Short, plain-language explanations of the technical terms used elsewhere on AstroKarmas -- what they mean, where they come from, and why they matter for your chart.
A Nakshatra is one of 27 lunar mansions the Moon's path through the sky is divided into in Vedic astrology, each about 13°20' wide -- your birth Nakshatra is whichever one the Moon was passing through at the moment you were born.
Vimshottari Dasha is Vedic astrology's system of planetary time-periods -- a fixed 120-year sequence, anchored to your Moon's Nakshatra at birth, that names which planet is considered to be "running" your life at any given point.
Lichun (立春, "start of spring") is the solar term around February 4th that marks the true year boundary in BaZi (Four Pillars) astrology -- not Lunar New Year, which is a full lunar cycle and up to several weeks off from the astronomically correct cutoff.
The Ten Gods (十神, Shi Shen) are BaZi astrology's system for describing how each of the other seven stems in your Four Pillars chart relates to your own Day Master -- the classical vocabulary for reading personality, relationships, and life themes from the chart.
Zi Wei Dou Shu (紫微斗數, "Purple Star Astrology") is a Chinese astrology system that maps your birth chart onto a fixed 12-palace grid -- one palace per life domain (Career, Wealth, Spouse, and so on) -- populated with major and minor stars whose placement and combination are read for that domain.