Water is an ocean of knowledge, education, and information.  It is our inner teacher, mentor, and historian that takes a thoughtful view on what we observe and pulls it in deep, to study it.  This element promises to take you on a distant journey into the truth about the world, how it works, and the significance behind all things significant.

As the germination phase of the lifecycle process, water is the thoughtful observer that connects patterns, analyzes data, and transforms information into nutrients that awaken and empower the life-giving energy of truth.  From books, magazines, and newspapers, to listening to public speakers, attending conventions, or even just engaging in casual dialogue, water seeks intellectual stimulation as its preferred form of edification. 

Water is both obvious, transparent, and articulate at its surface, and yet mysterious, hidden, and contained at its base.  Lucid thoughts are preferred to be spoken with candor, as water believes that valuable information should not be tampered with.   

While history, math, and science are often comparatively boring forms of entertainment for most, water seeks to strengthen these studies as building blocks for life itself.  This cultivates the wisdom within us to make  educated choices about what we want or don't want in life, as well as how and how not-to get it.  Roots gravitate toward water, as water seeks to find the root cause of problems.  While it a very capable problem solver, it passionately prefers preventing problems before they even start.

Excessive Water

Excess water is a drowning risk.  Waves  of information coupled with a deep layers of over-refined observation can cause an undertow of mind and thought, that often results in a haunting stress.  This can result in hostile behavior, as the sensationalized narrow truth then becomes a weapon to control, corrupt, or abuse others.  While the truth can set you free, an overdose can be toxic and leave a trail of suspicion, depression, and/or anxiety.


Deficient Water

Deficient water is ignorance breeding ignorance.  A lack of information, education, and awareness brings about defensive insecurity, exaggeration, and criticism, as a means of filling in the intellectual gap as ignorance rejects the truth.  Eccentric and exaggerated views become entertainment posing as education, resulting in separation and polarization of the minds, rather than the joining of them.  Like water that has gone stale, the lack of flowing truth, facts, and information becomes a breeding farm for other degenerating organisms.

Balance of Metal and Earth

The water element does not operate in isolation.  Its health rests in the balance of relationship that exists between other elements.  Water needs the filtering acumen of metal to wet its appetite for discernment.  Metal introduces the idea that not everything is the same, and water takes that energy to find out what is true and what is not.  To keep water in balance, it also needs a healthy dose of connectivity, community, and extroversion energy from earth, to ensure it does not self-isolate, self-medicate, or self-destruct.

Nourished by Metal

Metal provides the minerals that give water it's nutrition and flavor. It impregnates the mind with the idea that not everything is the same, there is value in some things over others, and everything is a direct result of its own unique process.  Water takes this concept and sets out to gather, collect, and compile storage libraries of these  informational treasures to use as sacred wisdom to live by.  

Where truth, knowledge, and information are meant to flow like water, excess refinement, processing, and bureaucracy will generate deposits of over-mineralized toxic water.   On the same note, the under-nourishment of metal in water, makes for an environment where any and all information flows regardless of its nutrition or toxicity.

Restrained by Earth

Bodies of water are bound by structures  of land.  While water would love to cover the entire planet, earth is a firm body of truth within itself.  By connecting water to the diversity of neighbors in its network, it serves as reminder that greater harmony is achieved, not through isolation, introversion, and self sufficiency, but rather by the shared common unity efforts of the whole.

Over-restraint by earth however, creates an over-centralization of information in such a way that narratives, knowledge, and reports are dictated rather than discovered.  This effectively closes off peer-review, scientific validation, and public transparency.  On the other end of the spectrum, the under-restraint of earth, sinks water into the lonely, dark, depressive abyss of heavy weighted truths with no place to come up for air.

Nourishes Wood

Wood needs water to grow, change, and produce.  Water plays the role of the teacher, self-sufficiency coach, and truth evangelist to wood while wood plays the role of the anxious and enthusiastic student.  Obtaining  comprehensive truth,  significant data, and the transformational information of water, gives wood the passion to develop a purpose, cause, and reason for growth, change, and exploration.

Even though wood functions on truth and information, too much can waterlog, drown, and spoil the excitement of a meaningful purpose.    Vice versa, the absence of water nourishment can lead wood into a pit of  despair, seeking a relevant theme .

Restrains Fire

Water quenches fire.  Water is the truth, reality and honesty that satisfies onlookers after they are charmed, convinced, and invited by the warmth of fire.   Fire ensures that what is spoken is heard, and water ensures that what is spoken is truthful.

Over-restraint by water comes in the form of being water-logged by data, facts, and information, which creates a painfully boring atmosphere.  However, fire without the restraint of water has no useful direction or purpose.  Those who are dazzled and drawn-in by the charm of fire, only to find there's no truth, relevance, or reality behind all of the excitement, will feel tricked, lied to, and taken advantage of.