Jungwon’s SajuA Silent Mountain, Crafting Song from Its Vein of Gold (Earth Horse)K-POP · February 9, 2004

Yours is the shape of a sun risen high over hard, settled ground. On the outside you look like dry earth that keeps its place quietly and squarely, yet within it you hold a great blaze and a keen blade together, so many people must have been fooled by the calm you show and failed to see your true force. You may have thought of yourself as someone who simply holds things up from behind in silence, but the energy of the chart you were born with already holds high the banner of a general who breaks through crises at the center of the group.

In San Francisco, in the days when people from all over the world flocked like clouds in search of gold, there was a man who opened a workshop for making clothes in a corner of a dusty market street. He quietly mended the torn clothes of the many men setting off for the rough mines and cut sturdy cloth for them, yet on that rough road the channels for bringing in good fabric on time and steadily taking large orders were blocked, so time and again he could not spread out a trade worthy of his skill, and it ate at him. Outwardly he always greeted customers with a silent, unruffled face, but how could I not know that each night, under the lamp he kept burning, he sharpened his worn shears alone, steeling himself in his heart?

Earth Horse — A Silent Mountain, Crafting Song from Its Vein of Gold

Your Day Master is Yang Earth, the symbol of a great mountain and solid ground, and with the vigorous flame of Horse Fire in the seat beneath it, you are an Earth Horse Day Pillar. Your earth is dry and hardened firm, so you were born with a strong grit and composure that does not so much as blink at ordinary wind, rain or shock. With Tiger Wood, the Fierce Authority, in your month branch and Yang Wood rising high on your year stem, yours is a Fierce Authority Structure, so rather than in a calm, comfortable seat, your grain is to snap awake and show your true skill in a crisis where tension hangs taut and the weight of responsibility is heavy. Your day branch holds the energy of the Peak stage along with the sharp Sheep Blade and the Needle Star, so although you look quiet and mild on the outside, within you lurks a razor-edged yardstick that tolerates not a speck of fault, in yourself or in others.

It can hardly have been chance that you took the front place and led the group at the young age of sixteen. The steadiness of Yang Earth meshes with the breakthrough power of Tiger Wood, so the more the board shakes and the more confused things grow, the sooner a cool head kicks in, one that says “every problem has an answer” and goes straight to a practical fix rather than being swept away by feeling. People may see you as someone without emotional swings who never feels stress, but in truth it is because the strong support of the Resource stars of Fire leads you to push pain and worry heavily down into a deep furnace in your heart and let them burn away there, rather than shaking them out. That you are shy with strangers yet open up freely once close, brimming with small everyday kindnesses, is because an innocence that wants to share warmth is breathing, hidden in the dry earth. Your way of ordering everything without a gap by procedure and principle, as your public type ISTJ suggests, should likewise be seen as a defensive wall by which the inborn sharpness of the Sheep Blade guards its place, and as a face shaped by your sense of responsibility.

Look into the way you work, and its backbone is the power of the Fierce Authority and the Nurturer, which finishes its share perfectly within an organization with a clear hierarchy and a settled system. When a hard task lands on you, your resolve to throw yourself in and find a way through, instead of looking for shortcuts, is outstanding, and the tenacity with which you break down fine moves, stage lines and the pacing of a song piece by piece, down to the smallest unit, comes from the precision of the Needle Star doubled on your year stem and day branch. You do not lose your way drunk on inspiration of your own, and your drive to push yourself to the very end toward a set standard and a flawless result is likely a great strength of yours.

You have both the patience to follow a system quietly, like an office worker, and the leadership to command a big stage yourself, so the place that suits you best is one where you hold authority of your own within an organization. Did you ask whether solo work, writing your own songs and standing alone on stage, is the right path for you? To give the conclusion plainly first, songwriting and solo stages go beyond a mere hobby. They are an outlet, like a lifeline, that your chart must keep open. Earth and Fire are piled layer on layer in your natal chart and packed hard, and the energy that draws this out and releases it as results in sound and movement is Metal, the Creative and the Performer, which is your Vital Element. The Literary Star and the Creative live and breathe clearly within the Monkey Metal seated in your year branch, so the talent to carve the countless thoughts and waves of feeling you have swallowed into precise lyrics and melodies already fills your vessel to overflowing.

What you must watch, though, is the trap of too much Resource, in which you think too much or are gripped by perfectionism and keep putting off the start. If you sit alone in your room bent on shaping a perfect masterpiece, your energy easily stalls, the way flames dry earth to the bone, so you must keep a working sense of putting things out first, even a little rough, and refining them as you watch how people respond.

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Water, which stands for wealth, does not show on the surface of your heavenly stems or earthly branches. It hides quietly as the Dynamic Wealth of Yang Water among the hidden stems of the Monkey Metal in your year branch. On top of this, the flames in your chart are so strong that it takes the shape of much Fire leaving Water scarce, where incoming water easily evaporates fast, so you must first recognize a structure in which your gift for earning is uncommon, yet money easily scatters in every direction if you grow careless once it is in hand. Having no visible Wealth Star means your grain is not to chase windfall riches grasped from drifting clouds, but to pile up your rewards steadily on the basis of your own skill, your honor and a firm position.

Your attitude toward money is very plain and rational, so you pay no mind to empty show or spending to impress, yet when it comes to looking after people or upholding the dignity of the group, you have a temperament that gives generously without counting. The virtue you showed in readily giving a large sum to the shadowed corners of society at a young age is likewise a beautiful expression of this hidden Dynamic Wealth and the weighty dignity of your Resource stars. Through your twenties and thirties, however, you must draw especially firm lines against partnerships, private money dealings with acquaintances and untested investment offers. Just as water seeps into earth in an instant and vanishes without a trace, money promises made under the pull of affection tend to come back in the end as worry, so lock the door of your storehouse firmly and keep it safe.

The surest way to guard and grow your wealth is not to hold the fruit that comes in as liquid cash and be shaken by it, but to tie it straight into documents, qualifications, or real estate such as solid land. However fierce the flames, documents set in stone and land cannot be burned away, so if you keep this principle, once you pass into midlife and beyond you will build a great fortress of assets that no one can touch.

To do from this month: set a fixed share of the money that reaches your hands to move automatically into long-term savings you cannot withdraw at once or into safe physical assets, and make it a principle to turn firmly away from requests for money from acquaintances.

In your chart the Wealth Star (the Water energy), which stands for a partner, does not show on the heavenly stems but lies buried deep in a crevice of rock in your year branch. This means that in the prime of youth you will not scatter noisy scandals or lose your heart to light romances, and only after you have firmly established your work and your place will you meet a deep, serious bond. Your day branch holds the Peak stage and the Sheep Blade, so the one you take into your heart, too, will not be someone who leans on you and plays the child. You are instinctively drawn to someone with a clear domain of their own, poised and firm at the core.

Your day branch, the palace of the spouse that governs your closest relationships, is filled with the hot Horse Fire of the Nurturer, so the right partner to stand beside you is a wise person who warmly soothes your weariness like a mother, yet can offer sound advice when it is needed. You have a habit, though, of not showing your feelings and quietly swallowing them alone with an “I’m fine,” so from the other person’s side there is no way to know your heart, and they easily feel the frustration of facing a wall. Because the energy of the Lonely Swan, which leaves you isolated, dwells in your day branch, you must guard yourself against the tendency to never fully draw back the bolt on your heart, even with those closest to you, and to walk off into a cave of your own.

The door to a good bond, where hearts are truly given and received, opens wide around the Metal Pig year of 2031. In the following year, the Water Rat year of 2032, Water flows in, but a clash that shakes your partner’s seat comes with it, so look twice at any promise you make that year. Above all, in the season before you turn thirty, when a cold stream flows in to soak the parched land, a true companion you can trust and lean on for life will come into view, so now is not the time to hurry in search of someone, but the time to polish your own vessel until it is large and clean. If you open up just a little and practice telling someone honestly about your small everyday grumbles and fatigue, then, like a clear spring welling up beneath a sturdy rock mountain, a partner who will be a cozy resting place will come to you of their own accord.

To do from today: begin practicing, once a day, saying aloud to the person you trust most around you an honest word of feeling, such as “today was hard” or “this upset me.”

In your chart the wood of early spring and a great blaze are heating the earth hard, so the energy overall leans far too hot and dry. Among the Five Elements, Water stays hidden under the rock without showing itself, so it is your lot to manage, all your life, the body’s moisture drying out and heat rising upward. If a red flush sometimes rises in your face, or your eyes grow dry and heat builds when fatigue piles up, the reasoning of saju would read it as the strong Fire within surging upward.

In particular, you carry the Tiger–Monkey Clash, in which the Metal of your year branch and the Wood of your month branch collide head-on, with the Needle Star layered over it, so when you dance or exercise hard you must take special care that your joints, ligaments and bones do not knock together and get hurt. You have a temperament that is dull to pain and shrugs off stimulation so calmly you are not even ticklish, but you must not forget that this may not mean your body does not hurt. It may be a state in which you are holding pain down by force of mind. What you must guard against most is overload, in which your mind fails to notice your stamina has hit bottom and you push your body to its limit, telling yourself “if I try, I can,” until at some moment you simply run dry.

You sorely need a way of tending life that cools heat and brings your energy down. After a heavy sweat, always drink lukewarm water often to moisten the dry earth, and rather than racking your brain under the lights late into the night, turn them off at a set hour and lay your body down in calm darkness. If aching cold in the joints, an unexplained feverish feeling or chronic fatigue goes on for long, do not put willpower first. See a doctor right away and get it checked.

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The Fire Horse year of 2026 is, for you, a year of the Mystic and the Nurturer, in which heaven and earth both burn with intense flame. The Horse Fire of your day branch meets the Horse Fire of this year’s luck and stirs up the energy of the Horse–Horse Self-Punishment, so even if your outward activity is dazzling and hot, inwardly this is a stretch of psychological strain in which you easily grill and drive yourself over questions like “Am I on the right path now?” and “What kind of person should I become?” Overflowing Fire clutters your thoughts and makes the weight of responsibility feel twice as heavy, so if a nameless impatience stirs in a corner of your usually steady heart, that is simply the natural working of your luck.

Look at the crossing point where your current Decade Luck of Earth Dragon meets this year’s Fire Horse, and you can see tailwinds and headwinds pulling evenly against each other. The standing of the great crowd and the team that support you hardens firmly, so your public achievements and position will be held securely, yet inside, the overflowing flames press on the channel of Metal, and alongside that sits the frustration of being unable to swing your creative blade as you wish, weighed down by the group. Once you pass through the dry dust of October and finally cross November 7, the Start of Winter, cold Water at last begins to soak the parched ground, and the tangles in your head will gradually begin to clear.

The coming December in particular will be this year’s finest turning point, as the cold energy of Metal and Water pours refreshingly into heaven and earth and settles the stifling Fire of your natal chart. By the end of the year, the work you have been quietly preparing will cast a solid light on the world, so for the rest of the autumn days the wisest course is to put your strength into a quiet defense, ordering what you already hold and storing up stamina, rather than rushing to start something new.

Survey your life as a great mountain range, and you ride the flow of a late bloomer. After tempering yourself harshly in the prime of youth to raise a great mountain, you pass, from around thirty to your mid-fifties, through a stretch where fortune and misfortune split according to conditions, and in your late fifties you dig dazzling gold and treasure out of the solid earth. The Fire Rabbit Decade Luck you have passed through, from age 8 to 17, must have been a season of endurance, when the Authority stars and the Resource stars combined and from a young age you had to bear bone-grinding training as you crossed the cold thresholds of harsh discipline, evaluation and survival competition. Because of that painful tempering, the solid Yang Earth frame that no one can shake today was built.

The Earth Dragon Decade Luck you are in now, from age 18 to 27 (from around February 2022 to around February 2032), is a time of the Companion, when vast land stretches out without end. It is a stretch in which you enjoy the glory of forming a great force with the steady comrades standing shoulder to shoulder with you and rising tall at the center of the world, but at the same time it is a taut, tense time when you must divide your share from others’ and take the waves of fierce competition with your whole body. Within this ten-year journey, the Earth Monkey year of 2028 and the Earth Rooster year of 2029 bring Companion and Rival energy in on top of it, years that call for special care in your rapport with those around you, in contracts and in managing money, so in those years look after the unity of the team first rather than acting alone out of ambition.

The Earth Snake Decade Luck that follows, from age 28 to 37 (from around February 2032 to around February 2042), is a stretch where Fire and Earth crowd in again, a time when fortune and misfortune split according to whether you draw that energy out through the channel of Metal. If you raise your expertise a level in years when the wind is gentle, such as the Water Ox year of 2033 and the Wood Tiger year of 2034, it will become the footing for rising to the rank of a master. In this period you will gradually shed the burden of leading the group from the front and settle in as a more fully ripened great tree, building producing, production work and an artistic world of your own. The Metal Horse Decade Luck that follows, from 38 to 47, and the Metal Goat Decade Luck of your fifties are also times that split according to conditions, so choose the side of guarding the channel of Metal, and from your late fifties (the Water Monkey Decade Luck), cold Water and solid Metal will come in from every side and a lifetime of toil will return to you as ample fruit.

Set your known type, ISTJ (the Logistician), side by side with the saju you were born with, and a very intriguing tension and harmony appear between the way you deal with reality and your inner motives. First, the Thinking (T) axis, which puts reason and logic first, points the same way in your saju too, but the lean is weak. The Fire that holds feeling is strong, so in one calculation the warmth of feeling even comes out ahead. The two calculations split and land close to half and half, and within that, the Fierce Authority of your month branch and the Creative of your year branch mesh to tilt you only slightly toward Thinking (T), which settles matters with a rational yardstick and solutions.

On the remaining axes, which deal with the direction of energy and with perception, a clear difference shows between the two lenses. Outwardly you wear the clothes of Introversion (I), quietly and carefully keeping your place, and of Sensing (S), examining the facts before you closely, but at the core of your saju, Extraversion (E), which wants to make your name ring out in the world and command the group, and the Intuition (N) of the Mystic, which sees through to possibilities beyond the stage that others cannot see, surge far more strongly. Judging (J), which values planning and control, is likewise only the product of training shaped by the leader’s role and the responsibility you took on outwardly, while at a deeper layer of your saju breathes the Perceiving (P) flexibility of the Creative, which wants to unfold inspiration freely without being bound by a set frame. This axis is a lean read from a single calculation, so it is fainter than the two axes before it.

So to use Metal, your Vital Element, rightly, you must join the bold intuition and expressive edge your saju holds to the frame of thorough planning and self-restraint that marks an ISTJ. When you make music or design a stage, do not lock yourself in a prison of rules that says “it must be done exactly this way.” Trust the unusual inspiration and daring departures that come to you suddenly, and allow yourself bold attempts to break the frame. Your true artistic calling will shine brilliantly not when you shut yourself inside a frame of discipline, but when you swing a keen blade freely on top of solid fundamentals.

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The man I spoke of earlier, who sewed clothes for rough miners in the dust of faraway San Francisco, never fully opened the channel to good fabric and a large market, and in the end had to close out his life holding only his worn shears to his chest. Looking back on that sorrowful spirit, who could not spread his sharp skill wide because the walls of his age were thick and the roads of the world were narrow, does not the world you stand on today throw open a dazzling stage, where countless eyes around the globe go wild over a single gesture of your hand and a single strand of your voice? You have met an age in which you can boldly pour the keen-edged sorrow that the old-world craftsman carried into the great vessel of music and dance and scatter it across the whole world, and that is a truly grateful, blessed fate.

To keep safe the road ahead of you, engrave deep in your heart these four ways of carrying yourself that I give you.

First, on the road of work and money, before you cross the threshold of the Fire Goat year of 2027, you must firmly set up a framework for songwriting of your own, through which you can fully hold the copyrights and the creative share in your own name. Establish within this year the discipline of burying the fruit that comes in inside a chest of trustworthy assets, rather than rolling it around as cash in front of you.

Second, in your relationships with people and the group, do not try to shoulder every burden alone and drag it along from the front. Show the wisdom to share the hilt of practical work with advisers or colleagues who carry Metal energy, decisive and clear about when to bind and when to cut. Never forget that a leader is not a shield that takes every arrow alone, but a steady lighthouse that lights up each person’s place.

Third, in tending body and mind, make it second nature to cool the heat rising in your chest with a ritual of resting in quiet darkness each evening as you finish the day’s work. Place a clock or a simple, structured metal object that holds the cool energy of metal in a corner of the room where you stay, and make looking at it a signal to pare away the restless flames within, and calm will settle in your heart on its own.

Fourth, before you meet the upheaval of the Earth Snake Decade Luck that arrives at twenty-eight, you must sheathe the harsh blade of the Sheep Blade that drives you so hard, and gain the mercy to accept your wounds and weariness as they are. It is fine not to be perfect, and it is all right to come undone now and then, but you must dig at least one breathing hole where you can pour out your true heart honestly, for only then does parched land keep from cracking.

The chart you were born with may look as parched as a desert, yet it is a precious mountain hiding, deep within, a vein of pure gold that no one has yet mined. How could I fail to understand the weariness of having worn a heavy crown on your head at the tender age of sixteen and endured the wind and rain? Do not be too hard on yourself. You are already doing your part in full, and thanks to the years you have held firm through, the world will one day embrace you.

When the Fire Goat year of 2027 comes, the flame of your day branch and the earth of that year’s luck will gently clasp hands, and a season of harmony will arrive in which the weight of responsibility that has pressed on you so long grows much lighter, and the unity of the group and your own standing settle in warmer and firmer. Once you have safely crossed the hot winds of that summer, come back to me with a lighter face and tell me what echo the music and dance you have shaped left in the world. Instead of the sharp lash you turn on yourself, may a gentle warmth that soaks your parched soul always stay by your side.