Cast & Chart

Dragon and Monkey

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

The traditional relations

  • 三合 Three Harmonies

    Two members of a trio of branches that tradition groups together.

What tradition says

辰 and 申 belong to the water group of 三合, the Three Harmonies, with 子, the Rat, as the missing third. The Sanming Tonghui spells out this very triad: 申 is where water is born, 子 where it peaks, 辰 where it is stored. So these two hold the beginning and the end of a process whose middle sits elsewhere. Taken alone, 辰 is earth and 申 is metal, and earth bears metal.

This pairing is a favorite of popular zodiac books, which match the Dragon's ambition with the Monkey's ingenuity and call the two a team that gets things done. That enthusiasm rests on the triad rule, whose actual subject is the stages of water.

A start and a finish with the middle left open is a useful image for shared projects. Between the two of you, who tends to begin things, and who looks after the long stretch before the end?

Membership in the water triad belongs to the branches 辰 and 申, and two individuals are far too particular to be summed up by it.

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.