How the New Year Fortune Is Read

The year's two characters

Each year one pair of the sixty-pair cycle (60 gapja) comes round. 2026 is 丙午 (byeong-o), 2027 is 丁未 (jeong-mi) and 2028 is 戊申 (mu-sin). Reading the new year fortune means reading how the year's two characters meet the characters of your chart. In saju the year changes at Ipchun (입춘, the Start of Spring, around 4 February in the solar calendar), so the force of 2027 is taken to run from Ipchun 2027 until just before Ipchun 2028. That is why January and early February 2027 still belong to the 丙午 year, and the animal of someone born around then can be that of the previous year.

The upper character of 2027, 丁 (jeong), is yin Fire, compared to a candle or a lamp. The lower character 未 (mi) is late-summer Earth, and in the zodiac it is the Goat. Since fire produces earth (화생토), Halmeoni's fortune pages by animal introduce this year as "a year in which the fire above nourishes the earth below (상생, mutual generation)." The elements of the upper and lower characters are used only to give the year's underlying mood. If the lower supports the upper, it is introduced as a year with a sturdy foundation; if they press on each other, as a year with tension and change together; and if they are the same element, as a year in which that nature is plain to see.

Reading by animal and reading by chart

There are broadly two ways to read the new year fortune. One is the animal fortune, which matches only the lower character of your birth year, your zodiac animal, against the lower character of the year. The other is a personal reading, which reads the year's two characters from all eight characters set up from your birth date and hour, above all from the upper character of your birth day (the Day Master, 일간). Halmeoni does both, but the amount of fact each uses is different.

The animal and the year: combination, clash, punishment

The animal fortune looks at what relation lies between the character of your animal and the year's 未. There are binding relations (six harmony, 육합, and half combination, 반합), head-on collision (clash, 충), friction (punishment, 형) and subtly out-of-step relations (harm, 해, and resentment, 원진). To these are added the Twelve Spirits and Samjae based on the animal. Here are the results for the twelve animals in 2027, transcribed just as Halmeoni calculates them.

The page title is the single line at the very top of each animal page. Halmeoni takes as the title whichever applies first in this order: whether it is the animal's own year, whether there is a clash, then six harmony, half combination, punishment, and harm or resentment. The Ox has a clash and a punishment together, so the clash became the title. For the Tiger, Dragon, Snake, Monkey and Rooster, which have no relation at all, the title is set by the Twelve Spirit.

Within each triple combination group, the Twelve Spirit is the same for every animal. In 2027 the 未 is Heaven for Monkey, Rat and Dragon, Moon Spirit for Snake, Rooster and Ox, Saddle for Tiger, Horse and Dog, and Canopy for Pig, Rabbit and Goat. Even spirits whose names sound frightening are written up on the page in terms of what is good to do that year. For Heaven it says "rather than cling to what is beyond your control, it is good to follow the flow," and for Moon Spirit "even if things move slowly, it is good not to be hasty."

The direction of the sentences Halmeoni uses for each relation is as follows. All of them are gentle renderings of traditional interpretation, and the emphasis differs by school.

• Six harmony and half combination: seen as a year in which you get along well with people and things tend to go well when you act together.
• Clash: seen as a year with a lot of movement, such as moving house, changing jobs or sorting out relationships. It advises choosing a change you have prepared for rather than rushing. It does not mean that moving or changing jobs is necessarily bad.
• Punishment: seen as a year when friction and adjustment come easily, and advises taking careful care of contracts and rules.
• Harm and resentment: seen as a year when quiet misunderstandings or hearts out of step creep in easily, and advises not letting hurt feelings pile up.
• No relation at all: seen as a year that is good for running things according to your own plans without major shaking.

Samjae is the custom of counting three years starting from the Travelling Horse (역마살) year of the triple combination group your animal belongs to. In 2027 it is the leaving year (날삼재), the last year of Samjae, for Rabbit, Goat and Pig people. It is the most widely known method, but the way of counting and the years given weight differ from counsellor to counsellor, and it is better read not as a prophecy that bad things will happen but as an old marker that says, let us spend the year carefully. The details are in the "Samjae: The Three Troubled Years (Entering, Staying, Leaving)" article.

The animal fortune does not look at the heavenly stem of your birth year, because the stem differs with each birth year even for the same animal. So all the combinations and clashes on the pages by animal are relations between lower characters.

The Day Master and the year: Ten Gods and the Twelve Life Stages

What a personal reading looks at first is which Ten God (십신) the year's upper character is to your Day Master (일간). Even in the same 2027, 丁 can be a friend, wealth or a workplace, depending on the Day Master. For the lower character 未, the Ten God is set by its central force, 己 (yin Earth). The Twelve Life Stages (12운성) are a traditional tool for seeing at what stage the Day Master's force sits in 未, whether on the filling-up side like Coming of age or on the sinking side like Decline.

Relations between heavenly stems are looked at too. 丁 combines with 壬 and heads toward Wood (丁壬 combination), and clashes with 癸 (丁癸 clash). If there is a 壬 or 癸 among the stems of your four pillars, it is read as a year of being bound to, or colliding with, that position. The animal fortune cannot show this difference. Among Snake people, someone born in 2013 (癸巳) has a year stem 癸 that makes a stem clash with the 丁 of 2027, but someone born in 2001 (辛巳) or 1989 (己巳) has no such relation.

One person's example: born 25 August 2001

Calculating 2027 for the example in the "What Is Saju?" article, someone born in Seoul on 25 August 2001 at 00:50, gives the following. This person's chart is year 辛巳, month 丙申, day 庚申, hour 丙子. As a Snake, there is no relation between 巳 and 未 in the animal fortune, the Twelve Spirit is Moon Spirit, and the page title is "A year to go slowly, without haste."

• Ten Gods: to the Day Master 庚, 丁 is the Direct Officer, and 己, the central force of 未, is the Direct Resource.
• Twelve Life Stage: a 庚 Day Master is at Coming of age in 未.
• Twelve Spirit: based on the animal (巳) it is Moon Spirit, the same value as on the page by animal.
• Combinations and clashes: the hour branch 子 and 未 are in harm and resentment. There is no relation with the year, month or day pillars.
• Favourable element: this chart has a strong Day Master (신강), so it treats Officer (관성), Output (식상) and Wealth (재성), that is Fire, Water and Wood, as favourable. Since 丁 is Fire, 2027 is a year that brings the favourable element.
• Force filled in: converting the stems of the four pillars and the central forces (main qi) within the branches into Ten Gods shows there is no Resource (인성), and the 己 in 未 fills in Resource. The remaining characters of the hidden stems are not put into this calculation.

Looking only at the animal fortune, 2027 is a quiet year for this person with no special relation. Looking at the whole chart, it is a year in which the Direct Officer, meaning rules and the workplace, and the Direct Resource, meaning study and documents, arrive together, a force that was missing from the birth chart is filled in, and there is a subtle mismatch with the character of the hour of birth. For the same year, the animal fortune and the personal reading paint this different a picture. If you do not know the hour of birth, the hour pillar is missing, so in this example the harm and resentment between 子 and 未 would drop out too.

Why the animal fortune is coarse

The animal is one character out of eight. The same animal comes round every twelve years, so one animal fortune shows the very same text to roughly one person in twelve. The heavenly stem of the birth year, the month, the day and the hour are all missing, and above all the Day Master, which stands for "you" in saju, is missing. That is why Halmeoni's pages by animal end with "Use the animal fortune only for the broad mood, and to see the year through your own chart, get a reading from your birth date and hour."

The Luck Cycle (대운) is missing too. A year sits within a larger ten-year flow, and the Luck Cycle is set differently for each person by birth date and gender. If you have chosen a gender for your chart, Halmeoni's personal reading looks at your current Luck Cycle together with the year's force.

How Halmeoni reads it

On Halmeoni's chart screen there is a card for reading a year. From October it shows the next year, and before that this year, so right now it is "My Fortune for 2027." When you tap the card, a question asking it to look at that year in terms of romance, money, work and health goes into the chat. Halmeoni answers on the facts calculated above, that is, the Ten Gods of the year's two characters, the Twelve Life Stage, the Twelve Spirit, the combinations and clashes with the four pillars, and the favourable element. This year's and next year's facts are both included in the chat.

The weight given to reading the new year fortune differs from school to school. Some put the relation between the animal and the year at the centre, some put the Ten God with the Day Master at the centre, and some read the Twelve Spirits by the character of the birth day (the day branch). Halmeoni looks at the year's Ten God and Twelve Life Stage from the Day Master, reads the Twelve Spirits by the animal, and checks combinations and clashes against all four pillars. The favourable element is set by taking away or adding according to the Day Master's strength (억부, reducing what is excessive and supporting what is lacking), and if the year does not bring it, Halmeoni says plainly that it does not.

The new year fortune is material for preparing a year ahead of time. A year that brings good force is not grounds for staking a large sum, and a year with a clash does not fix what you should avoid. For decisions about health, law or investment, consult an expert in that field.