Reading · How to read a chart
A chart is eight characters
Four Pillars (四柱) means the four pillars of your birth year, month, day and hour. Each pillar carries a heavenly character (stem) and an earthly character (branch), making eight characters in all — hence the Korean name saju palja, "four pillars, eight characters". The table used to set them is the almanac (manseryeok), and this site runs that calculation inside your browser.
Two things matter when the chart is set. The year does not begin on 1 January but at the solar term Ipchun (start of spring), and months change at solar terms too, not on the first of the month — so someone born in January or early February may receive the previous year's characters. The hour pillar runs in two-hour blocks, and births after 11 pm raise the question of which day they belong to. The advanced settings on this site let you choose how that is handled.
The reading order — three steps
Looking at eight characters at once, it is hard to know where to begin. There is an order.
- The day master — you. The heavenly character of your birth day is "you". It is one of ten — Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire, Yin Fire, Yang Earth, Yin Earth, Yang Metal, Yin Metal, Yang Water, Yin Water — and each comes with an image: a great tree or a vine, the sun or a candle. That image is your basic temperament.
- The five elements — your surroundings. Count the eight characters by element (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) and you see what is abundant and what is missing. This is not "you"; it is what kind of energy surrounds you.
- The Ten Gods — how you and your surroundings relate. Taking the day master as the reference point, every other character falls into one of five groups (Self, Output, Wealth, Authority, Resource). Only here, where the first two steps meet, does the reading begin. See What are the Ten Gods?
After that come the key and supporting elements (the energy this chart needs most and the one that assists it), and finally the luck cycles — the ten-year cycles and the year-by-year flow. The results page on this site is laid out in that order.
The most common misunderstanding
"Earth is the most abundant, so I must be an Earth person." — No. Abundant Earth means there is a lot of Earth around you; who you are is decided by the day master. If the day master is Yang Wood and Earth is abundant, the picture is one tree standing on a wide field. That soil is your Wealth (the energy you have to manage), and a lot of it makes for a busy life. Mix up the day master and the element count and that story disappears.
Using this site
- On the main page enter the date of birth (8 digits) and time (4 digits) and press Read the chart. If you do not know the time, tick "I do not know the time of birth" and the reading uses three pillars.
- Once calculated, an AI writes a plain-language explanation first, and you can ask follow-up questions in the box beneath it. Below that come the chart card, the pillar table, "You and what surrounds you" (the three steps), the stars, the ten-year cycles and the annual luck.
- Your date and time of birth are calculated inside the browser only and never leave it. Only when the AI explanation is written is a summary of the finished calculation sent.
A chart is a map, not a fixed ending. Take what this site produces as cultural and recreational reading, not as grounds for decisions about medicine, law or money.