Cast & Chart

Rat and Ox

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

子 and 丑 form one of the six pairs called 六合, the Six Harmonies. 五行大義 ties the pair to the sky: the eleventh month brings sun and moon together at the station named for 丑 while the Dipper points at 子, and in the twelfth month the two trade places. 三命通會 adds a number game in which 子 counts as one and 丑 as two, and it says the resulting three gives rise to all things.

Popular zodiac books turn this into a picture of two people who steady each other, with the Rat supplying ideas and the Ox the follow-through. In the fixed elements 子 is water and 丑 is earth, and earth dams water, a detail those books seldom mention. The older sources are talking about months and numbers.

A harmony of two neighbors raises a useful question about pace. One of you might ask the other which plans feel rushed and which feel held back too long. Because earth holds water in place, you could also talk about the moment when being steadied starts to feel like being stopped.

The Six Harmonies are a statement about 子 and 丑 on a calendar diagram, and any real pair of people still has to find out how they get along.

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.