Which Doors & Stars Are Lucky — and When They Aren't

Three Tiers, Not Two

The first thing classical texts do with any door, star or deity is assign it a tier: auspicious (吉), neutral (平), or inauspicious (凶). This is the vocabulary of Qimen luck, but it is only the vocabulary, not the sentence. The tier tells you an element's default character; the season and your question tell you what it actually means today.

Think of tiers as personality, not verdict. An auspicious door in a weak season is a friendly ally on a bad day. An inauspicious star aligned with your question type is a sharp tool that happens to cut in your favor. The tables below give the defaults; the last two sections show how they bend.

The Eight Doors — Your Actions, Ranked

The doors describe the human layer: modes of action. Three are reliably favorable, two shine for specific purposes, and three demand caution:

The Nine Stars — the Conditions, Ranked

The stars describe timing and objective conditions, the weather over your plans:

The Eight Deities — the Invisible Hand

The deities are the subtlest layer, background forces that tilt outcomes:

Seasonal Strength — 旺相休囚死

Here is where the tiers start to move. Every door and star belongs to one of the five elements, and every element cycles through five states of strength with the seasons: thriving (旺), supported (相), resting (休), imprisoned (囚), and dead (死). An auspicious water star in winter is at full power; the same star in late summer is running on fumes.

This matrix is why two charts with identical symbols can read differently in March and in October, and why memorizing "lucky lists" without seasons produces confident, wrong readings. Seasonal strength asks how the month treats an element; a second, finer ruler asks where a stem stands in its own life, from birth to burial — that one is the twelve life stages, and the two are read together.

Context Beats Labels — the "Worst" Door at Work

The final correction is the question itself. Every ranking on this page is a ranking for the average case, and your case is never average. Three canonical examples:

Injury Door (Injury Door): dreadful for weddings and launches, but the traditional first choice for debt collection and hunting. Energy that pursues and seizes.
Death Door: the worst door for beginnings, yet appropriate for funerals, endings, and closing what should be closed.
Dispute Door (Dispute Door): anxiety and disputes, but litigators and debaters want that edge in an argument chart.