What Information Is Needed to Cast a Zi Wei Chart: Birth Date, Time, Place, Gender, Plus Past Events for Rectification

Many only give a birth date when casting, and the resulting chart does not match them, often because the hour, calendar or birthplace was not corrected. Preparing the information before casting saves much back-and-forth later.

What This Question Is Really Asking

The question is what information to prepare before casting and why. First understand that Zi Wei casting is sensitive to hour and calendar, then prepare item by item and keep major events for rectification.

The Underlying Logic

Six basic items: birth year, month, day, time, precise to the hour and ideally to the minute, birthplace, province and city level for true solar time correction, and gender.

The hour is the most error-prone: the Zi hour must be split into early Zi, midnight to one, and late Zi, eleven to midnight, and births near hour boundaries can produce completely different charts, so cast candidates when uncertain.

The calendar must be unified: confirm whether lunar or solar is used, how leap months are handled, and whether the casting tool settings match, as different tools may produce different results from calendar differences.

Rectification needs past major events: list several memorable events with clear dates, schooling, work changes, marriage, moves and illness, to verify which candidate chart’s cycles fit best; this step is more reliable than birth date and hour alone.

A Step-by-Step Way to Read It

1. First confirm the birth date and time, as precise to the minute as possible, marking what is uncertain
2. Confirm the birthplace, at least province and city level, for true solar time correction
3. Confirm gender and calendar, lunar or solar and whether a leap month is involved, and unify the casting tool settings
4. If the hour is uncertain or near a boundary, cast two to three candidate charts
5. List about five past major events with clear dates for rectification
6. Compare the candidate charts’ decade and year cycles against the events, choose the best fit as the official chart, and review again if questions arise later

Three Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Giving only the birth date without the hour, so the Life Palace cannot be determined

Mistake 2: Insisting on one hour when uncertain, without casting candidates or rectifying with events

Mistake 3: Ignoring birthplace and true solar time, as local time differs from Beijing time by longitude

Back to Your Own Chart

Preparing the information before casting is the first step of reading: year, month, day, time, birthplace and gender as the base, and past events for rectification. The more accurate the information and the more solid the rectification, the more reliable the later reading.

Reading Order

1. Cast the natal chart first and locate the palaces and major stars tied to what information is needed to cast a chart before judging anything
2. Open the triple-direction of those palaces and count the auspicious, malefic and assistant stars separately
3. Check where the natal Four Transformations land to set the chart's baseline tone
4. Read the decade-limit transformations to see whether the what information is needed to cast a chart line is activated in this stage
5. Then read the annual transformations and the year's palace to pin down this year's trigger and timing
6. Layer natal, decade and year before concluding, then decide how to act rather than labeling good or bad