Geng Tie: The Birth Date Card in Traditional Marriage Rites

The 庚帖 is a document used in older Chinese marriage practice. It records the birth data of the two people whose compatibility was to be assessed. In the context of Chinese metaphysics, the information written on this document is not a summary or a symbolic token; it is the exact input required to construct a 四柱 chart. Because the chart depends entirely on the recorded year, month, day, and hour of birth, the 庚帖 functions as the factual starting point for the calculations that follow.

庚帖上写的是什么

The 庚帖 carries the birth year, month, day, and hour of the person in question. These are the four components that later become the four pillars of a 八字 chart. In practice, this means the document records the 干支 expressions for the year, month, day, and hour. Each of these expressions is made up of a heavenly stem and an earthly branch. Together they supply the full set of data needed to derive the eight characters.

The time of birth is treated as a separate and indispensable piece of information. The other three components, year, month, and day, are usually easier to establish from a calendar. The hour, however, often depends on family memory or old records. The material on this site treats the hour as a decisive input, not as a minor detail. If the hour is wrong, the resulting chart is wrong from the beginning, and later interpretation cannot repair that error.

The document does not contain personality descriptions, fortune predictions, or compatibility conclusions. It is limited to birth data. In older practice, the 庚帖 was written in a standardized form and exchanged between families. The names of the individuals might appear, but the essential content is the birth information. For the purposes of this knowledge base, the 庚帖 is relevant only because it supplies the raw data for a 八字 reading.

庚帖在婚仪里出现在哪一步

The 庚帖 appears in the step of the six rites called 问名. The six rites, 纳采，问名，纳吉，纳征，请期, and 亲迎, form the traditional framework of marriage procedure. 纳采 is the initial approach and gift. 问名 is the stage at which the family requests the birth details of the prospective spouse. It is here that the 庚帖 is exchanged.

The term 问名 can be misleading if read literally. The step is not only about asking for a personal name. Its function is to obtain the birth year, month, day, and hour so that the data can be used for compatibility assessment. The 庚帖 is the physical or written record of that information. In this sense, 庚帖 and 问名 belong together: the exchange of the document is the formal act through which the birth data enters the marriage process.

After 问名 comes 纳吉, the stage at which the obtained information is evaluated. At that point, the families may consult divination or compatibility methods. The 庚帖 does not itself belong to 纳吉, but it is what makes 纳吉 possible. Without the birth hour recorded in 问名, there is nothing to assess. The placement of the 庚帖 in 问名 therefore marks the first point in the marriage procedure where the technical data of Chinese metaphysics enters the sequence.

换帖之后做的事

After the 庚帖 has been exchanged, the next practical step is to take the recorded birth data and arrange it into the four pillars. This is the point where the birth year, month, day, and hour are converted into their corresponding 干支 expressions. The purpose is to produce a chart that can be checked against the other person’s chart or against the intended date of marriage.

The material on this site defines its scope as the 八字 branch. That means the work done after receiving the 庚帖 is to construct a chart from the four birth components and to examine that chart step by step. Each of the four pillars can be checked against the source data. If a discrepancy appears at any point, the practitioner should return to the original information before continuing. The site does not present this as a matter of ritual but as a matter of data handling.

In the older marriage sequence, the exchange of the 庚帖 was followed by inquiry into compatibility, good or bad indications, and the suitability of the match. This knowledge base does not claim to reproduce the full historical practice. It only covers the part that can be treated through the 八字 method. After the chart is constructed, the families or practitioners might then move toward the later stages of the six rites, but those stages lie outside the technical scope of this site.

今天这一步剩下什么

In present-day practice, most of the six rites have been simplified or merged. The full sequence of 纳采，问名，纳吉，纳征，请期, and 亲迎 is rarely followed in its traditional form. What remains is often concentrated in a few practical decisions, especially the setting of the wedding date.

The step of 请期, which originally meant requesting and confirming the wedding date, is one place where date selection still appears today. In this step, the families agree on a date, and the selection of that date may involve 择日 methods. This is the surviving point where the technical use of time data continues to operate. The 庚帖 itself is no longer commonly exchanged as a written document, but the underlying need for accurate birth data has not disappeared. When a date is chosen in relation to the birth information of the couple, the same requirement for correct year, month, day, and hour applies.

The site’s position is that if the birth hour is uncertain, the practitioner should state the possible range rather than guess a single hour on the spot. Guessing creates a false precision. The chart may look complete, but it is built on an invented component. The material advises treating uncertainty openly. If the hour is not known, the reading should reflect that limitation. If the hour is known within a range, the reading can be checked against more than one candidate hour.

Because the four pillars are derived directly from the birth data, every part of the chart can be traced back to what was recorded on the 庚帖. The site emphasizes this traceability. At each step of constructing the chart, the practitioner can go back to the original birth year, month, day, and hour and verify that the conversion was made correctly. This is not a matter of tradition for its own sake; it is a control on the accuracy of the reading.

In summary, the 庚帖 survives today less as a physical object and more as a reminder of what the birth data must be. The document itself belongs to the older framework of 问名. The technical need it served is still present whenever a 八字 chart is built. The remaining practical application in modern marriage is often concentrated in the selection of a date, corresponding to the old 请期 step. There, as in the original 庚帖 exchange, the accuracy of the recorded hour directly determines whether the subsequent calculation can be used at all.