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Saju guide

Gongmang, the Empty Branches: How to Find Yours and Read It

Gongmang names the two branches left without a partner in each run of ten pillars. Here is how to find your two empty branches, where they come from, and how readers interpret them.

Few saju terms make people as uneasy as gongmang (空亡). Written with characters meaning "empty" and "gone," it sounds like a forecast of loss, and hearing that "this pillar is in gongmang" can leave a first-time reader worried. In practice the term comes from a simple gap in how the calendar pairs its characters, and once you see where that gap comes from, the word loses most of its menace. Below, the lookup comes first and the interpretation second.

Finding your two empty branches

The usual starting point is your day pillar. Take its stem and count forward, one stem at a time, until you reach Gye, the last of the ten stems. Move the branch forward by the same number of steps as you go. The two branches that come right after the one paired with Gye are your gongmang.

Suppose your day pillar is Byeongin. Counting on gives Jeongmyo, Mujin, Gisa, Gyeongo, Sinmi, Imsin and Gyeyu. The branch after Yu is Sul, and after that comes Hae, so the empty branches for a Byeongin day are Sul and Hae, the Dog and the Pig. For a Gyeongjin day, you count Sinsa, Imo and Gyemi, and the empty pair is Sin and Yu, the Monkey and the Rooster.

If you would rather look it up, find which group of ten your day pillar belongs to in the list below. Gongmang is not marked on Hongsil's chart, though the four pillars it lists are all you need for the lookup.

The six groups and their empty pairs

Each group of ten pillars starts with a Gap stem and is named after its first pillar. Every group leaves two branches without a partner:

Two of these names are run together in romanization: Gabo is Gap over O (甲午), and Gabin is Gap over In (甲寅).

Each of the twelve branches is empty in exactly one group, so everyone has a pair of empty branches. Having gongmang is not unusual; what varies is whether those branches actually appear in your chart, and where.

Where the empty pair comes from

Pillars are made by pairing the ten heavenly stems with the twelve earthly branches in step, which yields the sixty-pillar cycle. Koreans call each run of ten pillars, from a Gap stem to the next Gye, a sun (旬). Because the stems run out two places before the branches do, every run of ten finishes with two branches that never got a stem. In the first run, Gapja through Gyeyu, the stems are used up while Sul and Hae are still waiting. Those two are the empty branches of that run, and the pattern repeats with a different pair in each of the six runs.

Day pillar or year pillar? Books differ

Today most readers count gongmang from the day pillar, as in the method above. Another method counts from the year pillar, and some readers check both and compare. Neither is simply wrong; they are different vantage points. If two readings disagree about your gongmang, the first thing to ask is which pillar each one counted from.

Reading an empty branch by its position

Once you know your pair, look for those branches among the other branches in your chart. Under the day-pillar method, the day branch itself can never be empty, so you check the year, month and hour branches. What readers say depends on the position.

  1. Year branch: a certain distance from family roots or childhood background, sometimes read as leaving home early or living far from where one grew up.
  2. Month branch: the seat of work and society is read as open, so the person may build their own path rather than settling in one place for a long time.
  3. Hour branch: the seat of later life and children, often read as a turn toward inner or spiritual interests over material ones in later years.

Readers also ask which of the ten gods the empty branch represents. An empty wealth branch may be read as a relaxed attitude toward money, and an empty authority branch as a pull toward free work over rigid organizations.

Empty is not the same as missing

Reading gongmang only as a loss sees half the picture. An empty bowl can hold anything. Many readers describe an empty branch as a place where a person grasps less and clings less, and older interpretations link it with an interest in religion, philosophy, the arts or research, fields that deal with what cannot be held in the hand. The weight of gongmang also depends heavily on the rest of the chart, so a single empty branch says little on its own.

When the gap is filled

Some readers hold that an empty branch is filled when it forms a combination or a clash with another branch in the chart. This is called the gongmang being released. Whether combinations and clashes really release it is another point where schools disagree.

Time can fill the gap too. When a year or a ten-year cycle brings in one of your empty branches, readers say that position is occupied for a while, and its theme may come forward. Take someone whose day pillar is in the Gapsin group, with O and Mi empty. The Horse year 2026 and the Goat year 2027 bring those branches in one after the other, so a reader might describe those years as a time when a topic that had felt muted becomes more noticeable.

FAQ

Does gongmang mean bad luck?

No. Every branch is someone's gongmang, and everyone has an empty pair. What a reader looks at is whether those branches appear in the chart and in which position, and even then the reading is about tendencies, not misfortune.

What if neither of my empty branches is in my chart?

Then no position in your chart is in gongmang. Readers usually note your pair only for the years when one of those branches arrives.

Should I count from the day pillar or the year pillar?

The day pillar is more common today, while some readers count from the year pillar instead. Some readers look at both. Treat them as two angles on the same chart rather than one right answer and one wrong one.

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Part of the dotorium saju guide. Saju readings are for fun and reflection, not for making decisions.