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Astral Atlas
Wiki concept · Chinese & East Asian calendars

Six combinations

Also called Six harmonies · Liùhé 六合 · Earthly Branch six combinations · Dìzhī liùhé 地支六合 · Six-combination pair · 六合

In BaZi, six fixed pairs of Earthly Branches conventionally recognized as combinations: Zi–Chou, Yin–Hai, Mao–Xu, Chen–You, Si–Shen and Wu–Wei.

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A fixed set of six branch pairs

The six combinations (liùhé 六合) are Zi–Chou (子–丑), Yin–Hai (寅–亥), Mao–Xu (卯–戌), Chen–You (辰–酉), Si–Shen (巳–申) and Wu–Wei (午–未). The traditional Wuxing Dayi passage gives the paired branches in its discussion of cyclical correspondences; Joey Yap’s published BaZi table presents the same six-pair set.

This is a branch relation. It is distinct from a Heavenly Stem combination, a three-branch relation and every other relationship table. A result should name the characters or pinyin and the source table rather than treating an animal nickname as the rule itself.

Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi ↗

What the native tool calculates

After the four pillars have been calculated, the detector compares their four visible Earthly Branches against only the six listed pairs. It checks the six positional comparisons: year–month, year–day, year–hour, month–day, month–hour and day–hour. It returns every matching pair with both branch names and their positions.

The result preserves whether a match is adjacent in the displayed pillar order (year–month, month–day or day–hour) or distant (year–day, year–hour or month–hour). Adjacent and distant are positions in this display, not ranks of importance. The calculation does not inspect hidden stems, assign weights or decide a transformation.

Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi, Earthly Branches Combinations table ↗

Compare transmitted conventions

Sanming Tonghui explains the six pairs through yin–yang and numerical correspondences. This records a traditional rationale for the classification rather than a modern measurement of attraction. The teaching is transmitted through texts and practitioner tables; matching pairs alone does not identify when or where the scheme first arose.

Wu–Wei appears as Fire in the Sanqing Yuanhai transcription, while the Dongli transcription and Joey Yap table use sun/moon wording without a phase. Pair membership agrees. No transformed phase is calculated.

三命通會·卷二·論支元六合 ↗淵海子平·卷一·論十二支六合 ↗Joey Yap, Hack Your Destiny With BaZi (2016) ↗淵海子平卷一 ↗

Traditional interpretation is an additional step

Traditional texts and later practitioners use combination labels within larger systems of correspondence and chart reading. Wuxing Dayi itself cautions that combination is not only combination and can also carry separation; that context makes a single universal meaning unsafe.

A practitioner may consider the relevant pillars, seasonal context, visible stems, hidden stems and a school’s own rules before making an interpretation. Those operations are outside this detector. A detected pair neither proves a phase transformation nor supplies a good or bad verdict.

Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi ↗

Worked pair: Zi–Chou 子–丑

Suppose the visible branches of a four-pillar chart are year Zi, month Mao, day Chou and hour Chen. The detector compares all six positional pairs and reports Zi–Chou at year–day. It also reports that the positions are distant in the displayed order because the month pillar lies between them.

That output is complete as a membership result: a sourced six-combination pair is present at year–day. It does not say that the pair becomes Earth, changes either branch, describes family relations or predicts any event. Such statements would require an explicitly selected method and its additional inputs.

Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi ↗

Keep the relation and its limits visible

The tool’s scope is the six two-branch relations only. It does not detect triple relations, harms, punishments, phase-strength weights, hidden-stem rules or forecasts. A chart can contain other traditional patterns without changing whether this exact pair membership was found.

The relationship is a traditional interpretive convention applied to calendar-derived branch labels. It is not a scientific measurement of personality, compatibility, health or future events. Keep the calculation, the cited tradition and any personal reflection visibly separate.

Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗

A reflective prompt, not a reading

Original Astral Atlas reflection: If the label is useful for reflection, ask: “What changes when I notice that these two calculated branch positions are conventionally paired?” Keep the answer in your own experience rather than treating the prompt as a conclusion about character or fate.

You may also record the calendar convention used to generate the chart and the exact pair and positions detected. That makes it possible to revisit the result if a boundary assumption changes.

Word origin · etymology

Chinese liùhé 六合: liù means ‘six’; hé means ‘combine, join, accord’ in this compound. Pinyin is editorial romanization, not evidence of a single historical pronunciation or a universal English equivalent.

‘Six combinations’ is the literal, least interpretive English label. ‘Six harmonies’ is also common, but should not imply that every occurrence is beneficial or that the two branches automatically change into another phase.

Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi ↗

How we know · epistemology

Traditional branch-pair convention and interpretive input

A combination is a sourced relationship label for a listed pair of branches. Detecting the pair in a calculated chart is mechanical; claims that it binds, transforms, helps, harms or predicts an event belong to a named interpretive method and are not established by pair membership alone.

Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi ↗

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Sources & provenance

Use the citations beside each section to distinguish a calculation convention, a historical teaching and an editorial example.

Find these sources across the wiki →

  1. Wuxing Dayi 五行大義, volume 2 ↗
  2. Joey Yap · Hack Your Destiny with BaZi ↗
  3. 三命通會·卷二·論支元六合 ↗
  4. 淵海子平·卷一·論十二支六合 ↗
  5. Joey Yap, Hack Your Destiny With BaZi (2016) ↗
  6. 淵海子平卷一 ↗