Material Religion

The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief

ISSN: 1743-2200 (Print) 1751-8342 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfmr20

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation,

Scripts, and the Virtual in South Korean Eight-
character Fortune Telling

David J. Kim

To cite this article: David J. Kim (2019) Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts,
and the Virtual in South Korean Eight-character Fortune Telling, Material Religion, 15:5, 599-618,
DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2019.1676623

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2019.1676623

Published online: 08 Nov 2019.

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divination and its
potential futures:
sensation, scripts, and the
virtual in south korean
eight-character fortune
telling
david j. kim

departments of anthropology and media studies, purchase college, suny, harrison,

new york, usa
 ABSTRACT
Horoscopic eight-character divination (saju p’alcha) flourishes
both face-to-face and online in South Korea. Contrary to a
face-to-face reading, however, the fortune teller is no longer
necessary in digital divination. This article highlights some
of the transitions and tensions between more conventional
forms of divination and their digital counterparts. Rather
than conceptualizing these transitions in relation to a loss
of authenticity or material presence, this work examines the
potentials of online mediations in regard to how they are not
only consumed as knowledge, but also as phenomenological
and affective experiences connected to the virtual. The virtual
foundations of religion expand to include divination activity,
which are key to understanding its proliferation across digital
platforms.

Keywords: divination, virtual, South Korea, mediumship,

technology.

David J. Kim is Assistant Professor of

Anthropology at Purchase College, SUNY.
His research focuses on magic, divination,
and healing in contemporary South Korea.
His other scholarly interests include critical Material Religion volume 15, issue 5, pp. 599–618
and post-structural theory, psychoanalysis, DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2019.1676623
posthumanism, affect, technology and new
media, and anthropology of the senses.
david-j.kim@purchase.edu © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 I have known the diviner Haedong-nim, whom I refer to in the
honorific, since I began my field research in Seoul, South Korea,
in 2004. At the time I was primarily focused on shamanic activity,
but expanded to include other forms of divination, in particular
horoscopic saju p’alcha (saju for short) or the four pillars and
eight Chinese characters, used to determine a person’s fate and

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
fortune. During those early years Haedong-nim was working
at a saju café, nearby the main gate to Ewha Women’s Univer-
sity in Seoul. There, he would give readings to mostly college
students who sat in tabled booths and gathered for drinks and
snacks, as well as the chance to peer into their futures. What
career path should they pursue? Was it a good year to study

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

abroad? What types of traits should they be looking for in a
possible partner? What should they be focusing on in terms
of their general health? The answers to every question were in
their eight characters, in addition to individualized knowledge
about their fate and personality. On a worksheet, he would jot
down a patron’s year, month, day, and time, and reference their
eight distinct Chinese characters found in an almanac. Scribbling
the characters into set boxes on his worksheet, he would give
entertaining readings, based on his study of numerous divina-

David J. Kim
tion texts—some old, some newer, some even “ancient”—while
mixing in his knowledge of psychology and modern philosophy,
with some analogies to fractals and quantum physics thrown in
for good measure.
As the years went by, Haedong-nim would save money and
move into his own private office, where he now gives more
lucrative face-to-face consultations. He looks fondly back on
his work at the café as time when he could give a large number
of readings in a condensed period—a great way for a young
diviner to hone their skills. He currently teaches saju divination

Volume 15
to a number of his own students and moderates an online for-

Issue 5
tune telling group, while finishing his master’s thesis for a degree
in Eastern philosophy. Like many diviners, he has felt pressure
from the proliferation of online fortune telling sites, which have
put new demands on his livelihood. With incisive structural
precision as to the nature of his craft, Haedong-nim recently told
me that “saju is digital.” It was a statement, in fact, not so much
about possible futures, but something more foundational, which
601 upon further examination troubles the idea of analog and digital
divides—with sensuous materiality on one side and representa-
tional surface effects on the other—and the qualitative aspects
of both when connected to divination and its mediums.

Divination and Its Mediums in South Korea

Studies of divination in South Korea in relation to new media
Material Religion

platforms—the internet in particular—have focused primarily

on inspirational or charismatic forms of Korean shamanism,
which yield qualitatively different results than this study of
Article

horoscopic divination practices that are largely void of such

categories.1 Studies of eight-character saju p’alcha divination
 and its practitioners, more generally, have been far more limited
in scope than its shamanic counterpart.2 Despite this, however,
there are significant theoretical and structural affinities between
shamanic and horoscopic divination, as well as similar tensions,
particularly in regard to the differences between face-to-face
interactions and the dilemmas diviners confront when moving
parts of their practice online (see Sarfati 2016; Lee 2016). One
work in particular, Seongnae Kim’s, “Korean Shamanic Practice
in Cyber Culture” (2005b), is especially relevant to the virtual
aspects of divination, which are explored in this article.
Based on observations during the rise of shamanic practices
online during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kim’s work raises
issues regarding the loss of the real connected to discourses of
authenticity, articulated via shamans themselves by an empha-
sis on face-to-face encounters and its efficacy determined by
inspirational techniques. Indeed, the timing of Kim’s work, at
the very emergence of internet shamanism in South Korea, is
of particular significance, as it captures the qualitative anxieties
of a transition from the analog to the digital. Friedrich Kittler
articulated this as an almost tectonic and anxiety producing
divide, emphasizing that in the digital realm, “Sound and image,
voice and text are reduced to surface effects…Sense and the
senses turn into eyewash” (1999, 1). Depth is not a concern in
the processing of digital information; if anything, depth itself is
now a limit. The deeper one burrows into the digital channels
of representation, the less one senses, much less comprehends.
Looking deeper only reveals discrete units and binary code;
chains of presence are broken, and in their place is a series of
“1”s and “0”s. The specter of loss is prevalent in this formulation,
problematized in Korean shamanism by Kim’s informants’ prefer-
ence for inspirational and embodied ritual activity, in addition to
tangible and “proper” talismans prayed over with time and labor,
drawn in accordance with established ritual activity and sacred
materials (2005b, 10). This proclaimed necessity of the body in
space—or what might be seen as analog materialities—sug-
gests a lack produced by fission. Kim’s work at first glance seems
to follow this logic, as cyber-shamanism for her is indicative of
a crisis of an indeterminant “original place” of spiritualized infor-
mation, and the subsequent flattening of such information by
602 the “equalizing effects” of digital technologies (2005b, 13).
Kim, however, is not content to dwell on the crisis of origin
she identifies and simply mourn its disappearance. Where she
departs from a discourse of loss (produced by the conception
of an analog/digital divide) is an examination of what she refers
to as the “virtual transformation of shamanic practices,” and
alongside it an analysis of “virtual religiosity” (2005b 15). For Kim,
virtual reality and cyberspace are not limited to representational
or aesthetic platforms through which the shaman can craft new
personas. Although she ultimately concludes that cyber-sha-
mans, or even potential “cyborg shamans,” engage mostly in
activities of “imitation or simulation” (2005b 18), her work at
 other points radically connects shamanic practice (in all forms)
to virtuality itself, defined by her as “becoming other” (2005b 13,
citing Levy 1998). Along these lines, she also provocatively states
that shamanism, even in its most “archaic” forms, “consists of
virtual reality” (2005b 16 italics mine)—shamanism itself was
already virtual. It is this virtual foundation, in addition to the idea

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
of a virtual religiosity, or even religion as virtual, that I wish to
explore further in this study of horoscopic eight-character
divination, as it takes place both face-to-face and online.

Divination and the Virtual

The idea of religion as virtual, is one of the topics explored

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

in Hent de Vries’ “In Media Res” (2001). Through the work of
Manuel Castells, de Vries describes the experience of virtuality
as “an intensification of the phenomenology of experience…
an expansion and extension of experience as it has happened
to us so far, rather than with its limit, with a nonphenomenal-
ity of sorts” (de Vries 2001, 12). This experience of virtuality is
further described as one in which “space flows and timeless
time are the material foundations for a new culture,” which is
“real virtuality” (de Vries 13 citing Castells 1996). The virtual,

David J. Kim
therefore, does not preclude sensibility, or sensation, and
produces durations and intensities by which we are affected.
For de Vries, and Seongnae Kim for that matter, these intensi-
ties connect the virtual to “religion” in perhaps the broadest, if
not etymologically grounded sense of the word. Religion is a
relation or connection with “otherness” and is thus potentially
“everywhere and nowhere” at the same time (de Vries 18)—it
is both immanent and emergent. Technologies that mediate
the virtual, likewise, share an “intrinsic nature” with the reli-
gious, which extends to the overlapping of mediumship and

Volume 15
mediation, and hence media as religion becomes a concep-

Issue 5
tual possibility (de Vries 14). Following this, it can be argued
that this expanded conceptualization of religiosity tied to the
virtual as contact with something “other,” or the experience of
alterity, also extends to practices such as divination and even
magic.
I am also persuaded by Martin Holbraad’s idea that an
anthropological study of divination should place an emphasis
603 on what can exist versus “what can be known” (2009, 82–83).
Divination in this formulation, perhaps counter-intuitively, is
not necessarily about a search for knowledge, or filling gaps,
but what it traverses, which in turn preconditions or disturbs
knowledge. Alterity is that disturbance, marked as otherness.
Following Holbraad, it can be understood that these (divina-
tory) disturbances, which are connected to volatile and “motile”
Material Religion

energies, were never really lost or repressed in the first place, but
always rich in immanent potential and connected to the virtual.
(Holbraad 2012, 162–165; see also Baxstrom and Meyers 2015;
Article

Delpech-Ramey, Harris, and. Delpech-Ramey 2010). In this for-

mulation, a transition from face-to-face or analog divination to
 digital surfaces and platforms is not necessarily about irretriev-
able loss, or the return of a hidden alterity, but can be under-
stood by an ever-persistent virtuality. Divination comes from an
external place; it traverses, moves through, makes contact, and
creates. Along these lines, Brian Massumi states that “[d]igital
technologies have a connection to the potential and the virtual
only through the analog” (2002, 138, italics his). The actualization
of virtual forces makes them sensate and qualitative, as they
are made to appear via the medium in question—in this case,
the techne of divination (see also Ishii 2012). Digital forms of
representation and aesthetics might not be so detached from
the senses, as Kittler seems to bemoan—they are not just “simu-
lacra,” imaginary, or fictive, but can be “felt in the bones” (Meyer
2009, 5).
The trick, perhaps, following Brian Rotman, is to understand
the digital as a vehicle for virtuality, as at once belonging to the
future, but just as much belonging to something “ancient” (2008,
112) —keeping in mind that they are not equivalent terms.
Massumi goes so far as at say that “[n]othing is more destructive for
the thinking and imagining of the virtual than equating it with
the digital” (2002, 137). The difference here is that the virtual
should be understood in relation to a field of “potential” filled
with generative “motor” forces that intersect with mediums,
systems, and technologies producing a number of “possibilities”
(Massumi, 136). Central to this is the subtle difference between
“possibility” and “potential.” What is “possible” then is constrained
by the medium through which virtual forces intersect (like
digital technology or algorithmic code), whereas “potential” is
the free, unmarked, state of forces before they are actualized by
such mediums. Returning to Rotman, there is an “ancient” virtual
“X” or presence/absence “inundating contemporary life” (2008,
112), which as a non-sensuous precursor to abstraction takes
on a mysterious quality—a kind of generative force or infinity.
The foundations for digital culture are not so new as they might
appear.

Saju Divination and Its Demands

Fortune telling thrives in South Korea and there are no short-
ages of diviners or customers. A cultural survey of one thousand
604 South Koreans over the age of nineteen by the Asan Institute for
Policy Studies, showed 4 of 10 respondents having visited a face-
to-face diviner, estimating about 15 million out of a qualified
population range of 40 million (SBS CNBC 2014; Joongang Daily
2014). A market research survey of nine hundred adults showed
almost 80 percent of those questioned saying they had used an
internet fortune telling site (Trend Monitor 2010). Another study
of one thousand fortune telling site users by the same company,
showed 46 percent of respondents saying they used sites “habit-
ually,” with a majority of users in their 20 s and 30 s. Just over
25 percent of those surveyed actually paid for online services
 (Trend Monitor 2012). Fortune telling by some estimates is a 4
trillion won industry (or roughly 3.5 billion USD), with half of that
number now accounted for by digital formats such as internet
sites and phone apps (Joongang Daily 2016; World Daily 2015).
The Statistics Korea [t’onggye ch’ŏng] online database in 2013
recorded 12,699 “fortune teller and other related businesses,”

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
keeping in mind that such a number does not take into account
unregistered diviners or sites. While such studies do not always
detail the specific type of divination in question—whether they
are inspirational or horoscopic—they are strong indicators of
a “networked,” or “N-Generation” that is perfectly comfortable
looking online for knowledge of their fate and future, in addition

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

to face-to-face encounters.
“Saju” literally stands for “four pillars,” “sa” meaning four and
“ju” meaning pillar in Korean. The four pillars refer to a person’s
year (1), month (2), day (3), and time (4) of birth according
to the lunar calendar. ‘P’alcha’ is directly translated to ‘eight
characters,’ found by using a large reference guide known as the
‘manseryŏk.’ Each pillar of year, month, day, and time is assigned
both a heavenly (top) and earthly (bottom) component. The 10
heavenly stems are comprised by the 5 elements of fire, water,

David J. Kim
wood, metal, and earth, further divided into negative and
positive, or ŭm and yang (yin and yang). The 12 earthly stems are
the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. Together they form a base
combination of sixty pairs (yuksip kapcha), which determine the
characteristics of a given year within one sixty-year cycle. This
is then combined with a person’s own 4 pillars of year, month,
day, and time (two characters for each pillar for a total of eight),
which varies over five twelve-year cycles.
Based on introductions to reference guidebooks and echoed
by some saju diviners I have known over the years, there are

Volume 15
518,400 eight-character p’alcha combinations in a sixty-year

Issue 5
cycle, and this does not take into account the diverse systems of
interpretation diviners use to read and interpret one’s saju p’alcha.3
It should be noted that the various methods of interpreting
saju are far too diverse to cover here. Even amongst my closest
diviner informants there is plenty of variation, including each
diviner’s own personality, politics, worldview, and intellectual
background. Such factors inevitably shape a diviner’s style and
605 craft, and in particular their views on fate, destiny, free will, and
environment. Some diviners, for example, may speak of fate and
destiny as immutable, while others may consider environment
a much more significant factor. But as a place to position this
discussion in relation to digital media, what does seem to be a
common thread—at least amongst my closest informants, who
make their living primarily doing face-to-face consultations—is
Material Religion

a general apprehension towards internet divination sites, at the

very least in terms of their quality or accuracy.
A common opinion amongst the saju diviners whom I have
Article

interviewed over the years, is that internet divination is a less

 respectable, if not inauthentic form of divination. The question
of authenticity has arisen often, from the standpoint of both
patrons and diviners, and is directly connected to accuracy. Most
of the diviners I have met will obviously point to their practices
as being both accurate and effective; they point to experience
and study as indicators of mastery of the craft. Diviners also
point to number of clients, loyalty, and popularity through word
of mouth, in particular, as signs of success. Earnings are also
another indicator, as one’s financial gains are an ostensible, if
not quantitative, sign of one’s abilities. A diviner is able to make
a successful living for a reason, after all. Mr. Sam, a saju diviner
who I have known since 2004, currently works from his home in
Sinch’on, in Northwest Seoul. He often speaks about earnings
as a measuring stick for success, and once even went so far as
to show me his monthly bank statements. Mr. Sam has also
dabbled in registering with online portal sites and gives read-
ings over e-mail. Ultimately, however, portal sites attract clients
that are in his view less likely to be loyal and cut too much into
profits. I find Mr. Sam’s honesty about profits telling. At the end
of the day he “must live and eat,” echoing a common saying, and
digital channels do not give him the degree of control he would
like over his practice.
The study of language is key for Mr. Sam, as he picks up
verbal cues that reveal class, region, and degrees of educa-
tion, which help him to navigate his consultations. Fortune
telling is all precision, but the four pillars are not necessarily
enough in this day and age. One must always supplement
foundational knowledge with new tools. His biggest stress is
accuracy, as a client’s loyalty is never a given. One bad piece
of advice, where big money or investment is concerned, could
mean disaster. The freedom his practice affords him, to go on
long walks, to exercise during the day—what he refers to as a
life “much better than a salary man”—comes with a price. As a
freelancer, his practice ebbs and flows with the precariousness
of the market. Internet divination occupies an ambiguous
place for him; on one level digital media offers new financial
opportunities, on another, it is a recent reconfiguration of
the practice itself that he must now either take advantage
of or confront. Email consultations are faceless transactions,
606 where a diviner’s skills outside the foundations of the pillars
are harder to utilize. Spontaneous and sustained dialogue
is impossible, while picking up on verbal and facial cues is
certainly out of the question. Returning briefly to the ques-
tion of authenticity—without getting too mired in its layers
of discursivity in regard to loss—from Mr. Sam’s point of view,
authenticity of practice still remains in the realm of intimate
face-to-face consultation, or at the very least, a phone call. The
tenuousness embedded in the very structure of fortune telling
practices is a constant strain for him—the specter that he may
no longer be necessary, and the script was already
written and fated. The operative structural mechanics and
 virtual dimensions of saju p’alcha are also very much the rea-
son for its proliferation via digitized networks.

Signs and Injunctions

The symbolic realm is the precursor to digital channels. The
first form of communicative media was analog—the act of

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
writing itself. For Kittler, data flows streamed through the hand
and were channeled through the “bottleneck” of the signifier
(1999, 4), but ultimately, the human hand is left behind and
revealed to be secondary, as the technology of writing develops
“independently from the body” (Griffin, Hermann, and Kittler
1996, 738). Through the writing of history, or in this case, divine

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

scripts, one is made aware of the illusion or ruse of writing itself,
“namely, by writing it while it writes us” (Kittler 1999, 242). The
force of history and alongside it the force of writing, is discov-
ered to be a priori to the actualization of individual thought as
an external injunction; the pen moves on its own accord, the
divinatory characters of saju p’alcha are channeled and orga-
nized not by man, but through man. Seen in this light, writing at
its origins is not simply an exercise of the subjective agency of
individuals, but far more mysterious, as it goes beyond this to

David J. Kim
become the symbolization of authority itself—text at its origin is
the mechanical representation of Law (see Derrida 1997; Siegel
2006). One may be right to critique this on the basis of Kittler’s
own fetishization of techne and alphabetization—drawing in
particular from Greek models. But the arbitrariness of significa-
tion cannot be overlooked here, as well as the more mysterious,
or even mystical, question of who, or what, is in fact doing the
writing, if not man? Media and technology is explicitly tied
to mediumship, which channels and conjures external forces
(Figure 1).

Volume 15
Indeed, the issue of arbitrary signification when applied to

Issue 5
an analysis of saju p’alcha deserves further analysis. The most
basic Chinese characters are pictograms—say for instance ‘sun,’
‘moon,’ ‘mountain,’ or ‘eye’—that in theory, if not etymologically,
are not so arbitrary. The logic at work here is not phonetical,
but if anything, physiognomic. In their most rudimentary form,
they are meant to be an analogous representation of things—a
drawing, trace, or index of matter in the material world. A look
607 at any Chinese character textbook for school children, in fact,
reveals this succinctly, where a cartoon-like drawing of a sun or
moon is simplified in stages before it is reduced. This reduction
opens the door for both ideational and conceptual forms, and
ultimately logographic systems and scripts.4 If signification in the
Saussurian sense is connected to the symbolic force of law, then
physiognomic text is connected to the force of nature, which in
Material Religion

divination includes the celestial, or heavenly. If anything, at first

glance, the question of whom or what is doing the writing is
even easier to bridge in the case of the latter. And indeed, in saju
Article

p’alcha many of the characters used are of the pictographic or

ideational kind; the physiognomic aspects of writing, as Walter
 FIG 1
Haedong-nim’s worksheet for saju p’alcha divination. The eight characters are found in the boxes on the upper-right.
Combined in vertical pairs read from right to left, they constitute the four pillars of year, month, day, and time.

Benjamin muses, reveal a “magical correspondence” that pro-

vides the “basis for clairvoyance,” which haunts the arbitrariness
of the structural sign (Benjamin 1999b, 695, 697). If anything,
characters, more so than an alphabet, support Kittler’s point
about external forces mediated through the activity of writing
better than phonetic examples. This feature of writing also gives
it a potentially religious aspect, as Kittler notes that all media
“are flight apparatuses into the great beyond” (Kittler 1999,
citing Theweleit, 13).
Working through Kittler’s theological proposition, I argue
it is the virtual that moves through and traverses its subject
becoming actualized through the symbolic divinatory appara-
608 tus with which it is entwined. Benjamin’s idea of the mimetic
faculty, and its ability to make aforementioned magical corre-
spondences and associations, is also an event where a “sensuous
shape-giving” takes place (1999b, 695 italics mine). In this way
the mimetic faculty is connected to non-sensuous forces of
nature that produce sensuous figures. This is strikingly similar
to Massumi’s Deleuzian idea of the virtual as a topography filled
with forces that are “inaccessible” to the senses, which require
“a multiplication of images,” or matter images. In this case the
virtual becomes sensuous when its forces traverse mediums
and become “actualized” (2002, 133, 137). Saju, then, when
 understood as the emergence of matter images, also recalls Rot-
man’s idea that virtuality is “ancient,” as well as Seongnae Kim’s
emphasis on its “archaic” character” (2008, 112; 2005b, 16).
The origin story of saju p’alcha is often a cloudy, if not
occulted, topic when discussing it with diviners—but from
another perspective, that is how diviners prefer it. All of the

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
diviners I have interviewed state that horoscopic divination
originated in China “a long, long time ago…” Some even cite the
foundational 8 trigrams of the yŏkkyŏng (I-Ching) that are said to
have been mystically revealed to Bokhŭi (Fu-xi), c. 2800 BCE (or
even further back depending on the diviner). After thousands of
years the 8 trigrams would ultimately develop into a philosophy

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

that would expand into other systems including horoscopic divi-
nation—ultimately linking the study of the I-Ching to saju p’alcha.5
Put another way, the foundations of horoscopic divination are
believed by practitioners as being ancient as the concepts of
Yin and Yang, or ŭm and yang. A mythology of saju preserves its
fetish attraction, even as diviners simultaneously mark it as sci-
ence. Saju in this way can be seen as a kind of porous membrane
between what might be considered science in one episteme
and esoteric knowledge from an ancient and imagined past in

David J. Kim
another—both traversed by the virtual—which I would argue
only adds to its appeal in current times.
Saju is simultaneously complex, yet strikingly simple in
terms of its logic. Such a statement, in fact, describes forms of
divination activity beyond saju, not only in terms of how they
operate, but how they are felt and confronted in a particular
cultural moment. In the opening to this article, Haedong-nim
declared incisively that “saju is digital.” It is ultimately about a
series of positive and negative relations; ŭm and yang is the
binary through which such revelations are codified. Saju, when

Volume 15
one digs deeper, beneath the characters, is revealed as binary

Issue 5
code. ‘1’s and ‘0’s here take on a cosmic significance—Rotman’s
claim of an ancient virtual ‘X’ or presence/absence that inun-
dates everyday life is revealed. The diviner observes the code
and actualizes its virtual potential with scriptural precision. ‘Yes’
and ‘no,’ like the rubbing-board and poison chicken oracles from
Evans-Pritchard’s classic work on the Azande (1968), is both the
outward expression and internal mechanism of the medium
609 itself. Saju answers questions simply, and while there may be
nuances and variations, they are the intricacies and injunctions
of ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ or ‘do’ and ‘don’t do.’
Despite its incredible complexity and surprising mallea-
bility—readers will spend a lifetime learning its internal intri-
cacies—saju’s basic function is to connect to a virtual source
and subsequently act as a vehicle to access knowledge from an
Material Religion

external place. One thing that still strikes me to this day is when
Haedong-nim told me that a person’s saju is like their cosmic
“bar-code.” Saju, he went on to say, is an “imperfect scanner for
Article

thousands of bar-codes,” and it was his job to make it the best

 scanner possible through study and practice. But this internal
logic to saju is precisely the dilemma for diviners in a digital
age—if Haedong-nim is holding the scanner, there are other
machines that can remove him from the equation altogether.
The possibility for self-checkout is made possible through the
various interfaces that the digital world offers.

Allegories of Potential in a Digital Age

Stories I have gathered from interviews of college students
and those in their 20 s and 30 s who frequent diviners, capture
some of the qualitative dimensions of the tension between
face-to-face divination and online fortune telling. The theme of
accuracy is raised in almost all my interviews and can become a
contested field. For some patrons it becomes a pivotal measure
in all forms of divination, whether it is a visit to a fortune telling
café, a diviner’s home, or going online. What is striking is some
of the lengths a patron will go to test accuracy, which often
becomes a search for truth or quackery. Patrons have relayed
instances where a person will actually visit a reader one day,
receive a negative reading, and then plan to return the next day
wearing a completely different guise. On the ensuing day the
patron berates the fortune teller, as the reading and omens are
different. Some patrons will withhold information and speak as
little as possible, basically putting someone like Mr. Sam, who
likes to pick up verbal and facial cues, in the lurch. If a diviner
passes the first test, and reveals accurate information about the
past and present, then a patron will begin a dialogue regarding
the future.6
Some of the mind games above are relayed in the spirit
of fun and entertainment, but at the same time there is also
something to be said for taking play seriously. Alongside the
fun is an air of skepticism, and an impulse to test and exper-
iment—a twist on caveat emptor, as a kind of “seller beware”
reflex. Wrapped in divination is the fact that a commodity is
being exchanged and consumed, which in this case is the reified
representation of the patrons themselves. The abstracted self,
quantified into a code, or eight characters, is sold back in the
form of information or story, which the buyer can then do with
what they wish. Even such simple examples point to a desire
610 for control, not just over their fate and possible futures, but the
divination scene itself. Some keep the revealed knowledge close
at bay, internalizing information or tucking it away, while others
simply disregard it, even forgetting it all together.
Jeong, a junior at a women’s university in Seoul who enjoys
frequenting cafés says, “I remember the good stuff, and throw
away the rest.” Both modes of consumption contribute to a chain
of divinatory information, and the circulation of the commodity
form. By either forgetting or disposing, one can return for new,
or not so new information with a twist. “It’s always a little bit
different…that’s why I can keep going,” she adds. Bad omens, in
particular, can come back to haunt a patron; the declaration of
 an imminent break up, or even personal tragedy, might be dis-
carded or forgotten shortly after the moment, but then provide
reason for a return if such events come to fruition. Its repression
can lead to a reemergence and subsequent desire for more
knowledge—a return of the same, but not necessarily from the
same locale or diviner.

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
Loyalty and long-term clientele are most highly sought after
amongst diviners like Mr. Sam, where every word affects his live-
lihood and the world of his patrons. The fortune telling scene, for
him, becomes more analogous to an analyst and their patient.
The saju café, on the other hand, will thrive so long as there is
good turnover and an entertaining product. For many younger

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

clients like Jeong, a trip to a divination café could be about man-
aging the stresses of everyday life, like anxieties regarding family
relationships, future partners, or job prospects, but for her, and
reiterated by many of her peers, it is ultimately for enjoyment.
The sensations of divination, the thrill of expectation, and the
possible fulfillment of potential can become an affective ride.
The instance when one’s hairs stand up on end when the stars
align, or when a convergence is made, makes the experience all
the better, if not unsettling—divination always has the potential

David J. Kim
to be “felt in the bones.” Here, the content does not take prece-
dence over the experience; accuracy is felt here in the now and
permeates the scene like a surfeit of energies. If a patron like
Jeong goes with a group of friends, those moments provide a
framework for magic experienced socially—the shared laughter
and play that emerges when peering into another person’s life
over a cup of tea. Marcel Mauss elegantly wrote that “Between a
wish and its fulfillment there is, in magic, no gap” (2001 [1902],
78). Another way to see this is that divination occupies the space
between a wish and its fulfillment. Accuracy, I would argue, is

Volume 15
actually secondary here, as it is tied to the possibility of out-

Issue 5
comes. Divination itself is a virtual field filled with potential,
what Benjamin referred to as “mis en jeu,” or the moment of play,
when the gambling dice, or divining lots, are suspended in mid-
air and fate lies in the balance like a frozen infinity (1999a, 512).
The timeless moment just before one is about to receive their
fate, is potentially more exciting than the reveal.
Internet divination experiences tell qualitatively different
611 stories, although ultimately share structural similarities in relation to
channeling virtuality and its potential. Patrons speak of online saju
divination in relation to privacy. If face-to-face
divination is social, and a kind of shared intimacy, privacy takes on a
different kind of sense-making in this scenario. Pay sites often have
free-options, where one gets more surface readings that might
be only a paragraph long. Jeong says she never pays for an online
Material Religion

divination script and bounces from site to site, trying to exhaust as

much information from their menus without any monetary invest-
ment. Sometimes she will take the step to register for a site to take
Article

advantage of a free coupon, but even then, the reading might only
be a page. Her activity is more analogous to hopping from one slot
 machine to another without having to even pay, but the repetition
she says is fun for her, if not a way to procrastinate from her studies
and fill time. Moreover, it is something she can do on her own.
When asked if she remembers any particular details, she replies
that there is not much to tell, as the scripts are ready made. “It’s
just whatever…here or there.” What she does emphasize, however,
is the mechanics—reiterating, “It’s the feeling of expectation,” or
“kidae-gam,” that matters. She even goes on to note that some sites
take longer than others to generate the reading, even if just for a
matter of seconds. She is critically aware that this interval affects the
very sensation of virtual suspense, in addition to own her mood and
whimsy in terms of playing with a particular site.
Kyeong, a slightly older graduate student from the same
university, in contrast to Jeong, is particularly drawn to internet
divination to the point where her mother once scolded her after
seeing the family credit card bill. She says she does not like to
visit face-to-face diviners because they “can’t be trusted.” The
diviner’s hand can be a tool for deception, as some of the exam-
ples above attest. From her point of view, there are fewer layers
of mediation in regard to online saju divination—the fortune
teller has been circumvented and one returns to an imagined
source. The year, month, day, and time are input, and the fortune
flows. Kyeong has a particular site she goes to and pays for her
reading. The sheer amount of data, for me at least, was surpris-
ing. She showed me a copy of her yearly online reading, which
amounted to almost 30 pages, albeit interspersed with colorful
graphics and charts. She keeps her reading on her desk, and
looks at it from time to time, underling a passage here, putting
a star next to a portion of a small graph there. It acts more like a
prewritten text or diary, but it is up to her to decipher yes or no,
truth or quackery. Some parts of her companion are just plain
wrong, but that does not discourage her from the possibility
that other parts could be right. The sections on her personality,
in particular, provide her with insights and spaces for reflection.
When I asked if she knew how these fortunes were pro-
duced, Kyeong assumed it was simply from a program—and
she was, of course, correct. But the possibility of human hands
behind these programs did not seem to matter. If anything, the
appeal of these readings seemed to be that human hands were
612 not involved, at least on the surface. Kyeong’s divination diary
is an intimate and private space, filled with not only texts and
numbers, but also self-reflection and surprise—an affective
mini-shock to the nervous system when a reading finds its mark.
This reduction or atomization of the self could fit well into the
definition of a neoliberal subject who desires affective mastery
and control over their own fashioning via self-help (see Song
2014), but it is also a personhood that is simultaneously and
ironically unsettled, as she paradoxically desires to displace this
mastery and turn it over to a mystical, or virtual machine. One
wonders if she is, in fact, correct, as the programmers them-
selves are just channeling an ancient code.
 “Before the end, something is coming to an end” (Kittler
1999, 1). Saju diviners must reevaluate their practices, but are
they really coming to an end? There seem to be no shortage of
patrons who seek out face-to-face consultations, but this could
very well be changing, as smartphone apps give readers like Mr.
Sam even more cause for tension (Munwha Ilbo 2013). What is

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
more likely, is that they will adapt and extend their own meth-
ods, blurring in a similar manner into what Seongnae Kim pre-
dicts will become a kind of hybrid, or “cyborg shaman” (2005b,
18). The anxieties produced in this transformation, however,
might even be greater for saju diviners, as the body in space
bound to inspired ritual activities is of far less importance in

in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling

text-based divination, if significant at all. A younger generation
finds both fun and suspicion in face-to-face transactions. Online
formats flatten the interface and create a different aesthetic
experience. But a powerful attraction still seems to exist from
the potentiality of the virtual. The surface of things still chan-
nels what de Vries referred to at the beginning of this piece, as
the possibility of an “extension of experience.” Online digital
platforms are not necessarily a limit, nor doomed to a kind of
nonphenomenology.

David J. Kim
Divination Postscripts and Horizons
Contacting the internet company who produced Kyeong’s
lengthy script, as well as interviewing a saju diviner who works
for them, I am told their program is composed of a set number
of sketches, written by himself and another fortune teller. Each
marketed category, like love life, business, or health, for example,
has twelve scripted variations. He explains that the scripts are
determined and routed via algorithms, which follow “the logic”
of saju. The process is renewed each year and the program is

Volume 15
tweaked, based on the characteristics of a given year. Each year

Issue 5
has its unique base elements and animal sign, which have a
positive and negative aspect, and reacts differently with each
individual’s respective eight characters. 2017 for example, was
marked as ‘chŏng yu,’ or negative fire and negative rooster/metal.
The program follows the logic of these combinations and pro-
duces outcomes based on these relationships.
Saju p’alcha is decidedly algorithmic and therein lies another
613 puzzle. Unlike some programs and algorithms that attempt
to simulate the intentionality and creativity of human impro-
visation (see Wilf 2013)—which, as Kyeong might have it, is a
sign of fallibility or even deception—the algorithmic basis of
saju divination fits all too well into a post-human space. If the
algorithmic program were to one day mimic the subtleties of
face-to-face interactions, it could very well undermine the cos-
Material Religion

mic foundations of divination, imagined or otherwise, which are

preordained, if not preordered (Wilf 2013). On the other hand, a
more sophisticated program might satisfy those consumers who
Article

insist the intimacies of human interaction provide more interac-

tivity and imagined depth, albeit always haunted by the specter
 of inaccuracy. And indeed, the first Turing games in the 1950s,
meant to discern if a person could tell the difference between
a human and computer, may not even be of relevance here.
Humans, after all, are flawed; and the message should ideally
be free from the messy continuum of human contingency. The
patrons see what they want to see, they collect what informa-
tion they want to retain, and yet, there is still the possibility for
external affective shock when a reading hits the mark. “Singi
hada,” says Kyeong—a word that mixes mystery, fascination, and
surprise. “It’s strangely precise,” she goes on to say. The fact that
a computer could be accurate is almost more of a mystery, but
there is also a strange and fitting logic to it. It does not seem to
matter if the information comes from a computer. If anything, it
is detached from the possible error of human hands and magi-
cally connected to a great beyond, rich in virtual potential.
Brian Rotman’s provocative claim that “virtuality is ancient”
(2008, 112) is conceptualized in relation to a tertiary schema.
Virtuality is first posited as a paradoxical source, or non-source—
the zero, or ‘X’ as he marks it. What follows next is the injunction
of technology as it takes the form of the first writing machine,
which is attached to forces that flow through the body and
extend into the human hand. The third stage is a hyper-abun-
dance of the virtual and a re-recognition of these flows as they
intersect with our digital and now posthuman age. Divination in
all forms qualifies these flows and gives them a sensuous dimen-
sion. Furthermore, it is a qualitative sensuousness that does not
necessarily have to be eschewed in a time so inundated with
digital media. Digitality is still a haptic medium, which creates
both “movement and immersion” (Rotman 2008, 134). The virtual
traverses both the analog and digital towards actualization, but
this process can be both precarious and even volatile. Such is
the dual nature of divine scripts, they disavow contingency—by
robbing the accident of its accidental nature—despite drawing
their energies from a field of limitless potential.

notes and references

1
614 Categories of inspired spirit possession,
ecstasy, and even trance, are discursive-
ly embedded in numerous studies of
shamanic activity in respect to regional
variation and networks of tradition
and have been successfully utilized as
interpretive lenses to varying degrees,
as well as richly problematized for their
reductive aspects by certain schol-
ars (see Howard 1993; Kendall 1996;
Kim 2004; Kim 1998). There are cases
where shamans, or mansin, undertake
rudimentary forms of horoscopic divi-
nation based on birth date, but utilize
charismatic or inspirational means
(sinchŏm, or literally spirit divination),
versus extensive learning of text-based
systems (see Bruno 2013; Kim 2015; Yoo
2017). For the purposes of this article,
however, I will be focusing on diviners
who identify themselves as practitioners
of the eight-character system, often
referred to as ‘yŏksulga,’ and do not
employ inspirational techniques. The
underlying mechanics of saju divination
and inspirational technique, still remain
significantly discrete for the time being.
2
One of the earlier descriptive archives
of saju divination is from Japanese
 colonial folk-scholar Chijun Murayama’s
Divination and Prophecy of Chosŏn
(1991 [1933]), which contains sections
on horoscopic divination amongst
shamanic and other types. Barbara
Young’s seminal overview of divination
practices in South Korea during the
1970s, is likewise a rich collection of
shamanic and horoscopic forms, which
utilizes more structural-functionalist
anthropological approaches to the
study of fate and causation (1980).
Dawnhee Yim-Janelli’s concise article
from the same period focuses on clas-
sical anthropological tensions between
faith and skepticism in relation to
rhetorical strategies of fortune tellers,
some of which are also found in this
piece (1980). Works in Korean often
emphasize textual and historical dimen-
sions in relation to Eastern philosophy
and culture-bound contexts (Ch’ae
2005; Chung-Hwoe 2010), in addition
to numerous how-to books readily
found in popular bookstores. Two
contemporary works of note include an
analysis of saju divination in relation to
urban geographies and religious niche
market theory (Yoo 2017) and a study
of debates concerning the role of saju
as a “non-official” religious practice in
relationship to secularization theory
(Kim 2005a).
3
This number comes from 60 kapcha
(12 years x 5 cycles) x 12 months x 30
days x 12 hours (the horoscopic day is
divided in 2-hour segments), for a total
of 259,200, which is then multiplied
by two (male and female) for a total of
518,400. Some diviners, however, insist
on the first as being more accurate as
an actual number of combinations,
whereas others I have spoken to say the
gendered aspect must be considered.
Thus, a male and female born on the
same year, month, day, and time would
have identical characters, but might
constitute a different “combination,”
depending on the diviner, or interpre-
615
tation.
4
In relation to its phonetic aspects, any
language that utilizes Chinese charac-
ters fits into Saussure’s formulations
of the arbitrary nature of signification
quite nicely (see Duan 2012). Further-
more, it should be noted that the idea
of an evolutionary type progression of
language from the pictographic to the
logographic is certainly debatable, if
not dated. Indeed, in regard to Chinese
characters, the pictorial and ideational
aspect linking it to material worlds has
been “subject to fantasy by European
thinkers” (Peters 2015, 296). But what
is more important here is that the
study of characters in schoolbooks is
represented and imagined this way;
moreover, the diviners in this piece
attribute a natural/cosmic origin to
their divination scripts. This imagination
Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual
bears tremendous weight. Following
this, I agree with Peters when he argues
that logographic systems of writing, in
particular, contain an “an intelligence
that its spoken version[s] do not” (ibid.,
301). I interpret this intelligence to be
knowledge of, or connection to, the ex-
ternal features of things and the virtual
in South Korean Eight-Character Fortune Telling
forces that connect them.
5
Scholarly works specific to Korea trace
the study of saju p’alcha to the late
Koryŏ (918–1392) and early Chosŏn
dynasty (1392–1910). Two Chinese texts
in particular, Tang saju and Myŏngni
chŏngjong (from the Tang and Ming
dynasties respectively), are said to have
made their way into Korea around
this time. The Tang saju, in particular,
because of its vibrant pictures was pop-
David J. Kim
ular in more quotidian spheres, while
the Myŏngni chŏngjong is said to be an
influential text in terms of this particu-
lar brand of eight-character divination
practiced today (see Chung-Hwoe
2010, 36–39). Other works study the
publication histories of particular texts,
and their influence on saju divination
in contemporary South Korea. Such re-
search, in fact, places the current brand
of saju p’alcha being practiced today, as
actually coming more into prominence
Volume 15
even as late as the 1960s (ibid.).
Issue 5
6
In this section I have removed either
the first or second syllable of the
students’ first names, as well as their
last names to preserve their anonymity.
Interviews for this paper were partially
conducted at Duksung [tŏksŏng] Wom-
en’s University, Ewha Woman’s Univer-
sity, and Incheon National University in
the summers between 2011 and 2015.
Some informants were introduced to
me by friends or family. Interviews with
informants lasted approximately one
hour. Meetings with the saju diviners
Mr. Sam and Haedong-nim have been
ongoing since the beginning of my re-
search in 2004. Over the years we have
developed a strong rapport and I am
grateful for the support both have of-
Material Religion
fered me.A note here on gender. Anec-
dotally, those who I have interviewed—
including men and women—note that
fortune telling seems to be a gendered
Article
practice, which appears to attract more
women patrons than men. Andrew Kim
 noted the same aspect in his work on
non-official religious practices, citing
gendered divisions between officially
sanctioned forms of religious practice
during the paternal Neo-Confucian era
(1392–1910) marked as male, and forms
of non-official religious practice marked
as female—shamanism in particular—
which was relegated to the margins
(2005a; see also Walraven 1993). Such
a binary, of course, does not mean the
minor was ever completely suppressed
in favor of the major, or the state-sanc-
tioned. Works on Korean shamanism
that study this era, its passing through
Japanese colonialism, and the rise of
the industrial state, note the presence
of shamans as a vital form of religiosity
despite its push to the periphery, and
foreshadow its growing acceptance in
the public domain, particularly during
the 1980s—even if under the marker
of cultural heritage and nationalism
(see Kendall 2009). Kim’s suggestion,
however, that this movement of
non-official religions to the margins
comes to encompass horoscopic
types of divination, particularly when
shamanism comes to be viewed as
superstition and antithetical to rise of
industrial modernity, is a compelling
one, especially as studies of yŏkkyŏng
(I-Ching) were, in fact, discursively
sanctioned forms of knowledge during
parts of the Neo-Confucian era. In
terms of diviners themselves, Andrew
Kim in his study cites 70% of shamans
as being women (Kim 2005a, 296), but
the gendered division of labor in saju
divination seems less clearly divided.
Haedong-nim’s students include a sig-
nificant number of women, including
those who wish to take their practices
online, or even monetize their skills on
AfreecaTV (a popular Korean P2P-based
site with similarities to YouTube, which
specializes in independent shows and
video streams by broadcasting jockeys,
known as BJs). During his days working
616 at the saju divination café, the majority
of diviners were in fact women, to
match its patronage.
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