Stems on top, branches on the bottom.
Every pillar in a saju chart has two characters stacked: a heavenly stem above, an earthly branch below. The stems are the ten elements in their yang and yin forms. The branches are the twelve animals. Together they form the 60-cycle that dates every year, month, day, and hour.
The stems describe character — what kind of energy is showing up. The branches anchor each pillar to time, season, and place. A pillar without its branch would float; the branch is what gives it ground.
All twelve, in order.
They run in a fixed sequence, starting with Rat at midnight in deep winter and ending with Pig at the close of the year. Each branch carries an element and a polarity.
- 子 — Rat / Yang Water
- Midnight, peak winter. The hour the world is asleep and something underneath is moving.
- 丑 — Ox / Yin Earth
- Cold, dense ground in late winter. Holds the last of the year's water and waits.
- 寅 — Tiger / Yang Wood
- Sunrise, start of spring. The first push of growth: fast, directional, a little reckless.
- 卯 — Rabbit / Yin Wood
- Soft mid-morning growth. Flexible, leafy, bends without breaking.
- 辰 — Dragon / Yang Earth
- Damp, warming earth at the end of spring. Stores water and feeds what comes next.
- 巳 — Snake / Yin Fire
- Quiet heat at the start of summer. Radiates instead of flaring.
- 午 — Horse / Yang Fire
- Noon at peak summer. The chart's loudest hour — direct, expressive, hot.
- 未 — Goat / Yin Earth
- Dry, warm earth in late summer. Baked by a long afternoon.
- 申 — Monkey / Yang Metal
- The first cool air of autumn. Sharp, clever, alert.
- 酉 — Rooster / Yin Metal
- Sunset in mid-autumn. Polished, exact, a finished edge.
- 戌 — Dog / Yang Earth
- Dry earth still warm from a long fire. Guards rather than grows.
- 亥 — Pig / Yin Water
- Late evening at the start of winter. Quiet water gathering before the year resets.
Hidden stems are the differentiator.
Every branch contains one to three hidden stems: heavenly stems tucked inside the branch that the reader has to draw out. This is the part most casual treatments skip, and it's where saju gets its resolution.
Take 寅 (Tiger). Its main hidden stem is 甲 (Yang Wood) — that's the obvious one, since Tiger is itself a Wood branch. But it also contains 丙 (Yang Fire) and 戊 (Yang Earth) as secondaries. So a Tiger branch isn't only Wood. It carries a warming Fire and a holding Earth inside it.
This is why two people born in the Year of the Tiger can have very different charts. Their other pillars hold different combinations of those hidden stems, and the branches in their month, day, and hour pillars open up an entirely different set. The animal is the surface label. The hidden stems are what the reading actually works with.
Branches and time.
The twelve branches map onto seasons and onto two-hour blocks. Each pillar uses that mapping differently:
- Year branch — your zodiac animal. The generational and social frame around your birth.
- Month branch — your season. Sets how hot, cold, dry, or wet the chart runs.
- Day branch — grounds your day master. Often shaping how you partner and what you marry into.
- Hour branch — the two-hour window of your birth. This is why saju needs your birth time to do real work.
Without an hour branch, a chart is missing a pillar. Some readers will work without it; the read just runs at lower resolution.
Your zodiac animal isn't your whole chart.
The most common misread of saju is treating the year animal like a sun sign. Born Year of the Rabbit doesn't mean you are Rabbit-shaped. Rabbit is your year branch — the social and generational atmosphere you were born into, not your core identity.
The pillar that describes you is the day pillar, and specifically the day master sitting on top of it. When someone with a Rabbit year and a Yang Earth day master meets someone with a Rabbit year and a Yin Fire day master, they share a birth animal and almost nothing else.
The animal is the room you walked into. The day master is who walked in.
Branches interact with each other.
The twelve branches form a small grammar of relationships across pillars. There are clashes — pairs that sit opposite on the cycle and pull against each other (Rat–Horse, Ox–Goat, Tiger–Monkey, and so on). There are harmonies — pairs that lock together (Tiger–Pig, Rabbit–Dog, Dragon–Rooster). And there are seasonal trios that gather three branches into a single element.
You don't need to memorize the full table. Just know that when a reader notices your hour branch clashing with your year branch, or your day branch harmonizing with someone else's, they're working with this layer. It's a real part of the read, not flavor text.