Minji's SajuA Beacon Fire on an Early-Summer Ridge, Guarding Those Beside Her and Lighting the Way (Fire Dog)K-POP · May 7, 2004

At midday in early summer, you are the beacon fire lit on a mountain ridge. It is a fire seen from far away, so people take their bearings by its light, and you stand guard in your place so that the fire never goes out. Only, beside this fire there is not a single bucket of water in sight. Water shows neither in the seats of heaven nor in the seats of earth, and only one thread of it lies hidden deep in the Monkey Metal of your year branch, the oldest seat. You may think of yourself as someone who weighs and sorts things out, but what this chart points to is a fire that notices before anyone else whether the people beside it are cold or hot.

In Edo, as the shogunate was drawing toward its end, I remember the mistress of a weaving workshop who ran a little more than ten looms in a back alley of Kanda. Like you, she was born with the Fire Dog Day Pillar and the Performer standing on her month stem, so she went over the cloth her weavers made thread by thread and never held back a hard word. Thanks to that, the cloth of her workshop had a fine grain, but the road that brought in the thread and the road that sold the cloth were held by the wholesale merchants and their guild. The sharp words that became quality inside the workshop turned, again and again, into a wall that blocked her dealings outside its door.

Fire Dog — A Beacon Fire on an Early-Summer Ridge, Guarding Those Beside Her and Lighting the Way

You are the Fire Dog Day Pillar, a beacon fire lit on a mountain. The month you were born in is the Snake Fire, the very season of fire, and in that month branch Yang Fire, the same as your Day Master, sits as its main energy, while fire is stored inside the Dog Earth of your day branch as well. You gained the season and put down roots in two places, so your natal chart as a whole has a clearly strong Day Master. The month branch is where your Day Master comes into its prime, so your structure is the Prime Structure. Yours is a vessel that feels at ease only when it rises by its own strength rather than by strength handed down.

Your sense of responsibility comes from exactly this structure. The Dog Earth of your day branch is the Creative, a seat of feeding and looking after the people beside you, and the Sound Element of your Day Pillar is Roof Earth, so an energy that wants to shield your family from wind and rain is ingrained in your body. On top of this, the Yin Earth of your month stem, the Performer, shows in the heavens, so when that care comes out as words it easily takes on an edge. As you said in an interview, the heart you learned from watching your father look after your mother must have been a root sunk into this ground of the Creative and the Performer.

Yet another grain hides within that fire too. The White Tiger Star sits in your day branch, so even if you look composed on the outside, the strength within is great, and between your month branch and day branch the Snake–Dog Resentment and the Snake–Dog Ghost Gate are caught together, so the seat of work and the seat of the heart pull at each other. So when you rarely cry and then the tears burst out once you feel stifled or wronged, it is likely because words you could not let out have pooled inside for a long time. The Needle Star in your year branch gave you an eye that digs into even the finest details, but when that eye turns on yourself it drives you hard, so watch for that. Your outgoing grain, drawing energy from standing before people, is also a place where the ESTJ you have named for yourself and your chart point the same way.

You are someone who takes in ideas, sorts them into a frame and sends them out in speech and writing. The Yang Wood of your year stem, the Mystic, draws up unusual ideas, and that Yang Wood is bound to the Yin Earth of your month stem, the Performer, in the Yang Wood–Yin Earth Combination, so the ideas that rise in you lead straight into expression. The Scholar Star stands in your year branch, so your mind turns more in organizing and expressing than in memorizing. Co-writing the lyrics of “Ditto” and “Supernatural,” speaking three languages and living with order built into your body all came from this seat, so the place where your strength will be used longest, beyond singing and dancing, lies here as well.

Three kinds of work suit your grain. The first is planning and writing, which grow out of lyrics, because water, your Vital Element, is the energy that refines your thoughts, and the Scholar Star holds up that road. The second is outward-facing work that links people to people with foreign languages as the bridge, which is why the Traveling Horse and the Dynamic Wealth in your year branch make your energy flow all the more on unfamiliar stages. The third is the seat of an advisor who hears people’s hearts and shows them the way. The Performer’s hard words come from affection in you, so in a teaching seat those words are given their due worth. If I were to choose between an employee and a business owner, you lean clearly toward drawing strength from work with your name on it, but rather than a trader who shoulders the whole board alone, an independent seat where you answer for your own share of the work within a firm frame is the garment that fits you best.

Water is the central Vital Element of this chart. In life, water is the time that slows the pace of fire, that is, time spent thinking alone and putting things into writing, and metal is the habit of sorting and finishing that gives birth to that water. Earth, your Avoid Element, is also the outlet through which you bring your talent out, so you cannot cut it off. Refilling with the quiet hours of night as much as you burned on stage is how you keep your accounts.

Your wealth comes from your talent. It is a road on which the results made by the Creative in your day branch and the Performer on your month stem lead on to the Dynamic Wealth of the Monkey Metal in your year branch, a flow in which skill becomes money itself. In your year branch even the Hidden Fortune Star sits, so help sometimes comes in from places that do not show. Your Day Master is strong, so you have ample strength to take in the chances that come, but there is a clear place where the strength to keep and grow your wealth leaks.

The reason lies in a pattern where the fire is so strong that the water dries up. Even when wealth and bonds come in, the flow is such that they quickly dry up in that heat and slip away, so the time money stays with you easily runs shorter than the pace at which you earn it. The Snake Fire of your month branch and the Monkey Metal of your year branch join hands in the Snake–Monkey Combination yet scrape at each other in the Snake–Monkey Punishment and the Snake–Monkey Break, so the road by which money comes in is always followed by negotiation. The Robbery Star in your month branch is a seat where money easily gets tied up in other people’s affairs. As beautiful as the heart was that bought your parents sneakers with your first settlement two months after debut, know that your money is the kind that flows to people first.

In terms of timing, from the Fire Goat year of 2027 to the Metal Dog year of 2030, years in which earth strikes water follow one after another, so it is a time to guard rather than to expand, while the Water Rat year of 2032, the Wood Tiger year of 2034 and the Wood Rabbit year of 2035 are years that hold up your wealth. There is one thing to do starting this month. Set a rule to tie up part of what comes in, on the very day it arrives, in a place your hand cannot easily reach, and make every decision to spend a large sum only after letting it cool overnight.

For you, the star that stands for a partner is water, the Authority star, and this star shows nowhere in heaven or on earth but hides as Yang Water deep within the Monkey Metal of your year branch. Rather than arriving in plain sight, your bonds are the kind that stay hidden for a long time and then slowly come to light. The person who approaches you is someone of few words like deep water, and clear in decision. The Fire Dog Day Pillar goes well with steady, trustworthy people, so a bond you form after getting to know someone fully keeps you at ease for a long time.

Your day branch, the Dog Earth where a partner dwells, is the Creative, so when you are together the urge to look after and feed comes out first. But the White Tiger Star sits in that seat, so in the closest relationships your strong energy shows first, and the seat is tangled with your month branch in the Snake–Dog Resentment, so work and heart fight over the same hours. When work is busy you push your heart to the back, and the heart you pushed back easily comes out as nagging. So the person beside you needs ears that can hear the affection inside that nagging.

The times when the seat of your heart moves easily are around the Metal Pig year of 2031 to the Water Rat year of 2032, when water energy comes in, followed by the Wood Rabbit year of 2035, when a combination reaches your day branch. In 2031 the year’s stem binds to your Day Master in the Yang Fire–Yin Metal Combination, but in the same year the Snake–Pig Clash also strikes your month branch and shakes the seat of your work hard, so you must look after heart and work together. There is one thing to do starting today. When you bring up words full of worry, try once handing them over as words of wish, “I’d love it if you could do it this way,” instead of nagging.

Your chart is an extremely dry summer full of fire and parched earth, so when your energy overflows you do not even notice yourself tiring. Then, in the very height of midsummer or on days when work piles up, yours is a constitution in which the seething energy easily goes out all at once. June 2026 was the month when the climate was most out of balance, and in the summer of 2027 months of incoming fire continue as well, so around then leave blank spaces in your schedule first. A life that cools rather than heats, that is, walking by the water and resting in the stillness of night, is your way of tending your health.

The Ghost Gate Star caught between your month branch and day branch is a seat where thoughts burrow inward so that sleep and heart are the first to waver, so the routine you have set for yourself before sleep is already doing the work of water’s hour. In 2026 and 2027, when years of fire overlap the White Tiger Star, you must put order and safety first in any work that uses your body. You are said to have the strongest grip among the members, so preparation before you use your strength matters all the more. If a strange signal from your body continues for a long time, seek a doctor’s judgment before my words.

The Fire Horse year of 2026 is a year in which caution leads for you. Yang Fire, the same as your Day Master, comes into the heavens and Horse Fire into the earth, so the Companion and the Rival arrive together, a pattern of fire laid upon fire. This year’s word is “shared portions.” Competing with those who walk beside you and shouldering a share of the load both grow larger, and the year’s Horse Fire meets the Dog Earth of your day branch and gathers fire in one place, so the climate’s burden of adding heat to an already parched chart is great as well.

You must also look at where the present Fire Tiger Decade Luck meets this year. The Tiger Wood of the Decade Luck and the Horse Fire of the year form the Tiger–Horse Half Combination and gather energy in one direction, so it was a year with a tailwind for pooling strength toward the same goal. Only, the side it gathers toward is fire, so as strength builds, the heat builds along with it, and the way to carry yourself this year was to share out the work you shoulder together and to let off the heat you would otherwise swallow alone. If this past June was the month to be most careful of this year, the two months that remain now matter.

November is the Earth Pig month, which begins on the 7th, a month that flows smoothly, so it is enough to sort out the year and choose what to keep. December is the Metal Rat month, when water enters the earth, and of all this year it holds you up the most, so there is no better time to write down your plans for next year. The coming year of 2027 is heavier, so the plan you write down in December will become the embankment for the year that follows.

The two Decade Lucks you have passed through were both heavy times for you. The Earth Dragon Decade Luck from age one to ten was a time when earth lay thick and blocked the waterway, and the Fire Rabbit Decade Luck from eleven to twenty was a hot decade when fire and wood were added and the climate fell out of balance. In the Fire Rooster year of 2017, the Rabbit Wood of the Decade Luck and the Rooster Metal of the year collided in the Rabbit–Rooster Clash and bent the decade’s flow once, and that year you came up to Seoul alone. That you achieved four years and eight months of practice and the success that followed even though the luck was not holding you up, that very gap is your structure. It was not success pushed along by luck but something you achieved by guarding your own fire on the root of your Prime Structure, so the fuel you burned must have been just as great.

Where you stand now is the Fire Tiger Decade Luck from twenty-one to thirty, running from around May 2025 to around May 2035. The same Yang Fire comes into the heavens and Tiger Wood, the Mystic, into the earth, adding fire and wood to fire, so it is a decade of caution in which the climate falls out of balance again. Within it, the five years from 2026 to 2030 carry caution in a row, and among them the Fire Goat year of 2027 is the heaviest, as earth strikes water, your Vital Element, and adds heat besides. In the Metal Pig year of 2031 the help of incoming water and a clash striking your month branch come together, the Water Rat year of 2032 and the Wood Tiger year of 2034 hold you up, and in the Water Ox year of 2033 caution comes in again, so know that this is a stretch full of ups and downs.

Next is the Wood Ox Decade Luck that begins at thirty-one, running from around May 2035 to around May 2045. The Nurturer, the star of learning, comes into the heavens and gives you the strength to teach and organize, but the Ox Earth below thickens the earth, so it is still a stretch in which caution leads. Only when you reach the Wood Rat Decade Luck that begins at forty-one does Rat Water enter the earth, opening a decade of support in which the long-awaited water settles into the branches, and on through the Water Pig Decade Luck at fifty-one, water fills heaven and earth, just as in the flow of a Prime Structure that blooms greatly after middle age. After that, the Water Dog Decade Luck from sixty-one brings help and caution together, and the Metal Rooster Decade Luck from seventy-one passes calmly. So the present decade is not a time to make the fire bigger but a time to cross the five years of caution in a row, guarding your ember and firming up your waterway.

Let me set the ESTJ you have named for yourself beside your saju. On the axis of Extraversion and Introversion, both calculations of your chart point clearly toward Extraversion, so your grain of drawing energy from standing before people is a strength you can trust and use. The axis of Sensing and Intuition is different. You named Sensing, but both calculations of your chart lean toward the Intuition created by the Mystic on your year stem, so on the outside you work through the facts before your eyes and repeated practice, while on the inside you first picture possibilities that do not yet exist, two faces moving together.

The axis of Thinking and Feeling is another place where they part. You named Thinking, and both calculations of your chart lean clearly toward the Feeling created by the Performer and the Creative. Even when your words go out straight, as if weighing things, their motive lies in looking after people, so the remark that you seem cold at first but care for others more than anyone once you grow close is exactly the scene where these two lenses overlap. The axis of Judging and Perceiving points toward Perceiving in only one calculation, the one from the ten gods, so I will touch on it lightly. It is enough to read it as a faint grain of riding the flow as your instinct leads, sitting beside the Judging habits of planning and organizing that you keep close to your body.

As an ESTJ, you are someone who gets done whatever goes into the schedule, so fixing water’s hour as one slot in that schedule is the way of using your Vital Element most true to you. If you nail down one hour of the night once a week as a slot for writing, the grain of Intuition and Feeling will breathe within that slot. The learning energy of the Wood Ox Decade Luck that arrives at thirty-one will carry the writing piled up in that slot on into teaching others.

That mistress of the weaving workshop in Kanda never managed to greatly expand her workshop in the end. But in her later years she took on a soft-spoken head clerk to run the shop and left the bargaining with the wholesale merchants to him, while she herself remained only as the eye before the looms, and only then did the thread come in without breaking off. That she was blocked again and again in dealings outside her door was not only because of her temper. The system of that age, in which thread and markets were held in the hands of the guild’s men, had narrowed a woman’s road. Today that keen eye of the Performer becomes value inside works such as lyrics and planning, so it is enough for you to put those words into your works and share the outside negotiations with someone you can trust.

First, for work and money, while the earth years continue from the Fire Goat year of 2027 to the Metal Dog year of 2030, build up your writing rather than widening the board. Gather your notes for lyrics and planning into one volume, then in the Water Rat year of 2032, when water enters heaven and earth together, put them out as work under your own name. That is the order of this chart.

Second, for people, go to the side of those who think deeply and have bright intuition, that is, people who think, people who make and people who advise. Disciplined people who show through action rather than words also hold up your waterway. Gatherings of writers, places where people study foreign languages together and small studios where creative work is shared are the meeting points where such people gather, so within this December, when water comes in, set your first foot in one such place.

Third, fill body, mind and dwelling with night, the waterside and the north. Within this year, set aside one evening a week to walk by a river, and bring the deep navy and black you already like into the place where you work, as a marker for turning inward. At the very start of your bedtime routine, add a single motion of filling a glass of water at your bedside, and use each of those moments as a signal to look back on whether you refilled as much as you burned that day.

Fourth, before the Wood Ox Decade Luck arrives around May 2035, when you turn thirty-one, organize your foreign languages and your writing by the Wood Tiger year of 2034, well enough to teach them to others. Even if the earth grows thick in the next decade, when the star of learning comes in, a waterway dug in advance will keep you from being blocked by that earth.

The Water Rat year of 2032 is coming, the year when the long-awaited water enters heaven and earth together. Only, in that year the Yang Fire of the Decade Luck and the Yang Water of the year collide in the Yang Fire–Yang Water Clash, and intentions easily overturn, so rather than hurrying to change roads, use that water to put out into the world one piece of writing you have long been firming up. I will wait for the day the world comes to know what you put out that year and which road you chose.