生肖 · Zodiac
Year branch & its relations
Each person's animal is the 地支 of the birth year (turned at 立春, fixed to Feb 4). The pair is matched against the full tables: 六合 (secret friends), 三合 (trine allies), 相冲 · 刑 · 害 · 破.
Old 月老, the Moon-Elder who ties the red thread, never read one life alone — he laid two charts side by side and looked for where they answered each other. 合婚 is that reading: the zodiac branches 生肖 weighed for 六合 and 三合 against 冲刑害破; the five elements 五行 tested for whether one supplies what the other lacks; and the sound-element 纳音 of each birth-year set in tune. Enter two dates — the day pillars computed exactly — and the ledger is cast.
合婚 describes tendencies, never fates. A red thread was said to bind two people no matter the distance — but the old teachers were careful: the chart is a mirror held up to a temperament, and people choose. A 冲 is not a doom and a 合 is not a promise; the friction a chart names is simply the work a good pairing already knows how to do. Read this as a conversation-starter between two people — not a sentence passed on them.
Each person's animal is the 地支 of the birth year (turned at 立春, fixed to Feb 4). The pair is matched against the full tables: 六合 (secret friends), 三合 (trine allies), 相冲 · 刑 · 害 · 破.
The day 干支 = (JDN + 49) mod 60, the offset calibrated against known dates: 2000-01-01 = 戊午, 1990-05-20 = 乙酉. The day pillar — and each person's Day Master — is exact.
Each chart's elements are tallied from its year and day pillars (four characters). The two are read for 相生 (one feeds the other), 比和 (alike), or 相克 (one checks the other) — and for whether one supplies what the other lacks.
Each birth year carries one of the thirty 纳音 — a poetic sound-element (e.g. 路旁土 Roadside Earth). The two are set in tune by the same 生 / 克 / 比和 logic.
A note on honesty: only the day pillar is exact to the day. The year branch turns at the true solar term 立春, approximated here by a fixed Feb 4 (near that boundary the animal may shift). Birth time is recorded but does not change these three readings — 生肖, 五行, and 纳音 all read the year and day, which the date alone fixes; the hour would only refine a fuller 八字. The compatibility score is one studio's weighting of these classical tests (生肖 45 · 五行 30 · 纳音 25) — a considered heuristic, offered for reflection, not an oracle.