酉
The Rooster
Announces the truth on time
The animal on this page is not the one from your birth year. That one comes from the year branch; this one comes from the branch of the day you were born — the day branch, as a reading calls it. Everything below is about that seat.
You and I have both been told we could put it less plainly. Neither of us has taken the advice.
The Rooster in Korean Saju
You say the thing. You have standards, you can articulate them, and you have limited patience for people who pretend not to have any. Precise, reliable, unusually well prepared. The cost is that being right is not the same as being heard.
The basics of this character
- Hours it governs
- 5pm – 7pm
- Its month
- September 7 – October 8
- mid-autumn
- Element
- Yin Metal
- Yang reaches outward, Yin gathers in
- Place in the cycle
- 10th of twelve
As your day branch
The Rooster is a day branch of clarity and order — it announces what time it actually is.
What this animal is like in a chart
The Rooster holds the autumn equinox month — pure Metal, the year’s one branch with no hidden agenda at all: its two stems are Metal and Metal. A Rooster day branch is read accordingly as precision: standards held publicly, work finished to tolerance, the voice that announces what time it actually is whether or not the room wanted to know.
Being right does not make it heard. That purity is the cost as well as the gift. With nothing concealed and nothing diluted, a Rooster day has no reserve to absorb disagreement: it is right or it is wrong, audibly. The tradition notes that its life’s work is learning the difference between accuracy and timing.
With the other animals
Bound to — The Dragon
The Rooster and the Dragon make one of the six harmonies (六合) — the closest tie two branches can hold. Day charts pairing them are read as binding: easy to fall into, hard to leave.
Struck against — The Rabbit
The Rabbit sits directly opposite the Rooster on the cycle — the classical clash (沖). Not incompatibility: a pairing that will not let either side stay where it was.
Allied with — The Snake & The Ox
With the Snake and the Ox, the Rooster completes a three-harmony triad (三合) that pulls toward Metal — three branches that convert best as a team.
Most people have never been told theirs. It takes a birth date, and a minute.