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Saju Glossary

Complete guide · 2026.08.27 · 41 terms

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41 Saju terms,
one line each.

No difficult jargon — just the points that are easy to mix up

Saju talk gets stuck on terminology. Not because the meanings are hard, but because there are so many terms that look alike — Day Master and day pillar, jeol and gi, Daeun and annual luck. Below is a summary written to make those differences clear.

If you're wondering what order to read in, start with How to read Saju: the complete guide; if you're curious about your own Eight Characters, go to the Manseryeok calculator.

Basic concepts The Eight Characters Five Elements and relations Dates and time Cycles and sal Date selection Mutal Unnie terms

Basic concepts 5

Saju 四柱: The four pillars of your birth year, month, day and hour. Each pillar has two characters, so there are eight in all, which is why it's also called Saju palja. These eight characters are all the material an interpretation has.
Palja (Eight Characters) 八字: The term for the eight characters of the four pillars. Korean idioms like “a tough palja” come from it, but originally it doesn't mean good or bad — it simply means eight characters.
Wonguk (birth chart) 原局: The Eight Characters set at your birth, as they are. A foundation that never changes in your lifetime; as Daeun and the day's iljin are layered on top, the rhythm of each period emerges.
Samju (Three Pillars) 三柱: A way of reading with six characters, leaving out the hour pillar, when you don't know your birth time. Leaving it out is more accurate than plugging in a guessed time, because a wrong hour pillar pulls the whole interpretation in a different direction.
Manseryeok 萬歲曆: The Saju calendar that lists the stem-branch pairs for each date. Apps and calculators do the job now, but if their calculation standards differ, results diverge at solar-term entry times, the Ja-hour boundary and daylight saving time.

The Eight Characters 7

Heavenly Stems (cheongan) 天干: The upper character of each pillar. There are ten — Gap, Eul, Byeong, Jeong, Mu, Gi, Gyeong, Sin, Im, Gye — carrying, in order, the elements Wood, Wood, Fire, Fire, Earth, Earth, Metal, Metal, Water, Water, alternating yang and yin.
Earthly Branches (jiji) 地支: The lower character of each pillar. There are twelve — Ja, Chuk, In, Myo, Jin, Sa, O, Mi, Sin, Yu, Sul, Hae — paired with the twelve zodiac animals. Each holds hidden Heavenly Stems inside, called hidden stems (jijanggan).
Day Master (ilgan) 日干: The upper character of the day you were born. It's the character in Saju that stands for yourself, so the other seven characters are all read by their relationship to it. The Ten Gods are the names of those relationships.
Day pillar (ilju) 日柱: The two characters of the day you were born. It's seen as the pillar that describes you most closely. Because the sixty Gapja cycle one per day, the same day pillar comes around every 60 days.
Month pillar (wolju) 月柱: The two characters of the month you were born. This position carries the energy of the season, so even with the same Day Master, what you need differs depending on the season you were born in. It changes at a jeol, not on the 1st of the calendar month.
The sixty Gapja 六十甲子: The 60 combinations made by pairing ten Heavenly Stems with twelve Earthly Branches in order. They start with Gapja and end with Gyehae. Days, months and years all carry these combinations.
Hidden stems (jijanggan) 支藏干: Heavenly Stems hidden inside an Earthly Branch. Each branch holds two or three, and the representative one is called the main hidden stem (bongi). When reading a branch as one of the Ten Gods, this main hidden stem is used.

Five Elements and relations 5

Five Elements (ohaeng) 五行: The five energies of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. They're intertwined through the generating cycle, where one gives rise to another (Wood feeds Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth yields Metal, Metal carries Water, Water nourishes Wood), and the controlling cycle, where one holds another in check (Wood controls Earth, Earth controls Water, Water controls Fire, Fire controls Metal, Metal controls Wood).
Ten Gods (sipsin) 十神: The names of the ten relationships the Day Master has with the other characters: Companion, Rob Wealth, Eating God, Hurting Officer, Indirect Wealth, Direct Wealth, Indirect Officer, Direct Officer, Indirect Resource, Direct Resource. They differ in tone, not in good or bad.
Nayin element (napeum ohaeng) 納音五行: Thirty names, each given to a pair of the sixty Gapja. They use pictorial names like Gold in the Sea (Haejunggeum) and Fire in the Furnace (Nojunghwa). Gapja and Eulchuk together are Gold in the Sea.
Clash (chung) 沖: When the twelve Earthly Branches are placed in a circle, the pairs directly opposite each other: Ja↔O, Chuk↔Mi, In↔Sin, Myo↔Yu, Jin↔Sul, Sa↔Hae. Seen as a colliding relationship and used as a reference in date selection.
Three Harmony (samhap) 三合: A group of three Earthly Branches that together form one element. There are four: Sin-Ja-Jin (Water), Sa-Yu-Chuk (Metal), In-O-Sul (Fire) and Hae-Myo-Mi (Wood). Samjae and the Twelve Sinsal are set according to these groups.

Dates and time 12

Iljin 日辰: The two characters assigned to a given day. They cycle every 60 days and are the same for everyone. Today's fortune is the interpretation you get by comparing this iljin with each person's birth chart — and that does differ from person to person.
The 24 solar terms 二十四節氣: Points named by dividing the sun's position into 24 parts. They're a solar concept, not a lunar one, so their Gregorian dates stay almost fixed from year to year. Ipchun always falls between February 3 and 5.
Jeol and gi 節·氣: The 24 solar terms alternate between 12 jeol and 12 gi at 15-day intervals. Only the 12 jeol (Ipchun, Gyeongchip, Cheongmyeong, Ipha, Mangjong, Soseo, Ipchu, Baengno, Hallo, Ipdong, Daeseol, Sohan) change the Saju month.
Ipchun 立春: The point at which the year changes in Saju. It's neither January 1 nor Seollal (Lunar New Year), and usually falls around February 4. If you were born before Ipchun, the previous year's stem-branch pair is used.
Solar-term entry time 節入時刻: The exact moment a solar term occurs. It's a time, not a date, so even people born on the same day can have different month pillars depending on whether they were born before or after it. Written in Korea Standard Time, it is 1 hour later than in China Standard Time.
Lunar calendar 陰曆: A calendar that follows the waxing and waning of the moon. A month has 29 days (a short month) or 30 days (a long month), so there is no lunar 31st. Twelve months come to about 354 days, roughly 11 days shorter than the Gregorian year.
Leap month (yundal) 閏月: To keep the lunar calendar from drifting away from the seasons, the same month is added a second time, seven times every 19 years. A leap 5th month is a second 5th month that comes after the 5th month.
Son-eomneun-nal: Days whose lunar date ends in 9 or 0 (lunar 9th, 10th, 19th, 20th, 29th and 30th). It means a day when Son, the spirit said to govern the directions, has gone up to the sky and is in none of the directions.
Late and early Ja hour 夜子時·早子時: A distinction that arises because the Ja hour (11 p.m.–1 a.m.) straddles midnight. 11:00–11:59 p.m. is the late Ja hour (yajasi) and 0:00–0:59 a.m. is the early Ja hour (jojasi). Schools differ on which day to use for the day pillar of someone born in the late Ja hour.
Daylight saving time: Korea used it in 1948–1951, 1955–1960 and 1987–1988, twelve years in all. If you were born in those periods, you need to subtract 60 minutes from the recorded time to get the actual solar basis.
UTC+8:30 standard time (127.5°E): The standard meridian Korea used from March 21, 1954 to August 9, 1961. Clocks were 30 minutes behind today's (135°E), so for people born in that period you need to add 30 minutes to the recorded time.
True solar time 眞太陽時: A correction that aligns clock time with the sun's actual position. Seoul lies west of the reference meridian, so it's about 32 minutes behind, plus an equation of time of ±16 minutes that varies by season. Whether to apply it differs by school.

Cycles and sal 5

Daeun 大運: The big rhythm that changes every 10 years. It starts from the month pillar and is built by stepping through the sixty Gapja one at a time. The starting age is set by the distance between your birthday and the nearest solar term, so it differs from person to person.
Annual luck (seun) 歲運: The stem-branch pair for a given year. If Daeun is a ten-year season, annual luck is one year within it. The year changes at Ipchun.
Samjae 三災: A period of 3 years in every 12 for each zodiac Three Harmony group. The first year is entering Samjae (deul-samjae), the second staying Samjae (nul-samjae), and the third leaving Samjae (nal-samjae). For everyone, a quarter of life is Samjae, so it's not something that happens because you're especially unlucky.
Twelve Sinsal 十二神殺: Twelve names attached in order to the twelve Earthly Branches: Geopsal, Jaesal, Cheonsal, Jisal, Yeonsal (Dohwasal), Wolsal, Mangsinsal, Jangseongsal, Banansal, Yeongmasal, Yukhaesal and Hwagaesal. They're set according to the Three Harmony group.
Gongmang (the Void) 空亡: When the sixty Gapja are grouped in tens, two Earthly Branches are left without a partner. Those two characters are Gongmang. It means empty, not bad. It's read as carrying less force than usual.

Date selection 3

Date selection (taegil) 擇日: Choosing a date that suits a purpose. Unlike Son-eomneun-nal, which looks only at the date, it also considers your personal Saju and the nature of what you plan to do.
Direct clash (jeongchung) 正沖: When the branch of a day's iljin is in clash with your zodiac animal. In date selection it's used simply to remove those dates. It comes once every 12 days, so it's best used just to narrow down candidates. Dates for each Earthly Branch are listed in Clash days.
Cheongmyeong and Hansik 淸明·寒食: Cheongmyeong is the solar term that begins the Dragon month, and Hansik is the day 105 days after Dongji (Winter Solstice). On these two days Son was believed to rest, so people saved up moving and ancestral-grave work for them.

Mutal Unnie terms 4

Bok 福: The currency used inside the app. Rhythm cards and adding events are free; Bok is used for features that give longer readings. Payments are made only through the App Store on iPhone and Google Play on Android.
Rhythm card: Today's interpretation, made by comparing the day's iljin with your birth chart. It includes an overall score, gauges for love, work and condition, and today's menu to fill in the element you're short on. It's free.
Hit Ledger: A feature that locks in the weekly forecast in advance, compares it with your evening check-ins, and publishes the record of hits and misses. Missed predictions stay on the record too. You can view the record itself for free.
Referral code: A code each user has. If a friend enters it when signing up, you both get 30 Bok (within a cap of 10 people per month for the inviter), and when that friend makes their first top-up, the inviter gets another 70 Bok. Sign-up rewards are limited to ten people a month.

Now that you know the words, it's time to see your own characters

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