Free saju reading (Korean Four Pillars)

Four pillars, eight characters

Each pillar — year, month, day and hour — has a heavenly stem on top and an earthly branch below. Ten stems and twelve branches pair up in turn into a cycle of sixty combinations, from 甲子 (gapja) to 癸亥 (gyehae), and years, months, days and hours all take their names from that cycle.

The center of the reading is the stem of the day pillar, the day master (일간). Saju treats it as "you", and reads the other seven characters by how they relate to it. That is why your result opens with the element of your day master.

Stems, branches and the five elements

The twelve branches follow the same order as the twelve animals of the East Asian zodiac, so the branch of the year pillar is your zodiac animal.

Every character belongs to one of five elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — which feed one another in a cycle (Wood → Fire → Earth → Metal → Water → Wood) and check one another in another. The result counts the basic element of each of your eight characters once. Stems hidden inside the branches and seasonal strength are not counted, so read the numbers as a simple map of which energies stand out.

Solar terms set the year and month: the new year starts at Ipchun, not 1 January

The saju calendar follows the solar terms, fixed by the Sun's position, not the first of the month or the lunar new year. Twelve of the 24 terms open the months, and Ipchun, the Beginning of Spring around 4 February, also opens the year.

So someone born in January or early February before Ipchun takes the previous year's pillar and animal. Someone born on 20 January 2000 is a Dragon by the calendar year, but in saju a Rabbit of 1999, because Ipchun came on 4 February 2000. The table shows the term that opens each month and the Korean dates it fell on from 1950 to 2050.

Why the birth time matters, and what if you don't know it

The day is split into twelve two-hour periods, and the period you were born in becomes the branch of the hour pillar. With the time, all eight characters are filled in and the element balance is complete.

If you don't know it, choose "time unknown": the hour pillar stays empty and the reading uses the other three pillars, six characters. The day master depends on the date alone, so the core reading stays the same.

A birth between 23:00 and 23:59 keeps the calendar date's day pillar and takes the next day's 子 hour stem (the "late 子 hour" convention). Some schools move to the next day at 23:00, which is a common reason two calculators disagree.

How this site calculates

Solar terms are computed from the Sun's apparent longitude (VSOP87 theory, following Jean Meeus) and dated in Korean standard time. Checked against KASI's (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute) published terms for 31 sample years between 1950 and 2030 (372 terms), every date matched and every time was within 1.3 minutes.

• Korean standard time, including the periods when Korea used UTC+8:30 (1908–1911 and 1954–1961; for solar-term dates, 1955–1961 as in KASI's tables).
• Daylight saving time is not applied; if a Korean birth record shows summer time (1948–1951, 1955–1960, 1987–1988), enter the time one hour earlier. For a record between 00:00 and 00:59 that also means the previous date.
• Month and year boundaries are drawn by date: the whole day of a solar term counts as the new month.
• Hours are split on the hour from the clock time you enter. There is no true-solar-time correction by birthplace and no conversion from other time zones.
• Gregorian birth dates from 1 January 1900 to today. Korean lunar dates (from lunar 1 January 1900) are converted to their Gregorian date first.

What the result shows

The result opens right after you enter your details. No account, no payment.

• Your day master's element with a one-line summary
• Three cards on character, relationships and work style
• The four pillars and your zodiac animal counted from Ipchun
• The five-element balance of your eight (or six) characters
• A short glossary and the calculation basis

How to read it

Saju is a long-standing East Asian cultural tradition, not a validated personality test or a prediction. Use it as a prompt for reflection, never as the basis for decisions about health, money, relationships or careers. This page does not cover ten-year luck cycles, compatibility or detailed ten-god readings.

Where your birth details go

Your birth date and time are used for the calculation inside this browser and are not sent to a server for it. The result and the details you typed stay in this browser's storage; deleting all your saju results in My Results removes the typed details too. A birth date entered separately in the daily fortune settings is cleared there or with Delete all in My Results. A share link can contain your birth date and time; it is compressed, not encrypted.

Related pages

• 2027 New Year readingThe year of the Red Goat by zodiac animal and day master, with the solar-term calendar
• Daily fortuneLight daily prompts for relationships, focus and recovery
• Saju vs personality testsA symbolic story from your birth date versus tendencies measured from your answers