Instruments of Self-Inquiry
Korean Birth Chart — Saju
Saju transcribes the year, month, day, and hour of your birth into eight
characters of Korea’s classical calendar, and those eight characters describe an arrangement of the five
elements. This calculator casts that chart and reads it: the character of your Day Master, the balance
and gaps among your elements, the placement of the Ten Gods, and the decade-long luck cycles that
structure a lifetime. The reading treats Saju as an interpretive system rather than a fortune, and the
entire computation stays on your device.
From the journal
Reading your chart
The center of the chart is the Day Master, the one
character among the eight that stands for you; the other seven, and the luck pillars, describe the
terrain that character moves through. In the elemental balance, look at what is absent before what is
abundant, because the missing element marks what a life keeps having to borrow, and the favorable
element points to where. The Ten Gods are a map of where ten kinds of force sit in your makeup rather
than a verdict, and the luck pillars become useful when you read each decade as a season with a
character rather than a schedule of events.
Frequently asked questions
What is Saju, in one paragraph?
Saju (사주, "four pillars") maps the year, month, day, and hour of your birth onto a cyclical calendar of ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. The resulting eight characters describe an elemental ecology — which of the five elements you carry in abundance, which you lack, and how they negotiate.
Is my birth information stored anywhere?
No. Every calculation runs in your browser. Your birth data is never transmitted to, or stored on, our servers — closing the tab erases it. The shareable result link encodes your inputs in the URL fragment, which browsers do not send to servers either.
Do I need my exact birth time?
The hour pillar requires it, and the hour pillar sharpens the reading considerably — but year, month, and day alone still yield your Day Master, elemental balance, and the broad architecture of the chart.
How is this different from Western astrology?
Western astrology reads planetary geometry against the zodiac; Saju reads calendrical cycles of elemental qi. One is spatial, the other temporal. They can describe the same person in strikingly complementary ways — we maintain a full essay series comparing the two frameworks.
Is Saju the same as Chinese BaZi?
They share a common ancestor and the same pillar structure, but Korean Saju developed its own interpretive tradition, terminology, and emphasis — particularly around the Day Master and practical life domains.
All calculations run in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to or stored on our servers.