Samjae: The Three Troubled Years (Entering, Staying, Leaving)

What samjae is

Samjae (三災, 삼재) means "three calamities." It is a custom holding that it comes to each of the twelve zodiac animals once every twelve years and stays for three years. The first year is called Entering (들삼재), the year it stays Staying (눌삼재), and the year it leaves Leaving (날삼재). After the three years, there are nine years without samjae.

The name is said to come from the three calamities spoken of in Buddhism. The great calamities of water, fire and wind are called the major samjae, and war, plague and famine the minor samjae. However, the custom of working out the samjae years from the zodiac animal has mainly been kept up in Korean folk practice, and the classics of myeongni studies, which read a chart centred on the Day Master (일간), do not give it much weight.

Which animal, and when

Samjae divides the twelve animals into four groups by triple combination (삼합). The three animals in the same group meet samjae in the same years together. Each group has three earthly branches that bring in samjae, and the years of those characters come round every twelve years.

Laid out year by year, it looks like this. From 2025 to 2027 the Pig, Rabbit and Goat meet Entering, Staying and Leaving in turn, and from 2028 it is the turn of the Tiger, Horse and Dog.

In saju the year changes not on January 1 or Seollal (Lunar New Year) but at the Start of Spring (입춘, around February 4 in the solar calendar). If you were born in January or early February, you may belong to the previous year's animal, so check your own animal first. The samjae of a given year is also counted from that year's Start of Spring until just before the next one. In folk practice, some places use the lunar New Year as the dividing line.

The rule: three years starting from the Travelling Horse

There is only one rule for the calculation. The three years starting from the Travelling Horse (역마) character of the group your animal belongs to are samjae. The Travelling Horse of the Monkey, Rat and Dragon is 寅, so they meet Entering in a 寅 year, Staying in a 卯 year and Leaving in a 辰 year. The character of the Entering year is also the character that clashes (충) head-on with the group's first character. 寅 clashes with 申, 申 with 寅, 亥 with 巳, and 巳 with 亥.

Translated into the Twelve Spirits (12신살), the Entering year is a Travelling Horse (역마살) year, the Staying year a Six Harms (육해살) year, and the Leaving year a Canopy (화개살) year. That is why, in a year when samjae applies, the Twelve Spirits in the zodiac fortune also come out as one of these three.

Traditional readings sometimes take these three spirits as a year of more movement and change (Travelling Horse), a year when small hindrances easily creep in (Six Harms), and a year of stepping back to build up inner strength (Canopy). This is only one of the old interpretations, and how the Twelve Spirits are read also differs from school to school.

The steps to find your own samjae are as follows. First, set your animal from your birth year. Here the dividing line is the Start of Spring, not January 1. Then find the row with your animal in the first table above, and the three years in that row are your samjae. For example, a Rabbit born in 1999, a 己卯 (gi-myo) year, after the Start of Spring is in the Pig, Rabbit and Goat row, so Entering begins in 2025 and Leaving ends it in 2027, and twelve years later, in 2037, Entering comes again.

The character of the Leaving year is the character of the last animal of that group itself. The Dragon meets Leaving in a Dragon year (辰), the Dog in a Dog year (戌), the Ox in an Ox year (丑), and the Goat in a Goat year (未). This is also why 2027, a 丁未 (jeong-mi) year, is both the Goat's own year and its Leaving year.

An example: 2027, the 丁未 (jeong-mi) year

2027 is a 丁未 year. 未 is the third samjae character of the Pig, Rabbit and Goat group, so these three animals meet Leaving. The flow is that they entered with Entering in the 乙巳 (eul-sa) year 2025, passed through Staying in the 丙午 (byeong-o) year 2026, and finish in 2027. The other nine animals have no samjae in 2027.

The first screen of Halmeoni's 2027 zodiac fortune has a single line reading "2027 samjae: Rabbit (Leaving), Goat (Leaving), Pig (Leaving)." On the zodiac pages, a samjae paragraph is attached only to the animals that fall under samjae. Taking the Pig page as an example, it first says that the Pig's 亥 and the year's 未 form a half combination (반합) that gathers into Wood, and that in the Twelve Spirits it is a Canopy year, and the Leaving year follows briefly after that.

A samjae year does not erase the rest of that year's content. Even within the same Leaving year, the Rabbit and the Pig each form a half combination with 未, while the Goat meets its own year. Samjae appears only as one among the several facts that make up an animal's fortune.

What has traditionally been done

What is done in a samjae year differs by region and by family. The widely known practices are as follows.

• At the start of the year, people receive a talisman to ward off samjae and carry it or put it above the door. A picture of a hawk with three heads and one leg is well known.
• People go to a temple and offer a samjae prayer.
• People hold a samjae-puri (삼재풀이), a rite to send misfortune away, for example by burning worn clothing or leaving it at a set place.
• Big events such as moving house, marrying or opening a business are sometimes put off during the samjae period.

Interpretations also differ. Some take care in all three years with the same weight, and some are most careful in the Entering year and treat the Leaving year lightly. Others distinguish a fortunate samjae (복삼재) from a bad samjae (악삼재), saying that depending on the flow of the whole chart, samjae can instead become a good chance. This is why, for the same person, one place may say to be careful and another may call it a fortunate samjae.

How Halmeoni sees it

Halmeoni presents samjae as a folk custom handed down from long ago. It uses only the one rule above for the calculation: three years starting from the Travelling Horse character of the group the animal belongs to, judged by the year's earthly branch. It does not separate a fortunate samjae from a bad one, and does not give different weight to Entering, Staying and Leaving.

The samjae paragraph on a zodiac page ends with the words "It has only been kept up since long ago as a reminder to be careful and does not mean something bad will necessarily happen, so take it as a prompt to think big decisions through once more." Halmeoni does not recommend talismans or prayers, and does not tell you to put off moving or marrying because of samjae.

Samjae is not among the calculated facts in a personal reading based on your birth date and time. A personal reading looks at how the year's characters meet your Day Master and your four pillars. Samjae is set by the animal alone, so it applies in exactly the same way to the three animals of a group, that is, to roughly one person in four. It is too rough a measure to speak about a year that differs from person to person, so Halmeoni does not calculate samjae and pass it on as grounds for a personal reading.

If your body feels unwell or you are worried about money in a samjae year, look at the matter itself, not at samjae. The order is to check your body at a hospital, and contracts and money matters with an expert in that field.