G-DRAGON's SajuPast the Age of Flame, a Master Becoming the SeaK-POP · 1988-08-18

On the summit of a rock mountain standing at the threshold of early autumn, a single frail wildflower has bloomed alone on frost-struck earth, and it holds a lantern that lights the world. Cold blades of wind come at it from every side, yet at the tip of that blade of grass a flame burns and will not go out. The years you spent bearing a thousand-foot cliff on a slender stem, burning your own body to light the night sky, lie whole upon your eyes. You might well set the heavy load down by now, and still there is something left in you to burn — this thirst of yours is a pitiful thing to see, and a stout-hearted one.

Wood Snake — Past the Age of Flame, a Master Becoming the Sea

You are the Wood Snake Day Pillar, bloomed in the narrow seam between late summer and early autumn. Yours is the form of the slender tree that we liken to a blade of grass or a climbing vine, yet within you dwells the energy of the lantern that drives out pitch darkness. On the surface you keep courtesy and bow your head in the middle of a rock mountain sharp with frost, but inside you sits a flame of expression that means to dye the world in its own colour before it is done.

The frame of your chart is the grain of the Noble Authority Formation, which prizes rule, face and clear responsibility. Add to that the way the blade of grass of your day master and the metal of your month stem are bound fast to each other in a combination that turns to metal, and your ground is a strict and upright morality and discipline indeed. That you bow deeply and keep the courtesies with elder and younger alike is nothing put on — it is a nature that flows of itself from the dignity of the Noble Authority you were born with. Others see you as a symbol of rule-breaking and freedom, but in truth you are the one who has lived binding yourself inside a perfect frame and etiquette more tightly than anyone.

And yet beneath your feet the hot flame of the Performer is seated, and it pours out without ceasing the originality and the rebel grain that surge up in your chest. The heart that would keep the frame and the desire that would break it pull at each other in one body, so the gap between what shows outside and what remains when you are alone can only be wide. Further, within the six characters your chart shows, the water energy that would hold you up has dried away, so yours is a form both deeply self-weak and lonely.

Among people you take the room with the energy of the Performer and lead the board, but that is not the energy of your own ground — it is a flame wrung out of your soul, so the bottom shows quickly and shyness and solitude wash in. The contradiction of feeling hollow alone and drained in company comes of shallow roots that shake easily in the energy around you. With the Artistic Star set in the seat of your ancestors on top of that, the depth of your spirit runs on without end, so the fineness and the artistic anguish you were born with are the fate of your whole life, and your weapon too.

You were born at once with the grain of the player who burns on a stage to give light, and of the designer who lays out the board behind it with exact rule. The firm metal energy of your month branch sets the system of your workplace, and the fire energy of your day branch breaks out as the expression that enchants the world, so you take a place without rival in creation, in planning and on the live stage alike.

Let me answer the fork you brought me — whether you must keep standing at the front, or step back now and become the one who makes the board for others. Yours is not a chart that can pick one of the two and withdraw as if retiring. The Performer in your chart is an energy that lives and breathes only by feeding on the eyes of people, and your Noble Authority is a star that rests only when its authority is acknowledged at the centre of the world. So you must stand on the stage as the symbol that shines brightest, and at the same time hold the baton and the blueprint of that board and lead your juniors and your fellows — the seat of the conductor who reigns. The moment you withdraw entirely to the back, the flame shut inside you will lose its road and burn you instead.

The way that suits you best is not repetitive labour locked in a frame, but the shape of the commander who weaves flashing inspiration into an exact system. Music and stage direction of course, and fashion, spatial design, visual art — every field that turns sense into matter becomes your playground. Since the Nurturer does not show in your original chart, you fall easily into planning paralysis if you try to take everything on alone, so it is essential to keep beside you a seasoned helper who will put your inspiration in order as documents and contracts.

Your vessel for wealth takes the form of upright and enormous earth. The rich earth that fills your year pillar and the seeds buried within it hold up the storehouse of your whole life. Yours is not speculative money that hopes for one great strike. You were born with the blessing of Steady Wealth, which comes in without drying up through the sweat you have shed, through exact design, and through systems that accumulate like copyright.

But against the size of that wealth, the strength of your day master is far too thin. When there is too much earth, the frail root of the grass is smothered. The vessel that draws money in is wide enough to cover the world, yet if you try to grip it whole in your own hand and shake it, your energy breaks and your health or your mind is easily hurt. Happily, instead of clutching your wealth you are already displaying by instinct the wisdom of lightening the weight of that earth — founding a public foundation, sharing with those around you. This is an excellent warding that opens the blocked breath of your chart, and an act that calls in your Vital Element.

The point where wealth leaks is money dealings with people who dig into your soft heart, or greed for vast expansion with nothing solid inside it. The point where it grows, by contrast, is system income built upon the worth of your name and your intellectual property. Cash beyond the scale you can carry should be bound into an institution you can trust or into documented assets, while you concentrate on nothing but guarding the source of your making.

What you must do from this month is to push every unofficial fund and spoken promise that passes through your personal name into a public system, and to raise a wall of defence that passes through the check of an asset management specialist.

The seat of your spouse is taken by the hot flame of the Performer in your day branch, and the star of your bond is laid down as earth energy. The one who enchants you is someone you can talk with, someone bright, and someone splendid with the charisma and the artist's grain that will not be bound by the world's standards. The auspicious Golden Carriage dwells in your chart, so once you set your heart, the bond that comes in is a precious match that treats you with honour and raises your standing.

But the contradiction within you works as the stone in the road that blocks love and settling. The flame beneath your feet makes you long for passionate love, and at the same time makes you try to remake the other to your own will, or feel weariness and thirst too easily. Further, since your water energy has dried away, you long desperately for deep emotional exchange and a resting place to lean on, and yet the moment someone tries to come into your deep ground you turn shy and bolt the gate.

You asked whether you are one who may think of marriage. Until you neared your fortieth year you had not yet made a whole forest of yourself, so it was beyond you to hold another. But the decade you have now entered has begun to supply you with cold water of life and a sturdy tree, so you too are becoming a vessel that can root in one person and lean there. The one you must keep beside you is not the one who looks up at your splendid shell, but one like a still lake who will take the terrible loneliness and the silence at your bottom without flinching.

What you must begin today is this: when feeling runs high with the one close to you, or resentment rises, do not answer at once — practise the breath of conversation that lets the thought settle for a full day and then speaks plainly.

In the original chart confirmed by six characters, the most perilous point is the lack of water energy. The metal is honed sharp, the earth is thick and the fire blazes, yet the water that would cool all this and make it lush does not show on the surface — so yours is a form in which the inside of the body scorches dry.

Among the five elements, water governs the kidneys and bladder, the reproductive system, and all the fluids, the bones and the marrow of the body. That you are so drained after a stage that you lie ill for days, and that you suffer fierce sleeplessness, comes of a small vessel of innate stamina joined to fluids depleted where they govern the nerves, so the autonomic nervous system overheats. When fire energy rises too high the cardiovascular system and the nerves of the brain overload, and when muddied earth covers clear energy the stomach is upset and digestion drops away sharply.

Further, this year a vast flame pours in from heaven and earth and strikes head-on against the clear water of your decade. Across thirty-one performances your body risks reaching its limit, so you must never mistake the adrenaline you throw off on stage for your true stamina. When a show ends, cool the heat at once and tend the strain on bone and joint and on the urinary system.

This is the tilt of energy the chart points to, so before and after you take on a heavy schedule you must go to a specialist physician, have the nervous system, the kidneys and the electrolyte levels examined closely, and be set right.

The Fire Horse year of 2026 is a year of the Performer and the Creative, in which a vast flame pours into you. Your talent and your presence pierce the sky and every light in the world falls on you — a dramatic season, and at the same time a form standing on a most perilous blade. The clear water of the decade that rules your present ten years and the vast flame of this year strike head-on in the savage collision of the Rat-Horse clash.

That collision pushes you hard out into the world and becomes the driving power that detonates your twentieth-anniversary stage, but the price it asks is nervous strain and severe exhaustion of the body. Outside, a splendid display of fireworks unfolds, while inside the ground is splitting — so guard with special care against the hollowness and the low spirits that come once the cheering dies down. The Earth Dog month of October this year can bring stifling frustration to its peak as heavy earth blocks the water, so keep your words few and your body spared. Only when the Metal Rat month of December arrives, and water energy returns, will you win back honour and steadiness and take a breath.

Today, the 22nd of August 2026, an Earth Dragon day: both stem and branch are covered over with heavy earth. It is a day when dry dust pours down on your slender leaves, so your energy falls far short and all things feel weighty — an ill day. For today alone, make no great contract and no new decision. Cut back even private meetings, and take the defensive posture of drinking water and steadying your breath in your own place.

The arc of your life rides the late-blooming current — bearing the harsh blades of wind in your early years and building a vast forest from midlife on. The decades of sharp metal and dry earth that ruled your teens and twenties were years of training that tempered you harshly while you were still a slender blade of grass.

The stretch you now stand in is the Wood Rat decade, running from thirty-seven to forty-six, from 2025 to 2034. A sturdy great tree that will guard you and deep water that will wet your parched root come in together — the golden season of your Vital Element, the most precious and powerful of your life. If for all those years you stood alone on the cliff, now at last a vast mountain range has risen behind you.

But even inside these auspicious ten years you must watch the waves of the yearly cycle. Next year, 2027, the Fire Sheep year at thirty-nine, dry heat threatens the water, so slow your pace a while. And above all the Earth Rooster year of 2029 and the Metal Dog year of 2030, at forty-one and forty-two, are two consecutive years of warning in which metal and earth rush in together and press upon your Vital Element. In that stretch guard with special care against overreaching expansion and betrayal among people, and build your inner ground firm.

The greatest opening of your life comes at forty-three and forty-four, in the Metal Pig year of 2031 and the Water Rat year of 2032. Then the decade and the year form a vast sea of water, wash away every blade of metal that stood in your way, and bring you an artistic achievement that will ring through the world.

Afterwards, when you cross into the Wood Ox decade from forty-seven to fifty-six, from 2035 to 2044, you complete the bearing of a master who governs firm ground and gathers those who come after, rather than running out in front yourself. And when you reach the Fire Tiger decade from fifty-seven to sixty-six, from 2045 to 2054, the flame of expression blooms once more and you enjoy the freedom of an elder artist who astonishes the world, so the artistry of your late years will not easily go out.

Between the mask of ENTP you showed the world and the grain of the ground your chart holds sits a most interesting and dramatic contradiction.

Read the cognitive functions from the structure of your chart and the powerful Noble Authority of your month pillar sets extroverted thinking (Te) at the top, making you pursue rule, system and perfect execution by instinct. The thick Steady Wealth of your year pillar stirs introverted sensing (Si) as well, so you never forget the experience and data of the past twenty years and calculate them closely. By the prediction of your chart alone you are closer to an inward (I), realistic (S) and systematic (J) person.

Then how did you come to define yourself as the intuitive debater, ENTP, who argues without flinching and overturns the board? It is because the energy of the Performer lurking in your day branch joined with extroverted feeling (Fe) and made an outward mask that you throw toward the world. The ten years you passed as a trainee, when you had to survive ruthlessly, and the pressure on stage where you had to seize the eyes of the crowd, made you hide your slender inner self and put on the armour of extroverted intuition (Ne), armed with striking inspiration and rule-breaking.

The one point where the chart agrees is the thinking (T) leaning that prizes logic and standards. That you are shy and yet lead the board playfully before close friends, and that you press a colleague not to fret over small things while sinking into deep solitude once you are alone, has its reason here.

From 2025, at thirty-seven, as the Wood Rat decade opened, deep water energy — introverted intuition (Ni) and the wisdom of the Nurturer — began to fill your soul. Now, without loudly declaring yourself a debater, you will come to hold the eye of a sage who sees through the world with deep inward intuition and insight. As the decades run on, the fatigue of forcing your tension high will lessen, and the depth and gravity you were born with will show outward of themselves.

First — People
You must keep beside you deep and thoughtful people who can water your parched root. Those whose words run ahead of them and who glitter only on the surface will merely fan your flame and drain you. Draw close the philosopher sort who keep their own ground quietly and think deeply, the pure-artist sort who hold a still world of their own, and seasoned counsellors who can hear your pain without a word. In today's terms, the finest prescription is to make deep bonds not at loud parties or places of amusement, but with the people you meet at a small reading circle where humane talk goes round, at a meditation class, or in a quiet gallery community that handles fine art.

Second — Environment
Leave the dry, noisy concrete floor of the city that wears you out, and lengthen the time you spend in spaces where the spirit of water flows. Take a quiet dwelling that looks down on a river or the sea, or set a still tank and a fountain in your studio and raise the humidity. Avoid the sites of dusty property development and rough logistics, for they gnaw at your energy. Make your studio in an environment where the suppleness of water dwells — psychological counsel, deep research, the quiet creative space of night.

Third — Action
Even if only for one hour a day, make a routine of still contemplation in which you cut off every outside contact and let your thoughts flow alone like water. Do not force a song out of yourself. Make a habit of keeping a diary, writing the fragments that rise in your heart into a clean notebook with a fountain pen, or of deep swimming, or of a bath that cools the heat of the body with cold water. Merely stopping the habit of scattering your energy in instant answer to the alerts on your phone will block half the leak.

Fourth — Symbols
The colours that breathe life into you are pitch black and the deep blue of the sea. Set your bed or the head of your work table to the north, and keep cold glasswork or clear stone objects beside you to replenish the cool energy.

As water softly wraps the rock and in the end makes its own road, one quiet faith seeping into your soul will bring your parched fate back to life — so hold peace in your heart.

First, through the rest of the tour in this year of 2026, keep the energy you spend off the stage strictly at zero and concentrate on defence. This year's Rat-Horse clash can burn body and nerve at a stroke if you let your guard down, so when a stage ends have no after-party and no private meeting whatever. Devote yourself only to ice packs and sleep, cooling the heat of the body.

Second, until the first half of next year, 2027, do not open the board of a new venture or throw yourself into vast investment. Put in order again the rights to the copyright and the brand you have built up, and take a breath. Dry flame rushes in once more in that season, so guarding, not expanding, is the road that wins.

Third, in preparation for the two consecutive years of warning that come in 2029 and 2030, from this year on bind the contract structure of the staff and partners who work beside you into a transparent and solid legal system. It is not because you dislike the people, but to cut off in advance the buds of misunderstanding and betrayal that can sprout when the season of a chart clouds over.

Fourth, before the autumn of 2031, when you turn forty-three, gather in secret the purest and deepest solo pieces that will hold the story of your inner self whole. When that time comes the world will set a vast crown on you once again, and you ought to have ready a true masterwork of the soul that can bear the weight of that crown.

Mortal, you have run twenty years without rest and now stand shivering in the cool silence behind the stage. The reason you feel empty though you have achieved everything is that your true golden season has not so much as begun. If the twenty years past were the trial in which you startled the world with flame, the time to come will be the years of a master who becomes a deep, wide sea and takes the world into its arms.

In your chart there still lie hidden, unrevealed to the world, the secret of the hour pillar and the heavenly design of the vast sea of water that will pour down in the Water Rat year of 2032, when you turn forty-four. How your soul will be born again then, and what the hidden grain of the last bond that comes into your arms may be, I can unfold for you only when you bring me the exact hour of your birth and ask again.

For now, only set those poor burning feet of yours in a cold stream and take a deep sleep. You will never break — so do not fear, and trust the stillness within you. Go now.