Reading Korean Traditional Fortune
From the year ahead to hexagrams, directions and names, in the order tradition read them
Each traditional reading looks at something different. Start with the ones that cover a whole year, move to the ones you consult question by question, and end with the slow things like a place to live and a name. If you came wondering about this year, the first stage alone is enough.
Stage 1 · Read the year ahead
Tojeong Bigyeol and the twelve zodiac animals both read a year as a whole. One draws a hexagram from your birth date, the other reads the animal of your birth year; comparing where they differ gives you the feel of both.
- 1. What Is Tojeong Bigyeol — Joseon's New Year Fortune and Its 144 Hexagrams — The origins of the New Year fortune method named after Tojeong Yi Ji-ham, and the principle of drawing one of 144 hexagrams from your lunar birthday to read the year.
- 2. The Story of the Twelve Zodiac Animals — Personalities and Compatibility — The origin of how the twelve zodiac animals, from rat to pig, were fixed, the temperament of each animal, and the basics of zodiac compatibility read through three harmonies, six unions, and clashes.
Stage 2 · Draw a hexagram and ask
The I Ching and yut divination answer a question you bring on the day. Learn the hexagrams first and the five yut results will make sense to you for the same reasons.
- 3. The World of the 64 Hexagrams — Reading Change Through Yin-Yang and the Eight Trigrams — From yin-yang to the eight trigrams, and from the eight trigrams stacked into 64 hexagrams — a look at the structure of the I Ching and how it reads change through hexagrams and lines.
- 4. Yut Divination — Reading the Year in Four Wooden Sticks — How the yut game once played at Lunar New Year became yut divination for foretelling the year ahead, and the meanings held in Do, Gae, Geol, Yut, and Mo.
Stage 3 · Settle a place and a name
Feng shui and naming deal with what you set once and live with for a long time. Both rest on the five elements, so what you learned about them earlier comes back into use here.
- 5. Feng Shui Basics — Your Kua Number and the Lucky Directions of Eight Mansions — A clear guide to the Kua number and the East/West Four Houses derived from your birth year and gender, and to the principles of Eight Mansions Feng Shui that pinpoint your four auspicious directions.
- 6. The Principles of Naming — the Phonetic Five Elements and Yin-Yang in a Name — How is a good name made? A look at the flow of the phonetic Five Elements held in a Korean name, the balance of yin-yang, and why it is held to matter.
By the end you can tell what each traditional reading is actually a tool for. The place people get stuck is how a Tojeong hexagram is produced; rather than memorising the numbers, just follow how three digits come out of a birth date. That said, a samjae year or an unlucky hexagram does not mean anything bad is settled, and moving house or changing your name is not a decision to make on a reading alone.
When you can change the order
If what you want is a view of the year as a whole at the turn of the new year, stage one on its own is enough. The hexagrams in stage two are a way of asking as the question arises, so they can be read at any point, and the pieces on place and naming in stage three tend to repay you most when a move or a naming is actually in front of you. None of the three stages assumes the others, so starting wherever your situation touches is fine.
What people usually get wrong
The most common belief is that entering the three years of samjae settles that misfortune is coming. It is closer to a mark on a scale telling you to check once more before a large decision than an instruction to spend three years being careful. The same applies to an unfavourable hexagram. The judgement text was meant to be read as a caution rather than a prophecy, which is why people once behaved quite differently in the face of the same hexagram.
What this path does not cover
The formal method of divining with the sixty-four hexagrams, and the burial geomancy that reads grave sites, are not covered. The hexagrams introduced here are the eight trigrams laid over a single day, which is a different scope entirely. Changing a name legally is not something this path can decide for you either. A name is finally a sound that gets called, so weigh how it sounds along with your circumstances.