Branch alliances and clashes in Chinese astrology

Three figures for twelve branches

An earthly branch taken in isolation says only part of what it does in a chart. What sets it in motion is its relations with the other branches present. Chinese astrology keeps three figures for this, and they bear distinct names because they do not describe the same thing: the alliances by pairs, called Liu He, the frontal clashes, called Liu Chong, and the affinity triangles, called San He.

The three lie over the same circle of twelve branches, which is why one branch appears in all three lists. It holds a different role each time, and nothing obliges those roles to contradict one another. The module home page places these branches back within the architecture of the four pillars.

The six alliances, Liu He

Six alliances link the branches two by two. Their particularity is that a pair does not merely get along well: it produces an element.

Six pairs, six productions, but five elements only: Fire appears twice, carried by Mao and Xu on one side, by Wu and Wei on the other. Earth, Wood, Metal and Water are each produced by a single pair.

One point of vocabulary deserves the reader’s full attention here. The Wu of the sixth line is an earthly branch. A heavenly stem is also romanised Wu: these are two distinct Chinese characters, and one is never deduced from the other. The romanisation coincidence is one of the most stubborn sources of confusion in the system.

The six clashes, Liu Chong

The second set of pairs opposes the branches diametrically facing each other on the circle of twelve. This is called a frontal clash, Liu Chong.

Six clashes, just as there are six alliances, and the symmetry is no accident: on a circle of twelve positions, every branch has exactly one branch facing it.

An exact partition of the twelve

This is the most remarkable property of these two figures, and it can be checked at a glance on the two tables. Alliances as well as clashes pair the twelve branches exactly once each. No branch is left aside, none appears twice.

The consequence is clear: every branch has one Liu He ally and one only, one Liu Chong opponent and one only. There is neither an isolated branch nor a branch overloaded with relations. That regularity is also a checking tool: a list of alliances or clashes that left a branch without a partner, or that placed one in two pairs, would be faulty. The tables above check themselves.

The four triangles, San He

The third figure no longer works by pairs but by groups of three. Four affinity triangles each gather three branches around an element.

Four triangles of three branches make twelve: here again, the twelve branches are distributed with nothing left over and no duplicate. The difference from the alliances lies in the number of elements involved. The triangles carry Water, Wood, Fire and Metal. None carries Earth.

Note that the groupings do not copy those of the alliances. Zi allies with Chou in the Liu He, but forms its triangle with Shen and Chen. The three figures are read in parallel, on the same twelve branches, without ever being deduced from one another.

What these figures are not

Alliances, clashes and triangles link branches, not people. A Liu He alliance between two branches says nothing, on its own, about how two human beings get along, and a Liu Chong clash announces no particular conflict. The animal of the birth year, the only one everybody knows, is just one character among those of a chart: a compatibility established on it alone leaves out what matters.

These three figures describe a structure. They say which branches answer one another, which face each other, which gather around a common element. They predict nothing, and they are read only inside a complete chart, taking account of the branches actually present in it.