Water: number one, flowing down, Yang and Yin Water

Why the elements are counted from Water

Most people learn the elements as "Wood Fire Earth Metal Water" or "Metal Wood Water Fire Earth". The order the classic Sanming Tonghui (三命通会) quotes is different: one Water, two Fire, three Wood, four Metal, five Earth, with Water first.

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Order sketch: the elements run around the ring by generating number one to five, not in generating order; Water's stems and branches follow this site's usual entry-level tables.

The picture sets the elements on a ring in this numbered order, with Water as one. Water takes the stems Yang Water (壬) and Yin Water (癸) and the branches Rat (子) and Pig (亥). The book first explains the first two numbers from direction and yin and yang: Water is in the north, the place of the Rat, which is the first of yang and counts as one yang number, so Water is one; Fire is in the south, the place of the Horse, which is the first of yin and counts as two yin numbers, so Fire is two. Then comes a more direct reason:

Water is born of one. Before heaven and earth parted and before the ten thousand things were formed, none failed to appear first in Water. … Check it by what we see now: before the fruit and seed of plants are set, and in the womb and egg of people and insects, the embryo is all water. How could it not count as one?

The passage has two layers. First: when heaven and earth had not parted and things were not yet formed, what appeared first was Water. Then a check against what we can see: the fruit of a plant before it sets, and the womb and egg of people and insects, all begin as water, so calling Water "one" is not odd. These numbers are the generating numbers: Water one, Fire two, Wood three, Metal four, Earth five. The completed number of Water is six, written in the book as "Water six, Fire seven, Wood eight, Metal nine", while Earth stays at five throughout.

To moisten, and to flow down

After the numbers the book turns to the word and the nature of Water:

Water rules the north and answers to winter. The word water means to moisten: yin qi soaks and supports the ten thousand things. Water goes from west to east, and it is Metal that generates it; its flow winds and bends, going down by the easy way until it arrives. That is its natural character.

"Moisten" is to soak and to nourish. "Water goes from west to east, and Metal generates it" gives its origin: Metal is in the west, water flows from west to east, and Metal is what generates it. "Winds and bends, goes down until it arrives" is how it travels: no straight lines, just following low ground all the way. The book quotes Master Zhang (Zhang Zai) that Water and Fire are both qi, whose rising and sinking go with yin and yang and cannot be held by Earth, and adds that "the nature of Water is to flow down; going with the flow it can hold much". The flow has a definite start and end in the book:

"Heaven tilts to the northwest, earth sinks in the southeast" speaks of a gap in the sky and a hollow in the earth: water goes out through the northwest gap and runs into the southeast low ground, so "water does not flow west". The book also distinguishes two ways of flowing: along the twelve branches in order, "it has capacity and measure"; against them, "it has a roar", and only a chart that fits a pattern counts as clear and honored. This is what this passage of the Sanming Tonghui says about it, not a general rule of the twelve branches.

Yang Water and Yin Water: the last two stems

Water's stems are the last two of the ten. The book writes of Yin Water: "following Yang Water, completing one round of the stems, the qi of yin and yang accomplished at the end and turning back toward the start", so it closes a cycle and also begins the next.

The book says that Yang Water "is born at the Monkey and dies at the Rabbit" and quotes the classic phrase "dead water runs over its banks"; it says Yin Water "is born at the Rabbit and dies at the Monkey" and quotes "water does not flow west". Those four words appeared once in the chapter on the elements and here are used again to explain why Yin Water dies at the Monkey. Yang Water's Establishment is the Pig and its Peak the Rat; for Yin Water it is the Rat and the Pig, so the two branches swap jobs. For the whole table, see the article on twelve stages and void branches.

Metal feeds it, Earth holds it: Water's four lines

Water's four lines are two coming in, Metal feeding it and Earth restraining it, and two going out, its restraint of Fire and its feeding of Wood. In the part on Water the book gives each line one sentence in its measured form:

Read these and Water always needs a counterpart: Metal for a source, Earth for banks, an even Fire to complete it, Wood for a place to work. The book adds a flip side in the same passage: "when Water and Earth are mixed there is the ill of a muddy source", and Water mixed with Earth has a clouded head.

Rat and Pig: the end and the start of the cycle

The branches of Water are the Rat and the Pig, which are the first and the last of the twelve and stand side by side. The book calls the Rat "the chief of the twelve branches" and the Pig a place of "six yin", whose "image is five lakes gathered together". Add the point above, that the Water stems are the last two of the ten, and Water sits at the seam of both cycles.

Two of the other three branches that hide Water match what came before. The Monkey is where Yang Water has Growth, and the book says as much: "the Monkey is a seat where Water and Earth have their Growth". The Dragon is the book's "intake of water"; in this site's hidden-stem table it hides Yin Water in third place, and it is also the Storage of Yang Water. Main qi, hidden stems and the stage in the twelve-stage table are three separate answers; to see what each is for, turn to how hidden stems unfold.

Strong Water, weak Water, and blazing Fire

The four lines above describe Water in measure; the sayings of Xu Dasheng that the book quotes push it to three extremes:

The subject of all three lines is Water itself: when strong it is drained by the Wood it generates; when weak it fears the Earth that controls it; and when it moves against Fire that is too hot, the Water is heated too. Looking back at "banked by Earth against flooding", the book first asks how much Water there is and only then says what the Earth is.

Look back

The element before Water is Metal and the one after is Wood; if Water is missing from a chart, whether to make it up is the subject of what a missing element means.