Chinese Zodiac Six Breaks: Liu Po Pairs Explained
Six Breaks, or 六破 Liù Pò (also called 相破 Xiāng Pò, “mutual breaking”), groups the twelve Earthly Branches into six pairs. A direct premodern description appears in the “Break” (破) section of the Liuren Daquan (六壬大全), an anonymous Six Ren (六壬) divination compendium preserved in a Ming-period edition. That source lists all six relationships by name and gives several of the traditional judgments still repeated today.
Because that text belongs to the Six Ren divination tradition rather than the Sanming Tonghui-based tradition this site cites for Three Harmonies, Six Harmonies, Six Conflicts, Six Harms, and Mutual Punishments, this page keeps the two traditions separate — and separates what the old text actually says from explanations later BaZi practitioners have added on top of it.
Six Breaks quick answer
The six Six Breaks pairs are Rat–Rooster, Rabbit–Horse, Dragon–Ox, Goat–Dog, Tiger–Pig, and Snake–Monkey. Every one of the twelve animals appears in exactly one pair.
Six Breaks is a technical label from the Earthly Branches (地支) — twelve symbolic signs used in the traditional Chinese calendar and in BaZi, a birth-chart system built from a person’s year, month, day, and hour of birth. “Break” here names a branch relationship, not a promise that two real people will disrupt each other. This page’s Six Harms and Mutual Punishments pages draw on the Sanming Tonghui — a separate BaZi/Earthly-Branch textual tradition from the Six Ren (六壬) divination tradition this page draws on; see the section below on where Six Breaks comes from before assuming the two traditions are interchangeable. It is a relationship between Earthly Branches and can appear between branches in any of the four BaZi pillars, not only the birth-year branch. The animal names on this page are a reader-friendly way to display the six branch pairs; they do not mean the rule is limited to birth-year zodiac animals.
The six Six Breaks pairs
Liuren Daquan: “主阴小灾悔” — brings minor, hidden setbacks.
Liuren Daquan: “主门户破败” — household and standing suffer loss.
Liuren Daquan: “主墙墓颓圮” — walls and graves fall into disrepair.
Liuren Daquan: “主人物刑伤” — injury to people, the most severe of the four “plain” pairs.
Tiger and Pig are simultaneously a Six Harmonies pair. Liuren Daquan itself names this “破中有合,败而复成” — breaking with a bond inside it, a softer case than the four pairs above.
The same “破中有合,败而复成” case as Tiger–Pig, named directly in Liuren Daquan. Covered in more depth on the Snake and Monkey page.
Six Breaks branch table: the classical text vs later explanation
The table below deliberately splits two things this page’s earlier draft ran together: what the Liuren Daquan “Break” section actually states, and mechanisms later BaZi practitioners have proposed to explain why. The classical passage itself is short — a naming and a one-line judgment per pair. It does not offer the Five-Element or Twelve-Stages-of-Growth reasoning in the right-hand column; that reasoning is a later addition, flagged as such.
| Pair | Chinese branch pair | Liuren Daquan says | Later practitioner explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rat · Rooster | 子酉破 | “酉破子,主阴小灾悔” — Rooster breaks Rat; brings minor, hidden setbacks. | Not stated in the Liuren Daquan passage cited here. Later practitioner writing explains it through the Twelve Stages of Growth (十二长生): 子 (water) and 酉 (metal) are ordinarily a generating pair (metal produces water), but both sit at their own 帝旺 (peak-strength) stage, so neither “yields” strength to generate the other. |
| Rabbit · Horse | 卯午破 | “午破卯,主门户破败” — Horse breaks Rabbit; household and standing suffer loss. | Not stated in the classical passage. Later practitioner writing frames 卯 (wood) generating 午 (fire) as a normally cooperative relationship that tips into friction when carried to excess. |
| Dragon · Ox | 辰丑破 | “辰破丑,主墙墓颓圮” — Dragon breaks Ox; walls and graves fall into disrepair. | Not stated in the classical passage. Later practitioner writing notes 辰 and 丑 are both earth branches with no generating or conquering relationship between them, reading the pair as inertia rather than active conflict. |
| Goat · Dog | 未戌破 | “戌破未,主人物刑伤” — Dog breaks Goat; injury to people, the most severe of the four “plain” pairs. | No mechanism found in the material reviewed for this page, classical or later. |
| Tiger · Pig | 寅亥破合 | “亥破寅……破中有合,败而复成” — Pig breaks Tiger; breaking with a bond inside it, defeat turning to completion. | Later practitioners connect this directly to Tiger and Pig also being a named Six Harmonies pair — the two relationships coexist on the same two branches. |
| Snake · Monkey | 巳申破合 | “申破巳,破中有合,败而复成” — Monkey breaks Snake; same judgment as Tiger–Pig. | Same reasoning as Tiger–Pig: Snake and Monkey are also a Six Harmonies pair. |
The classical passage closes with “六反皆然” — “the same holds in reverse for all six” — which is why this page displays each Six Breaks relationship as an undirected pair (Rat–Rooster rather than only “Rooster breaks Rat”), unlike this site’s Mutual Punishments page, where the source gives the three-branch cycles a specific direction.
None of the four “plain” pairs (Rat–Rooster, Rabbit–Horse, Dragon–Ox, Goat–Dog) shares one later-practitioner mechanism, and the Liuren Daquan passage itself does not explain why any of the six pairs breaks — it names the pairs and states the judgment. Tiger–Pig and Snake–Monkey stand apart from the other four because the classical text itself gives them a distinct judgment (“breaking with a bond inside it”) rather than the plain “breaks” judgment given to the other four pairs — and both pairs are also named Six Harmonies pairs elsewhere on this site.
Where Six Breaks comes from: a different textual tradition
This site’s Three Harmonies, Six Harmonies, Six Conflicts, Six Harms, and Mutual Punishments pages all trace their pairs to a named chapter in the Ming-dynasty Sanming Tonghui (三命通会), a BaZi and Earthly-Branch fate-calculation compendium. Six Breaks does not come from that book — checks of its chapter tables of contents, and of the earlier Song-dynasty Yuanhai Ziping (渊海子平), turned up no standalone chapter on Six Breaks in either text. But that does not mean Six Breaks lacks an old textual source. It has one: the “Break” (破) section of the Liuren Daquan (六壬大全), which opens by defining the term (“破者,散也,移也” — “breaking means scattering, means shifting”), then names all six relationships in a single passage and gives most of them a one-line judgment, several of which are reproduced in the table above.
The real distinction is not old versus new, or high-tier versus low-tier — it is which of two separate Chinese fate-calculation traditions a page draws on. Six Harms and Mutual Punishments on this site come from the Sanming Tonghui lineage, built around BaZi and the Earthly Branches. Six Breaks comes from the Liuren Daquan, a compendium belonging to Six Ren (六壬) divination — a separate, and separately old, Chinese divination system with its own textual history. Liuren Daquan is not a marginal source: the Qing imperial Siku Quanshu catalogue includes it as the only Six Ren text in the collection, describing it as an anonymous compilation (“不著撰人名氏”) whose surviving edition names Guo Zaikan (郭载騋), a Ming-dynasty judicial official in Huaiqing, as its editor/collator (“校”) rather than its author.
What this page treats as later addition is not the six pairs or their classical judgments — those are directly attested in the Liuren Daquan passage itself — but the Five-Element and Twelve-Stages-of-Growth mechanisms that later BaZi practitioners have proposed to explain why each pair breaks. The classical passage states the pairs and their judgments; it does not explain the underlying mechanism. That explanatory layer is marked separately in the table above.
Six Breaks vs the other five branch-relationship systems
| System | Chinese | Structure | Textual source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three Harmonies | 三合 · Sān Hé | Four groups of three signs | Named Sanming Tonghui chapter (BaZi/Earthly-Branch tradition) |
| Six Harmonies | 六合 · Liù Hé | Six one-to-one pairs | Named Sanming Tonghui chapter (BaZi/Earthly-Branch tradition) |
| Six Conflicts | 六冲 · Liù Chōng | Six opposite pairs | Named Sanming Tonghui chapter (BaZi/Earthly-Branch tradition) |
| Six Harms | 六害 · Liù Hài | Six one-to-one pairs | Named Sanming Tonghui chapter, 论六害 (BaZi/Earthly-Branch tradition) |
| Mutual Punishments | 相刑 · Xiāng Xíng | Two three-branch cycles, one two-branch pair, one self-punishment group | Named Sanming Tonghui chapter, 论三刑 (BaZi/Earthly-Branch tradition) |
| Six Breaks | 六破 · Liù Pò | Six one-to-one pairs | Named “破” section of the Liuren Daquan (Six Ren divination tradition — a separate lineage from the five rows above) |
Six Breaks does not duplicate any Six Harms or Six Conflicts pair. It does overlap with two other systems, in two different ways. Tiger–Pig and Snake–Monkey are also named Six Harmonies pairs — the same two branches carry both relationships at once, an overlap later interpretation commonly connects to the “breaking with a bond inside it” judgment those two pairs receive in Liuren Daquan. Separately, Snake–Monkey (巳申) is also one edge of the Tiger–Snake–Monkey (寅巳申) Mutual Punishments cycle, and Goat–Dog (未戌) is one edge of the Ox–Dog–Goat (丑戌未) Mutual Punishments cycle — see this site’s Mutual Punishments page for those two three-branch cycles. A pair naming the same two branches across different systems does not mean the systems agree with each other; each is a separate named relationship from a separate source.
See the Three Harmonies, Six Harmonies, Six Conflicts, Six Harms, and Mutual Punishments pages for the other five systems.
Confirm the sign first
None of these six categories is useful if the underlying zodiac sign is wrong, and a sign taken from a calendar year alone can be wrong for people born in the first weeks of the year — the Chinese zodiac year turns over on a date other than January 1. For ordinary zodiac-animal lookup, the year changes at Lunar New Year. Formal BaZi practice commonly uses Lìchūn (Start of Spring) for the year-pillar boundary instead, so it matters which convention is being used.
Use the Chinese Zodiac Calculator or Chinese Zodiac Years Chart before comparing Six Breaks pairs.
Common mistakes
- Assuming Six Breaks and Six Harms come from the same book. Both have a genuine premodern textual source, but from two separate traditions — Six Harms from the Sanming Tonghui’s BaZi lineage, Six Breaks from the Liuren Daquan’s Six Ren divination lineage. See the section above on where Six Breaks comes from.
- Treating Six Breaks as a prediction of real-life disruption. It is a branch-relationship judgment from a classical divination text, not a verdict on two actual people.
- Assuming the classical text explains why each pair breaks. The Liuren Daquan passage names the six pairs and gives most of them a one-line judgment; the Five-Element and Twelve-Stages-of-Growth mechanisms in this page’s table are later practitioner explanations, not part of that passage. Tiger–Pig and Snake–Monkey get a distinct classical judgment (“breaking with a bond inside it”), and those same two pairs also happen to be Six Harmonies pairs — an overlap later practitioners use to explain the phrase.
- Skipping the zodiac year boundary. January and February birthdays can produce the wrong animal if the boundary is ignored.
- Using the pairing as relationship advice. The result is cultural and historical context, not marriage, dating, medical, or financial guidance.
Want to check this for your own signs?
All six Six Breaks pairs are set out above as a general pattern. Two things go further if you want your own sign — or you and a partner’s signs — checked specifically, not just placed in a pair:
FAQ
What is Six Breaks (六破) in the Chinese zodiac?
It is one of several named Earthly Branch relationship categories used in Chinese fate calculation: six one-to-one pairs — Rat–Rooster, Rabbit–Horse, Dragon–Ox, Goat–Dog, Tiger–Pig, and Snake–Monkey.
What text is Six Breaks sourced from?
A direct premodern account appears in the “Break” (破) section of the Liuren Daquan (六壬大全), an anonymous Six Ren (六壬) divination compendium preserved in a Ming-period edition. That passage names all six relationships and gives most of them a one-line traditional judgment.
Is Six Breaks from the same textual tradition as Six Harms and Mutual Punishments?
No. This site’s Six Harms and Mutual Punishments pages rely primarily on the Sanming Tonghui, a BaZi and Earthly-Branch fate-calculation compendium. The direct source used here for Six Breaks is the Liuren Daquan, a compendium of Six Ren divination — a separate Chinese divination tradition. The distinction is about which textual tradition each page draws on, not simply older versus newer or more versus less reliable.
Does every Six Breaks pair work the same way?
Not quite. The Liuren Daquan gives four pairs a plain “breaks” judgment (Rat–Rooster, Rabbit–Horse, Dragon–Ox, Goat–Dog), while Tiger–Pig and Snake–Monkey receive the distinct phrase “breaking with a bond inside it” (破中有合). Those same two pairs are also Six Harmonies pairs; later interpretation commonly connects the phrase with that overlap. The Five-Element mechanisms proposed for the four plain pairs on this page are later practitioner explanations, not part of the classical passage itself.
Are Six Breaks pairs bad matches?
The classical text frames them as an adverse branch relationship, not as a fixed outcome. How two real people get along depends on far more than one branch relationship.
Where should I start if I do not know my sign?
Start with the Chinese Zodiac Calculator or the Zodiac Years Chart.
Next steps
Editorial note
This page explains Six Breaks (六破 / 相破) as a Chinese zodiac and Earthly Branch relationship category. Its direct textual source is the “Break” (破) section of the Liuren Daquan (六壬大全), an anonymous Six Ren (六壬) divination compendium preserved in a Ming-period edition. The six pairings and the traditional judgments “门户破败,” “墙墓颓圮,” “阴小灾悔,” “人物刑伤,” and “破中有合,败而复成” are attested directly in that passage, cross-checked against two independently hosted transcriptions of the Liuren Daquan full text. The Five-Element and Twelve-Stages-of-Growth mechanisms presented in this page’s branch table for the four “plain” break pairs are later explanatory additions from BaZi practitioner writing and are identified separately in the table; they are not attributed to the classical passage itself. The Siku Quanshu catalogue description of the Liuren Daquan (“不著撰人名氏” — author unnamed; “怀庆府推官郭载騋校” — collated by Guo Zaikan, a Ming-dynasty judicial official in Huaiqing) is the basis for describing Guo Zaikan as an editor/collator rather than the book’s compiler or author. This site’s Snake and Monkey compatibility page separately cites Liuren Daquan for the Snake–Monkey pair specifically; both pages now describe it as a separate Six Ren textual tradition rather than a lower tier of the same BaZi tradition used for Six Harms and Mutual Punishments. Quoted judgments are presented as what the cited sources say, not as verified fact. Compatibility notes on The Zodiac Lore are cultural and educational references, not relationship, marriage, medical, financial, legal, or life-decision advice.