Water and the Season

Five ElementsElement: Water 水

Water governs winter, from 立冬 in early November to 立春 in early February. It is the season of storage: nothing is produced, everything is held, and the phase's instruction is to conserve rather than to act.

水 Shuǐ · winter · north

The five relations of Water: what feeds it, what it feeds, what restrains it and what it restrains. — Water at the centre of its own relations — Season. Correspondences follow the classical classification.

At a glance

Water governs winter — from 立冬 in November to 立春 in February, the season for storing rather than spending.

In the classical correspondence tables Water governs winter and the north, the kidney and bladder, the ears, and the salty taste.

Water and winter

Winter's logic is the reverse of summer's. Where summer spends, winter stores; where summer is visible, winter is hidden. The classical advice is to rest more, eat warmer and heavier food, and avoid the kind of expenditure that the season cannot replace — and the failure mode of the season is behaving as though it were summer.

The three months are 亥, 子 and 丑. 亥 is the first winter month and carries strong Water with hidden Wood; 子 is the peak, pure Water and the darkest point of the year; 丑 is the transition month, technically Earth, where the season hands over. A chart born in 子 reads colder than one born three weeks later.

For a person, the correspondence is about the bottom of a cycle rather than the top. Water-heavy charts tend to be most themselves when everything has stopped and least comfortable in the periods of maximum activity — which is why the same person can be excellent in a crisis and restless at a party.

What the season asks of you

To store. The classical instruction for winter is that the year's reserve is built now, and that spending it is a decision with consequences in spring.

The month boundaries

亥 from 立冬, 子 from 大雪, 丑 from 小寒 — each around the 7th of the month. A birth within a day of a boundary is why practitioners ask for the hour.

The season in correspondences

Season

winter

Season (Chinese)

冬

Climate

cold

Numbers

1 and 6

How much weight this carries

The seasons are the original evidence for the whole scheme — the cycle was read off the year before it was ever applied to a person. That is also its limit: a season is a phase everyone passes through, while a chart is a particular arrangement of phases.