Tojeong Bigyeol: Meaning, How to Read It, Calculations, and Differences from SajuFree

Tojeong Bigyeol is a traditional Korean yearly fortune-telling guide named after Joseon scholar Yi Ji-ham, whose pen name was Tojeong. Historical records suggest the book in its current form was compiled around the mid-nineteenth century.

Using your lunar birth date and the year you want to check, you calculate three numbers to find one of 144 hexagrams. The text for that hexagram reveals the overall flow of the year as well as the good and bad fortune for each lunar month.

A Tojeong Bigyeol hexagram number is a three-digit figure formed by combining the upper, middle, and lower digits in order, ranging from 111 to 863. There are eight possibilities for the first digit, six for the second, and three for the third, making 144 hexagrams in total.

The first digit is the remainder when your Korean age (the target year minus your lunar birth year, plus one) added to the year's assigned number is divided by 8. For 2027 (the Yin Fire Goat year), the assigned number is 19. If the remainder is 0, it counts as 8.

The second digit is the remainder when the number of days in your lunar birth month for that year (29 or 30 days) added to that month's assigned number is divided by 6. The third digit is the remainder when your lunar birth date added to that day's assigned number is divided by 3. If the remainder is 0, the second digit becomes 6 and the third digit becomes 3.

For example, someone born on the lunar date April 21, 1990 gets hexagram 163 in 2027, while someone born on lunar January 1, 1985 gets hexagram 662. Because your age increases by one each year and the monthly day counts and daily characters change, your hexagram number updates every single year.

Tojeong Bigyeol uses only your birth year, month, and day, leaving out your birth time entirely. Just as recorded in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, it uses these three factors to produce a single hexagram that outlines the broad seasonal weather of your year.

Saju, on the other hand, uses all eight characters including your birth hour to examine deeply how the energies of that year and month interact with you as a person. That is why two people born on the same day can have identical Tojeong Bigyeol hexagrams, yet have completely different saju charts if their birth hours differ.

If you only know your solar birth date, convert it to the lunar calendar first; if you already know your lunar date, entering it directly yields the most accurate result.

If you were born in a leap month, treat it as the regular month of the same number. If you were born on the 30th day of a lunar month that only has 29 days in the target year, base your calculation on the 29th day's character.

Paldo Saju's Tojeong Bigyeol calculator is in Korean only for now. To see how 2027 flows for your Korean zodiac animal, the 2027 horoscope by zodiac sign is the place to start.