The Ten Gods in saju (십성), explained without the jargon
2026-08-21 · 8 min read · Ioreum
Open any serious saju reading and you’ll hit terms like “hurting officer” or “indirect wealth.” They sound ominous. They aren’t — they’re relationship labels. Each one describes how another character in your chart stands toward you, and once you see the logic, the whole vocabulary collapses into something simple.
They are relationships, not entities
Your Day Master is the reference point. Every other character is asked one question: what is your relationship to me? There are only five possible answers — same as me, produced by me, controlled by me, controlling me, producing me — and each splits in two depending on whether the polarity matches. Five times two is ten. That’s the whole system.
The translations are unfortunate. “God” is a rendering of 성/神 that suggests far more drama than the original. Think of them as ten roles in a household.
The five pairs
Grouped by what they do rather than by their names:
- Same as you (비견·겁재) — siblings and rivals: independence, self-reliance, and the friction of equals
- Produced by you (식신·상관) — output: appetite, expression, craft, wit, and the itch to say the unsanctioned thing
- Controlled by you (편재·정재) — resources: money, assets, the material world you can move and manage
- Controlling you (편관·정관) — structure: duty, rules, pressure, office, the standards you answer to
- Producing you (편인·정인) — support: study, care, intuition, the things that feed you before you produce
Direct and indirect
Each pair has a “direct” form (polarity opposite to yours) and an “indirect” form (polarity the same). Direct tends to read as steady, conventional, sanctioned; indirect as irregular, intense, unconventional — bigger swings in both directions.
Direct wealth is a salary; indirect wealth is a deal. Direct officer is a job title; indirect officer is a pressure you took on yourself. Neither column is better. They describe different textures of the same function.
Why the count is the reading
A chart heavy in output and light in structure reads very differently from the reverse — the first as expression that resists being managed, the second as someone who runs on obligation and forgets to make anything of their own.
This is where readings earn their keep: not in the label, but in what your chart has too much of and too little of, and what the current decade is adding to the pile.
Reading them honestly
Traditional texts attach fortunes to these labels — this one brings honour, that one brings trouble. We don’t write it that way. A Ten God describes a tendency and its cost, and the cost is information, not a verdict. If your chart leans hard on structure, that is worth knowing precisely because you can decide what to do about it.
Frequently asked questions
Ten Gods, Ten Deities, sipseong — same thing?
Yes. 십성 is the Korean term; “Ten Gods” and “Ten Deities” are common English renderings of the same set of ten relational labels.
How are they calculated?
By comparing each character in your chart to your Day Master — element relationship first, then polarity. It’s deterministic arithmetic, which is why a correct chart is a prerequisite.
Is “hurting officer” bad?
It’s a name, not a sentence. Sanggwan describes expressive, unruly output — the part of a person that won’t say the polite thing. It reads as talent and as friction with authority, and which one shows depends on the rest of the chart.
Do I need all ten in my chart?
Almost nobody has all ten. Eight characters can only hold so much, and the ones you’re missing are as informative as the ones you have.