Tojeong Bigyeol (토정비결)

Korea’s Beloved Annual Fortune Book

Overview

Tojeong Bigyeol (토정비결, Tojeong’s Secret Verses) is Korea’s most cherished annual fortune-telling text, consulted nationwide each Lunar New Year. From a person’s birth year, month, and day it derives three trigram numbers — upper, middle, and lower — that point to one of 144 poetic verses describing the year ahead. Each verse opens with a four-line omen for the whole year, then breaks down month by month, offering plain counsel on health, money, travel, and relationships. Warm, proverbial, and accessible, it has long spoken to commoners rather than court scholars.

Origin & history

The book is attributed to Yi Ji-ham (이지함, 1517–1578), the mid-Joseon scholar known by the pen name Tojeong (토정, earthen pavilion) for the riverside mud hut where he lived. A diviner, geomancer, and brief magistrate, he was famed for compassion toward the poor, and tradition holds he devised the verses to give them hope.

Most scholars date the text as it circulates today to the late 19th century, when it spread through woodblock and movable-type printing and Yi Ji-ham’s name lent it authority. By the 20th century it had become a New Year ritual; one tale says Yi hid a fuller second volume after people misused it, leaving the 144 verses known now.

How it works

A reader converts the lunar birth year, month, and day into three numbers — the Sang-gwae (upper), Jung-gwae (middle), and Ha-gwae (lower) — drawn from the eight trigrams of the Book of Changes; the math (8 × 6 × 3) yields 144 configurations. Those three numbers index a single verse with its yearly omen and monthly notes. The askTIAN API computes the three gwae from a birth date, selects the matching verse among 144, and returns its number, four-line omen, and month-by-month outlook.

Good for

Use cases

New Year Fortune

Generate a full year-ahead reading from a birth date in the Lunar New Year tradition.

Monthly Breakdown

Surface the verse’s month-by-month notes to anticipate favourable and cautious periods.

Yearly Omen Card

Return the four-line opening verse as a concise theme for the coming year.

Household Readings

Run the same calculation for each family member to compare the year ahead.

Key terms

Gwae
A trigram-derived number; the upper, middle, and lower gwae together identify the year’s verse.
Sang-gwae
The upper-trigram number, the first of the three figures computed from the birth date.
144 verses
The fixed set of poetic fortunes, produced as 8 × 6 × 3 combinations, that the system can return.
Seollal
Korean Lunar New Year, the season when Tojeong Bigyeol is most widely consulted.

API

The askTIAN Tojeong Bigyeol API returns the three gwae, the matching verse among 144, its four-line omen, monthly outlook, and a 0–100 score.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/korean.tojeong — 5 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.