In a separate paper we have discussed the possibility that six quark clusters can affect the rate of double-beta decay. In this article we develop the formalism needed in the evaluation of the energy of all six-quark cluster configurations, which can arise in a harmonic oscillator basis up to $2 \hbar \omega$ excitations. The symmetries that were found useful for this purpose were the combined spin color symmetry $SU_{cs}(6)$, the orbital symmetry $SU_{o}(6)$ and the isospin symmetry $SU_I(2)$.

Comment: 46 pages, 32 tables, no figures