Cast & Chart

Horse and Goat

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

The traditional relations

  • 六合 Six Harmonies

    One of six pairs of branches that tradition treats as natural allies.

What tradition says

午 and 未 are neighbors, seventh and eighth, and one of the 六合, the Six Harmonies. In the fifth month the sun and moon meet at 未 as the Dipper points to 午, and in the sixth month the roles reverse. The Sanming Tonghui counts them as one and two, which makes three, a total they share only with 子 and 丑, and it links that number to the line that three gives rise to all things. Fire makes earth, so the flow also runs from 午 to 未.

Fondness for this match runs high in popular zodiac books, which offer an outgoing Horse and a gentle Goat, with the Goat's care balancing the Horse's wandering. That division of roles comes from popular writing, and the classical passages concern months and numbers.

A pairing that casts one person as the adventurer and the other as the caretaker deserves a second look. Which of you would like to swap roles now and then, and what would a small swap be?

The old reckoning that joins 午 and 未 concerns months and stations, which is to say signs, and a Horse and Goat must still work things out themselves.

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.