Stage 3 · Term 27 of 34
Three Harmony Frames 三合
Sān Hé
Four elemental teams of three branches: 申子辰 (water), 亥卯未 (wood), 寅午戌 (fire), 巳酉丑 (metal). When all three are present and activated, they can form a full elemental frame that greatly amplifies that element across the chart.
In the classics
The four frames — 申子辰 water, 亥卯未 wood, 寅午戌 fire, 巳酉丑 metal — are each built on one element's long-life stages (birth, peak, storage), a structure 《三命通会》 lays out in its harmony chapters. Two of the three branches form a "half frame" with reduced but real effect.
In a chart
A completed frame is the strongest amplification the branch layer can produce: three branches functioning as one elemental team, capable of re-weighting the entire chart — strength assessments, structure, even the useful god can shift when a luck pillar or annual pillar completes a frame that the natal chart holds two-thirds of. That arithmetic makes half-frames the thing to notice in Stage 3: they are loaded springs, and the year that supplies the missing branch is the year the spring releases.
Worked example
A natal chart holding 寅 and 午 has two-thirds of the fire frame. When a 戌 year arrives, 寅午戌 completes: fire surges across the chart for that year — a delight for a chart that needs fire, a stress test for one that doesn't.
Where beginners misread it
Reading frames as static chart features. Their sharpest effects are dynamic — completions and disruptions arriving through time, which is why they belong to Stage 3.
Spotting it is Stage-3 work; weighing it against everything else in a real chart is what a teacher trains you to do — that layer lives at Yixin Academy.
learnwithyixin.com/courses →What does Three Harmony Frames mean in BaZi?
Four elemental teams of three branches: 申子辰 (water), 亥卯未 (wood), 寅午戌 (fire), 巳酉丑 (metal). When all three are present and activated, they can form a full elemental frame that greatly amplifies that element across the chart.