What's the special move
hidden in your saju? ⚡

A saju chart writes the year, month, day and hour of your birth as two characters each — eight characters in all. The two characters for the day are your day pillar, and its upper character, the day master, stands for “you.” Most Magpie Tests decide their result from those ten possible day masters. This one looks at the lower character instead: the day branch. The day branch is the seat your day master sits on, so in saju reading it's treated as your foundation — the place closest to you.

There are twelve day branches, from Ja (子) to Hae (亥), so there are twelve special moves. The shape of each move comes from the season and time of day its branch stands for. The twelve branches map in order onto the twelve two-hour periods of a day and the twelve months of a year: Ja is midnight and the deep winter of the winter solstice, O (午) is high noon and the midsummer of the summer solstice, Yu (酉) is sunset and the middle of autumn around the equinox, and so on.

That's why your special move here has nothing to do with the hour you were born. Adding a birth time only changes your power level; the move itself is fixed by the day alone. Day branches cycle every twelve days, so each of the twelve moves comes up for about 8.3% of people. There's no rare move and no common one.

Your element is your day master's Five Elements phase: Gap and Eul are Wood, Byeong and Jeong are Fire, Mu and Gi are Earth, Gyeong and Sin are Metal, Im and Gye are Water. The same Last-Minute Awakening feels different by element — with Fire the first hit burns hottest; with Water it finds a way around anything in its path.

Your type sorts the relationship between your day branch and your day master — what saju calls the ten gods (sipseong) — into five families. A branch's ten god is read from its main hidden stem (bongi), the energy at the core of the branch. For most day branches that main stem has the same yin or yang as your day master, which gives Peer, Eating God, Indirect Wealth, Seven Killings or Indirect Resource. But Ja (子), O (午), Sa (巳) and Hae (亥) hold a main stem whose yin or yang is the opposite of their outward one, so with those day branches you get Rob Wealth, Hurting Officer, Direct Wealth, Direct Officer or Direct Resource instead. A Gap-ja (甲子) day pillar, for example, sits on Direct Resource, and a Byeong-o (丙午) day pillar on Rob Wealth.

Here's how the five families became move types. Your own element (Peer, Rob Wealth) is a Boost type that powers itself up. The element you give birth to (Eating God, Hurting Officer) is a Release type that sends out what's inside. The element you control (Indirect and Direct Wealth) is a Control type that takes over the field. The element that controls you (Seven Killings, Direct Officer) is a Counter type that gets stronger under pressure. The element that gives birth to you (Indirect and Direct Resource) is a Charge type that fills up before it fires.

Power measures how much of five other characters (year stem, year branch, month stem, month branch and day branch, plus the hour branch if you enter a birth time) back up your day master. The supporters are the same element as you (the Peer and Rob Wealth gods) and the element that gives birth to you (the Resource gods) — the first thing a saju reader checks when judging how strong a day master is. Each character carries a different weight: month branch 2.2, day branch 1.7, month stem 1.4, hour branch 1.3, year branch 1.1, year stem 0.9. The month branch weighs most because saju reading measures a chart's energy by the birth month first.

That share is then compared against 251,667 cases — every one of the 19,359 days from January 1, 1960 to December 31, 2012, times 13 birth-time options (unknown plus the 12 two-hour periods) — and turned into a percentile from 1 to 99. Power 87 means that if all 251,667 cases were lined up from least to most backing, you'd stand at about the 87% mark. You get one star for every 20 points, up to five.

High power doesn't mean a better chart. Saju reading treats a day master that's too strong or too weak as a problem either way, and looks at balance first. This number is just a playful gauge of how hard your special move hits.

The twelve branches come with fixed pairs that pull together — the six harmonies (yukhap) — and fixed pairs that sit directly opposite each other and collide — the six clashes (yukchung). The harmonies are Ja–Chuk, In–Hae, Myo–Sul, Jin–Yu, Sa–Sin and O–Mi; the clashes are Ja–O, Chuk–Mi, In–Sin, Myo–Yu, Jin–Sul and Sa–Hae.

Your result's combo partner is the special move of the branch in harmony with your day branch, and your head-on clash is the move of the branch that clashes with it. Each of the six harmony pairs also has a combo-attack name. Get your friend's result and you can see which combo the two of you unlock; for pairs that aren't in harmony, the Combo Attack Test works out the combo too.

Tests like the Joseon job test or the idol position test decide their result from the ten day masters. This one uses the day branch, so people with the same day master still split across six different moves, and people with the same move are spread across five day masters. The only thing a day master and its day branch always share is their outward yin or yang, so knowing one result tells you almost nothing about the other.

Can I enter my lunar birthday?

No — the input is solar (Gregorian). If you only know your lunar birthday, convert it to the solar date first. Entering a lunar date as-is calculates a different day's pillar, and your special move changes.

Does not knowing my birth time change the result?

Your special move stays the same. Birth time only goes into the power level: with a time, the hour branch adds a weight of 1.3 and your power can move up or down; without one, power is measured from five characters.

Another saju calculator gives me a different day pillar

This test uses a single fixed method. The day pillar is set by the calendar date alone, with no standard-time correction and no late-Rat-hour option (counting births after 11 p.m. as the next day). If you were born after 11 p.m., a calculator that rolls over to the next day will show a different day branch — and a different special move. For a chart that handles those edge cases, the Korean-language manse-ryeok calculator lets you switch the standard-time correction and the late Rat hour on and off.

Does the result link contain my birth date?

No. The share link carries one number that packs three values: your day branch, your day master and your power level. Your birth date and time aren't in it and can't be worked out from it.

I don't like my special move

There are no bad moves here. Every weakness is written as a joke, and a low power level doesn't make the move itself weaker. It's more fun to grab a friend's result and see whether you unlock a combo.

Why only 12 special moves?

Because there are 12 day branches. The same move still splits five ways by element and type depending on your day master, and power ranges from 2 to 99, so no two result screens look quite the same.

If you've read this far you've probably guessed: this test is entertainment. The almanac part is a real calculation running on actual solar-term data, and the day branch, the ten gods, the six harmonies and the six clashes all follow the standard saju framework — but turning branches into special moves and the weights used for power are entirely this page's own invention. Saju has no concept called a “special move.”

If the chart itself has caught your interest, you can check your eight characters in the Korean-language manse-ryeok calculator.