A simple magnetic circuit of salient-pole synchronous machines is presented. A method for calculating steady-state electrical performances using the circuit is described. Magnetic saturation including the cross-magnetizing phenomenon is considered in the method. The saturated reactances, field currents, and load angles are calculated easily from the method without much computational effort as compared with the finite element method. Despite the simplicity of the magnetic circuit, the calculated reactances at various load conditions using the method are close to the measured and FEM values.