Lesson 3: What are the "Ten Stems" and the "Twelve Branches"?

Let me show you the table again to better demonstrate this.

The columns, I used to call them the stands. When you look at the Year-Column, you looking at a "Year-Stand", I called. When you look at the Month-Column, you looking at a "Month-Stand", and the rest are called "Day-Stand" and "Time-Stand";

In this nomanature, we also called it the "Four-Stands" in 8-Words. (Please note, the way I use the hyphen is a little bit off English Grammar, but I use it as for a translation where is translated character-by-character.)

So, each one stand gets a "Stem" and a "Branch". It is recognized as in the top row of each stand, that there the Stem is; And the branch is located at the bottom.

The Ten Stems

The ten stems are: 甲, 乙, 丙, 丁, 戊, 己, 庚, 辛, 壬, 癸。

The Twelve Branches

The Twelve Branches are: 子, 丑, 寅, 卯, 辰, 巳, 午, 未, 申, 酉, 戌, 亥。

*** Please note: It is, somehow, very meaning-less that no translation of the words I can think of, because they are the numerals in Chinese.

No matter a stem or a branch, each of which has it's own Yin-Yang, and a physiological/element attribute (which are gold, wood, earth, water, and fire);

I can show you the table of stems and branchs in correspondence to their Yin-Yang and Elements.

Ten Stems and Their Attributes

Twelve Branches and Their Attributes