What Qi Men Dun Jia is, and how an hour is chosen

Qi Men Dun Jia (奇門遁甲) is the second system in BaziArt and the one behind the planner. Where BaZi reads a birth-moment chart within its tradition, Qi Men reads a moment itself: for every double hour it lays out a chart of nine palaces, one per direction and the centre. The eight gates and the eight spirits are distributed over the eight outer palaces; the centre has no gate of its own and is read through the palace it lodges in, by the rule chosen in the settings. Each palace also carries a star and two stems. The tradition reads that layout to say which directions and which hours suit which kind of action.

The chart of an hour

The layout starts from the half of the year, which sets the direction: yang layouts from the winter solstice to the summer solstice, yin layouts after it. The solar term then gives three candidate numbers from one to nine (the 局), and the day's position in the ten-day cycle picks one of them. The engine then places the eight gates (八門), the nine stars, the eight spirits (八神) and the stems of the ten-day cycle on the plates. None of this is chosen by hand; the calculation method page lists the school choices.

The example is 10 November 2026, Madrid, the hours from 07:00 to 23:00, task “career”, direction east (palace 3). The chart of the highest-scoring hour, 07:59–09:59, is layout 9 yin, in the term 立冬.

In the east palace of that hour stand the Rest gate (休門), the star 天蓬 (Tiān Péng), the Union Spirit (六合) and the stems 乙 over 丁. That placement has two traditional names: a favourable stem enthroned (三奇升殿), a favourable stem in its seat of plenty (奇有祿位). The engine counts each named favourable combination in the palace, so in this system the hour gets 4 points for the task, above the threshold of two.

How the planner rates an hour

The planner asks for a task and a direction, and for every double hour in the range it looks at the palace of that direction.

First come the hard filters. An hour is rejected, with the rule named, when the palace is empty for the day, when the gate presses on the palace (門迫), when the stems form a punishment (擊刑) or fall into a grave (入墓), when the hour is one of non-meeting (五不遇時), or when a fierce spirit sits on the palace. A rejected hour is shown with its reason rather than hidden.

Then the remaining hours are scored: a suitable gate, a favourable stem and a spirit matching the task add at most one point each, and every named favourable combination in the palace adds a point of its own; an hour counts as favourable from two points. Combinations with a traditional name, such as a favourable stem enthroned in its own palace, are listed by name and explained in the library.

What a favourable hour means

In this system it means that the rules of the layout gave the palace of your direction at least two points and no hard filter fired. It is a rule-based rating for planning, not a statement about what will happen in that hour. The planner shows the rule behind every rating and lets you see the whole day, including the hours it rejected and why.

In the app

The planner is the first screen: the day as a timeline, your own events on it, the hour windows in the background. A task and a direction give the ratings above; the Qi Men chart of any hour can be opened and read in two registers. The engine, the rules and the example on this page are the same.