How to Read a Saju Chart, Step by Step

To read a saju chart, start with one character: the top of the day pillar, which is your saju type. Then count the five elements across all eight characters and see which ones support it and which ones drain it. Everything else in a reading builds on those two steps.

This guide walks through one real chart from start to finish. If you are new to saju itself, read what saju is first, then come back.

What does the example chart look like?

The example is a person born on March 16, 1998, at 2:00 PM in Seoul. Their chart, calculated with PAL:JA's fixed rules at true solar time, looks like this:

Each column is a pillar, and each pillar has two characters. The top row holds the heavenly stems, ten characters that each carry an element in a yang or yin form. The bottom row holds the earthly branches, the twelve zodiac animals, which also carry an element.

In what order do you read the four pillars?

Read the chart from right to left: year, then month, then day, then hour. Traditional Korean and Chinese charts are written with the year on the right and the hour on the left, which is why the table above runs that way.

Each pillar is read as a layer of your life, from the outside in:

• Year (戊寅): the background you were born into, your family and generation.
• Month (乙卯): the season you were born in and the environment you grew up in. The month also sets the climate of the whole chart, which matters in step 4.
• Day (壬戌): you. The top character is your core type, and the bottom one is often read as your closest relationship.
• Hour (丁未): your inner life and the later part of life.

The year pillar here is 戊寅, a Tiger year. March 16 falls after ipchun, the start of spring around February 4, so the saju year is 1998. Someone born in mid-January 1998 would still belong to the previous year, 丁丑, an Ox year.

How do I find my saju type in the chart?

Your saju type is always the top character of the day pillar. In the example, that is 壬, yang water, which PAL:JA calls the Ocean.

That character is your saju type, which saju experts call your Day Master. Every other character in the chart is read by its relationship to it, so this is the anchor of the whole reading. There are ten possible types, from Big Tree (甲) to Morning Dew (癸), and you can learn what each one means in our guide to the ten saju types.

Your type comes from the day you were born in a 60-day cycle, so it cannot be worked out from your birth year or star sign. You can get yours free, with no sign-up, on the saju type page.

How do you count the five elements in a saju chart?

Count the element of each of the eight visible characters, stems and branches alike. For the example chart, the count is:

The role column is the key idea. In the five-element cycle, metal feeds water, water feeds wood, wood feeds fire, fire feeds earth and earth feeds metal. Elements that feed your type support it, and elements your type has to feed, control or resist take energy from it.

Most branches also hold hidden stems, extra elements tucked inside. Here the dog 戌 hides a little metal (辛), so the chart is not completely without metal, but on the surface it is absent.

How do you tell which elements are strong or weak?

Compare the support your type gets with the energy it gives out. The Ocean in this chart has one water character (itself) and no visible metal, against six characters of wood and earth that draw on it.

Then check the season, which comes from the month branch. This person was born in the 卯 (rabbit) month, the middle of spring, when wood is at its peak and water is not in season. Traditional readers give the season a lot of weight, so a water type born in spring with little support is usually read as a weak Ocean.

Weak does not mean bad. It means the chart leans on outside support, so a reader would point to the years and people that bring metal and water as the ones that tend to feel easiest. A strong type is read the other way round, with output and pressure as the welcome elements.

Advanced readers also look at how the branches interact. Here, 卯 and 戌 form a classic pair that is read as creating fire, which adds to the chart's wealth side.

How do you check the hour pillar against true solar time?

Convert the clock time to the time the sun actually showed at the birthplace, then pick the two-hour block. Seoul's clocks run on a time zone centred east of the city, so the sun there is about 32 minutes behind the clock.

For the example, 2:00 PM on the clock was about 1:28 PM by the sun. Saju's 未 (goat) hour runs from 1:00 to 3:00 PM, so the hour pillar stays 丁未 either way.

It does not always work out that neatly. Had this person been born at 1:15 PM by the clock, the sun time would have been about 12:43 PM, inside the 午 (horse) hour, and the hour pillar would become 丙午 instead. That is why PAL:JA corrects every chart to the real sun time of the birth city before reading it.

What does this example chart say overall?

Put the steps together and the chart describes a big, restless Ocean with a lot to give and a lot pressing on it. Strong wood suggests someone who expresses, teaches or creates easily; strong earth suggests responsibility and structure arriving early; little metal and water suggests a person who does best when they protect their own rest and the people who refill them.

That is the shape of a reading: one anchor character, a count, a balance and a season. A full reading then adds the yearly and ten-year cycles on top, to talk about timing.

Is a missing element in my chart bad?

No. A missing element is common, and it simply shows where the chart is quiet. Readers treat it as a direction for balance, not as a flaw.

Why do different saju sites show different charts?

Usually because of three settings: true solar time, the year boundary at ipchun, and how the late-night hour is handled. PAL:JA applies all three with fixed rules, so the same birth details always give the same chart.

Do the zodiac animals in my chart matter?

Yes, but as elements rather than as personalities. Each animal in the bottom row adds its element and its season to the count, and the year animal is only one of the four.