A Saju Glossary: 40 Korean Terms, Romanized and Explained
2026-07-29 · computed with the solar-term engine (the Method)
Every craft hides behind its vocabulary, and saju (사주) is worse than most, because the vocabulary is Korean, the concepts are Sino-Korean, and the whole thing runs on a calendar most Westerners have never met. Read three articles and you will collide with ilgan, ohaeng, sipsin, yongsin, daeun — a wall of romanized terms that each unlock a piece of the chart. This page is the key. It is not meant to be read straight through so much as kept open in a tab while you read everything else. Each entry gives the Korean, the romanization, and a one- or two-sentence definition in plain English. Where a term has its own deep dive, the term links out.
The terms are grouped roughly the way a reader encounters them — the frame first, then the pieces, then the timing, then the finer machinery.
The frame
Saju (사주) — "four pillars." The whole system, and the name for your chart: your life read through the four time-units of your birth.
Palja (팔자) — "eight characters." The eight stem-and-branch characters that make up the four pillars. The word doubles, in everyday Korean, as a synonym for "fate."
Saju palja (사주팔자) — the full formal name: four pillars, eight characters.
Manse (만세력, manseryeok) — the perpetual calendar that converts a birth date and time into the correct pillars. Every reading starts here.
Ipchun (입춘) — the solar term in early February that begins the saju year. The year pillar turns here — not on January 1, and not at lunar new year.
The pillars
Gan (간) — a heavenly stem. The character sitting on top of a pillar.
Ji (지) — an earthly branch. The character sitting underneath.
Ganji (간지) — a stem-branch pair; one pillar's worth of characters.
Cheongan (천간) — the ten heavenly stems, the celestial half of the cycle.
Jiji (지지) — the twelve earthly branches, which also carry the zodiac animals.
Ilgan / Ilju (일간 / 일주) — the day master (ilgan is the day stem specifically; ilju is the whole day pillar). This is you — the character the rest of the chart is read around.
Yeonju (연주) — the year pillar. Ancestry, early environment, the zodiac animal everyone knows.
Wolju (월주) — the month pillar. The single most important pillar for judging seasonal strength.
Ilju (일주) — the day pillar; its stem is you, its branch is often read as the spouse palace.
Siju (시주) — the hour pillar. Later life, children, and the part of the chart that vanishes if you don't know your birth time.
The elements
Ohaeng (오행) — the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. The economy every chart is audited against.
Mok (목) — Wood. Hwa (화) — Fire. To (토) — Earth. Geum (금) — Metal. Su (수) — Water. The five, in order.
Eumyang (음양) — yin and yang. Every stem and branch carries a polarity as well as an element.
Sangsaeng (상생) — the generating cycle: water feeds wood, wood feeds fire, and so on. How the elements nourish each other.
Sanggeuk (상극) — the controlling cycle: water quenches fire, metal cuts wood. How the elements check each other.
The ten gods
Sipsin (십신) — the ten gods: the ten functional roles every other character plays relative to your day master — resource, output, wealth, power, peer, and their yin/yang variants.
Jaeseong (재성) — the wealth stars. What the day master controls; money, and in a man's chart often the wife.
Gwanseong (관성) — the power/officer stars. What controls the day master; career, authority, and in a woman's chart often the husband.
Inseong (인성) — the resource stars. What feeds the day master; support, learning, mother.
Siksang (식상) — the output stars. What the day master produces; expression, talent, children.
Bigyeop (비겁) — the companion stars. Peers and rivals sharing the day master's element.
Timing
Daeun (대운) — the great luck cycles, the ten-year eras your chart passes through, each coloring a decade with a new pair of characters.
Seun (세운) — the yearly luck; the pillar of the current year, read against your chart.
Sinnyeon-unse (신년운세) — the new-year fortune, the annual reading Koreans queue for around ipchun.
The finer machinery
Yongsin (용신) — the balancing element, the useful god: the one element a chart most needs to come into balance. The linchpin of serious interpretation.
Gyeokguk (격국) — the chart's structural "type" or format, a higher-order classification of how the whole thing is organized.
Sinsal (신살) — the spirit stars, a catalog of special stars and markers (some lucky, some ominous) layered onto the chart.
Sal (살) — a "killing" or malevolent star; a subset of sinsal. Real as a technical feature, frequently abused as a fear-selling prop.
Dohwa (도화) — the peach blossom star: charm, attraction, magnetism.
Yeokma (역마) — the travel horse: movement, relocation, restlessness, travel.
Gongmang (공망) — the "void" or emptiness, a pair of branches read as hollow or detached in a chart.
Hap (합) — combination: stems or branches that bond and merge their energies.
Chung (충) — clash: branches that collide and destabilize each other.
Gunghap (궁합) — compatibility: two charts read together for a relationship.
Jangmyeong (작명, jangmyeong / jakmyeong) — professional naming, often chosen to supply an element a newborn's chart lacks.
That is the working set. It looks like a lot on a list, but in a real chart these terms lean on each other — the yongsin is chosen because of what the ohaeng audit reveals, the daeun matters because of which sipsin it activates — and after a few readings the vocabulary stops being a wall and starts being a language. If you want a foundation to hang all of it on, what is saju walks through the whole system in prose. And the fastest way to make the words click is to have a real chart in front of you while you learn them — cast a free chart here and read this glossary against your own eight characters.