Everything the wheel opens, one animal at the center
The Eastern wheel, your birth year's animal
The Western wheel, the sky on your birthday
The craft your Zodi Animal practices
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The Moon overhead, its phases, and the path they light.
A room of Water · 水
上善若水
上善若水 (shàng shàn ruò shuǐ), the highest good is like water. Laozi's line from the Dao De Jing sets the tone for how China reads Water: it benefits all things, seeks the low place others avoid, and overcomes the hard by yielding.
In chapter 8 of the Dao De Jing, water is the model of the sage: it nourishes everything, contends with nothing, and settles where others will not go. Softness that outlasts hardness is the whole teaching, echoed in the proverb 水滴石穿 (shuǐ dī shí chuān), dripping water pierces stone.
Water runs through Chinese myth: the Dragon Kings 龍王 who rule rain and sea, the Yellow River 黃河 and the Yangtze 長江 as the country's lifelines, the flood-taming of 大禹 (Yu the Great), and 玄武 the Black Tortoise, guardian of the north and of Water. The chengyu 飲水思源 (yǐn shuǐ sī yuán), drink water and think of its source, carries the same current into daily speech.
Where Water sits