How to read a saju chart, step by step

In what order do you read a saju chart?

A saju chart writes the year, month, day and hour of a birth as four pillars of two characters each. The eight characters are not read from one end to the other. A reading starts from one character, the Day Master, which is the upper character of the day pillar, and works outward in the six steps below. Each step uses the result of the one before it.

The starting point comes from the tradition itself. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, a saju reading is centered on the Heavenly Stem of the day pillar, which the entry calls gisin (기신, 己身), "one's own self". The other steps depend on it: step 2 asks how the season suits the Day Master's element, step 4 reuses the season and the elements from steps 2 and 3, and the ten gods in step 5 are names for relations to the Day Master.

The calculator on this page draws the pillar table only. The blocks marked "Full result" are on the home page, where the saju calculator shows every section for the same example and for your own birth details.

How is a Korean saju chart laid out?

The pillar table above has four columns. From left to right they are the Hour pillar, the Day pillar, the Month pillar and the Year pillar, so a birth is read from right to left: year first, hour last. The example's pillars are 乙亥 for the year, 己卯 for the month, 乙巳 for the day and 癸未 for the hour.

The order comes from the way Korean used to be written. Wikipedia's article on horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts notes that Korean was traditionally written in vertical columns running from right to left. A chart written that way begins with the year pillar on the right, and this site's table keeps that order on a horizontal page.

Each column is one pillar, read downward: a Heavenly Stem (cheongan, 천간, 天干) on top and an Earthly Branch (jiji, 지지, 地支) below. Four pillars of two characters make eight, which is why the chart is also called saju palja (사주팔자, 四柱八字), "four pillars, eight characters". The page on what saju is gives the background.

The rows labeled Ten god, Hidden stems and Life stage belong to later steps. Steps 1 to 3 need only the Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch rows.

Step 1: Which character is the Day Master?

The Day Master (ilgan, 일간, 日干) is the Heavenly Stem of the day pillar, and it stands for the person the chart belongs to. In the pillar table it is the stem in the Day pillar column, second from the left. The Ten god row above it reads "Day Master" where the other columns show a name.

The example's Day Master is 乙 (eul), which is Yin Wood. Every stem has one of five elements and is either yin or yang, and both facts, Wood and yin, are carried into each later step. The tradition pictures 乙 as a vine or a flower. The Day Master guide describes all ten stems.

The example's year stem is also 乙, but only the stem of the day pillar is the Day Master. The year stem is read in step 5 like any other character.

Step 2: What season does the month branch give?

The month branch is the Earthly Branch of the month pillar, and it records the season of birth. A saju month does not follow the calendar month. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, the month changes at the start of a solar term, one of the fixed points in the sun's yearly course, and not on the first day of a month.

The example's month branch is 卯 (myo, Rabbit). By the solar-term times this calculator uses, the 卯 month of 1995 ran from Gyeongchip (경칩, 驚蟄, Awakening of Insects) on March 6 to Cheongmyeong (청명, 清明, Pure Brightness) on April 5 in Korean time, and the birthday, March 15, falls inside it. 卯 is the middle month of spring, and its element is Wood.

The seasons are matched to elements as well. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture's entry on yin-yang and five-elements theory records that spring, summer, autumn and winter were assigned to Wood, Fire, Metal and Water. The example is a Wood Day Master born in a Wood month of spring, so the season and the Day Master share an element. The full result joins the two into a type name, Spring Flower, printed under the Day Master.

Step 3: How do you count the five elements?

The five elements (ohaeng, 오행, 五行) are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water, and every stem and branch belongs to one of them. The caption under each character in the pillar table names its element. The table below gives the same information for all 22 characters.

To count, take the eight characters one at a time. This calculator counts each stem and each branch once. It does not count hidden stems, the one to three stems that each branch is said to contain, which have a row of their own in the pillar table. The example has Wood 3 (the stems 乙 of the year and day pillars and the branch 卯), Fire 1 (巳), Earth 2 (己 and 未), Metal 0 and Water 2 (癸 and 亥).

The full result marks Wood as Abundant and Metal as Missing. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture draws the same lines in its sample charts: three or more of one element is an excess (taegwa, 태과, 太過), and none at all is a shortfall (bulgeup, 불급, 不及).

The counts matter because the elements act on each other in two cycles. Wood produces Fire, Fire produces Earth, Earth produces Metal, Metal produces Water and Water produces Wood. Wood controls Earth, Earth controls Water, Water controls Fire, Fire controls Metal and Metal controls Wood. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives both series in its article on wuxing, the Chinese name for the five elements. For a Wood Day Master, Water is the element that feeds it and Metal the one that checks it. The example has two Water characters and no Metal.

Step 4: Is the Day Master strong or weak?

Strength asks how much the other seven characters support the Day Master. A character supports it when it has the same element or the element that produces it. For the example's Wood Day Master, that means Wood and Water.

The calculator makes three checks, and each can be read off the pillar table. The month branch 卯 is Wood, so the example is In season (deukryeong, 得令). The day branch 巳, which sits directly under the Day Master, is Fire, so it is not Rooted (deukji, 得地). Of the five characters that remain, three support the Day Master: the year stem 乙, the year branch 亥 and the hour stem 癸. The example counts as Supported (deukse, 得勢).

The full result combines the three checks with a score for the support found in each pillar, in which the month pillar counts most, and places the chart on a scale of seven levels. The example is Slightly strong: Level 5 of 7, Score 58. The Day Master guide has a table of all seven strength levels.

Strong (singang, 신강, 身強) and weak (sinyak, 신약, 身弱) are not grades. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says that saju values balance and harmony above all, and strength shows which way the balance around the Day Master leans. The descriptions the calculator prints for the seven levels follow one idea: a strong Day Master is read as needing an outlet, and a weak one as needing support. By the same logic, a reader of a strong chart looks next at the characters that use or check the Day Master's energy, and a reader of a weak chart at those that support it. Step 5 gives those characters their names.

Step 5: How do you name the ten gods?

The ten gods (sipseong, 십성, 十星) are ten names for the relation between the Day Master and each of the other seven characters. They are not deities. Each name answers two questions: how does the character's element relate to the Day Master's element, and does its yin-yang match?

A stem is looked up as it stands. A branch is looked up through its main hidden stem, which is the one listed last in the Hidden stems row. The day branch 巳 lists 戊 庚 丙, so it is read as 丙, Yang Fire.

For the example's Day Master 乙, Yin Wood, the seven characters come out as follows.

These are the names in the two Ten god rows of the pillar table. Counted by group, the example has Bigeop (Companions) 2, Siksang (Output) 1, Jaeseong (Wealth) 2, Gwanseong (Officer) 0 and Inseong (Resource) 2. The Officer group is empty for the reason found in step 3: for a Wood Day Master the Officer group is Metal, and the chart has none. The full result prints the traditional reading for the largest group. Here three groups tie at two, a tie goes to the group that comes first in the list, and the page shows "The independent type".

The ten names began as labels for family relations. A 2022 paper by Lee Nam-Yeon and Kim Ki-Seung in the journal Industry Promotion Research reports that the major classical texts used them mostly in that sense, under the name yukchin (육친, 六親, "six relatives"), and that explaining how each one acts began with Saju Jeongseol (사주정설), a book published in 1963. The descriptions of character printed next to each ten god in the full result are of this later kind.

Each name on this site gives the Korean reading first and, in brackets, the term used in English books on BaZi, the Chinese form of the same system. The page on saju and BaZi compares the two.

Step 6: How do the 10-year luck cycles fit over the chart?

The first five steps describe the birth chart, which does not change. Daeun (대운, 大運) are ten-year periods laid over it. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture defines daeun as what shifts in units of ten years, alongside seun (세운, 歲運), which shifts year by year.

Each daeun has a pillar of its own. The pillars continue from the month pillar through the fixed sequence of 60 stem-branch pairs, forward or in reverse. The example's month pillar is 己卯 and its cycles run Forward, so the first is 庚辰, the next pair in the sequence, and it starts at age 7, in 2002. The direction and the starting age come from fixed rules, set out on the About and method page. The full result lists ten cycles, and the first four are below.

To read a cycle, find the row that covers the year in question, then look at the element and the ten god of its stem. The year 2026 falls in the example's third cycle, 壬午. Its stem 壬 is Water, the element that produces the Day Master, and its ten god is Jeongin (Direct Resource).

The first two cycles show why the earlier steps come first. Steps 3 and 5 found no Metal and nothing in the Officer group in the birth chart, and both cycles carry Metal stems, which belong to the Officer group for a Wood Day Master. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture shows the reasoning on a sample chart with four Wood characters and no Fire. Meeting Fire is read as filling the gap, and meeting Metal as restoring balance, because Metal controls Wood. That describes how the tradition reasons. It is not a forecast, and the calculator prints no verdict on any cycle.

What about hidden stems, life stages and special stars?

Three parts of the result are left out of the six steps: the Hidden stems row, the Life stage row and the Special stars (sinsal, 신살, 神殺) section. They add detail to a reading and do not change its frame.

Hidden stems have done their work in step 5, where the last one listed decides how a branch is read. A life stage names where the Day Master stands at each branch in a cycle of twelve stages, from Birth to Nurture. A special star is a set pattern between particular stems and branches. The example has four, listed in the full result with the pillar each one sits in.

Each pillar also has a color and an animal, which come from its stem and branch alone and play no part in the six steps. The example's day pillar 乙巳 is the Blue Snake and its year pillar 乙亥 is the Blue Pig. The page on Korean zodiac color animals lists all 60.

How do you read your own saju chart in this order?

Enter your birth date, time, birthplace and gender in the calculator above, and the pillar table changes to your chart. Steps 1, 2, 3 and 5 can be done from that table with the lookup tables on this page. For steps 4 and 6, follow the link under the table. It opens the home page with the full result for the same birth details.

The sections of the full result run in the order of the steps: "Your four pillars", "Your Day Master (ilgan)", "Five elements (ohaeng)", "Day Master strength", "Ten gods (sipseong)", "Special stars (sinsal)" and "10-year luck cycle (daeun)". Without a birth time the chart has no hour pillar. The same steps are then read from six characters instead of eight, and the starting age of the luck cycles is marked as approximate.

A practitioner's interpretation goes further than these steps. It weighs the combinations and clashes between characters and chooses a yongsin (용신, 用神), the element judged to bring the chart into balance. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture calls the yongsin the point given most weight in a reading. This calculator does not choose one. It computes each step by fixed rules and prints what the tradition says about the result.

If you want the steps turned into sentences, the ChatGPT saju prompt page gives you your computed chart as text to paste into an AI assistant. Saju is a traditional practice, not a science. The six steps show how that tradition reads a birth time.