The six harms are the quiet friction of a chart. Where a clash is a head-on collision, a harm (害 hài, also written 穿 chuān, “to pierce”) is erosion — the slow undermining of something that should be stable. This is the complete bazi six harms list, with the pairs set out exactly and an explanation of why each one forms. None of it is a verdict; a harm is a relationship between two Earthly Branches (地支 dìzhī), not a sentence passed on a life.
Practitioners reach for the harms after they have read the clashes and combinations. They are subtler, and in a busy chart they are easy to over-read. Treat them as texture, not headline.
What a harm actually is
Two branches harm each other when one of them clashes the other’s secret ally. Every branch has a combination partner it “wants” to pair with (the six combinations, 六合 liùhé). A harm appears when a third branch arrives and clashes that partner away — spoiling the union. So a harm is really a broken combination: the pull toward union is there, and something keeps interrupting it.
That is why the felt sense of a harm is petty, nagging, and personal rather than dramatic. Loyalty that gets undercut. Help that arrives with strings. A plan that keeps getting quietly derailed by a third party. In Ba Zi (八字 bāzì) we read it as wear, not rupture.
The full Ba Zi six harms list
These six pairs are fixed. Copy them as they stand — the harm runs both ways within each pair.
| Harm pair | Animals |
|---|---|
| 子 ↔ 未 | Rat and Goat |
| 丑 ↔ 午 | Ox and Horse |
| 寅 ↔ 巳 | Tiger and Snake |
| 卯 ↔ 辰 | Rabbit and Dragon |
| 申 ↔ 亥 | Monkey and Pig |
| 酉 ↔ 戌 | Rooster and Dog |
Read one line to see the logic. The Rat (子) likes to combine with the Ox (丑). The Goat (未) clashes the Ox, pulling that partner out of reach. So Rat and Goat harm each other — not because they hate one another, but because the Goat keeps spoiling the Rat’s preferred alliance. Every row in the bazi six harms list can be traced the same way, back to a combination that a clash interrupts.
Tracing two more pairs
Run the derivation twice more and it becomes automatic. The Rooster (酉) combines with the Dragon (辰); the Dog (戌) clashes the Dragon away, so Rooster and Dog harm each other. The Ox (丑) combines with the Rat (子); the Horse (午) clashes the Rat away, so Ox and Horse harm each other. Notice what this means in practice: a harm is never about the two visible animals disliking each other. It is about a third branch — the absent combination partner — whose alliance keeps being disturbed. When you read a harm in a chart, ask what that missing partner would have represented; that is usually the thing being quietly worn down.
Where a harm shows and what it colours
Position matters more with harms than with anything else, because the effect is so quiet that only its location tells you what it touches.
Year and month
A harm reaching the year branch tends to read as friction with elders, ancestry, or the wider social sphere — the sense of being subtly undercut by people who should be behind you. In the month, the chart’s career and family “gate”, it can show as workplace politics or a helping hand that quietly costs you.
Day and hour
The day branch is the self and the spouse palace (夫妻宫 fūqīgōng), so a harm here often reads as small, recurring domestic friction rather than a break. In the hour it colours children, late life, and private projects — the plan that never quite gets clear air. Because the day and hour sit side by side, a harm between them is one of the more commonly felt.
When a harm switches on
Like every branch relationship, a harm can be natal or arrive on schedule. A natal Chou, for instance, meets its harm partner in every Horse year — including 2026, which is Bing Wu 丙午, the Fire Horse — when the annual branch (流年 liúnián) brings 午 against it for the year. A ten-year luck pillar (大运 dàyùn) carrying the harming branch keeps the friction humming for a decade instead. Triggered harms read as a period when the third-party dynamic sharpens: the colleague who complicates a promotion, the relative who keeps a couple’s plans off balance. Check the luck pillars before deciding whether a harm is a season or a standing theme.
One harm pair, 寅巳, is also one of the punishments (刑), so it is read with both relations in mind.
How to read it without over-reading
The classic mistake is to find a harm and treat it as damage. In practice a single harm inside a supported chart barely registers; it needs the whole picture to matter. Ask first whether the harmed branch carries something you rely on — a useful hidden stem, a favourable element, the spouse palace — and whether luck or the annual pillar is currently activating it. A harm on a branch you do not lean on is background noise. The hidden stems table shows exactly what each branch carries, which is the fastest way to judge whether a harmed branch actually matters to your chart.
Be equally clear about what a harm is not. It is not a curse between two zodiac signs, not a reason to avoid a person born in a “harming” year, and not a predictor of betrayal. The year animal is one character out of eight. A harm describes a pattern of interference; whether that pattern has anything to grip depends on the whole chart.
The calm response is management, not alarm. Harms respond well to the branch that would complete the broken combination, and to simply naming the third-party dynamic they describe so it stops working in the dark. A harm is friction to be smoothed, not a fate to be feared.
To see the neighbouring machinery, compare this against the head-on collisions in the six clashes and what each one means, against the unions that harms interrupt in the six combinations of Ba Zi, and against the three-branch blocs of the three harmonies. For the branches themselves and their hidden stems, the heavenly stems and earthly branches guide lays out the full alphabet.
Want to check the bazi six harms list against your own four branches? Plot your chart free with the Butcher Boy calculator and see where these quiet frictions actually land before you decide any of them matter.