Two animals · their fixed branch coordinates
丑酉
Ox and Rooster compatibility
Ox and Rooster sit 4 places apart on the twelve-branch circle. Their compatibility reading begins with that geometry, then adds the phases and trines attached to the two positions.
- Branch relation
- Shared trine
- Phase relation
- Earth generates Metal
- Circle distance
- 4 of 6 steps
The coordinates beneath the animal names
Read the two branches first
The animal is the familiar label. The branch fixes the position, phase, polarity, month, double-hour and direction used by the comparison.
丑
Ox
Chou · Yin Earth
- Circle position
- 2 of 12
- Fixed phase
- Earth
- Double-hour
- 01:00–02:59
- Month opens
- 小寒 Minor Cold
- Direction
- North-northeast
- Trine phase
- Metal
酉
Rooster
You · Yin Metal
- Circle position
- 10 of 12
- Fixed phase
- Metal
- Double-hour
- 17:00–18:59
- Month opens
- 白露 White Dew
- Direction
- West
- Trine phase
- Metal
Inside both branches · 藏干
What Ox and Rooster carry beneath the surface
Each Earthly Branch contains a fixed list of one to three Heavenly Stems. Comparing the two inventories shows whether this pair repeats an exact stem, shares only a phase, or keeps the two internal lists separate.
辛 Xin
Ox and Rooster both contain 辛 Xin. Internal phase overlap: Metal.
Every matching set stays visible
The named branch relationships
Harmony, trine, meeting, clash, harm, break and punishment are different sets. A pair can appear in more than one, so no match replaces another.
Fixed branch phases · 十二支五行
Earth generates Metal
Earth, carried by the first branch, moves into Metal along the generating cycle. The direction matters: reversing the names would describe a different phase relationship.
This is the phase fixed to each Earthly Branch. A birth year also has a stem phase — for example, Fire Rat or Metal Rat — which is a separate coordinate.
The three-branch groups around the pair
Both point to the Metal trine
A trine is complete only when all three of its branches are present. One or two selected animals locate positions inside that group without inventing its missing members.
Metal trine
From a year pair to a four-pillar chart
What this pair establishes — and what comes next
The comparison establishes the fixed relationship between 丑 and 酉. It does not turn two birth-year animals into a verdict about the whole relationship. In a Four Pillars chart, branches also appear at the month, day and hour layers, and each occurrence meets the rest of both charts.