The phrase Saju Palja (四柱八字) literally means "four pillars, eight characters." Your birth year, month, day, and hour each form one pillar, and every pillar consists of two characters stacked together. The upper character is called a Heavenly Stem (Cheongan, 天干) and the lower one an Earthly Branch (Jiji, 地支). These eight characters are the starting point — and in many ways the entirety — of Saju interpretation.

The Heavenly Stems: Ten Kinds of Energy

There are ten Heavenly Stems: Gap (甲), Eul (乙), Byeong (丙), Jeong (丁), Mu (戊), Gi (己), Gyeong (庚), Sin (辛), Im (壬), and Gye (癸). Each pair of stems belongs to one of the Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water — and within each element the two stems are distinguished as yang and yin.

Take the two Wood stems as an example. Gap (甲) is often compared to a tall tree growing straight upward, symbolizing drive and initiative. Eul (乙), by contrast, is likened to a vine or a flowering plant — flexible, adaptive, finding its way around obstacles. Byeong (丙) is fire that spreads wide like the sun, while Jeong (丁) is fire that concentrates on a single point like a candle flame. In short, the stems describe what kind of energy is present and how it tends to move.

The Earthly Branches: Twelve Positions on the Ground

The twelve Earthly Branches are Ja (子), Chuk (丑), In (寅), Myo (卯), Jin (辰), Sa (巳), O (午), Mi (未), Sin (申), Yu (酉), Sul (戌), and Hae (亥). These are the characters behind the twelve zodiac animals — Rat, Ox, Tiger, and so on. The branches carry the cycle of seasons and hours, so if the stems describe the type of energy, the branches describe the environment and season that energy sits in.

Branches are trickier to read than stems because each branch contains a blend of several stem energies hidden inside it, known as Jijanggan (支藏干). The same Wood energy expresses itself very differently depending on which season and position it occupies — that is the core intuition.

The Sixty-Year Cycle

Pairing the ten stems with the twelve branches in sequence produces sixty combinations, starting from Gapja (甲子) and ending with Gyehae (癸亥). This is the famous sexagenary cycle. The Korean word hwangap (還甲), celebrating one's 60th birthday, literally means that the stem-branch pair of your birth year has come back around.

The cycle does not only apply to years. Months, days, and hours each follow their own sixty-unit rotation. That is why two people born in the same year can have completely different charts if their month, day, or hour differs — and why Saju can be far more individualized than a simple zodiac-sign horoscope.

Where You Meet These Characters in Your Result

In a Hamhee K-SAJU analysis, the element distribution chart and the personality summary built around your Day Master all originate from these eight characters. When you read your result, you do not need to memorize every character. Start with just two questions: which elements are abundant or scarce in my chart, and which stem is my Day Master?

One closing note: stems and branches are not codes that fix your destiny. They are a language for reading tendencies. People with identical characters live entirely different lives depending on environment and choices. Please treat every interpretation here — and everywhere else — as reference material for self-understanding, not as a verdict.