Ren Water is the ninth of the ten Heavenly Stems in Chinese style fortune telling. What are the Heavenly Stems and what do they show us? They don’t give any information about life or our circumstances—instead, they show us our ideas. Ren Water is the ninth archetype in Chinese cosmology. It is the outlaw and the merchant. If you want to check to see if Ren Water represents your personality in Chinese astrology, find a bazi chart calculator and look for your day stem. Your day stem is the anchor of your day and represents your personality.

(I titled this article “day master” because the day stem of your chart is often translated as “day master” and this is the most common search term related to the concept. However, you can call your day stem your day destiny, your chart ruler, or simply your day stem.)


Ren Water is yang water. Yang water refers to the big waters. So, Ren Water is the oceans. It is the seas, the rivers, and even the creeks. Ren Water refers to anything that flows.

If fire is considered to be the most yang of the five movements, then water is the most yin. Why? Because yang is visible and yin is invisible. We can see the world around us when we have either light or fire. The oceans, on the other hand, are unknowable. Only 5% of the world’s oceans have been explored by people. We simply have no idea what is going on inside of the seas. For all we know, another civilization could be down there.

A river or a lake is the yang version of the most yin or hidden type of movement. It is the most visible type of hiding. What does that look like?

Ren Water people are chatty and mysterious. Water likes to crash, and bubble, and likes to chat. It is literally saliva which we use to talk. They are chatty but, if you watch them, you might notice that they don’t actually share their own opinions. Ren Water people like to chat about the opinions of other people. While fire people say things like “I think” and “I feel,” water people say things like “I’ve heard” and “You think.”

So, this is very interesting. Someone who can talk your ear off without revealing their true opinions. Ren Water is trading information, is sharing observations.

Water also gives you a return. If you fill up your tub and you push water in one direction, it will bounce off the edge of your tub and crash right back into you. All water circulates. If a current moves through a river, it has to find a way to come back. And it will.

If you treat a Ren Water person well, they will return your favor back to you. If you treat them hastily, they will treat you the same. If you do them wrong, they will take vengeance. That’s the behavior of water—it comes back to you. Water is a reflection and tells you who you are. Water is a mirror.

In a lot of Chinese literature or movies, water appears along the fringes of society. The term jianghu, which literally means rivers and lakes, represents those who exist outside of the kingdom with their own moral code and laws. Water separates and protects using mystery—if you cross a body of water, then you can’t be found. More recently, jianghu came to refer to underground societies but, today, it really just represents all of contemporary life. We are all living in the jianghu because our laws are more and more unattached to ideology and more attached to the rules of change.

I think that the story behind the term jianghu really unpacks Ren Water. Ren Water is sometimes thought of as restless, as perpetually churning on the inside. If you make a date with a Ren Water person, you don’t always know if they will appear or when. They tend to schedule a lot of things chaotically and they will move around from location to location without a concrete plan. But why does Ren Water do this?

Because it is always responding to change. When other people’s plans and attitudes change, Ren Water is ready. When the times or the zeitgeist changes, Ren Water is right on time. Water is formless. It doesn’t have a schedule of its own. That’s why Ren Water people can sometimes seem scattered. They are taking everyone’s plans into account in order to make their own.

And Ren Water has a lot of practice with when to make the right return or to ask for a favor back. They are good at trading whether they are trading Pokemon cards or affection. Water is formless and doesn’t have its own schedule. It moves at precisely the right time to make a trade.

A lot of famous traders are actually Ren Water people. Warren Buffet is a very strong Ren Water day master with his Ren Water riding on a Rat. John D. Rockafeller is also a Ren Water day master with his day master rooted in the Water Rat in his hour pillar. Bang Si-Hyuk, the founder of HYBE, is also a Ren Water day master with his day master rooted in the Water Rat of his month.

So, these people are moguls. I don’t really understand what Warren Buffet or John D Rockefeller did so I’ll just focus on Bang Si-Hyuk who produced and invented BTS.

If you look at Bang Si-Hyuk’s projects, they go through a lot of change. BTS was supposed to be like 1TYM but then they had to become like Glam after Glam went under. When that didn’t pan out, they started doing softer aesthetics. All of Bang Si-Hyuk’s projects are imitative as well. He named BTS after Johnny’s Entertainment’s Shonentai and copies from artworks, literature, other groups, and American pop culture. Ren Water is like a moving reflection. It is a river. That’s Hallyu, which literally means flowing Korea. It’s a reflection of pop culture tastes from around the world as a fast moving river of trends.

Trading trends, trading ideas, and trading information. Ren Water can absorb a lot of information. They are the people who just seem to know about everything there is to know. They can keep track of what is going on almost as though the world flows through their psyches.

But if you ask them to make their thoughts transparent to you? Water is most clear when cupped in the hand but it will also flow out when you try to cup it. If you ask Ren Water to make their own thoughts clear, they will slip away. They will play a little trick on you and get you talking about something else.

Ren Water isn’t about individual expression. Ren Water is the perfect medium for holding a collective together. Everyone feeds from the river—elephants, fish, tigers, monkeys, and people. We all share water. We sometimes spar over it but, if we want to live, then we all have to share it. That’s Ren Water. It doesn’t express itself through “I think.” It expresses itself through “he thinks” and “she thinks” and “they think.” That’s the chattiness of Ren Water people. They are incredibly social. They always know what is going on and will brush shoulders with anyone. They compromise by making everyone around them compromise. And, they will trade a secret or two if you spill to them.