Guess what? I’ve been studying bazi for more than a year now! It’s been giving me all of these feelings that I had when I first started studying western astrology. It’s this sheer excitement and also this fascination with the art and the craft. Everything in life starts to feel a bit more magical.
I wanted to write this article playing with examining just Jung Hoseok’s day pillar in bazi not because I feel that I’m so good at it or like I have any expertise to show off yet but because I truly love the art, I am endlessly fascinated with idols, and I wanted to share that with anyone reading this in case you catch the bazi bug too.
Since the day pillar is just a small component of the eight character chart, this also feels like a low stakes way to explore the practice of reading. Keep in mind that an overall description of your chart has a lot more stuff involved than I’m doing here. You have to look at both your chart and your timing and know how to read the balances and imbalances. What I’m doing here is really just for fun.
I’m reading the day pillar of the four pillar chart because the day pillar is usually seen as the pillar that reflects your character. All of the other parts are viewed using the day pillar in bazi.
Hoseok is another person in BTS who happens to have Yi wood as his day pillar stem. Because I already looked at the poem about Yi wood from the Di Tiansui for Taehyung’s analysis, I won’t do it again here. Instead, I’ll just summarize.
Yi wood appears soft on the outside but can cut and control underneath the surface. It likes to cling to Jia wood and a sense of purpose. This purpose means that Yi wood bears fruit in the spring and it becomes grain in the fall. It doesn’t like extreme conditions and it expresses itself with fire. It grows around rocks.
Just like Taehyung, Hobi was actually also born in the winter when Yi wood things like grass and flowers and cacti are usually dormant. They’re sleeping! However, Taehyung’s month branch is Zi mouse and Hoseok’s is Yin tiger. Without getting too out of the scope of this article about just the day pillar, Hoseok’s season of February is a lot warmer than Taehyung’s in December. The grass is starting to wake up and the sun shines for a bit longer so that the waking grass can absorb light. Hoseok’s Yi wood is in a warmer condition than Taehyung’s. We could even say that, because it’s about to be spring, Hobi has a lot of potential energy inside of him. He’s about to spring forth.
How does Hobi’s Earthly Branch accept and express his Heavenly Stem, however? Hobi’s Yi wood is sitting on Hai which is the pig.
Hai pig is a branch that starts off the cold phase. It’s represented by a body of water. Hai pig contains Ren water which is big water but it is itself yin. This is because Hai pig is yin on the outside and yang on the inside. Hai pig is like a pond or lake. While Taehyung’s Yi wood is on dry land and combustible, Hobi’s isn’t because it’s actually floating on top of the water.
You know, Hobi actually had this plant before he went into the military. It must have been a tropical plant because he always watered it in his shower for a long time, soaking the plant completely. He loves that plant. He took such good care of it and watered it where he bathes.
The pig is the last animal in the zodiac. The story about it coming in last is so cute because all of the other animals are already at the finish line waiting for the pig. The huge race, a competitive event, just occurred and all of the animals were competing with each other. The pig comes in and cries because it’s last! This causes all of the other animals to give it different reasons why being last isn’t so bad. All of the competition of the day just melts right off because of the pig’s vulnerability. Everyone gathers around the pig.
Hai pig plays an important role. It has the ability to bring a collective together.
The other thing about pigs is that they are very mysterious. Pigs are also hunters but they don’t hunt other animals. They hunt mushrooms. Mushrooms are these fantastical and unpredictable things because you really don’t know where they’re going to pop up. Pigs can find mushrooms with their nose but, to do so, they have to keep their noses to the ground. They don’t see that far ahead with their eyes but use their other senses. This is why pig perception feels so mystical. It’s like they have a third eye.
Being a winter branch, pigs also wrap their bodies up in a lot of insulation to protect themselves against the cold. A pig knows their own vulnerability. I think that this is the aspect of the Hai pig that a lot of people latch onto. Ask someone about what the best branch to have is and they’re likely to say the pig. The idea of being a pig is also the idea of living a good life where you can eat and drink to your heart’s content. But I think the pig’s protection layer is more than that. Not only do pigs build a protective layer of flesh, they also build a protective layer of friends.
In folklore, pigs are usually seen as sexual icons. Zhu Bajie is a character who is a pig who can’t stop falling in love with different women and who women also fall in love with again and again. He’s actually the god of prostitutes. In stories with him, he’s the most gentle hearted and merciful character which is why people keep falling in love with him. A lot of people don’t know that Zhu Bajie is actually the Buddhist reinterpretation of an older goddess, one who had four faces and who gave birth to the stars.
Pigs bring people together. That doesn't always happen in a platonic way. There is a Jia wood stem hidden inside of the pig. It has a phallus. You might call this the pig’s hidden warmth. Eroticism is something that is necessary when it comes to bringing collectives together.
If you watch Hobi in BTS, he’s like the glue. They all cluster around him. He’s their second dance instructor! He patiently shows everyone how to do the choreography. He calls Taehyung, Jimin, and Jungkook his children. He flirts back when they flirt with him. He puts his arms around them. Hobi gives a lot of hugs. He’s so social. In his documentary, he’s always around people. He invited all the people he knows to his launch party and you just see him charm everyone.
Hobi is also an aquatic plant. Do you know what plants need to grow? They need water. This means that Hoseok’s Yi wood is wet. It has all that it needs to grow.
When a day pillar resources itself like this, it makes the person very intellectually curious. Hoseok’s parents are actually literature teachers. He was probably a really great student. Having your stem resourced by your pillar is about having a lot of intelligence. Out of all of them, Hobi is known to learn things the fastest. He can learn the dances on the first try and he learned how to write music, lyrics, and rap to join the group too. It’s like the Yi wood is a super absorbent sponge that can take in all of this information. Hoseok is perceptive and curious. He learns.
When Yi wood and Hai pig come together in a stem, they also form a Ten Spiritual Star. This is a star that gives a person wisdom. They might be really mystical.
I’m pretty sure that Hobi is spiritual in some way. His favorite artist is J Cole who is well known as a Christian rapper. The song that he made together with J Cole is pretty religious as well. It references that whole parable about Jesus walking by someone’s side throughout their life and carrying them when times got tough. I can really see J Cole and Hobi talk about this parable during their collaboration together.
Of course, I’m not sure if Hobi is religious in any way or if he’s Christian the way J Cole is. He hasn’t confirmed anything. He doesn’t necessarily share these things explicitly in a public way. Hobi’s lines in the collaborative song were not the explicitly Christian parts of it.
That said, I do think that Hobi has some kind of spirituality. When Hobi talks about being j-hope and trying to embody hope, he sounds absolutely devoted to the concept. Hoseok brings a ton of depth into BTS. With Mang’s character design, he wanted them to have a backstory where they have a hidden face and wear a horse’s head. He keeps talking about how he’s reconnecting to his childhood and the eternal self.
Any kind of spiritual pursuit is actually going to be about spiritual struggle. This is because spirit is hidden and reveals itself in conflict with reality. I expect that Hobi has some kind of spiritual struggle. It’s probably through this struggle that he’ll figure out what his unique sense of wisdom looks like, feels like, and sounds like.
