TOJEONG BIGYEOL
What is Tojeong Bigyeol?
Tojeong Bigyeol is a traditional Korean New Year divination that maps the year, month, and day of a person’s birth onto the sexagenary cycle to calculate a unique hexagram, then uses it to read that year’s fortune month by month at the Lunar New Year. It is said to originate in a work by the Joseon-era scholar Yi Ji-ham (Tojeong), and remains a beloved national custom practiced every New Year.
Overview
- System
- Fate Reading (calculates and reads a unique hexagram from the date of birth and the sexagenary cycle)
- Origin
- Korea
- What You Need
- Date of birth
- Best For
- Life, career, money, timing
- Time Frame
- One year
Origins & History
Tojeong Bigyeol is a divination text said to originate in a work by Yi Ji-ham (1517–1578), a mid-Joseon-era scholar who took the pen name “Tojeong.” It is structured around mapping the year, month, and day of a person’s birth onto the sexagenary cycle, then reading that year’s fortune month by month. Sources differ on whether Yi Ji-ham himself actually wrote the text or whether it was compiled by later generations under his name.
It is said to have spread widely among the general public around the late Joseon period, and even today, when the Lunar New Year arrives, fortune-telling using Tojeong Bigyeol is still carried out on street corners and in markets, remaining a beloved national custom in Korea. The finer details of how the hexagram is calculated vary somewhat between sources.
How It Works
- 01Map the year, month, and day of the date of birth onto the sexagenary cycle.
- 02Calculate that year’s base hexagram from the resulting combination of stems and branches.
- 03Read the fortune for each month of the year based on the hexagram.
- 04Check fortune by theme, including career, money, and relationships.
What It Reveals
This is a New Year divination well suited to grasping the month-by-month flow of fortune for the year ahead, along with tendencies in career, money, and relationships. At the same time, the finer details of how the hexagram is calculated vary between sources, and it is best regarded as a folk custom enjoyed for guidance at the start of the New Year rather than a precise predictive system.
Related Methods
References
- 토정비결 - 위키백과 (https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%ED%86%A0%EC%A0%95%EB%B9%84%EA%B2%B0)
- Wikipedia: Yi Ji-ham (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Ji-ham)