How Compatibility Is Read

The positions looked at in compatibility

Compatibility is a way of setting two people's charts side by side and seeing how their characters meet. What is put at the centre differs from reader to reader. There is a simple method that looks only at the relation between the zodiac animals, a method centred on the two people's day pillars, and a method that looks at whether each fills in what the other lacks in the elements. Traditionally it was used to look at a marriage partner, but Halmeoni uses the same calculation not only for couples but also between family members, friends and business partners. Halmeoni looks at four of the commonly used ones together.

• Two Day Masters: whether the characters that stand for "me" in a chart combine or collide.
• Elements of the Day Masters: whether the two Day Masters' elements are the same, generate each other, or restrain each other.
• Two day branches: the lower character of the day pillar is taken as the spouse's place (배우자궁), so it is weighed most heavily.
• Zodiac animals and complementary elements (오행 보완): how the two people's animals meet, and whether an element one person lacks is plentiful in the other.

A score that starts at 60

Halmeoni's compatibility score starts at 60. The set points for each position above are added and subtracted, and a result below 0 is set to 0 and above 100 to 100. It is Halmeoni's own way of calculating, made so that it can show exactly which relation in which position each point came from, and there is no fixed formula for it in myeongni studies. It is natural for the score to differ from other compatibility services.

One of the three cases for the Day Masters' elements always applies, so there is no case of two people with no relation at all. When the same character meets itself (self-punishment, 자형), it counts as a punishment only for 辰, 午, 酉 and 亥 and gives -5 in the day branches, and other identical characters give no points. For the animals, punishment and harm are not counted, and only six harmony, half combination, clash and resentment are. The animal is a character that everyone born in the same year shares, and Halmeoni counts the relation of the animals as smaller than that of the day branches.

When points overlap

When one pair of characters has several relations at once, the points are added together. All five stem-combination pairs are also pairs in which one element restrains the other. For example, 甲 (Wood) and 己 (Earth) combine and also Wood restrains Earth. So when the Day Masters combine, in fact 15 points and -6 points are both applied, and the score rises by 9. All four stem-clash pairs are also restraining, so when the Day Masters clash, -10 and -6 are applied and the score falls by 16.

It is the same for the day branches. 寅 and 申, and 丑 and 未, are both a clash and a punishment, so -17. 子 and 未, and 丑 and 午, are both a harm and resentment, so -13. 寅 and 巳 are both a punishment and a harm, so -10. 巳 and 申 are both a six harmony and a punishment, so 12 and -5 together raise the score by 7. Adding up this way, the theoretical lowest score is 22 and the highest is 98.

How complementary elements are counted

Count the elements of each person's eight characters (four stems and four branches). If an element that one person has none of is the element the other has the most of (all of them, if several are tied), 4 points are added. Both directions are looked at, and if there are several such elements, 4 points are added for each, up to 12 points in all. Hidden stems are not counted (a branch is counted by the element of the character itself). If the birth hour is unknown, it counts six characters, so missing elements arise more easily, and the cases of receiving the complementary score increase accordingly.

A real example

Calculating by code the compatibility between a person born in Seoul at 00:50 on August 25, 2001 (辛巳 丙申 庚申 丙子) and a person born in Seoul at 18:00 on November 2, 2000 (庚辰 丙戌 甲子 癸酉) gives the following.

The first person has four Metal, three Fire and one Water, with no Wood or Earth. The second has one Wood, one Fire, and two each of Earth, Metal and Water, so Earth, Metal and Water are tied for the most. So Earth receives 4 points as a complement. Wood, which the first person lacks, is only one in the second person, so it is not the element with the most and gives no points. The second person has no missing element, so there is no complement in the opposite direction either.

If the same first person meets a person born in Seoul at 15:00 on December 9, 1999 (己卯 丙子 乙未 癸未), the result is 77. 乙 and 庚 are a stem combination (+15) and also restraining (-6), and the Earth the first person lacks is the most in the other while the Metal the other lacks is the most in the first, so the complement is 8. There is no relation that counts between the day branches 申 and 未, or between the animals 巳 and 卯.

How the scores are spread

To show about what score counts as high, the scores of 20,000 random pairs were calculated with the actual code. Birthdays were drawn evenly between January 1, 1950 and December 31, 2005, birth hours evenly between 0 and 23, and the birthplace was set to Seoul for all. The cases where the hour is known and where it is unknown were each calculated separately for 20,000 pairs.

When the hour is known, the share by score range was 0.3% in the 20s, 1.7% in the 30s, 8.0% in the 40s, 21.8% in the 50s, 37.3% in the 60s, 22.0% in the 70s, 8.7% in the 80s and 0.1% in the 90s. At or above the starting point of 60 is 68.1%, so 60 is not "average" but a score a little below the middle. This is because the Day Masters' elements are generating or the same in a little over 60% of pairs, and a complementary score is added in about 40% of pairs. In the example above, 56 is about a quarter of the way up from the bottom, and 77 is about the top 10%.

By factor, a stem combination of the Day Masters came up in about 10% of pairs and a stem clash in about 8%. The Day Masters' elements were generating in 39.9%, restraining in 39.5% and the same element in 20.6%. For the day branches, half combination was 16.8%, punishment 12.4%, and six harmony, clash, resentment and harm about 8% each, and complementary elements were 39.9%. When the hour is unknown, the complement rises to 55.1%, so the score comes out a little higher.

This distribution was measured in October 2026 by running Halmeoni's calculation code as it is. If the range of birth years or the birthplace is changed, the numbers may differ a little.

A low score is not a verdict on a relationship

What the compatibility score looks at is only the Day Master, day branch, animal and element counts among the two people's eight characters. How they talk with each other, what they value, and the time spent together and the trust built up are not in the score. Consider that two people born on the same day at the same hour get exactly the same score with the same partner, and it is clear that a score cannot tell the whole of a relationship.

A relation that lowers the score does not only mean something bad either. A clash means facing different directions, so it can lead to collisions, but it is also read as a force that sets each other moving. resentment is a position where hearts easily drift subtly apart, so knowing that position can instead let you voice a hurt early. When Halmeoni gives a score, it also shows which factor raised or lowered it by how many points, and passes on the reading not as a verdict but as material for the two to understand each other. The AI that writes the reading is given only the other person's chart, the score and the factors, and is not told whether the two are a couple or family, so for people who are not a couple it is appropriate to read the day-branch items as how well you get along at close quarters rather than as suitability as marriage partners. Also, the score compares only the innate foundation, so even the same two people can have a different atmosphere in their relationship depending on the Luck Cycle (대운) and Yearly Luck (세운), which change from period to period.

Do not decide meeting, marriage or parting by a compatibility score. The best use of the score is as a way to start a conversation about where the two of you fit well and where you need to adjust to each other.