(107) Saju of Vladimir Putin, prime minister of Russia

By Janet Shin

Once a saju master learns the birthday of a person, it is not difficult to see through their life style ― whether they aspire for fame or power, or other ambitions. Since saju is composed of the complicated combinations of heavenly and earthly energy according to the provisions of nature, it doesn’t reveal the truth of life by means of a simple translation, such as astrology or the zodiac signs.

In the last column, we learned how to understand the structure of saju. That structure explains one’s field of activity, skill levels and how goals can be achieved.

The first step is to find the day master, which is generated by the heavenly sign of one’s birthday. The day master plays a leading role in one’s life. Then the month branch ― the earthly sign of the birth month ― provides the stage and setting for the day master.

Saju masters can read whether the day master enjoys the playful life, looks for compromise, challenges or will struggle during its life path, which help determine one’s life style and the likely course of action one will take.

In order to interpret another’s life, saju must be read in terms of relationships among the five stars. The five stars are called the friend, expression, money, career and knowledge stars, and they translate to: parallel, output, wealth, power and resources.

As noted in the previous column, we will review the saju of global leaders. The first will be Vladimir Putin, who once served as the second president of the Russian Federation and is the current prime minister.

Putin was born with the energy of the sun, or the yang fire day master. Having the energy of a radiating fire like the sun, the personality of people with yang fire are distinctive, and like to shed light on everything. Yang fire serves to melt metal (another element) in order to create jewelry and polish them to shine. This means that the yang aspect radiates the fire character, and shows great driving force.

Looking at the generation cycle of the five elements, fire generates earth, which then generates metal, and metal generates water.

For the fire day master, the earth represents its expression star, which denotes the talents of a person. Particularly in this case, with the presence of the metal energy next to it, it shows great fiscal skills.

All four branches in Putin’s saju create a bigger metal trine, which in turn support the water element in his year stem. The water represents the career star, or the power of the fire day master.

While this saju looks as if it concentrates on the money cycle, it eventually flows toward the career-power cycle.

People would normally predict a career star-based structure for politicians. The career star may make a great political leader, but is subject to its surrounding and relationships, which means that the leader will have a strong reputation or build his or her achievements on economic stability. Putin is the latter case.

Reviewing Putin’s saju, we are able to understand that Putin is not the personality to protect an ideological system itself alone. From his saju’s perspective, power comes from wealth and it is economical success that will bring authority.

Trained by the KGB, Putin is known to hide his emotions and plans from the public. It also seems obvious that in order to keep ruling the country, he appointed Dmitry Medvedev to be his successor as president, while he continued his reign under the title of prime minister. There are also increasing hints that he will run for a third term as president in 2012.

All these may look very political and strategic to the outside of world. But according to Putin’s saju, it doesn’t matter what others think. He places more priority on how to achieve his goal of further economic growth and instead of taking any detours he is the type to be direct and efficient.

Information: Are you interested in learning more about the ancient Chinese teachings of the “Four Pillars of Destiny”? A special saju workshop is held Saturdays at 1 p.m. in Itaewon. For more information, contact Janet at 010-5414-7461or email janetshin@hotmail.com.

The writer is the president of the Heavenly Garden, a saju research center in Korea, and the author of “Learning Four Pillars.” Visit www.fourpillarskorea.com.