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How to read a saju chart —
start from the Day Master

Basics · October 2026 · 8 min read

What does a saju chart actually show?

This is the grid a Korean manseryeok (만세력, 萬歲曆) app or a Seoul saju cafe hands you, the myeongsik (명식, 命式). There are ten heavenly stems (cheongan, 天干), 甲 乙 丙 丁 戊 己 庚 辛 壬 癸, and twelve earthly branches (jiji, 地支), 子 丑 寅 卯 辰 巳 午 未 申 酉 戌 亥 — the zodiac animals, from the Rat to the Pig. Paired in order they make a cycle of sixty that labels years, months, days and hours alike.

Every character also carries one of the five elements (ohaeng, 五行) and a yin or yang charge: 甲 is yang wood, 乙 yin wood, 丙 yang fire, and so on. So a chart is really eight pieces of element sorted into four slots. Most screens add rows for ten gods, hidden stems and luck cycles, but all of that is derived from the eight. On a first pass, look only at the eight in the middle.

Which order do you read the columns in?

On a Korean manseryeok the pillars usually run right to left: year, month, day, hour. The leftmost column is the hour pillar. Some Chinese, Japanese and English sites put the year on the left instead, so check the column labels first: 年 year, 月 month, 日 day, 時 hour.

A sample chart, built to show the layout: from the right, year 丙午, month 庚寅, day 甲子, hour 丁卯. Each pillar has traditional themes and its own changeover point.

Treat these as convention, not law. Note too: the zodiac animal people talk about is only the branch of the year pillar — one character out of eight. Customs that run on the sign alone, like Korean samjae (삼재, 三災), read only that slot; a full reading uses all eight.

Where do I start — which character is me?

The year feels like the self because the zodiac animal lives there, but a whole birth year shares it; the day stem changes daily. Chinese sources call it rizhu (日主) or riyuan (日元); Japanese sources, nikkan (日干).

Each stem has a traditional image: 甲 a great tree, 乙 grass and vines, 丙 the sun, 丁 a candle, 戊 a mountain, 己 field soil, 庚 raw ore, 辛 a jewel, 壬 the sea, 癸 rain and dew. Treat the image as a way in, not a verdict. All ten are covered in the Day Master and the ten stems. From there, this order works well.

• Find the Day MasterTop character of the day column. Everything is measured from here.
• Check the birth monthThe month branch is your season, wolryeong (월령, 月令). A spring tree and a winter tree read differently.
• Name the relationshipsWhat each other character is to the Day Master — the ten gods.
• Count the elementsWhere the eight pile up, and where the gaps are.

What do the ten gods (sipsin) mean?

On the sample chart: the Day Master 甲 is yang wood. The hour stem 丁 is yin fire — wood produces fire, charges differ — so it is the Hurting Officer. The month stem 庚 is yang metal, which controls wood with a matching charge: Seven Killings. The year stem 丙, yang fire, is the Eating God.

Rob Wealth or Seven Killings may sound grim, but they name kinds of relationship, not good or bad luck. Having several of one does not make you a type; read them against the season and the whole chart.

How do I read the five-element balance?

Sort the eight characters into wood, fire, earth, metal and water, then see which crowd together and which are missing. The sample has wood three times (甲, 寅, 卯), fire three times (丙, 丁, 午), metal once (庚), water once (子) and no earth.

Then look past the count. Whether the Day Master is strong or weak (singang and sinyak, 身強·身弱) and which element helps most (yongsin, 用神) are judged from the whole chart, above all the month branch. The sample is a 甲 tree born in a 寅 month, early spring, when wood is in season, and that context matters as much as the tally. An element at zero is not automatically bad.

Counting methods differ, too. Many schools hold that branches contain hidden stems (jijanggan, 지장간, 支藏干) — 未, for example, is said to hold 丁, 乙 and 己 — and counting them shifts the bars. That is one reason apps disagree. The generating cycle (wood, fire, earth, metal, water, back to wood) and the controlling cycle (wood over earth, earth over water, water over fire, fire over metal, metal over wood) are the tools here; reading five-element balance walks through them.

What are daeun, the 10-year luck cycles?

Daeun (대운, 大運) are luck cycles that change every ten years. On a manseryeok screen they are the row of stem-and-branch pairs under the chart, each labeled with an age. If the chart itself, the wonguk (원국, 原局), is the mixture you were born with, daeun are the seasons passing over it a decade at a time.

The age your first cycle begins, and whether cycles run forward or backward, differ from person to person; the manseryeok calculates it, so just read what it shows. Find the box containing your current age and ask: which ten god are these two characters to my Day Master, and which elements do they add? Each year adds its own layer, seun (세운, 歲運): 2026 is 丙午 and 2027 is 丁未, switching at Ipchun. A cycle change is simply a transition stretch, a good time to leave slack in your plans.

What if I don’t know my birth time?

You can still read your chart. Leave the hour pillar empty and read three pillars, six characters. The Day Master and your birth season are untouched; you lose only the two hour characters.

• Ask and search firstFamily memory or a birth record. Even morning versus night narrows it a lot.
• If you cannot find it, leave it blankA guessed hour puts two possibly wrong characters into every later step. Six honest characters beat eight shaky ones.
• If you know it, correct itNear a double-hour boundary, the gap between clock time and the sun at your birthplace can change the hour pillar. See birth time correction.

The hour pillar is also where Korean saju, Chinese bazi and Japanese shichu-suimei most often disagree, as laid out in saju vs bazi vs shichu-suimei. Planning a saju cafe visit in Seoul? Read three questions before a Korean saju reading first.

When you want to see your own chart laid out, 5htrip shows your Day Master and five-element spread in five languages, and viewing your chart is free.