The twelve zodiac animals are paired in order with the twelve earthly branches, and those branches relate to each other through six combinations and three combinations as well as clashes and punishments. Folk custom makes a great deal of a zodiac clash, while in a complete chart-reading system it is only one relationship among many and has to be read in context.
BaZi compatibility reading sets two people's Four Pillars side by side and looks at the combinations, clashes and punishments among the branches, together with whether the five phases complement each other. Six and three combinations describe a type of relationship rather than a score for marriage quality: plenty of combination does not mean smooth, and plenty of clash does not mean impossible.
In Lenormand each card's meaning is relatively fixed, and the core of combination reading is to treat two adjacent cards as a modifier plus a noun. Reading card by card out of a dictionary throws away the combination itself, which is the most common mistake for beginners.
A Lenormand deck usually means the 36-card Petit Lenormand, named after the nineteenth-century French reader Marie Anne Lenormand, although the deck was published under her name only after her death. Tarot is a 78-card system with 22 Major Arcana, and the two differ plainly in deck size and in how they are read.
The finger-counting method of Xiao Liu Ren counts the month, the day and the two-hour period in turn around six palaces, and the palace you stop on last is the reading. It is simple and can be repeated, but it answers only one small, concrete question at a time.
Xiao Liu Ren lands on one of six named outcomes: Da An, Liu Lian, Su Xi, Chi Kou, Xiao Ji and Kong Wang, names that can be traced to the six-day cycle recorded in the old text Shilin Guangji. The method is simple, and that simplicity is exactly why a single outcome so often gets treated as a verdict.
In Da Liu Ren the Monthly General is set by the palace the Sun occupies, with the medial solar terms marking when it changes. It sits alongside the divination hour, the void branches and Tai Sui as one of a chart's time coordinates, and one slip here throws the whole chart off.
A Da Liu Ren chart is built from elements such as Tai Sui, the divination hour, the monthly general and the void branches, and its core is the Four Lessons and the Three Transmissions. The Four Lessons are derived layer by layer from the upper and lower spirits, while the Three Transmissions fall into nine types according to the controlling and punishing relations between those lessons, known as the Nine Gates; read the structure first and the judgment afterwards.
Aspects are the angular relationships between two planets: the conjunction at 0°, the sextile at 60°, the square at 90°, the trine at 120° and the opposition at 180°. The closer the angle, the more noticeable the influence is usually thought to be, and since orbs differ from one line of practice to another, comparing two readings starts with checking that.
A natal chart is a snapshot that fixes the planetary positions of the moment you were born, and natal astrology is the branch that studies it. The Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant each answer to a different level; reading the Sun sign alone is like reducing a whole chart to a single point.
In the date-selection tradition, different matters correspond to different suitable-and-avoid entries: capping, marriage, mourning and sacrifice form one group, building and moving another, daily life and ceremonial celebrations a third. In practice the steadier order is to fix the range of possible dates first, check the weather and the people involved second, and use the almanac to choose among those days last.
The suitable-and-avoid entries of a huangli form part of the date-selection tradition, and different editions of the almanac were never consistent with one another, so a single day reading both "suitable for marriage" and "avoid marriage" is nothing unusual. The steady way to use a huangli is as a reference calendar rather than as the basis for a decision.
