ζ¨ Β· mΓΉ
Wood
Spring Β· East Β· Green
Wood is the upward push, the seedling cracking its shell, the year's first green insistence. It is vision and ambition and the courage to begin, the phase that wants to expand in every direction at once. Where the other phases hold or fall, Wood reaches. Rooted, it builds a whole canopy from a single seed; unrooted, it overreaches and snaps in the first hard wind.
θ²θ±εΌ Β· in the Lotus deck
Wood's element card and the guardian of the east. Draw the Lotus Bloom spread and these come into the pool.
Where it comes from
In the Hong Fan, Wood is the phase that bends and straightens, and its taste is sour. The Neijing seats it in the liver and gallbladder, governs it by Jupiter, the year-star, and gives it the Azure Dragon of the east and the green of new leaves. Spring is its season and the wind its weather, and the emotion it carries, anger, is meant to be tempered into benevolence (ren δ»), the willingness to let other things grow alongside you.
The wheel, from Wood's seat
Generating (η)
Water feeds Wood.
Wood feeds Fire.
Controlling (ε )
Wood checks Earth.
Metal checks Wood.
Its correspondences
The Han cosmologists sorted the whole world into five. These are Wood's.
- Season
- Spring
- Direction
- East
- Colour
- Green
- Climate
- Wind
- Planet
- Jupiter (ζ²ζ)
- Taste
- Sour
- Note (δΊι³)
- Jue θ§
- Voice
- Shouting
- Sense
- Sight, the eyes
- Celestial beast
- Azure Dragon (ιιΎ)
- Yin organ (θ)
- Liver
- Yang organ (θ )
- Gallbladder
- Emotion
- Anger β kindness
- Virtue
- Benevolence (rΓ©n)
- Grain
- Wheat
- Fruit
- Plum
- Number
- Three and eight
- Time of day
- Dawn
- Life stage
- Birth and childhood
In a person
A person of strong Wood is a planner and a pioneer, generous, idealistic, quick to grow and quick to push, happiest with a project and a horizon. Healthy Wood is flexible, it bends in the storm and springs back; stuck Wood turns to frustration and a temper that snaps rather than yields. Wood years and Wood-natured people lead, but they do best with Metal nearby to give their growth an edge and a shape.
In the zodiac
Years ending in 4 or 5 are Wood years (the Wood Rat, the Wood Tiger, and so on), and Wood lends any animal it touches a greener, more outward, more growing cast, kinder and more restless than the same animal in a harder phase.
Find your animal & element βToo much, too little
Too much Wood is all sprawl and no trunk: scattered plans, irritation, a body that holds tension in the jaw and the sides. Too little is timidity and stagnation, growth that will not start. Feed weak Wood with Water (rest, depth, patience); drain excess Wood with Metal (structure, decisions, a clean cut), or let its own child Fire carry some of its heat away.
Tending Wood
Court Wood at dawn and in spring: walk among trees, start the thing you have been circling, stretch the sides of the body, eat a little something sour, and let yourself want, then choose one direction and grow that one.