How to read a saju chart

The chart at a glance

Korean and Chinese charts are usually laid out with the year on the right, so across the page you see hour, day, month, year. Each column is a pillar (주, 柱). The top row holds the stems, the bottom row the branches. The table below lists the same four pillars as rows, for Jordan, a fictional sample reader born Nov 2, 1994, at 7:40 AM in New York. The Day Master is 壬 Ren (yang water).

Read it in three passes. First, find the Day Master. Second, name what every other character is to it, the ten gods. Third, look inside the branches for their hidden stems, which add quieter layers. Everything else, from element balance to luck pillars, builds on those three steps.

The ten heavenly stems

The stems are five elements, each in a yang and a yin form. 甲 Jia is yang wood, the tall tree; 乙 Yi is yin wood, the vine and the grass. The same pattern runs through fire, earth, metal and water. In Korean they are read 갑, 을, 병, 정 and so on, which is why Korean media call a year like 2027 정미년.

The twelve earthly branches

The branches are the twelve zodiac animals, and each also names a saju month. The saju year starts with the 寅 Tiger month at Ipchun, not with the Rat, and each month begins at a solar term, not on the 1st. Each branch carries hidden stems; the first listed is its main stem, which also gives the branch its element.

English sites call 未 the Goat, while Korean calls it 양, the sheep; they are the same branch. Japan’s 亥 is the boar, Korea’s and China’s the pig.

The year pillar: your zodiac animal and more

A baby born on January 20, 1994, gets 癸酉 as the year pillar, a 1993 pillar. The saju year doesn’t turn on January 1 or at Lunar New Year but at the moment of Ipchun (입춘, 立春), when the sun reaches ecliptic longitude 315°, and in 1994 that moment was still about two weeks away (NAOJ solar-term table). For a birth on Ipchun day itself, the minute decides (how we handle the Ipchun moment).

Its branch is your zodiac animal. The tradition links the year pillar with where you come from: family, early surroundings and the generation you share. In a reading it is background, not the headline.

Ipchun has its own folk customs in Korea too: as the first of the 24 solar terms it marks the new year, and households traditionally paste auspicious spring phrases (입춘첩) on gate posts and beams, a custom some homes still keep (입춘, E0047822).

The month pillar: the season you were born into

The month pillar changes at the twelve “jie” solar terms, between about the 3rd and the 9th of each Gregorian month, at an exact minute. Born within a day of one of these and without a birth time, your month can’t be settled from the date alone; our free chart leaves it blank and says so rather than guessing.

The month branch shows the season, so traditional readers use it to judge how much support the Day Master gets from its surroundings. It is often linked with working life and the setting you grew up in. Japanese readers take a “central star” (中心星) from it.

The day pillar: the center of the chart

The day pillar is the two characters of your birth day in the sixty-day cycle. It needs only your date, with one caveat: if you were born between 23:00 and midnight, the day depends on whether it starts at midnight (the rule our chart uses) or at 23:00, the other common rule. The sixty day pillars each have their own page; 壬辰 is the water dragon day pillar, and the full list is at the 60 day pillars.

Its branch is often called the spouse palace, the seat of close relationships and private habits. In 壬辰, the branch 辰 Chen holds the main stem 戊, which is Seven Killings to the Day Master. Two people with the same day pillar share that structure; they don’t share a personality.

The Day Master: the “you” of the chart

The Day Master (일간, 日干, also 日主) is the stem of the day pillar. It is what saju means by “your element,” and it is different from the year element that zodiac sites give, for most people (what is my element). Ten stems means ten Day Masters, from 甲 yang wood to 癸 yin water.

Every relation in the chart is measured from it. The ten gods say what each other stem is to the Day Master, and the twelve stages say how the Day Master sits in each branch. Schools also judge whether a Day Master is strong or weak, a balance judgment they make differently; our readings don’t score it (how we calculate).

The hour pillar: two-hour blocks

The hour pillar divides the day into twelve two-hour blocks named by the branches, starting with 子 from 23:00 to 01:00. Its stem follows from the day stem. Without a birth time, a chart has six characters instead of eight, and the Day Master is unaffected.

The tradition links the hour pillar with later life, plans and the people who come after you. In practice it is the pillar people most often don’t know, so a good reading says plainly what is missing.

Hidden stems: what each branch holds

Each branch carries one to three stems inside it (지장간, 藏干). In the table we use, 子 holds only 癸 and 寅 holds 甲, 丙 and 戊. The first is the main stem and the branch’s own element; the others are weaker residues. Our table is the three-stem 人元 table shown in the branch table above, the one built into the lunar-typescript calendar library (our settings). Tables that follow 淵海子平 and several other schools add a residual stem to 子, 卯, 午, 酉 and 亥, such as 壬 in 子 and 甲 in 卯, and 淵海子平’s table also puts 己 in 寅 and 申, so a branch can look different elsewhere. The same comparison lists our three-stem table under 滴天髓 (蔵干 tables of six schools).

Hidden stems matter because they add ten gods the visible stems don’t show. In our counting, each visible stem and each main hidden stem weighs 1.0, and each other hidden stem 0.3. Other schools, common in Japan, use a single hidden stem chosen by how many days after the month’s solar term you were born; that choice can change the ten god people call the month’s “central star.”

The twelve stages: the Day Master in each branch

The twelve stages (십이운성, 十二運星) describe how the Day Master fares in each branch through the image of a human life, from birth through peak, decline and rest to a new start; the Korean encyclopedia lists them among the tools of saju analysis (사주, E0025957). 三命通會 gives the order as 長生, 沐浴, 冠帶, 臨官, 帝旺, 衰, 病, 死, 墓, 絶, 胎, 養 and explains each one by a stage of a person’s life, from being born to returning to the grave (三命通會, vol. 2). Our tables print 冠帯, the Japanese form of 冠帶, and 建禄 (Korean 건록), the common modern name for 臨官.

The names sound dramatic (死 is “death,” 墓 is “tomb”), but in the handbook they are a metaphor for a phase, not an event. In the sample chart, the Day Master 壬 stands at 墓 in its own day branch, 辰. These are the short glosses our readings use:

• 長生: starting fresh
• 沐浴: restless curiosity
• 冠帯: wanting to look right
• 建禄: steady self-reliance
• 帝旺: peak drive
• 衰: experienced calm
• 病: sensitivity
• 死: quiet focus
• 墓: collecting and keeping
• 絶: sudden switches
• 胎: many ideas
• 養: being looked after

The void: two branches each day pillar skips

Ten stems against twelve branches means every run of ten days leaves two branches out. Those two are the void (공망, 空亡) for any day pillar in that run. 壬辰 sits in the run whose void is 午 and 未. Japanese books call the same pair 空亡 and give it a lot of attention; readers commonly describe a void branch as a place where effort seems to land softer. It is arithmetic, not a warning.

Luck pillars: ten-year chapters

Luck pillars (대운, 大運) are a sequence of pillars stepped forward or backward from the month pillar, each covering about ten years. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture defines 대운 as change in ten-year units and 세운 as change year by year (사주, E0025957). The classical rule for their direction depends on the polarity of the birth year and on sex, and the starting age on the days from birth to the next solar term (going forward) or back to the previous one (going backward) (三命通會, vol. 2). Neither our free chart nor our paid reading shows luck pillars.

About this page

Written with AI (Claude) from the sources listed and our calculation engine. Horan and Kachi are fictional characters, and nothing here predicts events. The rules behind every chart: how we calculate.