Cast & Chart

Dragon and Dog

These are traditional rules about the twelve signs. No chart decides a relationship.

The traditional relations

  • 六沖 Six Clashes

    Two branches that sit opposite each other on the circle of twelve.

What tradition says

辰 and 戌 stand opposite each other, fifth and eleventh, and the Wuxing Dayi lists them among the six opposite pairs it calls 衝破, known as 六沖, the Six Clashes. Both are earth and both are yang, so the element cycles give no winner here, only same meeting same across the widest possible distance. The same book sets 辰 in the east and 戌 in the west, where they hold the closing stages of water and of fire.

Dragon and Dog usually rank among the hardest combinations in popular zodiac books, with the grand Dragon's plans running into the Dog's suspicion of grand plans. We cannot say where that ranking came from. A word for collision between calendar positions has been stretched into a story about temperament.

Idealists and skeptics can both be right. When one of you proposes something large, could the other name the one concrete worry first, before any general doubts, and then hear the reply to that worry alone?

Opposite positions make a clash between 辰 and 戌, which is a fact about two signs and leaves a Dragon and a Dog to get along however they do.

Where this text comes from

The relation tables follow 五行大義 volume 2 and 三命通會 volumes 2 and 3 on Wikisource. The popular readings are modern and come from neither.

The English here is our own plain wording, not a translation of a single source.