How to Chart a Leap Lunar Month in Zi Wei

The lunar calendar tracks new moons, so a year runs about 354 days. Every few years a leap month is inserted to keep seasons aligned. Leap April follows April and repeats the dates; it does not create a thirteenth palace or an extra earthly-branch month.

Zi Wei sets the Life Palace from lunar month plus hour: count months backward from Yin for January, then count hours forward to the Life Palace. Month order is lunar, not the solar-term month used in Ba Zi. 'Leap X' only names the calendar you remember.

The usual rule is: a leap month without a mid-term (zhong qi) is not counted as its own month, and placement borrows the previous month. Writing leap April as May shifts the Life Palace by one. Missing the leap flag shifts the solar date by about a month, which can move the five-element class and the Purple Star.

Confirm year, month, day, and whether that month is the leap month. Ordinary February and leap February in the same year are different spans. In 2023, leap February day 1 is 22 March solar; treating it as ordinary February misses about a month and mis-sets month order.

After conversion, the engine applies leap-month fix, then hour for Life and Body Palace, then lunar day for the Purple Star. A leap-month birth may still count as the previous month. Only the converted landing tells you—do not add one month by hand.

The hour still uses two-hour branches. A leap month changes which civil day and month-order you are on, not which hour inside that day.

Household books and oral history often say 'leap May, third day' with no solar date. Do not rewrite it as May or June. Enter it as a leap lunar month.

At TianJiGe, choose lunar calendar and pick the month marked leap. The system converts to solar time, then places stars. If a tool cannot mark leap months, look up that year's leap date on a perpetual calendar, convert to the solar day, then chart from solar input. Convert to the day, not only the month.

After conversion, glance at the Life Palace branch. If it is far from the spoken month, the leap flag was probably missed, or the year was cut at Spring Festival.

First, the Life Palace: month order must come from the converted lunar month, not from adding one to the month name. Lunar 'leap April' is not automatically a May Life Palace.

Second, the Purple Star: it is placed by lunar day. Missing the leap flag puts the day in another span and moves the majors. The five-element class follows the Life Palace; a wrong palace often means a wrong class.

If those two hold, read the twelve palaces as usual. A leap month is not a special structure and does not need a separate 'leap-month fate' story.