Cast & Chart

Rat and Rabbit

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

The traditional relations

  • 三刑 Three Punishments

    Two branches from a punishment group in the old tables. The name is a label, not a forecast.

What tradition says

子 and 卯 belong to 三刑, the Three Punishments, in the one group made of only two branches. The arrow runs both ways: 五行大義 says 子 is punished at 卯 and 卯 at 子. Its explanation is a pair of images, water flowing toward its end and what falls from a tree returning to the root. Punishment here is a technical name for a pointed relation between calendar positions.

Popular zodiac books often describe the Rat as sharp and restless and the Rabbit as gentle and guarded, and they warn of friction over manners. That warning is a modern gloss. The fixed elements are friendlier, since the water of 子 feeds the wood of 卯.

The two-way arrow offers a concrete topic: when one of you feels criticized, does the other feel criticized right back? Take one recent small sting and have each person say what they heard. The speed and reserve that the popular picture hands these signs may be a place to start.

三刑 is a name given to a relation of two branches, and nobody is being punished by having been born in a given year.

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.