The Story of the Twelve Zodiac Animals — Personalities and Compatibility

The heart of zodiac compatibility is the 'three harmonies (samhap, 三合).' The twelve signs are grouped into four sets of three, and signs within the same harmony are seen to share goals and temperament, creating synergy together. Monkey-rat-dragon (the Water bureau), tiger-horse-dog (the Fire bureau), snake-rooster-ox (the Metal bureau), and pig-rabbit-sheep (the Wood bureau) each form one harmony. In romance, business, and friendship, the three harmonies are read as bonds that fit well over the long run.

Even for the same three harmonies, this site counts differently when it compares two people's signs and when it compares your sign with the energy of a year. Between two people it follows the popular custom of sign compatibility and treats any two signs of the same harmony group as a three-harmony match, so for a Monkey both the Rat and the Dragon come up as well-matched signs. For the luck of a year or a month, on the other hand, it follows the Myeongri rule that a half harmony only forms when one of the cardinal branches 子, 午, 卯 or 酉 (旺支) is part of it. So for a Monkey born in 1992 (壬申), the 庚子 year of 2020 is a three-harmony year, but the 甲辰 year of 2024, which has no cardinal branch, is read as a steady year with no special relation. Because it can look inconsistent that the Dragon is a well-matched sign while the Dragon's year is merely steady, the result screen adds a line linking the two judgements in such years.

Beyond the three harmonies, the 'six unions (yukhap, 六合),' in which two signs form a pair, are a relationship of easy attraction — stable, with little friction. Conversely, the six pairs that face each other head-on are called 'clashes (chung, 沖)': their temperaments are polar opposites and prone to collision, yet for that very reason they can be relationships that spur each other to grow. Signs six positions apart — like rat and horse, ox and sheep, tiger and monkey — form the clashing pairs. A clash is not necessarily bad; understand the difference and it becomes a strong bond.

There are 66 pairs of two different signs in all, and by this site's table they break down into 12 three-harmony pairs, 6 six-harmony pairs, 6 clash pairs, 6 harm pairs, 3 punishment pairs and 4 resentment pairs, with the remaining 29 pairs holding no special relation. When a pair falls under two relations, the site looks at the harmonies first and then picks just one in the order clash, harm, punishment, resentment, so a pair like the Rat and the Sheep, where harm and resentment overlap, counts as harm. Punishment comes from the triple punishments 寅巳申 and 丑戌未 and the rude punishment 子卯, but once you set aside the pairs where another relation is caught first, only three pairs actually come out as punishment: Rat and Rabbit, Ox and Dog, and Dog and Sheep. Two people of the same sign are treated separately as "same sign", and self-punishment, which counts identical branches such as 辰辰 or 午午 as punishment, is left out because schools disagree. Counted again with the cardinal-branch rule used for luck, the three-harmony pairs drop to 8 and the pairs with no special relation rise to 33, so some pairs read differently between two people and against the energy of a year.

The 'samjae (三災),' which comes up often in zodiac fortune, is a traditional notion that within the twelve years there is a particular three-year span to be careful. Each harmony group has fixed years in which samjae falls, so the three years run as the entering year (deul-samjae), the staying year (nul-samjae), and the leaving year (nal-samjae). Take samjae as a signal to avoid big changes and reckless decisions and to look after your body and mind.

The samjae is fixed for each harmony group: the 亥卯未 group meets it in the 巳, 午 and 未 years, the 申子辰 group in the 寅, 卯 and 辰 years, the 寅午戌 group in the 申, 酉 and 戌 years, and the 巳酉丑 group in the 亥, 子 and 丑 years. So the 丙午 year of 2026 is the middle samjae year for Pig, Rabbit and Sheep, the centre of three years that began with the 乙巳 year of 2025 and end with the 丁未 year of 2027. For Monkey, Rat and Dragon, the next samjae runs from 2034 to 2036. This site reflects the samjae only as a small deduction from the score, so a Sheep born in 2003 (癸未) scores 81 for 2026 even though it is a middle samjae year, because that year's 午 forms a six harmony with the sign. Rather than taking the samjae as three years that are bad no matter what, reading it together with that year's relation and using it as a marker for where not to rush fits this site's readings better.

One common misunderstanding is that people of the same sign get the same reading for a year, but this site also looks at the heavenly stem of the birth year and splits each sign into five strands. Comparing Horses in the 丙午 year of 2026, someone born in 1978 (戊午) scores 73, someone born in 2002 (壬午) 69, and someone born in 1990 (庚午) 67, so even when all of them meet a year of their own sign, the scores part according to how that year's stem 丙 relates to each person's stem. Another is to treat January 1 as the dividing day, but a January or early-February birthday has to be checked against that year's lunar New Year to settle which animal applies. It also helps to know that the personality symbols of the signs are long folk tradition, and that in Myeongri a person's temperament is read from all eight characters centred on the Day Master of the birth day rather than from the sign alone. The zodiac reading is a light entrance that reads that big frame one year at a time, so if you want the flow in more detail, the next step is Saju, built from your date and hour of birth.