Ren · Yang Water

Meaning

Ren is the ninth Heavenly Stem and the yang side of Water: water as the sea is water, or the river that runs to it, broad, deep and always moving. Its season is the winter, when life withdraws below the surface and yang, as the Han historians wrote, carries and nourishes things from beneath: the name was read as 任 rèn, to bear, to be pregnant with. The Di Tian Sui begins its verse: “Ren water joins the great rivers.”

It is read as intelligence, breadth and resourcefulness: a mind that takes in a great deal, a curiosity that travels, an ease with change, the generosity of a river that waters every field it crosses. Ren goes round obstacles rather than through them and rarely stays still for long. Its difficulty is the flood: a river without banks spreads and loses its force, and Ren can scatter its energy, take on too much, or move on before the ground it has watered can grow.

The classics praise its inner strength. The Di Tian Sui speaks of “strength at its centre”, a virtue that flows everywhere without stagnating, and says that Ren drains the excess of Metal, as a river wears down stone; rooted and joined by Gui, it can rush to the sky and run over the earth. The tradition reads Ren as power that needs a course: given banks, Earth that guides it, it carries ships and turns mills.

In practice

• As the Day Master, Ren finds its resources in Metal, Geng its Indirect Resource and Xin its Direct Resource, and its peers in Water, Gui being its Rob Wealth. Wood is its output, Jia its Eating God and Yi its Hurting Officer; Fire is its wealth, Bing indirect and Ding direct; Earth shapes it, Wu its Seven Killings and Ji its Direct Officer, the banks of the river.
• Its roots: Ren is the main qi of Hai, the Pig, and is hidden in Shen, the Monkey, where it begins. In the twelve life stages it is born in Shen, prospers in Hai and stands at its peak in Zi, the Rat, at midwinter.
• Its partners: Ren combines with Ding, yin Fire, its Direct Wealth, a pair that leans towards Wood: water and warmth together make things grow. It clashes with Bing, yang Fire, the sea against the sun.
• In time: the years ending in 2 are Ren years, counted from Lichun: 2022 was the Water Tiger’s, 2032 will be the Water Rat’s. A Ding or Ren year opens with a Ren-Yin month, and a Ding or Ren day with a Geng-Zi hour.
• In Feng Shui, Ren is a mountain of the luopan, the first of the north, from 337.5° to 352.5°, and a yang one for the Flying Stars; Ulune’s 24 mountains begin with it.

Across traditions

• In Japan 壬 is read mizunoe, “elder brother of water”; in Korea im, in Vietnam Nhâm. As the ninth letter of Chinese lists it is the I, and in chemistry nine carbon atoms, 壬烷 rénwán, nonane.
• The Daodejing praises water as the image of the highest good: it benefits the ten thousand things without contending, and nothing is softer, yet nothing better wears down the hard. Ren is that teaching in a stem, strength that yields and carries.
• Western astrology gives the ocean to its water signs, and above all to Pisces and to Neptune, named after the god of the sea; the stem shares their sense of a boundless water, though it is read for movement more than for dissolving.

Origin and history

On the oracle bones 壬 names the ninth day of the Shang week, and kings such as Wai Ren and Shi Ren carry it in their names; some read the character as a spindle or a carrying pole. Sima Qian explained it by 任 rèn, to bear: yang carries and nourishes things below the surface of winter; Ban Gu wrote that things are carried within in Ren, and Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) places it in the north, where yin is at its height and yang is born again.

BaZi’s classics made Ren the great water. The Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty sets out its relations, and the Di Tian Sui’s verse, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary of the Qing dynasty, describes a water that joins the rivers, drains Metal and flows without stopping, transformed by its partner Ding into the life of Wood. Modern teachers picture it as the ocean, the river, the flood that must be channelled.

How Ulune calculates it

Ren is the stem of six of the sixty pillars, Ren-Shen, Ren-Wu, Ren-Chen, Ren-Yin, Ren-Zi and Ren-Xu, each joining it to a yang branch. In BaZi’s balance a visible Ren counts one point of Water, a hidden one its weight (0.7 in Hai, 0.3 in Shen, twice in the month branch). For a Ren Day Master Ulune counts the life stages forward from Shen, as for every yang stem, and finds its symbolic stars by the classical verses: the Nobleman in Si and Mao, the Academic star in Yin, the Prosperity star in Hai and the Sword Edge in Zi. On the luopan, Ulune measures the 24 mountains clockwise from Ren’s first edge at 337.5°. The pages draw Ren in Water’s deep blue.

Correspondences