The twelve Earthly Branches (地支, dì zhī) are the lower row of a BaZi chart. In popular culture they are the Chinese zodiac animals. In the chart they are time-rooms: year, month, day, and hour each sit in a branch. The animal is a nickname. The useful facts are the branch’s element, its hidden stems, and how it clashes or combines with the other three.
Upper row: Heavenly Stems. Hidden layer: hidden stems. Popular animal pairing: Chinese zodiac compatibility. Animal plus stem color: Chinese zodiac five elements.
The Twelve
In order, with the usual animal and a seasonal hint (month branch, solar calendar):
- 子 Zi — Rat — peak Water (midwinter)
- 丑 Chou — Ox — Earth, leftover Water/Metal
- 寅 Yin — Tiger — Wood, beginning of the year in many BaZi counts
- 卯 Mao — Rabbit — peak Wood
- 辰 Chen — Dragon — Earth, leftover Wood/Water
- 巳 Si — Snake — Fire
- 午 Wu — Horse — peak Fire
- 未 Wei — Goat — Earth, leftover Fire/Wood
- 申 Shen — Monkey — Metal
- 酉 You — Rooster — peak Metal
- 戌 Xu — Dog — Earth, leftover Metal/Fire
- 亥 Hai — Pig — Water
“Peak” here means the branch whose main qi is that element in a relatively pure form. The four Earth branches (Ox, Dragon, Goat, Dog) are storage / leftover rooms. That is why two people with the same Day Master can feel different: one has a storage month, one has a peak month.
Month Branch Is the Season
The month branch is the chart’s climate. A Jia Wood Day Master born in Mao (Rabbit, mid-spring) sits in a Wood season. The same Jia in You (Rooster, mid-autumn) sits in Metal season — Wood is being cut. Strength, useful gods, and the whole Ten Gods reading lean on that climate. See month pillar.
The year branch is the outer layer people already know as “year of the Dragon.” Useful, and the least intimate of the four. See year pillar.
Clashes and Combinations
Branches punch and pair: Rat-Horse, Ox-Goat, Tiger-Monkey, Rabbit-Rooster, Dragon-Dog, Snake-Pig are the six clashes. Combinations (three harmonies, six unions) pull branches into a team. You do not need the full table on day one. You need to look at your four and see whether two of them are a known pair.
A clash in the natal chart is a standing conversation. A clash from the current year is weather. Do not treat a year-clash headline as a breakup appointment.
Hidden Stems: Why the Animal Is Not the Whole Room
Each branch contains one, two, or three hidden stems. The main qi is the one people quote (Horse is Fire). The leftovers are why two Horses are not interchangeable once they sit in a real chart.
Chen (Dragon) is an Earth storage that also holds leftover Wood and Water. A Day Master that needs Water can find a sip in Chen that a naive “Dragon = Earth” label would miss. That is the point of the hidden stems page: the animal is the door; the hidden stems are the furniture.
You do not need to memorize all thirty-something hidden letters on day one. You need to look up the four branches you actually have. Volume is lower than a visible stem. It is not zero.
Four Branches, Four Jobs
The same animal means different things in different columns.
- Year branch: the outer coat, the generation-field, the animal people already know. See year pillar and the folk overlay in Chinese zodiac five elements.
- Month branch: climate. This is the one that decides Day Master strength more than any other single letter.
- Day branch: the closest room — classically the spouse palace of BaZi, practically the quality of one-to-one space.
- Hour branch: the late room — output, the work you parent, the two-hour clock you were born in.
A Rat in the year and a Rat in the day are not “double Rat personality.” They are the same branch doing two jobs. If those two Rats clash the month Horse, the clash has an address: outer life and close life both arguing with the climate.
How to Read Your Four Without a Poster
Write the four animals. Mark any textbook clash or combination among those four only. Then mark whether this year’s branch repeats, clashes, or combines with one of them.
A natal clash is a standing conversation you already know how to have (or have been having badly). An annual clash is a year when that conversation gets a louder room. Neither is an appointment with disaster. If a headline says “Horse year wrecks Rat people,” ask: which Rat — year, day, or hour — and relative to this Day Master?
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my zodiac animal my Day Master? Almost never in the way people mean. The animal is the year branch (or sometimes people quote the day branch). The Day Master is a stem.
Do I need birth time for branches? You need time for the hour branch. Year, month, and day branches can be known from the date (month uses solar terms, not just the civil month).
Are the animals personality types? As pop zodiac, they are treated that way. In BaZi they are structural. Science of the Chinese zodiac is the evidence caveat.
Where next? How to read a Four Pillars chart.