合冲刑害
interactions — how branches talk to each other
Branches relate to each other in fixed geometries, the same way musical notes form chords. Six relation types: 六合 (harmony pairs), 三合 (three-branch groups) with 半合 (half groups), 冲 (opposition), 刑 (punishment), 害 (harm). The first rule of reading them: a pair can carry MORE than one relation at once. 巳申 is a harmony pair AND a punishment leg; 寅申 is an opposition AND a punishment leg. The app lists every relation a pair carries — it never hides one behind another.
The second rule: these are structural facts, not fortunes. A 冲 marks a geometry; what it means in a life is a reading, and readings are yours.
六合 — the six harmony pairs — 六合
Six pairs, each one yang and one yin branch, each a complement. The tradition adds a layer of 合化 "transformations" (each pair said to fuse into a phase — 子丑合化土, 寅亥合化木, 卯戌合化火, 辰酉合化金, 巳申合化水; schools differ on 午未). That layer is interpretation; the app computes the pair, not the transformation.
| pair | the traditional picture |
|---|---|
| 子丑 | seed and turning soil — water absorbed by winter earth |
| 寅亥 | dawn and deep water — spring watered from the night |
| 卯戌 | leaf and dry mountain — wood kept warm by the fire-vault |
| 辰酉 | wet earth and pure metal — ore drawn from the wet vault |
| 巳申 | coiled fire and formed metal — the forge's two halves |
| 午未 | noon and garden earth — the sun ripening the fruit |
三合 and 半合 — the four great groups — 三合 · 半合
Four three-branch groups, each the three seats of one phase across the year: 申子辰 (water), 亥卯未 (wood), 寅午戌 (fire), 巳酉丑 (metal). Each group is a season's arc — beginning, height, storehouse — so the three branches are phase-pure even though two of them are nominally other elements.
半合 "half harmony" is the adjacent pair inside a group: 申子 or 子辰, but NOT 申辰 — the end pair skips the middle seat and carries no relation by itself. (Some schools call the end pair 拱 gǒng, "the arch," and read it as the missing middle — a further layer the app does not compute.) The app's 流年 also detects 三合 completion: when a transit branch fills the one missing seat of a group whose other two sit in your chart, the year's marker reads 三合 — the arc closes.
冲 — the six oppositions — 冲
Six opposite pairs across the wheel: 子午, 丑未, 寅申, 卯酉, 辰戌, 巳亥. Opposition is the most energetic relation — two forces facing each other across the chart. In a transit year, a 冲 to a natal branch is traditionally the loudest event of the year — a confrontation, a move, a change of season. Read it as weather: a storm is neither good nor bad until you know what was standing in the field.
Two special cases. 冲空则实 chōng kōng zé shí — "a clash on a void fills it": when the year's branch clashes with a natal branch that sits in the chart's 空亡 (void) seats, the tradition reads the void as filled — the empty chair gets an occupant. The app marks these with 实. And 伏吟/反吟: a transit branch identical to a natal branch (伏吟, "hidden chant") or opposite to it (反吟, "returning chant") — the same-pair and opposite-pair cases of the year touching your chart. The app shows them through the same matrix: 反吟 is the 冲 marker; 伏吟 shows only when the branch is one of the four 自刑 (below).
刑 — the full canonical set — 刑
Punishment is the system's most misunderstood relation — folk tables often leave out half of it. The full canonical set is eleven pairs in four families:
无礼之刑 wú lǐ zhī xíng — "punishment of the unmannered": 子卯, the single pair of the yang-water / yin-wood axis, across the wheel.
恃势之刑 shì shì zhī xíng — "punishment of the presumptuous": the triangle 寅巳申 — ALL three legs punish, including the 冲 leg 寅申 and the 六合 leg 巳申. Note the multi-relations: 巳申 is BOTH harmony and punishment; 寅申 is BOTH opposition and punishment.
无恩之刑 wú ēn zhī xíng — "punishment of the ungrateful": the triangle 丑戌未 — all three legs punish, including the 冲 leg 丑未.
自刑 zì xíng — "self-punishment": 辰辰, 午午, 酉酉, 亥亥. When a transit branch lands on one of these four and the same branch sits in the natal chart, the year's marker reads 刑 — the chart meeting itself in the one place that hurts.
The engine implements exactly this set — it is the set pinned in the project's review process, and the transit timeline shows every 刑 leg, never a subset.
一个几何笔记 (worth knowing before you read a folk chart): the two 90°-triangle 刑s are NOT the 120° equilateral of 三合. Confusing them is the single most common folk-table error — a 三刑 triangle carries a 180° 冲 leg (丑未冲 inside 丑戌未; 寅申冲 inside 寅巳申) plus two 90° 刑 legs, while a 三合 group (申子辰, etc.) is evenly spaced at 120° and carries no clash at all. If a table shows a triangle with no 冲 leg, it is describing 三合, not 三刑.
害 — the six harms — 害
Six pairs: 丑午, 子未, 寅巳, 卯辰, 申亥, 酉戌. Harm is the quiet relation — the pair that shares space without harmonizing or opposing, like two neighbors who keep tripping over each other's fence. Note again the overlaps: 寅巳 is BOTH a punishment leg and a harm pair — the app shows both.
一个推导捷径: 害 is sometimes taught as "the branch that clashes with your 六合 partner" — 子's 合 partner is 丑; 丑's 冲 partner is 未; so 子未 is a 害 pair. Run it for any branch and the six 害 pairs fall out without memorizing a table.
调候 — the climate of the chart — 调候
The month branch names the climate: winter months (亥子丑) are cold and look for fire; summer months (巳午未) are hot and look for water. 调候 "adjusting the climate" is the chart's elemental need — and the transit timeline marks the years whose branch supplies it (a 巳 or 午 year feeding a winter chart). It is the most concrete, least interpretive relation in the whole system: a season and its fuel. Module 11 (用神) makes 调候 one of the five formal ways to choose a chart's favorable god — this module gives you the raw climate-reading; module 11 gives you the decision procedure.
reading interactions honestly
Every marker in the app's timeline is a geometric fact from the engine: which pair, which relation, which void was struck. What it MEANS is deliberately not computed. The markers have no colors of fortune, no red for "bad" and green for "good" — because a clash in one life is a rescue in another, and no arithmetic knows which is which. Structure is computed; meaning is read. The line between them is this project's whole discipline.