Double hour 3 of 12 · 時支
The Tiger hour
寅 Yin holds 03:00–04:59 on the modern civil clock. Tradition fitted the tiger to it as the hour tigers hunt, the most dangerous stretch of the night.
One branch · four linked coordinates
What stays fixed in the Tiger period
The clock selects one Earthly Branch. The same branch also carries a phase, compass direction and solar-term month; those links are structural coordinates, not extra personality labels.
- Hour branch寅 Yin
03:00–04:59
- Month opens立春 Lìchūn
Start of Spring
- DirectionEast-northeast
Branch sector 3 of 12
- Fixed phaseWood
Phase carried by the branch
五鼠遁 · day stem sets hour stem
Five complete Tiger hour pillars are possible
The branch is fixed by the clock. The stem advances from the Day Master, so the ten day stems fall into five rule pairs and produce five possible hour pillars here.
- 01 · on 甲 Jia / 己 Ji days丙寅Yang Fire Tiger
- 02 · on 乙 Yi / 庚 Geng days戊寅Yang Earth Tiger
- 03 · on 丙 Bing / 辛 Xin days庚寅Yang Metal Tiger
- 04 · on 丁 Ding / 壬 Ren days壬寅Yang Water Tiger
- 05 · on 戊 Wu / 癸 Gui days甲寅Yang Wood Tiger
Two clock edges
The Tiger hour changes at 03:00 and after 04:59
A time earlier than 03:00 belongs to the preceding branch; a time after 04:59 belongs to the next. This site reads the local civil time entered and does not silently apply longitude, daylight-saving or apparent-solar-time corrections.
Known time
A recorded local time selects this branch and allows the hour stem to be derived from the day stem.
Unknown time
The hour pillar stays absent. Assuming noon or another default would invent two of the chart’s eight characters.
The same branch geometry at every scale
Its clash, harmony and trine do not change with the clock
The Tiger branch clashes with Monkey, forms Six Harmony with Pig, and belongs to the Fire trine with Tiger and Horse and Dog. These relationships come from fixed positions.