BTS members V and Jungkook brought up saju while choosing Brazilian football jerseys in an interview released on November 3. V picked a red Red Bull Bragantino jersey and explained that his chart lacked fire. Jungkook linked his choice of a blue Cruzeiro jersey to water.
The jersey picks were part of CazéTV’s full interview, filmed during the group’s ARIRANG tour stop in Brazil.
What is saju?
Saju (사주) is a Korean fortune-telling tradition that uses a person’s birth date and hour. Its full name, sajupalja (사주팔자), means “four pillars, eight characters.” The birth year, month, day and hour each form a pillar. Each pillar has two characters from a traditional calendar cycle, a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch.
Readers use the chart to interpret personality, relationships and different periods of a person’s life. They look at how five elements interact across the chart. Wood, for example, symbolically feeds fire, while water restrains it. Earth and metal complete the set.
What it means to say “I’m fire”
The first character in the day pillar is called the day stem (ilgan, 일간). Its element is a starting point for reading the whole chart. Someone who says “I’m fire” may be referring to a fire day stem, while other parts of their chart can still include water or any of the other elements. Saying a chart lacks fire, as V did, is a comment about its overall balance.
To see your own four pillars and the K-pop idols who share your Day Master, try the saju calculator.
