Two animals · their fixed branch coordinates
子巳
Rat and Snake compatibility
Rat and Snake sit 5 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
- No direct named pair
- Phase relation
- Water controls Fire
- Circle distance
- 5 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.
子
Rat
Zi · Yang Water
- Circle position
- 1 of 12
- Fixed phase
- Water
- Double-hour
- 23:00–00:59
- Month opens
- 大雪 Major Snow
- Direction
- North
- Trine phase
- Water
巳
Snake
Si · Yin Fire
- Circle position
- 6 of 12
- Fixed phase
- Fire
- Double-hour
- 09:00–10:59
- Month opens
- 立夏 Start of Summer
- Direction
- South-southeast
- Trine phase
- Metal
Inside both branches · 藏干
What Rat and Snake 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.
No exact stem repeats
The two fixed inventories contain no identical Heavenly Stem. Internal phase overlap: No shared hidden phase.
Every matching set stays visible
No direct named pair
Harmony, trine, meeting, clash, harm, break and punishment are different sets. A pair can appear in more than one, so no match replaces another.
Rat and Snake do not form a named two-branch pair
They are not a Six Harmony, Clash, Harm, Break or punishment pair and do not share a trine or seasonal meeting group. Their water controls fire phase link and their separate trines still give the comparison structure.
Fixed branch phases · 十二支五行
Water controls Fire
Water, carried by the first branch, regulates Fire in the controlling cycle. That is a phase link alongside any named branch relation the pair also carries.
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
The pair belongs to two trines
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.
Water trine
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 子 and 巳. 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.