(30) Friend Stars 1

By Janet Shin

What's the difference between avarice and ambition? Everybody desires a better life, whether a quality of life or wealth. When it is achieved, we consider it a successful life and disregard how it was acquired.

Saju considers three major factors to determine fate: time, space and the will (or the effort). These three factors are combined to make a person's life successful or not. Not a single factor makes one's fortune. Sometimes, real happiness lies in the acceptance and understanding of one's destiny. Unhappiness lies in the fact that we realize this truth too late.

We will be able to read fate by understanding the meaning of each letter in saju. Among various interpretation of saju, ten stars are the most practical and interesting for reading fate. As we reviewed the classification of the ten stars last week, you can know their attributes, a highlight of saju study.

Let's start with a friend star from this week. Open your saju and see what your friend stars are and how they stand.

1.Friend cycle

(Friend star)

It's the same element as a day stem. For example, if the day master is a byeong fire, the friend stars are jeong (stem, fire), sa (branch, fire) and o (branch, fire).

1)Family relations: brothers, sisters and cousins.

2)Social relations: friends, schoolmates, alumni, business partners

3)General and best traits:

― The friend star is the power of the person himself or herself

― Self-respect and propulsive force.

― Positive, plain and straight.

― Easy and self-possessed attitude but hates losing something.

― Lofty, bearing and stylish. This person is strong and therefore hates being constrained and usually runs his own business instead of being employed.

4)Worst trait

― Selfish and neglects others' opinions.

― Expresses and insists on his or her will.

― Recklessly pushes ahead, sometimes leading to failure and ups and downs

― Sticks to money and women, ruining himself and his family.

― Sometimes has suspicions about his wife.

The saju with too many or overly weak friend stars usually neglects social regulations and is easily left out. It lacks the benefits of parents and siblings, has a difficult life when young and makes its own fortune. Its business, occupation, family and money are not stable.

If the person's saju is in a bad composition, he or she may have conflicts with his or her spouse.

Here is a saju of a 54 year-old man. He is a Korean living in Indonesia. He was born in the month of yu (8th month of lunar calendar-metal) when the day master, gap wood, is restrained. He studied trading but was in his thirties when he graduated from school and worked for several trading companies. He moved around many different companies and started his own business but it created lots of legal problems. He was not able to engage himself in the trading industry again.

His marriage was not happy and he had to divorce his wife and leave his daughters. In his late forties, he married a woman in the exporting business and moved to Indonesia, where he's now settled with a househusband. He has five sons and daughters from his two marriages. This saju tells us although there are lots of friend stars (wood elements), they did not strengthen the day master. Lots of career stars, which are also his children (metal), made his life unhappy until he met gi earth (2nd wife). Still, his expression star, sa fire (social activities) and sin metal (career star) conflict each other, which prevents him from starting his own business again.

The writer is the president of the Heavenly Garden, a saju research center in Korea. She is the author of ``Learning Four Pillars." She offers saju courses for all. For more information, visit her Web site, https://blog.naver.com/janet_shin, or send email to janetshin@hotmail.com