Compatibility: How Two People's Characters Meet
Compatibility (宮合, gunghap) is not about deciding who is good or bad for whom. It looks at how two people's characters meet. Rather than one score, we show compatibility in four dimensions: attraction, stability, complement and tension.
What compatibility compares
- Day Master with Day Master: how your basic temperaments meet. A stem combination means mutual attraction; one generating the other, a caring relationship; one controlling the other, leading and following — or friction.
- Day branch with day branch: the closest seat of all, the spouse palace. A Six Harmony meshes naturally; a clash means lifestyles and paces collide more easily.
- Month branch with month branch: your surroundings, values and workplaces.
- Sign with sign (year branches): the familiar zodiac match. Traditionally the lightest factor.
- What you give each other: whether the other chart is rich in your useful element, whether the other's day branch is your Peach Blossom or Heavenly Noble, and, for couples, whether the other's Day Master is your spouse star (Wealth for men, Officer for women).
Four dimensions
| Dimension | Comes from | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Attraction | Stem combinations, the spouse star, Peach Blossom | The pull you feel towards each other |
| Stability | Six Harmonies, the same Three Harmony group, the same branch, Day Masters of the same element | Comfort together, the power to last |
| Complement | Day Masters that generate each other, useful-element support, Heavenly Noble, roles by relationship | Filling in what the other lacks |
| Tension | Clashes, punishments, Yuanjin, breaks and harms, controlling Day Masters, stem clashes | Friction that also spurs each other on |
Each dimension adds up its evidence into weak, moderate or strong, and the result lists every piece of evidence — which characters produced it.
Each relationship weighs positions differently
For a couple the day branch matters most, but for colleagues the month branch — the workplace — matters more. So each relationship gives each position its own weight.
| Relationship | Day branch | Month branch | Sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Couple, spouses | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Friends | 1.5 | 1 | 1 |
| Family, parent and child | 1 | 1 | 1.5 |
| Siblings | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Colleagues, boss and report, business partners | 1 | 2 | 0.5 |
| Teacher and student | 1 | 1.5 | 0.5 |
Some checks are specific to a relationship. For parent and child, the parent's hour branch (the seat of children) is compared with the child's day branch. For boss and report or teacher and student, we look at what ten god the senior person is to the junior: a boss who is the report's Direct Officer is easy to trust and follow; one who is their Resource teaches and pulls them along. Business partners who are each other's Rob Wealth are the pairing to be most careful with.
Useful-element support: the person who is easy to be around
When the other person's chart holds plenty of the element you need, being together is said to fill in your missing energy. We count it as strong support when your useful element makes up 28% or more of the other chart's elemental strength, and some support at 20% or more. Support can run one way only, so both directions are checked separately.
The timing you share
Compatibility is not just about the characters you were born with; it is also about the periods you go through together. We pick the years in the next ten when both of your flows are gentle, and the years when either person's day branch is clashed or both flows are heavy.
Group compatibility
For families, teams and groups (up to eight people), every pair is calculated and then summarised:
- The group's elements: everyone's elements added together, finding what is plentiful (26% or more) and what is lacking (12% or less).
- Who gets what they need: how much of each person's useful element the others carry. Little means that person could use some extra care.
- The mediator: with three or more people, the person with high stability and complement and low tension with everyone else.
- Pair highlights: the pairs that complete each other, the comfortable pairs and the pairs that clash easily.
How to read compatibility
- Strong tension does not mean a bad match. Knowing where you collide in advance helps you set ground rules for talking things through.
- Weak attraction is fine. Relationships with stability and complement grow stronger with time.
- Respect the other person's consent. Their date of birth is used only for the calculation and never stored. Before sharing a result, ask whether they want you to.
How this site calculates it
Each piece of evidence gets points added to its dimension: a stem combination between Day Masters adds 2 to attraction, a Six Harmony adds stability equal to its position's weight, a clash adds tension equal to its position's weight, useful-element support adds 1–2 to complement, and so on.
Attraction, stability and complement are moderate from 1 and strong from 3. Tension has slightly higher thresholds: moderate from 1.5 and strong from 3.5. In the shared timing, good years are the top three among years when both flow scores are 58 or more; years to watch are those when either person's day branch is clashed or both scores are 40 or less.
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