Nature
Im is big water: the sea, the river in flood. Yang Water people are curious, quick, adaptable and hard to contain. They think broadly, travel easily, and change shape to fit the container without losing what they are. The ocean is also unknowable: Im can seem open while holding a great deal in reserve. The tradition associates Im with wisdom and with wandering, in equal measure.
Strengths
- Intelligence: fast, wide-ranging, strategic.
- Adaptability: comfortable in new places, roles and cultures.
- Depth: emotional and intellectual reserves others underestimate.
- Generosity of spirit: the sea receives every river.
What to watch
- Restlessness: difficulty staying, in places, jobs or relationships.
- Unpredictability: calm, then a storm.
- Evasiveness: flows around commitments rather than into them.
- Excess: without banks, the flood takes everything with it.
In relationships
Passionate and open-minded, Im loves freedom and needs a partner who does not try to dam it. Stability has to come from choice, not pressure. Earth in the chart (Mu, the mountain) gives the river banks, and Jeong (Yin Fire) forms a combination with Im that the tradition reads as a good pairing.
At work
Trade, travel, media, research, strategy, international work: anything that rewards range and movement. Im does poorly in narrow, repetitive roles, and well wherever the map is unfinished.
How the other elements read for Im
Every other character in a Im chart is named by its relationship to Water. This is the key for reading the ten gods on your chart.
- Water characters are Friends and Rob Wealth: peers, competition, self-reliance.
- Metal produces Water, so it is Resource: support, learning, protection.
- Wood is produced by Water, so it is Output (Eating God, Hurting Officer): talent, expression, children.
- Fire is controlled by Water, so it is Wealth: money, ambition, and for a male chart the partner.
- Earth controls Water, so it is Officer and Seven Killings: authority, pressure, and for a female chart the partner.