On Matching the Useful God to the Climate (Yong Shen Pei Qi Hou De Shi)

Climate Comes First in the Extremes

Shen now adds a second axis to the useful god: the climate of the season. Cold and dryness do not care what a structure is called. Winter wood fed with water freezes instead of growing, however proper the officer and seal look; in metal-and-water charts the officer that is normally hated turns refined because fire is what the chart needs. He runs a short list of these reversals — winter water, summer wood, winter metal, summer fire — and leaves the rest to the reader's analogy, since climate is a principle rather than a catalogue.