Chinese Fortunetelling Workshop: An Introduction to Purple Star Astrology

This workshop introduces Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗數 Purple Star Astrology) as a symbolic and narrative system that has shaped Chinese understandings of fate, selfhood, and time for centuries—and continues to inform contemporary identity construction today.

Participants will be guided through the history and basic structure of Zi Wei Dou Shu, including the Twelve Palaces, the Fourteen Major Stars, the Four Transformations (Si Hua), and key differences among interpretive lineages. Rather than focusing on prediction or personal readings, the workshop emphasizes how fate charts function as structured narratives, where palaces and stars operate like roles within an unfolding story.

The session examines how a single chart can yield different meanings at different life stages, and how concepts such as ming (命 destiny), yun (運 cycles), da xian (限 major periods), and liu nian (流年 annual movement) contribute to evolving ideas of subjectivity and the question of “Who am I?”

Placing Zi Wei Dou Shu in dialogue with contemporary identity politics, the workshop considers how interpretive approaches shift over time—reframing traditionally “difficult” or tragic star combinations through dialectical and contextual readings that offer narrative stability rather than determinism.

The program concludes by situating astrological and divinatory systems within contemporary art practices, examining how artists such as Suzanne Treister, Hilma af Klint, and Agnes Denes have employed esoteric charts, symbolic systems, and cosmological thinking as tools for meaning-making, critique, and imagination.

This workshop is designed as a conceptual introduction and cultural exploration, open to all audiences—no prior knowledge required.

About the Instructor:

Lili Xie is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose practice spans photography, performance, video, installation, and ceramics. Alongside her artistic work, she has studied and practiced Zi Wei Dou Shu（紫微斗數）for over ten years, and Tarot for more than four years, with a particular focus on traditional East Asian divination systems as cultural, symbolic, and narrative structures.

Xie approaches divination not as prediction, but as a method of inquiry into subjectivity, time, and embodied experience. She has incorporated divinatory systems into her artistic practice as conceptual frameworks and generative tools, exploring how fate, chance, and interpretation intersect with personal identity and lived experience.