In a normal work environment, ceteris paribus*, getting a job promotion is something that should happen to everyone. If you miss it this cycle, you will expect to get it in one of the future review cycles.This is a given assumption and if you fail to get one, after many cycles — especially others have gotten more than one promotions in your team but you, it will indirectly suggest that you are deliberately being sidelined for some reasons.
The purpose of this article is to show you some of the basic ZWDS Sihua techniques, on how you can apply them to call out when will this event happen to you. This is by no means an exhaustive list, meaning there are many more other ZWDS techniques, but may require more advanced training to interpret it.
For a beginner, the easiest way to interpret a chart is to use the Local Sihua technique and apply it to establish the event i.e job promotion.
Local Sihua | Symbol on the chart |
---|---|
Self Hua Lu (自化祿) | ![]() |
Self Hua Quan (自化权) | ![]() |
Inherited Hua Lu (生年化祿) | ![]() |
Inherited Hua Quan (生年化权) | ![]() |
To plot a free ZWDS Sihua Flying Stars chart, refer Sihua Flying Stars chart
For more extra ZWDS learning, refer ZWDS Sihua Flying Stars interpretation
For terminology pronunciation, refer ZWDS terminology
The purpose of Local Sihua is to activate the interpretation for an event. Therefore to read a job recognition event, you will look to find where your Career cell (官禄宫) is activated, with any of the above Local Sihua and together with a recognition line (e.g Fame line 光明线 or Achievement line 成就线), to show that your career is beginning to shine.
Without activated together with a Fame line or Achievement line, your career is said to have been activated for an interpretation, but it may be decoded for other subject matter, instead of the job recognition.
Some of the possible activation scenarios that commonly associated with the job promotion:
- D-Parents overstacks with Career and Y-Self (Refer Client 1 below for how it works on a chart and the “when”)
- D-Career overstacks with Parents and Y-Self (Refer Client 2 below for how it works on a chart and the “when”)
- D-Friends overstacks with Career and Y-Self
- D-Career overstacks with Friends and Y-Self
- D-Parents overstacks with Career and Y-Self
- D-Career overstacks with Parents and Y-Self
If you can identify any of the above similar scenario in your chart, that will mean your job promotion is already “connected” in the horizon, and all you need to do next, is to establish “when” this event will take place.
The above first 2 scenarios are further illustrated with the chart examples below. Hopefully this will help you relate the scenarios with a better visual. Besides, the examples below also further show you the likelihood of when the job recognition will likely to happen.


Please be mindful that not all job recognition will reward you with a promotion. The reward can come in many forms such as monetary, rank adjustment, location change, contract extension with status quo, or even a lateral reshuffle but with more promising prospect.
Besides, Career cell does not only represent your work matter alone. It can also represent a study matter. If you are planning to start a study on an off-hour basis, this will certainly complicate, as to how you will construe where your Career cell should represent.
Once you have a good grasp of the Local Sihua techniques, you can then proceed to explore other sihua techniques, as well as on other subject matters in your Ziwei chart.
*Of course, there are many other factors that may influence such as other compensation in-lieu of promotion, rank seniority, budget constraints, education qualification, nature of the work, complexity of the organisation, promotion on discretionary basis, discriminative work practices etc — These are not the purpose of this article