Traveling Horse: only four branches

Twelve day branches, only four landing spots

On this site the Traveling Horse (驿马) is found from the day branch. Work out which Three Harmony (三合) group that branch is in, take the first branch of the group, and the branch opposite it is where the "horse" lands. You look for it in the year, month and hour pillars.

Open the full-size diagram

Look-up sketch: the left column is the Three Harmony group of the day branch, the middle column is the head of the group (the Growth spot of its element), and the right column is the horse landing spot given by the site engine's table.

The four rows in the picture are the whole rule. The Water group is Monkey, Rat and Dragon: its head is Monkey and the horse lands on Tiger. The Fire group is Tiger, Horse and Dog: head Tiger, horse on Monkey. The Metal group is Snake, Rooster and Ox: head Snake, horse on Pig. The Wood group is Pig, Rabbit and Goat: head Pig, horse on Snake. So whatever the day branch is, the horse sits among Tiger, Monkey, Snake and Pig. The day branch is never the horse itself, which is why the day pillar is not part of the search.

Why the clash: the "relay station" and the "horse" in the book

The "On the Traveling Horse" chapter of the Sanming Tonghui (三命通会, a Ming-dynasty compendium) treats the horse as a kind of qi held in reserve, and compares it to the post stations of old:

When the qi is hidden, it is like a relay station; when the qi moves, it is like a horse.

It then gives the Fire group as an example:

Tiger, Horse and Dog belong to Fire, with Water hidden inside; at the Monkey place, where Water is born, it is released.

Tiger, Horse and Dog form the Fire group, and Fire holds Water inside; Water is born at Monkey, and there the hidden qi is set moving, so that place is the horse. The Water group works the same way: Fire is hidden inside Monkey, Rat and Dragon and is released at Tiger. Put this over all four groups and each time the result is the clash of the head:

The site's table fixes this rule into twelve rows, and a check confirms it: head Monkey, clash Tiger; head Tiger, clash Monkey; head Snake, clash Pig; head Pig, clash Snake. It matches the table exactly.

Pulling out one horse: two charts

Take a chart whose day branch is Rat: Rat belongs to the Water group, whose head is Monkey, and the branch opposite Monkey is Tiger. The four branches read Tiger, Ox, Rat, Dragon, so the year pillar's Tiger is the horse. Now take a day branch of Rooster: Rooster belongs to the Metal group, with Snake as head and Pig opposite; the four branches read Horse, Pig, Rooster, Pig, and the month and hour pillars each hold a Pig, so both are horses.

Finding the horse is only the start: twelve kinds in the book

The same chapter goes on to sort the horse into twelve kinds, each one the horse plus another condition. The book puts it plainly:

These twelve Traveling Horses are to be weighed with judgment.

Four of them show what the book cares about:

The conditions in these four, which are voids, emolument, the conception month and element control, are not judged by the site. The site look-up says only whether a horse exists and in which pillar.

The site's wording against the book's

The site describes the Traveling Horse as "much moving and change, suited to mobile work or travel". The closest line in the same chapter of the Sanming Tonghui follows a quotation from Luo Lu Zi and opens with "it is also said": when the major or minor luck or the passing year reaches the horse, it brings official posts and transfers. Set side by side:

Another day-branch Symbolic Star worked out from a Three Harmony group is the Peach Blossom: it takes the branch right after the head (the Bath spot), which is not one of the group's three branches. How much weight a horse carries in a full reading is covered in where Symbolic Stars sit in a BaZi reading.