Cast & Chart

Ox and Horse

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

The traditional relations

  • 六害 Six Harms

    One of six pairs of branches the old tables list as harming each other. The name is a label, not a forecast.

What tradition says

丑 and 午 are paired in 六害, the Six Harms, five steps apart. 三命通會 says strong fire at 午 bullies the dead metal held in 丑 and gives this the technical name 官鬼, official and ghost, a chart term that refers to no actual ghost. It also gives a structural reason: 丑 fears a clash from 未, and 午 is the branch that forms a harmony with 未.

Popular zodiac books contrast the Horse's appetite for motion with the Ox's love of routine, and popular charts mark the pair as strained. In the plain fixed elements fire makes earth, so the two ways of looking at this pair point in opposite directions. The language of strain is the modern part.

Since the rule involves an outside party, the Goat's 未, it may help to ask who else affects how you two deal with each other. A schedule makes a good test case. Each of you could list which commitments are fixed and which are optional, then compare the lists and see what surprises you.

The name 六害 is about how 丑 and 午 stand to each other, and an Ox and a Horse in a real friendship remain unaccounted for 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.