Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches are two sets of signs in a certain sequence, which were created by ancient Chinese people to calculate the history and record the chronological sequence of events. The Heavenly Stems: 天干 (tiān gān) The Earthly Branches: 地支 (dì zhī) Together they are called 干支 (gān zhī), two sets of signs, with one taken from each set to form 60 pairs, designating years. The Origin of Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branches As early as about 2700BC, the ancestor of Chinese nation, Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), sent Da Rao Shi to create a calendar system. Da Rao Shi explored the rule of changes between sky and earth, as well as that of the four seasons. Then he created ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches to make combinations representing a sexagenary cycle. A year can be represented by the composition of two characters, one from the heavenly set, and one from the other. That is believed to be the start of the stem-branch calendar. Thus came a way of counting time which has been passed down through thousands of years. The 10 Heavenly Stems 甲 (jiǎ) 乙 (yǐ) 丙 (bǐng) 丁 (ding) 戊 (wù) 己 (jǐ) 庚 (gēng) 辛 (xīn) 壬 (rén) 癸 (guǐ) Earthly Branches Earthly Branches can be used to count time of years, months and hours. When counting years, people use them with the 12 Chinese zodiacs and strictly one Earthly Branch corresponds to one fixed zodiac. For example, our ancestors have divided a day and night into twelve sections and named each, which is equal to today's two hours and has a fixed Earthly Branch name. From 11 pm at night to 1 am is decided to be the first one, then the second two hours, on the analogy of this. The 12 Earthly Branches 子 (zǐ) 丑 (chou) 寅 (yín) 卯 (mǎo) 辰 (chén) 巳 (sì) 午 (wǔ) 未 (wèi) 申 (shēn) 酉 (yǒu) 戌 (xū) 亥 (hài) Take the year of 2022 for example, 2022 can be described as 壬 (rén) 寅 (yín), a combination of the ninth sign in Heavenly Stems and the thrid one in the Earthly Branches. The Four Pillar of Life (also the Eight Characters of Birth Time or 八字 (bā zi) in Chinese) was very popular and mostly used in fortune-telling. In four pairs of year, month, day, and hour of a person's birth, each pair includes one Heavenly Stems and one Earthly Branchs. There are compatibility and incompatibility relations among the stems and branches. The expression of one's birth time in this way has always been vital especially when it is used for fortune foretelling. |
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