Cast & Chart

Goat and Dog

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

The traditional relations

  • 相破 Mutual Breaking

    A pair of branches the old tables list as breaking each other. The name is a label, not a forecast.

  • 三刑 Three Punishments

    Two branches from a punishment group in the old tables. The name is a label, not a forecast.

What tradition says

Two classical listings apply to 未 and 戌, both earth branches, three places apart. The Sanming Tonghui's third volume names them among four pairs that break each other, 相破 or Mutual Breaking, and 破 simply means to break or split. The 三刑, or Three Punishments, adds a one-way arrow, 戌 punishing 未, within a ring that also includes 丑. The Wuxing Dayi has no separate breaking table of its own, so the Mutual Breaking listing rests on one witness.

Hurt without intent is the theme popular zodiac books give a sentimental Goat and a principled Dog. Popular charts mark this one low, perhaps partly because of the label of punishment. The branch rule concerns calendar positions, and a low mark is a popular judgment of those positions.

Feeling and principle make different arguments for the same wish. Next time you differ, let each of you first restate the other's reason in your own words, then check whether it was heard correctly.

Breaking and punishment are old names for how the signs 未 and 戌 sit in the tables, and they pass no judgment on a Goat and Dog as people.

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.