Qi Men Dun Jia hour chart
Qi Men Dun Jia (奇门遁甲, “mysterious gates, hidden Jia”) is a classical Chinese method for choosing a good time and direction. A new chart is drawn for every two-hour period: nine stars, eight doors and eight spirits move around nine palaces, one for each compass direction. Traditionally it was used to plan journeys, meetings and campaigns. Enter a date and time (now, or a time you are planning for) to see which directions the chart favours.
How Qi Men Dun Jia works
The chart has nine palaces arranged as the Lo Shu square, eight around a centre, each linked to a compass direction. The earth plate is laid out from the solar term: during the half year after the winter solstice the stems run forwards (Yang Dun), after the summer solstice backwards (Yin Dun), and each 15-day term is split into upper, middle and lower cycles of five days that set the chart number from 1 to 9. The heaven plate then turns so that the leading star follows the stem of the hour, the eight doors turn with the count of hours, and the eight spirits are laid out from the leading star’s palace.
The three “wonders” are the stems Yi, Bing and Ding; the six “instruments” are Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui; and Jia, the leader, hides beneath one of the instruments, which gives the method its name. The auspicious doors are Open, Rest and Life; Death, Harm and Fear are the difficult ones; Block and View are mixed.
Method and limits
This calculator uses the rotating-plate (zhuan pan) hour chart with the chai bu method for finding the chart number, which is the most widely used approach today. The solar terms come from the true position of the Sun for your time zone. Schools that use the zhi run method (inserting extra cycles) or the fixed flying plate may give a different chart for some hours. The ranking of directions is a simplified score: an experienced practitioner weighs the five-element relationships in far more detail.
Sources: the classical “Yan Bo Diao Sou Fu” (烟波钓叟赋) and the Ming-era compendium “Qi Men Dun Jia Tong Zong” (奇门遁甲统宗).