Cast & Chart

Pig and Pig

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

The traditional relations

  • 自刑 Self-Punishment

    A branch the old tables list as punishing itself when doubled. The name is a label, not a forecast.

What tradition says

亥, the twelfth branch, completes the list of four that punish themselves, known as 自刑 or Self-Punishment. The Sanming Tonghui overlays the wood group 亥卯未 on the run 亥子丑, and the first column sets 亥 against 亥. A saying from the Han history, quoted in the Wuxing Dayi, is that falling wood returns to its root, and it places this group's punishment in the north. 亥 is yin water, and two of it produce no element conflict.

Kindness toward the Pig runs through popular zodiac books, which call it generous and fond of comfort, and two Pigs become a warm, unhurried household in popular telling. The self-punishing label and the warm household come from different sources, and neither explains the other.

The generosity popular books give this sign, doubled, can mean nobody says no. When did each of you last agree to something you would rather have declined, and what would have made it easy to say so?

亥 punishing itself is a classifier's note about one sign, and two Pigs remain entirely free of 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.