The Six Branch Combinations in BaZi: The Bond That Reads Differently From Each Side

The Same Marriage, Two Readings

One client sent me two charts, hers and her husband's. Both carried the same pair of branches in the same palace, the Rat and the Ox. Her question was narrow. Why did she describe the marriage as light while he called it the best thing that ever happened to him. I asked which of the two branches held her day branch. The manual has a line for that exact situation.

What the Six Combinations Are

The six combinations (六合, liu he) are a set of six branch pairs in Chinese astrology that bind one yin branch to one yang, giving each of the twelve Earthly Branches exactly one combination partner. The pairs are the Rat with the Ox, the Tiger with the Pig, the Rabbit with the Dog, the Dragon with the Rooster, the Snake with the Monkey, and the Horse with the Goat. They come from the same twelve characters that produce the six clashes, the six harms and the sixty-year count of the sexagenary cycle (Earthly Branches).

The classical definition is short. 夫合者和也，乃隂陽相和其氣自合. The combination is harmony. Yin and yang meet and their qi joins of itself. Nothing has to be done for the bond to exist, which is why it behaves so differently from the six harms I wrote about in this piece.

Why the Ox and Not the Pig

The Rat sits between the Pig and the Ox. Why pair it with the Ox.

The Ming manual Sanming Tonghui (三命通會), first printed in 1578, reports its author asking the same thing. 子與丑合皆莫知其故, and the answer he found is arithmetic. Count the twelve branches from the Rat and start the count over at the Horse, so each branch carries a rank from one to six.

Add each pair. Rat and Ox make three, and so do Horse and Goat. The other four make nine. 子丑午未各得三者，三生萬物，餘皆得九者乃陽數極也. The Rat-Ox and Horse-Goat pairs add to three, the number that generates things. The rest add to nine, where yang runs out. The sum decides the partner, and the honored place goes to the yang branch.

Where the Pairs Come From

The chapter's author found the sun and moon crossing the twelve stations between north and northwest, at the place the ring marks 壬 and 亥. 一嵗十二㑹. Twelve times a year the two bodies meet there, and the station at that crossing is the one whose branch combines with the month. The twelfth month is built on the Ox, and Dark Emptiness, the station that belongs to the Rat, stands there then. 此其所以為子丑之合. I went through the twelve stations themselves in a separate piece.

得日月㑹同之數，則其相合之用如日月彌漫六合矣. With the number of the sun and moon meeting in hand, the combination spreads the way sun and moon fill the six directions. 六合 is also the old word for the whole of space.

The Six Pairs as Court Music

The Rites of Zhou, a bureaucratic text of the second century BCE, sets out the duties of the Grand Music Master, whose office matched the twelve pitch pipes in pairs and rang each pair for one of the six state sacrifices.

奏黄鍾歌大吕舞雲門以祭天神, the Yellow Bell with the Great Bell for the sky god. 奏太簇歌應鍾舞咸池以祀地祇 for the earth. 奏無射歌夾鍾舞大武以享祖先 for the ancestors. 奏姑洗歌南吕舞大罄以祀四望 for the four directions. 奏夷則歌仲吕舞大濩以享先妣 for the ancestral mother. 奏蕤賔歌林鍾舞大夏以祀山川 for the mountains and rivers.

Each pipe answers to a branch, and the six pairs of matched pipes are the six combinations exactly. The manual calls this 成王周公之制作也, the making of King Cheng and the Duke of Zhou.

The Bond Has Two Ends

The chapter quotes an older source, the Tianyuan Bianhua Shu, and gives every pair twice. I use this table more than any other line in the manual.

子合丑福輕，丑合子福盛. The Rat combining with the Ox is light, and the Ox combining with the Rat is abundant. Two worked examples follow, each splitting one pair across two chart shapes.

The manuals do not name which branch does the combining, and practitioners differ. I take the day branch as the self and read outward, which makes the table a statement about position. One bond holds two people, and each stands at a different end of it. Nobody in a long relationship believes both are having the same experience.

What the Manual Says a Bond Does

A closing passage credited to a source called Yujing lists names for what a combination does once it lands in a chart. 勾引恩讐, enticement and gratitude or grudge. 牽綰得失, a tethering that brings gain or loss. 顧盼人我, looking at and being looked at. 呼應前後, an echo front and back. 夫婦有情, husband and wife with feeling. 行藏同道, the same road whether acting or resting. Every name describes a relation between two ends rather than a property of one branch.

Beside it sits a line from the fourth-century diviner 珞琭子. 是從無而立有，謂見不見之形也. Establishing the existent out of the nonexistent, seeing the form of what cannot be seen. The manual puts that to work in fixed readings. A Wood day master whose prosperity seat is the Tiger finds the same seat through the Pig, 合禄. The riding horse arrives through the Snake when the Monkey is absent, 合馬, the logic the wealth horse reading turns on. Then the classic sums it up. 明合不如暗合，拱實不如拱虛. An open combination is worth less than a hidden one. The bond nobody can see from outside is the one doing the work.

The verdict paragraph that follows refuses to fix the bond's value. A combination produces a settled spirit, and everything after that depends on company. 大率合吉神則吉，合㓙神則凶. Meeting an auspicious star it turns auspicious, meeting an inauspicious one it turns inauspicious. The pair is a wire, and the surrounding stars decide what it carries.

Two Transform, Three Build

Since the branch pairs sit beside the three harmonies in every manual, the question is what separates them. The harmony chapter answers in one line. 天地間道理，兩則化，一隂一陽之謂也. Two transform, and that is what one yin and one yang means. 三則化三，生萬物之謂也. Three transform into three, and that is what generates things. A triad missing one member 則化不成局, never completes.

Jung arrived at something close from another direction. An essay called The Transcendent Function, written in 1916 and left in his files, describes the bringing together of opposites for the production of a third. The word he used for a matched pair of opposites was syzygy. The anima and animus literature is blunt about the cost of missing one, describing a syzygy without its partner as yin without yang. A branch read alone is a configuration with a piece missing.

An Exercise: Standing at One End

Take the two branches that form a combination in your chart. Write the bond twice, once from each end. The Rat in my chart combines with the Ox. Then the Ox combines with the Rat. Next to each line, write what that end would be asking for if the reading were turned toward it.

Then answer two questions in writing. Which end am I standing on right now. And what is the pair producing. A bond supplies nothing but the connection, so the honest follow-up is whether anything is being made at either end, since a combination that produces nothing is only holding.

A Closing Note

One line in the chapter has aged badly and deserves to be read as history rather than instruction. 男子忌合絶，女人忌合貴. Men should fear the combination that cuts and women should fear the combination with rank. It was written for a society where marriage was an economic arrangement. Read today, it is a window on the Ming compilers.

A combination is not a forecast of a wedding or a partnership. It is a description of two positions facing each other, and the reading only stays honest when both ends get described. One of those ends is usually held by somebody else. You can lay out your own four branches with the BaZi calculator.

This article is offered for spiritual guidance and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical, legal, or financial advice.