How to Study Saju
From the stems and branches to the great luck cycles, in order
Saju is full of unfamiliar terms, and it is easy not to know where to begin. Keep to the order, though, and it is simpler than it looks: read the characters, then the relations between them, then the flow of time. Those three stages are enough to read your own chart. Work through them below.
Stage 1 · Read the characters
Saju renders your birth year, month, day and hour as eight characters. Start with what those characters are and how they are fixed. Once you add the solar terms and the hour pillar, you can build your own chart accurately.
- 1. Saju Basics — How to Read Yourself Through Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and the Five Elements — The principles behind Saju, which frames your birth year, month, day, and hour as eight characters, plus a beginner's first steps in reading your own chart.
- 2. The Complete Guide to the Five Elements — The Principle of Generation and Control — The cyclical principle by which Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water give life to (generation) and restrain (control) one another, seen through a lens that runs through Saju, feng shui, and traditional medicine alike.
- 3. The 24 Solar Terms — Nature's Ruler That Divides the Months of Saju — From Ipchun to the Great Cold, the sun's path is split into twenty-four. Here is why those solar terms mark the boundary of a month — and the start of a new year — in Saju.
- 4. The Twelve Double-Hours and the Hour Pillar — What the Moment of Your Birth Says About Your Inner Self — A look at the twelve double-hours that divide the day into twelve stretches, and at the Hour Pillar — the final pillar of the Four Pillars (Saju) — and why it reflects the hidden inner self and the later years that differ from one's outward appearance.
Stage 2 · See the relations
With the characters read, next come the relations. The Ten Gods tell you what role each character plays for you; combinations and clashes tell you how the characters pull at and collide with one another. Most of interpretation comes from this stage.
- 5. Understanding the Sipsin (Ten Gods) — The Code of Relationships and Talent in Your Saju — The ten relationships the remaining characters form with your day master, grouped into five pairs, and how to read wealth, career, bonds, and learning through them.
- 6. The Six Relations (Yukchin) — Family and Bonds Read Through Your Four Pillars — The Six Relations translate the Ten Gods of your chart into relationships like siblings, parents, spouse, and children. Here we lay out the pattern of human ties woven into your eight characters.
- 7. Combinations and Clashes in Saju — How the Characters Attract and Collide — From the Heavenly Stem combination and the triple and six harmonies that draw together, to the clashes, punishments, and harms that collide — here is how the eight characters of a chart bind to one another.
- 8. The Twelve Fortune Stages — The Life-Cycle Energy of Your Day Master — From Birth to Nurture, the Twelve Fortune Stages read how much strength the Day Master of a Four Pillars chart gains or loses in each Earthly Branch, mapped onto a single human lifetime.
Stage 3 · Read the flow of time
Having seen what you were born with, the last piece is timing. The yongsin names what you need; the great luck and yearly cycles show when it arrives. Get this far and you can answer "how is this year going to be" for yourself.
- 9. The Theory of Yongsin — The One Character That Restores Balance — Yongsin, the essence of Saju reading, examined through its four approaches — eokbu, johu, tonggwan, and byeongyak — to lay out the principle of finding the element that benefits you.
- 10. Sinsal in the Four Pillars — Reading the Traveling Horse, the Peach Blossom, and the Heavenly Noble — The Traveling Horse of movement, the Peach Blossom of allure, the Heavenly Noble whose help arrives from above — a guide to the sinsal, the spirit stars that mark special currents of energy in a chart.
- 11. Daeun and Seun — Reading the Great Currents of Life Through Saju — The principles of daeun, the major luck cycles that turn every ten years, and seun, the yearly luck that arrives each year — plus how to meet the flow of fortune with balance.
- 12. Samjae (三災) — The Three-Year Caution of the Zodiac — Once in every nine years, each animal sign is said to enter samjae. Here is what the entering, settled, and departing years of samjae mean, and how to face them without needless fear.