Cast & Chart

Rabbit and Rooster

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

The traditional relations

  • 六沖 Six Clashes

    Two branches that sit opposite each other on the circle of twelve.

What tradition says

卯 and 酉 face each other straight across the circle of twelve, fourth place against tenth, and the pair is one of the six in 六沖, the Six Clashes. 沖 means to strike or collide, and the Sanming Tonghui (三命通會) reaches it by counting: seven places from one branch, counting both ends, lands on its opposite. The Wuxing Dayi (五行大義) puts 卯 in the east as wood at full strength and 酉 in the west as metal at full strength. Metal cuts wood in the overcoming cycle, so the calendar logic has 酉 pressing on 卯.

Popular zodiac books cast this as the gentle Rabbit who keeps the peace and the exacting Rooster who says what is wrong out loud. Many popular compatibility charts mark the match as hard, and that verdict goes further than the geometry, which only sets the two signs opposite each other. No classical passage in our sources describes the temperament of people born under either sign.

Two people with these signs could compare how each of them raises a complaint. Does one of you wait for the right moment while the other prefers to name the problem at once? Talk through one recent small disagreement and see whether that pattern was even there.

The clash is drawn between two points on a circle of signs, and no diagram of that kind can describe the two of you.

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.