水 · shuǐ
Water
Winter · North · Black / deep blue
Water is the deep rest of winter, the patient flow that wears stone, wisdom and depth and the long memory of things. It is the phase of storing, of yielding, of finding every way down and around. Flowing, Water nourishes all it touches and will not be stopped; frozen, it withdraws and holds everything still.
莲花开 · in the Lotus deck
Water's element card and the guardian of the north. Draw the Lotus Bloom spread and these come into the pool.
Where it comes from
The Hong Fan names Water the phase that soaks and descends, and its taste is salty. The Neijing seats it in the kidneys, the store of the body's deepest reserve (jing 精) and its will (zhi 志), and in the bladder; it governs Water by Mercury, the chronograph star low in the north sky, and gives it the Black Tortoise of the north and the black of the midwinter deep. Its emotion, fear, is meant to settle into wisdom (zhi 智), the deep knowing that comes of stillness.
The wheel, from Water's seat
Generating (生)
Metal feeds Water.
Water feeds Wood.
Controlling (克)
Water checks Fire.
Earth checks Water.
Its correspondences
The Han cosmologists sorted the whole world into five. These are Water's.
- Season
- Winter
- Direction
- North
- Colour
- Black / deep blue
- Climate
- Cold
- Planet
- Mercury (辰星)
- Taste
- Salty
- Note (五音)
- Yu 羽
- Voice
- Groaning
- Sense
- Hearing, the ears
- Celestial beast
- Black Tortoise (玄武)
- Yin organ (臟)
- Kidney
- Yang organ (腑)
- Bladder
- Emotion
- Fear → wisdom
- Virtue
- Wisdom (zhì)
- Grain
- Beans
- Fruit
- Chestnut
- Number
- One and six
- Time of day
- Night
- Life stage
- Death and storage
In a person
A person of strong Water is deep, intuitive, patient, the quiet one who understands more than they say. Healthy Water flows and adapts, finding the way around every obstacle; frozen Water is fear, withdrawal, a holding-back that becomes isolation. Water-natured people see far and wait well, but need Earth nearby to give their depth a bank and a course.
In the zodiac
Years ending in 2 or 3 are Water years. Water lends its animals depth, intuition, and a yielding adaptability, more inward and more reflective, more inclined to flow around a thing than to push through it.
Find your animal & element →Too much, too little
Too much Water is fearfulness, withdrawal, a body that runs cold and tires easily, depth that becomes drowning. Too little is burnout, a dry and brittle exhaustion, no reserve to draw on. Feed weak Water with Metal (rest that gathers, the cold that condenses the mist); warm and move excess Water with Earth (a routine, a bank, warm food) and a little of its child Wood to draw the depth upward into growth.
Tending Water
Court Water at night and in winter: rest deeply and sleep enough, keep some reserve unspent, listen more than you speak, take a little salt and dark food (seaweed, black beans), and trust the slow underground way a thing has of working itself out.