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. There is no need to read it all at once. Keep your own chart open at each stage and find what the article describes in your own eight characters; it sticks far faster that way.
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.
By the end of this path you can raise your own chart, read the relations between its characters through the Ten Gods and the combinations and clashes, and gauge the current year through the luck cycles. Stage two is where most people stall — the Ten Gods have ten names, and trying to memorise them is exhausting, so work from the ones actually present in your own chart instead. The useful element is a point where authorities differ, and books will tell you different things. Following why each reading is made serves you better than hunting for a single correct answer.
When you can change the order
If you already know how to set up your own chart, you can skip stage one and begin at stage two. Two things are worth confirming before you move on, though: that the month is cut by the solar terms rather than the calendar, and that the hour pillar covers two hours at a time. Both are assumed constantly later on. If you do not know your birth time, read the piece on the hour pillar but do not apply it to your own chart. A wrong hour never announces itself; it simply changes the reading quietly.
What people usually get wrong
You will often hear that a chart cannot be read without a birth time. That is not so. The year, month, and day pillars leave plenty to read, and most of this path can be followed without the hour at all. The other common misreading is that a missing element is a flaw. It is unusual for all five elements to sit evenly across eight characters, and what is missing is a clue about what you have been filling that space with, not a verdict on your life.
What this path does not cover
This order is aimed at reading your own chart on your own. Applications such as comparing two charts for compatibility, choosing an auspicious date, or naming a child are not covered here. How the useful element is chosen is also a point on which schools genuinely disagree, and this path introduces only one of them. If another book says something different, it is not wrong so much as looking from another position, and following why it looks that way is the more useful exercise.