These groups in your chart
Add birth details, or explore the example, to see present and missing members in each group.
Open the group explorer →Four fixed three-branch groups
The conventional three-harmony sets are Shen–Zi–Chen (申–子–辰), Hai–Mao–Wei (亥–卯–未), Yin–Wu–Xu (寅–午–戌), and Si–You–Chou (巳–酉–丑). The Sanming Tonghui passage headed ‘On the three combinations of branch origins’ explains Shen–Zi–Chen through Water, then gives the parallel Fire, Wood and Metal sets.
They are relation sets among Earthly Branches. They are not the same table as the six combinations or six clashes, and their animal labels are not the calculation rule. The tool checks the branch characters or their named equivalents against these four exact triplets.
Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, ‘On the three combinations of branch origins’ ↗
Phase and lifecycle associations in the cited tradition
In its account of Shen–Zi–Chen, Sanming Tonghui calls Shen the place where Water is born, Zi the place where it prospers, and Chen the storehouse where it is gathered; it then describes the three as a combination. This gives one transmitted rationale for the term: a phase is traced through a three-part birth, flourishing and storage sequence.
The same passage aligns Yin–Wu–Xu with Fire, Hai–Mao–Wei with Wood, and Si–You–Chou with Metal. These are traditional correspondences within a five-phase framework. They help explain why later readers speak of a ‘Water group’ or ‘Fire group’; they do not license the tool to declare a transformation or measure the amount of a phase in a person.
Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, ‘On the three combinations of branch origins’ ↗Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, branch discussion ↗
What the native tool calculates
After the four pillars are calculated, the tool reads their four visible Earthly Branch occurrences. For each of the four listed groups, it reports the exact present members, the exact missing members, and every pillar position in which a present member occurs. The comparison is membership-based, so order and adjacency do not make or break a group.
A three-harmony result is complete only if all three distinct members of one listed group occur. If a chart contains Shen and Zi but no Chen, the Water group is incomplete and the tool reports Chen as missing. It does not call that pattern a ‘half transformation,’ and it does not inspect hidden stems, count phase strength, or rank one group over another.
Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, ‘On the three combinations of branch origins’ ↗
Distinct membership matters more than repetition
The requirement is three different branch members, not three branch occurrences. A chart with Shen in year, Shen in day, and Zi in hour contains two distinct members of Shen–Zi–Chen: Shen is present twice, Zi is present once, and Chen is missing. The group therefore remains incomplete.
Showing all four pillar occurrences avoids hiding this distinction. A duplicate can be useful descriptive information about the calculated chart, but it never supplies the absent third member. This is a transparent application rule for the tool, separate from any later school-specific reading of repeated branches.
Worked example: a complete Water group
Suppose the visible pillar branches are year Shen, month Mao, day Zi, and hour Chen. The tool finds Shen, Zi and Chen among the four positions and reports the Shen–Zi–Chen three-harmony group as complete. Its position display is Shen/year, Zi/day and Chen/hour; Mao/month is not a member of that group.
The cited traditional passage associates this set with Water and describes a birth–prosperity–storage rationale. The calculation itself establishes only complete membership and locations. It does not say that Water has transformed, become dominant, overrides Mao, or predicts a circumstance. A personal reflection can begin after those separate statements have been kept distinct.
Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, ‘On the three combinations of branch origins’ ↗
Interpretation and reflection are later steps
Traditional readers may bring seasonal context, stems, hidden stems, pillar roles, and a named school’s rules to a three-harmony group. Sanming Tonghui itself treats branch use as varying by year, month, day and hour and gives the month branch a prominent role in that discussion. The group detector deliberately does not choose among those further operations.
Original Astral Atlas reflection: after recording a complete group and its positions, ask, ‘What do I notice when I compare this calculated pattern with the tradition’s phase-and-lifecycle image?’ Treat the answer as your own reflection. It is neither an empirical finding about personality nor a forecast.
Historical wording and the convention used here
The Wuxing Dayi (五行大義) discusses both directional triples and phase-based three-branch relations. Its lifecycle sequence uses birth (生), flourishing (王) and burial (葬); later presentations may use flourishing (旺) and storage (庫). Burial is not the separate lifecycle position called death (死).
The opening of Ziping Zhenquan’s chapter on clashes and combinations calls Shen–Zi–Chen-type sets 三會. Modern practitioner tables often reserve Sanhui for consecutive seasonal triples. This entry states the modern distinction explicitly rather than assuming one label had an unchanged meaning across every text.
Yuanhai Ziping also lists an Earth arrangement of four branches, Chen–Xu–Chou–Wei. The present inspector covers four triples per family; that Earth arrangement requires a separate rule. No single inventor or original date is established by these passages.
Word origin · etymology
Chinese sānhé 三合: sān means ‘three’; hé means ‘join, combine, accord.’
‘Three harmonies’ is a common English rendering; ‘three combinations’ stays closer to the literal relation label. The compound names a conventional group and does not assert that all chart occurrences are harmonious in an everyday or psychological sense.
How we know · epistemology
Traditional branch-group convention and calendar-derived membership calculation
The chart calculation can establish only whether each cited three-branch membership set is complete among the four visible Earthly Branches. Traditional explanations associate the sets with phases and a birth–prosperity–storage sequence, but those correspondences are inherited interpretive material, not a measured property of a person. A complete set does not by itself establish transformation, strength, precedence or a forecast.
Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, ‘On the three combinations of branch origins’ ↗Sanming Tonghui 三命通會, volume 2, branch discussion ↗五行大義 卷二 第六論五行相雜・三論方位雜 ↗
Explore it in your atlas
Connected concepts
Read alongside this entry
Terms used in this explanation
Mentioned in 1 other entry
These links connect subjects and terminology. They do not establish a shared historical origin.
Sources & provenance
Use the citations beside each section to distinguish a calculation convention, a historical teaching and an editorial example.