10-year luck cycles: reading your life as a timeline

Your birth chart is fixed, but the calendar is not. Saju models this with major luck cycles (대운, daeun): a sequence of 10-year periods, each named by a stem and branch that interact with your chart. The cycle you are in colors everything — the same chart in a Wealth cycle and a Pressure cycle lives very differently.

The cycles start from your month pillar and step through the sixty-character cycle. Whether they step forward or backward depends on the yin-yang of your birth year and your gender: yang-year men and yin-year women run forward, the others backward. This is a calendar rule, not a judgement about anyone.

The first cycle begins at an age set by how far your birthday sits from the nearest solar term (절기, the 24 seasonal markers of the East Asian calendar). Each three days of distance counts as one year, so starting ages range from one to ten. Because solar-term dates are calculated to the day, the start age is approximate to a few months.

Each cycle's stem and branch are read as Ten Gods against your Day Master. A cycle whose stem is Steady Wealth favors earned income and building; one whose stem is Expression favors creative risk; one whose stem is Pressure asks for discipline. The full reading marks the cycle you are in today and names the age the next one begins, so you can plan around the transition rather than be surprised by it.