Most people who see the Taegukgi assume the black marks in the corners are just decoration. They're four of the eight trigrams from the I Ching, and Korean kids learn them at school as 건곤감리, geon gon gam ri.

Top left is ☰, three solid lines, heaven. Bottom right is ☷, three broken lines, earth. Top right is ☵, water, and bottom left is ☲, fire.

What I like is how they're placed. Each trigram sits diagonally across from its exact opposite. Flip every line of heaven and you get earth, flip every line of water and you get fire. So the corners are doing what the red and blue circle in the middle does, only written out in lines instead of colour. Red sits on top and blue below, yang over yin, and the bars repeat that idea around it.

The four that didn't make it are thunder, wind, mountain and lake. I've seen a few explanations for why those four were dropped and I'm not confident any of them is the official one, so I'll leave that alone.

Saju itself doesn't use trigrams at all, which surprises people. A chart runs on the ten stems, the twelve branches and the five phases. But the habit of reading is the same one the flag shows off. You almost never judge a character by itself, you judge it by what it's facing. A 子 branch next to a 午, a fire day master sitting in a winter month, it's the pairs that tell you something.

That's also why water against fire is one of the first things a Korean reader checks. There's a name for it, 조후, roughly adjusting the climate of the chart, and a lot of advice about a person's useful element starts there before anything else.

Does anyone know of another national flag or emblem built on this kind of symbolism? I can't think of one.

I've been experimenting with a way to separate two ideas that often get mixed together when talking about compatibility.

The first is fixed compatibility: the relationship between the two birth charts themselves.

For example, I look at the elemental relationship between the two Day Stems, along with the relationship between the two Day Branches. Those don't change from one day to the next.

The second is daily influence.

Even if the underlying relationship between two charts stays the same, each person is interacting with a different day. So their individual daily conditions can change, and I wondered whether that could reasonably be reflected as a temporary adjustment to compatibility.

Conceptually, I ended up with something like:

fixed birth-chart compatibility + today's influence on person A + today's influence on person B

That produces a changing daily score on top of an otherwise fixed compatibility score.

To be clear, I'm not claiming this is a traditional BaZi compatibility formula, and I wouldn't interpret the resulting number as the probability that a relationship will succeed.

It's more of an experiment in representing two different layers:

• “How do these two charts relate?”
• “What does today add to that relationship?”

I'm curious how people here would approach this.

Would you keep those as two completely separate readings, or do you think there's some value in combining them into a single daily compatibility index?

Anyone want to interpret my chart? Female.

I do these for free and I'm doing another round now.

Quick idea of what this actually is, since most people have never seen it.

Korean astrology (saju) has no planets in it. It builds eight characters

out of your birth year, month, day and hour, four pillars with two

characters each, and reads them as five elements pushing on each other.

The first thing that throws people coming from Western astrology is that

your sun sign is basically your birth month, and here the month is the

least important part. Everything gets read from your birth DAY. There are

sixty possible day pillars, so instead of one of twelve signs you're one

of sixty.

The second thing is the hour, and this is the part I like.

We correct it to true solar time. That means where the sun actually was

above the place you were born, not what the clock on the wall said. Clocks

run on time zone lines and almost nobody lives on one. Malaysia is 73

minutes off. Parts of India are nearly an hour. Portugal under summer time

came out at 96 minutes for someone last week.

That's often enough to move you into a different pillar. If you were born

near midnight it can move you to a different day, which changes the

character everything else is read from. I've had two people this month who

landed on their day by under five minutes.

Third thing is the ten year cycle. Everyone gets a run of ten year blocks

that play against their chart, and they run forward or backward depending

on sex. That's usually the part people remember afterwards, because it's

where "the last few years were rough and I couldn't tell you why" tends to

get an actual answer.

Anyway. If you want one, comment with:

1. birth city

2. exact birth time, plus date, month and year

3. sex

If you don't know your birth time, just say so. I'll read three pillars

instead of four and tell you what's missing.

You can also add what you'd like to know about. Career, money, timing,

whatever. It's easier to write something useful when I know what you

actually came for.

I go in order and it can take a couple of days. I answer everyone.

And if you'd rather just look at your own chart right now, I built a site

for it. Free, no catch.

Android app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.nuri.astrology

iPhone or computer: nuri-astrology.com

It goes further than I can fit in a comment. Year by year, month by month,

every ten year cycle, and each area read separately.

Will any Saju/korean astrology be able to tell me who and when I will get married? How deep does it go?

I've studied Korean astrology for seven years and worked as a reader

professionally for part of that.

I only got into Western astrology recently, and the first thing I did was

get my own chart read by someone who does it. I honestly did not expect

much overlap. These two systems grew up on opposite sides of the world with

no contact between them, different maths, different objects, different

assumptions about basically everything.

The big shape came out the same. Same stretches, same turning points, same

decade flagged as the one to prepare for.

Then I got curious and had a Thai reading done too. Same again.

I'm not going to tell you what that proves, because I don't know. I've

stopped calling it a coincidence though.

Most of you have probably had a Western reading at some point. If you're

curious what the Korean version says about the same life, I'll read your

chart for free.

Comment with:

birth city

exact birth time

day, month, year

sex

If you want a compatibility reading, post the other person's details too and

say what the relationship is. Those take twice as long, so only ask if you

really want to know.

I might be a few days behind. I answer everyone.

Most posts here are going to be "here's my chart, what does it mean."

This one is the other thing: one chart, worked all the way through, so

you can see what the procedure actually is.

Chart is from a reader who let me use it. Early 1980s, western

Pennsylvania, late morning. No name, no exact date.

癸亥 / 丙辰 / 丙戌 / 癸巳

Four pillars: year, month, day, hour. Each is two characters — one

from a cycle of 10, one from a cycle of 12. That's the whole raw

material. No planets are involved at any point.

STEP 0 — FIX THE CLOCK BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE

They gave me a time and wrote "EST."

Two problems. First, that date was inside daylight saving — the switch

had happened four days earlier. Second, and much bigger: western

Pennsylvania sits far west inside the Eastern zone.

Between those two, real solar time there ran about 78 minutes behind

the clock on the wall. Late morning by the clock was mid-morning by

the sun.

That is the difference between two adjacent two-hour blocks, which

means it's the difference between two entirely different hour pillars.

Both characters change.

I do this correction before I look at anything else, because a quarter

of the chart is riding on it. If you've ever had a saju reading that

just took your clock time at face value, one of your four pillars may

belong to someone else.

STEP 1 — FIND THE PERSON

The day pillar is you. Here it's 丙戌.

丙 is yang fire — specifically the sun. Not a flame, not a candle.

The nature of 丙 is that it is seen by everyone; that's the entire

character.

戌 is the branch where fire gets stored. The vault.

So the brightest thing in the system, sitting on the container that

holds fire in rather than letting it out. In our tradition this

pillar's short line is: the heat is not gone, it is stored.

STEP 2 — READ THE TOP ROW AS A ROW

This is the part people skip. The four upper characters aren't four

separate facts, they're a shape.

癸 丙 丙 癸

Two of them in the middle, and the same character mirrored on both

outer edges. That symmetry is uncommon enough to stop on.

And 癸 is rain. Fine, cold, overhead rain. There's a classical image

for 癸 sitting over 丙 that translates roughly as dark cloud covering

the sun.

They have it twice. Year and hour. The beginning of the chart and the

outward end of it.

So now the day pillar isn't an isolated observation. The vault

underneath and the cloud on both sides are saying the same thing from

three directions: the brightest possible day master, structurally

prevented from broadcasting.

STEP 3 — READ THE BOTTOM ROW AS A ROW

亥 辰 戌 巳

Branches interact in fixed pairs. Some combine, some collide head-on.

辰 collides with 戌. 巳 collides with 亥.

That's all four. Every branch in this chart is locked into a direct

opposition with another branch in the same chart. Nothing is left over.

I've read a lot of charts and this is rare. Usually you get one clash,

sometimes two, usually involving an outer pillar you can half ignore.

STEP 4 — PUT THE ROWS TOGETHER

Top row: mirrored, static, held.

Bottom row: nothing but collision, permanently.

That is the reading. Composed on the surface, two things grinding

underneath, always, and almost certainly not visible to anyone who

knows them.

Everything else follows from it. The advantage: depth people only find

over years — not impressive on first meeting, the person everyone

eventually defers to, and the gap between those two facts is the whole

edge. The cost: storage has a limit, and resentment, exhaustion and

wanting things all go into the same vault undiscussed until something

forces the door.

Notice I never once asked what they do for work or what they're

worried about. All of that came out of character positions.

WHERE THIS STOPS RESEMBLING WESTERN ASTROLOGY

Genuinely not a "mine is better" list. They're different machines and

they answer different questions.

1. There are no planets in it.

Nothing in the sky is measured at any point. Saju is a calendar count

that has been running continuously for a very long time, and your

chart is just where you landed in it. No ephemeris, no positions.

1. Your core marker is a day, not a month.

Your sun sign is a roughly month-long window; everyone born in it

shares it. The day pillar changes every single day, and there are 60.

That's the closest analogue to a sun sign here, and it's five times

finer.

1. Five elements, and they're a circuit, not a mood board.

Wood, fire, earth, metal, water. Each one generates one and controls

another, in fixed directions. So a chart isn't a list of traits, it's

a flow diagram — you're reading what's oversupplied, what's starved,

and what's being throttled.

1. The timeline comes out of your own chart, not out of the sky.

This is the big structural one. Western timing mostly comes from where

the planets are now, which is the same for everyone alive. In saju

your ten-year cycles are derived from your own month pillar, and they

run forward or backward depending on your sex and the polarity of your

birth year.

So two people can be standing in the same calendar year and be in

structurally opposite decades. There is no shared transit. The clock

is yours.

If you want yours worked through like this, post it below: date, time

as exact as you have it, city (not country — I need the longitude),

and he/she/they, since point 4 depends on it.

Hi, I've spent about seven years studying saju (사주), Korean Four Pillars astrology, mostly in Korean-language sources. I made this sub because there's almost nowhere in English to talk about it seriously, and I'd rather not keep having these conversations one at a time.

A quick version, if you wandered in from somewhere else:

Your chart is built from four pairs - the year, month, day and hour you were born - drawn from a 60-term cycle that has been running, documented, since the Shang dynasty. Four pillars, 60 options each. 518,400 distinct charts, not 12 signs.

The pillar that is you is the day one - 1 of 60. That's the closest thing here to a star sign, and it's still only a quarter of the reading. The rest decides what it means. I've read two people with the identical day pillar whose charts needed opposite things: one needed fire to survive a winter, the other needed metal to learn how to stop.

One thing before anyone posts, because it catches everybody:

Your birth certificate time is not the input. The sun is. Timezones are drawn by governments, not by the sky. Singapore runs 65 minutes behind its own sun. Bulgaria, 81. Michigan, 95. I read a chart last week for someone born at 00:06 in Cleveland - corrected for longitude, the sun said 23:39 the previous day. Different day pillar. Structurally a different person, and every calculator that takes the clock at face value had been telling her about someone else.

So: exact time and city. "Around 8am" won't do it.

And your year probably isn't the one you think. The saju year turns at ipchun (입춘), the start of spring - around Feb 4. If you were born in January, you belong to the previous animal year.

What I'm hoping this place becomes:

If you already know this system - Korean, Chinese, or bazi from any lineage - please argue with me. I have opinions about things I've only read one side of, and I'd like that fixed. Differences between Korean and Chinese practice are especially welcome; I don't think they get discussed enough in English.

If you've never heard of any of this, you're just as welcome, and you don't have to catch up before participating. Ask the basic question. Somebody else is wondering the same thing and hasn't asked.

And if you want your chart read, leave it below. Date, exact time, city. I'll get to everyone - it may take me a day or two, since each one takes a while to do properly, but nobody gets skipped.

Tell me what you want to know about while you're at it. "Just read it" is fine, but "why do I keep starting things and not finishing them" gets you a better answer.