九紫 as the reigning star, 八白 still wealth, 一白 growth, 六白 authority, 四綠 study; 五黃 the worst, 二黑 illness, 三碧 quarrels, 七赤 fading. One line of advice per star, a 玄空 convention rather than evidence. The 八宅 chart takes the 命卦 from the 立春 year of birth and the gender by the classical formula, East group (坎離震巽) or West group (乾坤艮兌), and the eight directions with their 遊星 (生氣 天醫 延年 伏位 good; 絕命 五鬼 六煞 禍害 bad) from the standard table. No gender, no 命卦. The recommendation grid reads the month star in your 生氣 direction: 五黃／二黑 → health −1, 八白／六白 → wealth +1, 九紫 → love +1, 一白／四綠 → career +1.

I Ching: sixty-four hexagrams, two ways to cast

The 易經 card in the 占卜 area of 今日. Coins: three coins per line, six lines from the bottom (heads 3, tails 2: 6 old yin, 7 young yang, 8 young yin, 9 old yang), randomised with the browser's crypto; 6 and 9 are moving lines, the hexagram with them flipped is the 之卦, and 乾／坤 with all six moving read 用九／用六. 梅花易數: by time, the year-branch number plus lunar month plus lunar day mod 8 gives the upper trigram, adding the hour mod 8 the lower, the total mod 6 the moving line; by numbers, the same arithmetic on three numbers you supply. 梅花 splits 體 (the trigram without the moving line, yourself) from 用 (the matter). The sixty-four follow the King Wen order; the 卦辭 and 爻辭 are the received text of the Zhouyi (public domain, checked against the Wikisource edition (opens in a new tab)); the keywords and one-liners are ours. Like tarot, it reads no chart.

Western natal chart: the positions are astronomy, the reading is ours

Under the sun-sign card on 命盤, the chart uses the open-source astronomy-engine to compute the geocentric ecliptic longitudes (true ecliptic of date) of the Sun, Moon and eight planets at the birth instant, hence each body's sign and degree; with a birth hour and a birth place (a city picked in 檔案) it computes the ascendant from local sidereal time, latitude and the obliquity, and Whole Sign houses. The place's time zone is standard time, never daylight saving (the card says so); without an hour the chart is computed for noon and the Moon, which moves 13° a day, is marked approximate, with no ascendant; without a place there is no ascendant. Transits: today's Sun to Saturn against the natal Sun, Moon and ascendant (orbs 8° for conjunction and opposition, 6° for square and trine, 4° for sextile); trines and sextiles read flowing, squares and oppositions tense, conjunctions by the planet. The recommendation grid reads Jupiter flowing → wealth +1, Venus flowing → love +1, Saturn tense → career −1, Mars tense → health −1. The one-liners for signs, planets and houses are the common tradition, in our words, not astronomy.

Numerology: the digits of the birth date

Year, month and day each reduced to one digit (keeping 11, 22 and 33), then added and reduced again for the life path; the day alone is the birthday number; month plus day plus the calendar year is the personal year. Arithmetic, the same for everyone with that date; the line for each number is ours.

紫微 annual and monthly: the palaces are the library's, the reading is ours

The centre of the 紫微 card carries the year and the month as iztro (opens in a new tab) places them: the annual 命宮 is the 太歲 palace (the year branch counted from 寅), the monthly one follows the 斗君 count (from the annual 命宮 count back to the birth month, then forward to the birth hour, then one palace a month), and the four transformations of the year and month stems use the library's default table (庚: 陽武陰同; 壬: 梁紫左武 — schools differ; we follow the library rather than assemble another table). Below the chart, 流年讀法 and 流月讀法 list which star turns 祿／權／科／忌, which annual (monthly) palace it sits in, and one arrangement line of ours; the forty-eight lines, the twelve annual focuses and the transient-star themes are original neutral wording, not quotations from the 紫微斗數全書 (opens in a new tab), which is the source for the stars, the palaces and the traditional readings only. Sixteen rules feed the recommendation grid (化祿 in 財帛 → wealth +1, 化忌 in 官祿 → career −1, 化忌 in 疾厄 → health only as a rest reminder), each once, year and month folded into one vote; health never gains a plus from a star. Without a birth hour there is no 命宮 and none of this.

Synastry: the aspects are arithmetic, the score is a communication hint

Each expanded pair on 夾唔夾 computes the cross-chart aspects (opens in a new tab) of two natal charts: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and the ascendant against each other (36 pairs), Jupiter to Pluto against personal points only (60), never slow planet to slow planet. Orbs are 6° for conjunction and opposition, 4° for square and trine, 3° for sextile, capped at 3° when an ascendant or an outer planet is involved. Every aspect carries a base weight (the Moon leans emotional, Mercury leans coordination), a lens factor (partner, business partner, colleague, family — 配偶／情侶 read as partner, 合夥 as business, 同事／上司／下屬 as colleague, 朋友 as family), a closeness factor 1 − orb／(limit + 1) and a sign (trines and sextiles +1, squares and oppositions −1, conjunctions by the planet: Sun–Moon +1, Mercury–Mercury +1, Venus–Mars +0.75, Saturn −0.25, Jupiter +0.75, outer planets 0). Score = 50 + 40 × Σ(weight × closeness × sign) ÷ (Σ(weight × closeness) + 10); fewer than three personal points or a total weight under 5 gives no score. Whole Sign house (opens in a new tab) overlays need an ascendant; the Moon of a chart without a birth hour is left out. The seventy-two theme lines are our own communication prompts; the score is not a compatibility (opens in a new tab) rate and says nothing about who should marry.

Name numerology: 康熙 strokes, five-grid arithmetic, verdicts withheld

Strokes follow the 康熙字典 (opens in a new tab) convention — the radical's own count plus the additional strokes (氵 as 水 4, 艹 as 艸 6, left 阝 as 阜 8, right 阝 as 邑 7) — from the Unicode Unihan 15.0 kRSKangXi (opens in a new tab) field (the last release that carries it), for some thirteen thousand Big5 characters; a character outside the table is reported as unverified rather than counted the modern way. Numerals count as the dictionary writes them (四 = 5) by default, with a by-value mode. The five grids are arithmetic: 天格 = surname strokes (+1 for a single character), 人格 = last surname character + first given character, 地格 = given-name strokes (+1 for a single character), 總格 = everything, 外格 = 天格 + 地格 − 人格; elements by the last digit (1, 2 wood; 3, 4 fire; 5, 6 earth; 7, 8 metal; 9, 0 water). The 吉／半吉／凶 labels of the 81 數理 follow the MIT-licensed babyname/fate (opens in a new tab) table, each with one line of ours; for 三才 we show the three elements and their 生剋 and publish no verdict (the source's 125-row table is unverified and one row short). The name is never stored, and the AI receives numbers only.

Event dates: veto first, then score, every rule named

The event picker in the 吉日 area of 今日 works on the daily almanac (lunar-javascript (opens in a new tab)) plus a few purely calendrical rules, rule version event-selection-core-v1. Seventeen event variants map to the almanac's 宜 tokens (wedding → 嫁娶; moving in → 入宅, moving only → 移徙; opening → 開市; contract → 立券; groundbreaking → 動土; travel → 出行; taking office → 赴任; an interview has no classical main token and earns support points only). The main token in 忌, 諸事不宜, or 餘事勿取 with the main token uncovered vetoes the day; a major event is vetoed on 歲破 (the day branch clashing the 立春 year branch) or 月破 (which is the 建除 破 day, counted once) and a minor one loses three points; weddings and trips are vetoed on the 四離 (the day before an equinox or solstice) and 四絕 (the day before a 立) days. Then the score: base 50, main coverage 12, support tokens +1 each (cap 2), 黃道 day +4 or 黑道 −2, the 建除 preference of the event ×2, the 二十八宿 (weddings and works by the mansion's verse for that matter ×2, otherwise general 吉 +1／凶 −1), auspicious spirits capped at 8 (天德 and 月德 2 each, 天赦 2, 天恩 1, 天喜 only for weddings and gatherings, 三合／六合 2, 母倉 only for moving, beds and gatherings), 往亡 by the solar month −3 for weddings, trips and taking office; participants count by their year branch alone — a clash vetoes only if you chose to avoid it, otherwise it is flagged; 刑／害 deduct 2 only when switched on; 六合 adds 2. Hours use the hour spirit (黃道 +4, 黑道 −2), hour 宜 ×6, and a clash with a participant can exclude the hour. The 協紀辨方書 (opens in a new tab) is the source for 四離四絕, 往亡, 月忌 and the twelve-spirit rule; the event mapping, the weights and the order are our product rules. Folk days we could not source reliably — 楊公忌, 三娘煞, 紅紗, 受死, the bride's 大利月 — are not computed and not pretended. Funeral, medical and gambling events are not offered.

Generic readings: generated once, the same for everyone

Under the zodiac-year card and the Western-zodiac card on the 命盤 tab sits a generic reading: the animal against the year's 太歲 (this year and next), and the sun sign month by month (which house the transit sun lights up, usually in two segments, plus the new- and full-moon days). Neither depends on any personal data, so we run the same tables the two sections above publish, have the AI write each reading once, review it, and ship it as a static file: everyone with that animal or sign sees the same text, at no credit cost, never regenerated per visit. Each reading is labelled generic and pre-generated, names the model and date, and says it is not your chart — the personal explanation is still the AI button on the card. The writing follows the same rule as every AI explanation here: every point must cite a data line or it is dropped. Regeneration is a deliberate act (a new year, or a changed table), never automatic.

No birth hour? We do not invent one

What this cannot do

• No true solar time correction. The day pillar rolls over at local civil midnight; longitude is not corrected for. If you were born far from your time zone's meridian, or near midnight, the day pillar may be off by one.
• Single almanac source. The 宜/忌 data comes from lunar-javascript. Different printed almanacs and different schools disagree; we do not pretend there is a consensus.
• The almanac gate is not the whole almanac. Only the vetoes and adjustments listed above are applied; other spirits (受死, 四廢, 天賊 …) and day-master strength are not yet weighed.
• The weights are our judgement. Every number above is a decision, not a formula found in a classical text. We publish them so you can judge them yourself.
• Sun sign only. No ephemeris, so no planets, ascendant or aspects; the moon phase is a calendar reading.
• One school for 紫微. iztro's default 中州派 placement; other schools' charts can differ, and true solar time is still not applied.
• The natal chart tab is display only. Luck cycles, life stages, void branches, 命宮 and the daily card feed no score; every line is a rule written on this page.
• This is not financial advice. See the terms of use.

Sources

Every term and every table used above can be looked up. These are the references we actually opened and checked. None of them is cited for a score — the classical texts name relationships, they do not assign points, and no text anywhere says “day-branch six-harmony, 22”. Where each number comes from is stated in the sections above: from us.

Several of these are Chinese-language sources. That is not an oversight — for the branch relationship tables, the 建除 day officers and the 黃道／黑道 spirits there is no English reference of comparable quality, and citing a weaker one to look tidier would be the dishonest choice. They are labelled below.

Terms and tables

• The stem-and-branch cycle — Wikipedia: Sexagenary cycle (opens in a new tab) and Earthly Branches (opens in a new tab).
• Six-harmony, three-harmony, clash, punishment, harm — Wikipedia (Chinese): 地支〈組合〉 (opens in a new tab), which tabulates all five relations pair by pair. Modules 2 and 3 and the compatibility structure rules read exactly these tables.
• 五鼠遁 (日上起時), the hour-stem rule — Wikipedia (Chinese): 干支〈干支紀時〉 (opens in a new tab), which carries the rhyme and the full day-stem × hour-branch table.
• Natal chart columns, luck cycles — Wikipedia (Chinese): 四柱八字 (opens in a new tab), Wikipedia (Chinese): 大運 (opens in a new tab).
• Five-element cycles, 河圖 numbers — Wikipedia (Chinese): 五行 (opens in a new tab), Wikipedia (Chinese): 河圖 (opens in a new tab). The daily card's bridging rule and lucky numbers use these; colours and directions are the usual five-element set; items and activities are ours.
• 太歲 — Wikipedia: Tai Sui (opens in a new tab).
• 紫微斗數 — Wikipedia: Zi Wei Dou Shu (opens in a new tab); placement by iztro (GitHub · SylarLong) (opens in a new tab).
• Zodiac, sun-sign method, moon phase — Wikipedia: Zodiac (opens in a new tab), Sun sign astrology (opens in a new tab), Lunar phase (opens in a new tab).
• The ten gods (十神) — Wikipedia: Four Pillars of Destiny (opens in a new tab); for the primary text, Wikisource (Chinese): 《淵海子平》 (opens in a new tab), whose 〈基礎〉 section enumerates them stem by stem, 以甲為例: 見甲：為比肩、兄弟。見乙：為劫財、敗財，剋父及妻。見丙：為食神、天廚、壽星，為男。… (that transcription is in simplified characters; converted here, but the clause breaks and punctuation are the source's own).
• 納音 — Wikipedia (Chinese): 納音 (opens in a new tab); primary text at Wikisource: 《三命通會》卷一〈總論納音〉 (opens in a new tab). The 上／中／下婚 grading itself is folk almanac practice; we could not find a classical locus we would be willing to point at, so only the concept is cited.

The almanac

• The almanac and its 宜／忌 lists — Wikipedia: Tung Shing (opens in a new tab); Wikipedia (Chinese): 擇日學 (opens in a new tab) for how the date-selection tradition and its printed almanacs relate.
• The twelve day officers 建除 (建, 除, 滿, 平, 定, 執, 破, 危, 成, 收, 開, 閉) — Wikipedia (Chinese): 建除十二神 (opens in a new tab).
• The 黃道 / 黑道 twelve spirits — Wikisource: 《欽定協紀辨方書》卷七〈義例五・黄道黒道〉 (opens in a new tab), where the sentence is quoted from the 《神樞經》 (神樞經曰…), not the compilers' own: 青龍, 明堂, 金匱, 天德, 玉堂, 司命 are named the 黃道 spirits and 天刑, 朱雀, 白虎, 天牢, 元武 (玄武), 勾陳 the 黑道 ones. The 四庫全書 text runs unpunctuated; the commas are editorial. The six our “black-path day” rule looks for are that second list; the size of the deduction is ours.
• 《協紀辨方書》 itself (compiled by imperial order in 1739, in the 四庫全書) — Wikipedia (Chinese): 協紀辨方書 (opens in a new tab).

Classical texts

• 《淵海子平》, full text (Wikisource) (opens in a new tab) — 〈六親總篇〉 “年為祖上，月為父母伯叔兄弟門戶，日為妻妾己身” is the day branch as the spouse palace; the same edition carries 比劫 as siblings and 傷官見官為禍百端.
• 《三命通會》卷七〈論六親〉〈論女命〉 (Wikisource) (opens in a new tab) — “我剋者為財為妻” and “女命以剋我者為夫”: the origin of the gendered spouse-star column.
• 《三命通會》卷六〈論印綬〉 (Wikisource) (opens in a new tab) — 印綬者，乃五行生我之名……為父母，能護我官星, plus 經云：印賴官生 and 忌財星，以財能破印: the source for reading 印 as mother, teacher and patron, and for 財破印. (This transcription is missing 卷十–卷十二, but 〈論印綬〉 is not among them.)
• 《滴天髓》〈六親論〉 (Wikisource) (opens in a new tab) — “夫妻姻緣宿世來，喜神有意傍妻財”, the reason the 十神 weights here are deliberately smaller than the harmony/clash weights.

Data

• lunar-javascript (GitHub · 6tail) (opens in a new tab) — the single source of every lunar date, solar term, day officer, spirit and 宜／忌 entry on this site. It is an open-source library, not a printed almanac; where it disagrees with the almanac on your shelf, that is expected.

Every link above was opened and checked on 2026-09-06. No classical text states any score on this page.

Try it with my own chart

Or see a worked example first →