Two animals · their fixed branch coordinates
巳申
Snake and Monkey compatibility
Snake and Monkey sit 3 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
- Harmony · Break · Punishment
- Phase relation
- Fire controls Metal
- Circle distance
- 3 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.
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
申
Monkey
Shen · Yang Metal
- Circle position
- 9 of 12
- Fixed phase
- Metal
- Double-hour
- 15:00–16:59
- Month opens
- 立秋 Start of Autumn
- Direction
- West-southwest
- Trine phase
- Water
Inside both branches · 藏干
What Snake and Monkey 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.
庚 Geng · 戊 Wu
Snake and Monkey both contain 庚 Geng · 戊 Wu. Internal phase overlap: Earth · 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.
- 01
Snake and Monkey form one of the six fixed 六合 pairs. This identifies their matched positions on the branch circle.
- 02
Monkey and Snake form one of the six 六破 pairs, often translated as Break or Destruction. This set can overlap another relation, so every matching relation stays visible.
- 03三刑
Shared Punishment group
Punishment of IngratitudeTiger, Snake, Monkey form the Punishment of Ingratitude pattern. The selected pair identifies two positions in the group; the remaining member completes its three branches.
Fixed branch phases · 十二支五行
Fire controls Metal
Fire, carried by the first branch, regulates Metal 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.
Metal trine
Water 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 巳 and 申. 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.