---
title: "Heavenly star points"
url: "https://acuiq.com/wiki/nomenclature/heavenly-star-points"
updated: 2026-10-12
last_verified: 2026-10-12
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
section: "nomenclature"
basis: "Classical"
audience: "Practitioner"
published: "2026-10-12"
reading_minutes: 9
sources: 12
---

# Heavenly star points

_Ma Danyang's twelve heavenly star points: the eleven-point verse of the 1329 Yulong jing, the twelfth point and the attribution added in Ming editions, and what the verse lists each point for._

The heavenly star points (tianxing 天星) are twelve points, from Zusanli below the knee to Lieque at the wrist, that a Chinese mnemonic verse lists with the disorders each is to treat. Later editions name the verse after Ma Danyang, a twelfth-century Daoist teacher. The earliest text found for this page, the [Bian Que shen ying zhenjiu yulong jing](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%89%81%E9%B5%B2%E7%A5%9E%E6%87%89%E9%87%9D%E7%81%B8%E7%8E%89%E9%BE%8D%E7%B6%93) (扁鵲神應針灸玉龍經, Bian Que’s Divinely Responsive Jade Dragon Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion), gives eleven points under the title tianxing shiyi xue gejue (天星十一穴歌訣) and does not mention Ma Danyang. A twelfth point, Taichong, and the attribution to Ma Danyang both appear in the Ming editions.

## Ma Danyang

Ma Danyang is Ma Yu (馬鈺), a disciple of Wang Zhe, whom the Quanzhen (全真, Complete Perfection) school of Daoism counts as its founder; the Qing encyclopedia [Gujin tushu jicheng](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Gujin_Tushu_Jicheng,_Volume_509_(1700-1725).djvu/109) records that Ma Yu succeeded to Wang’s teaching. On [its next page](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Gujin_Tushu_Jicheng,_Volume_509_(1700-1725).djvu/110) it collects three earlier accounts of Ma Yu. He came from Ninghai and was first named Congyi, with the courtesy name Yifu. In 1167, the seventh year of the Jin emperor Shizong’s Dading reign, he took Wang Zhe into his house, and Wang named the hermitage they built there Quanzhen.

Wang renamed him Yu, with the courtesy name Yuanbao and the sobriquet Danyangzi. The same page records his death at 61 and the honorific title the Yuan court conferred on him in 1269. The [Jinlian zhengzong ji](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E8%93%AE%E6%AD%A3%E5%AE%97%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7%E4%B8%89), a Quanzhen hagiography, dates his birth to the fifth month of a guimao year, which is 1123. Both sources list his writings, collections such as the Jinyu ji and the Jianwu ji, and neither mentions needling or the verse. The Jinlian zhengzong ji does record him treating the sick, with water or fruit over which he spoke a charm.

## From eleven points to twelve

The Yulong jing is a Yuan work by Wang Guorui of Wuyuan, according to the editorial note in the [Siku quanshu edition](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%89%81%E9%B5%B2%E7%A5%9E%E6%87%89%E9%8D%BC%E7%81%B8%E7%8E%89%E9%BE%8D%E7%B6%93_(%E5%9B%9B%E5%BA%AB%E5%85%A8%E6%9B%B8%E6%9C%AC)), which gives his name as Wang Guoduan. A postface by his student Zhou Zhongliang is dated to the second year of Tianli, 1329, and the editors record Zhou’s view that the book carries Bian Que’s name to honour its method rather than because Bian Que wrote it. Its eleven-point verse opens with the list of points and claims that the 360 methods are no match for these eleven.

The Ming physician Xu Feng’s [Zhenjiu daquan](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%87%9D%E7%81%B8%E5%A4%A7%E5%85%A8) (針灸大全), which the Wikisource edition dates to 1439, gives the verse as Ma Danyang tianxing shier xue bing zhi zabing ge (馬丹陽天星十二穴并治雜病歌), the song of Ma Danyang’s twelve heavenly star points for miscellaneous diseases. It adds Taichong after Chengshan and gives it a stanza of its own. The same chapter carries a different verse with the same two characters in its title, the Changsang jun tianxing mijue ge, which pairs points in a fixed order of first and second needling; the two are separate texts. The sources opened for this page do not say who added Taichong, or when the verse was first tied to Ma Danyang.

Gao Wu’s [Zhenjiu juying](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%8D%BC%E7%81%B8%E8%81%9A%E8%8B%B1/%E8%96%9C%E7%9C%9F%E4%BA%BA%E5%A4%A9%E6%98%9F%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%8C%E7%A9%B4%E6%AD%8C), dated by the [WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/206952) to 1529, titles the verse the song of Perfected Xue’s twelve heavenly star points and adds “Ma Danyang’s song” in brackets. Gao’s note after the verse says Xue held the twelve to have come down from Bian Que, and rejects that: Sima Qian’s biography of Bian Que mentions no book on needling, so Gao calls the attribution Xue’s invention. He accepts the twelve as a quick guide to treatment, but calls the claim that they correspond to twelve lodges of the sky forced, since the sky has 28 lodges. The WHO terminology dates Yang Jizhou’s Zhenjiu dacheng to 1601, and the [contents page of its third volume](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:SSID-12130817_%E9%87%9D%E7%81%B8%E5%A4%A7%E6%88%90_%E5%8D%B73%E9%83%A8.pdf/2) lists Ma Danyang’s heavenly star verse next to the Changsang jun verse.

## The twelve points

The verse gives each point a stanza of its own: where to find it, then what it treats. The table follows the Zhenjiu juying text and gives AcuiQ’s codes; the identifications follow from the names and the locations the verse gives.

| Point | Where the verse places it | What the verse lists it for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [`ST36`](/points/st36) (Zusanli) | Three cun below the knee, between two sinews | Distension of the heart and abdomen, cold in the stomach, rumbling bowels and diarrhoea, swollen and aching knees and shins, wasting after cold damage, and qi drum distension; past the age of thirty, needling and moxa here brighten the eyes |
| [`ST44`](/points/st44) (Neiting) | Outside the second toe, on the foot yangming | Cold limbs, a wish for quiet and dislike of noise, wheals, sore throat, frequent yawning, toothache, and weak qi with no appetite |
| [`LI11`](/points/li11) (Quchi) | At the edge of the bone with the elbow bent and the hands joined | Pain in the elbow, one-sided wind with a hand that cannot be drawn in, an arm too weak to draw a bow or comb the hair, a throat obstruction that threatens life, unremitting fever, and wind rashes over the body |
| [`LI04`](/points/li04) (Hegu) | At the tiger’s mouth, in the fork of the bones between thumb and index finger | Bone pain and swelling of the face, malaria with alternating heat and cold, tooth decay, nosebleed, and a locked jaw that stops speech; needled five fen deep |
| [`BL40`](/points/bl40) (Weizhong) | In the crease behind the knee, at the pulse in the middle of the crease | Lumbar pain with the back too heavy to lift, aching sinews that will not stretch, wind bi that comes and goes, and knees that are hard to bend and straighten |
| [`BL57`](/points/bl57) (Chengshan) | Also called fish belly; between the calf muscles | Lumbar pain, haemorrhoids, difficult defecation, leg qi with swollen knees, trembling and aching, and huoluan with cramping sinews |
| [`LV03`](/points/lv03) (Taichong) | Two cun behind the joint of the big toe, at a pulse that tells life or death | Fright epilepsy, distension of the throat, abdomen and heart, feet that cannot move, the seven shan with one-sided swelling, clouded eyes, and lumbar pain |
| [`BL60`](/points/bl60) (Kunlun) | At the outer ankle, above the heel bone | Cramp, pain of the lumbar region and sacrum, sudden panting with fullness rushing up to the heart, and inability to walk |
| [`GB30`](/points/gb30) (Huantiao) | At the hip pivot, taken lying on the side with the leg bent | A back as if broken that cannot turn, cold wind and damp bi, and pain from the thigh and hip down to the calf |
| [`GB34`](/points/gb34) (Yanglingquan) | One cun below the knee on its outer edge | Heavy, numb knees, cold bi and one-sided wind, and a foot that cannot be lifted; needled six fen deep |
| [`HT05`](/points/ht05) (Tongli) | 1.5 cun behind the wrist bone | Loss of voice, vexation and palpitations; with excess, heavy limbs and a red face; with deficiency, no appetite, sudden loss of voice and a lustreless face; needled lightly with a fine needle |
| [`LU07`](/points/lu07) (Lieque) | Above the wrist on its side, where the index finger rests when the hands are crossed | One-sided headache, wind bi and numbness over the body, phlegm and saliva welling into the mouth, and a locked jaw |

The terms are the verse’s own. The WHO terminology defines bi (痹) as a group of disorders of pain, soreness and heaviness in the muscles, sinews and joints; huoluan (霍亂) as sudden vomiting with diarrhoea; and shan (疝) as pain or swelling of the lower abdomen or scrotum, of which the verse counts seven kinds. How point names like these are rendered into English is covered in [Point names in translation](/wiki/nomenclature/point-names-in-translation).

## What the verse claims

The Zhenjiu juying text opens by grouping the points in pairs: Zusanli with Neiting, Quchi with Hegu, Weizhong with Chengshan, Taichong with Kunlun, Huantiao with Yanglingquan, Tongli with Lieque. It then tells the reader to use the method of carrying (dan 擔) where carrying fits and of cutting (jie 截) where cutting fits; the verse does not define either. It claims that of the 365 points none goes beyond these twelve, that few people know the method, and that the twelve work on disease like hot water poured on snow. These are the verse’s claims about itself, and Gao Wu’s note in the same edition already disputes its origin.

Seven of the twelve are also points the [Lingshu](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%BB%83%E5%B8%9D%E5%85%A7%E7%B6%93/%E9%9D%88%E6%A8%9E%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E5%8D%B7), chapter 2, places in its five transport sequences: Zusanli, Quchi, Weizhong and Yanglingquan as he-sea points, Neiting as a ying-spring point, Kunlun as a jing-river point and Taichong as a shu-stream point. [Five transport points](/wiki/nomenclature/five-transport-points) sets those sequences out.

## Where the editions differ

The editions do not give the same locations or indications. Taichong is two cun behind the joint of the big toe in the Zhenjiu juying, three cun in the Zhenjiu daquan, and two cun above Xingjian in the Lingshu. Tongli is 1.5 cun behind the wrist in the Zhenjiu juying and one cun in the Yulong jing and the Zhenjiu daquan. For Hegu the Yulong jing and the Zhenjiu daquan list headache where the Zhenjiu juying text reads bone pain, and the Yulong jing’s Kunlun stanza adds headache and stiffness of the shoulders and back, which the Zhenjiu juying stanza lacks. The texts cited are transcriptions of particular printings, and the Zhenjiu daquan transcription is marked on Wikisource as one quarter proofread.

## The twelve as a modern category

A [2025 narrative review](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41324111/) by Hooshyarazar and colleagues, of 24 acupuncture prescriptions for uterine fibroids, counted 12 heavenly star points as a class of specific points alongside the five transport and back-shu points and found six of them used 15 times across the 24. In a [2024 randomised trial](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39686497/) of tuina for low back pain in the third trimester of pregnancy, Elabd and colleagues describe LV3 as the heavenly star point when setting out the massage sequence. Neither paper tests the twelve as a group.

## What these sources cannot tell you

The verse reports no patients, and the indications in the table are what a mnemonic song asserts, not measured results. The texts disagree on how many points it holds, on who wrote it and on where two of the points lie, and the biographies of Ma Yu opened here do not connect him with it. How the Yulong jing, the Zhenjiu juying and the Zhenjiu dacheng sit among the earlier classics is covered in [The classical texts](/wiki/theory/the-classical-texts). A heavenly star point in one of AcuiQ’s protocols records that a study used it, not that the study chose it from the verse; [What AcuiQ does not do](/wiki/method/what-acuiq-does-not-do) sets out that limit.

### Sources

1. Wang Guorui, Bian Que shen ying zhenjiu yulong jing (Jade Dragon Classic), Yuan, postface dated 1329, Chinese text, Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%89%81%E9%B5%B2%E7%A5%9E%E6%87%89%E9%87%9D%E7%81%B8%E7%8E%89%E9%BE%8D%E7%B6%93
2. Bian Que shen ying zhenjiu yulong jing, Siku quanshu edition with the editors' note, Chinese text, Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%89%81%E9%B5%B2%E7%A5%9E%E6%87%89%E9%8D%BC%E7%81%B8%E7%8E%89%E9%BE%8D%E7%B6%93_(%E5%9B%9B%E5%BA%AB%E5%85%A8%E6%9B%B8%E6%9C%AC)
3. Xu Feng, Zhenjiu daquan (Great Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion), Ming, Chinese text, Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%87%9D%E7%81%B8%E5%A4%A7%E5%85%A8
4. Gao Wu, Zhenjiu juying (Collection of Gems of Acupuncture and Moxibustion), 1529, the heavenly star twelve-point song, Chinese text, Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%8D%BC%E7%81%B8%E8%81%9A%E8%8B%B1/%E8%96%9C%E7%9C%9F%E4%BA%BA%E5%A4%A9%E6%98%9F%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%8C%E7%A9%B4%E6%AD%8C
5. Yang Jizhou, Zhenjiu dacheng, 1601, volume 3 contents page, scanned edition transcribed on Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:SSID-12130817_%E9%87%9D%E7%81%B8%E5%A4%A7%E6%88%90_%E5%8D%B73%E9%83%A8.pdf/2
6. Huangdi neijing Lingshu, volume 1, chapters 1 to 4 (including chapter 2, Ben shu), Chinese text, Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%BB%83%E5%B8%9D%E5%85%A7%E7%B6%93/%E9%9D%88%E6%A8%9E%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%80%E5%8D%B7
7. Gujin tushu jicheng, Shenyi dian, volume 255, entry on Wang Zhe (Volume 509 of the scan, page 109), Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Gujin_Tushu_Jicheng,_Volume_509_(1700-1725).djvu/109
8. Gujin tushu jicheng, Shenyi dian, volume 255, entry on Ma Yu (Volume 509 of the scan, page 110), Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Gujin_Tushu_Jicheng,_Volume_509_(1700-1725).djvu/110
9. Qin Zhi'an, Jinlian zhengzong ji, volume 3, Danyang Ma zhenren, Chinese text, Wikisource — https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E8%93%AE%E6%AD%A3%E5%AE%97%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7%E4%B8%89
10. World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific, WHO international standard terminologies on traditional medicine in the Western Pacific Region, 2007 (section 7.7, dates of the Zhenjiu juying and Zhenjiu dacheng; definitions of bi, huoluan and shan) — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/206952
11. Hooshyarazar E, Azizi H, Layegh P, Dadgarmoghaddam M, Kazemi AH, Farahmand SK, Hafizi L, Acupuncture in uterine fibroids management: literature update on frequently used acupoints and the underlying mechanism, a narrative review, Health Science Reports 2025 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41324111/
12. Elabd AM, Hasan S, Alghadir AH, Elabd OM, Shawky GM, Iqbal A, Iqbal A, Marwan YN, Effect of Tui-Na versus positional release techniques on pregnancy-related low back pain in the third trimester: a randomized comparative trial, Medicine 2024 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39686497/