This is the whole system, as plainly as we can put it. Not a personality type, not a horoscope, and not a belief — a way of naming which phase a situation is in, and therefore what it will reward and what it will cost you to push against it.
The five are not made of anything. They are five ways a thing behaves: how it moves, how it changes, and what it does to what is around it. The classical statement of them is short enough to hold in your head:
Water soaks and descends. Fire blazes and rises. Wood bends and straightens. Metal follows and transforms. Earth sows and reaps.
The Book of Documents · Hong Fan
Every colour, direction, season and cycle you will see attached to them afterwards is elaboration on those five verbs. Start with the verbs and the rest is easy.
The five lines
Each page runs the same length as the others: the movement, where it shows up, what it does in balance and in excess, what feeds it, and how to hold it.
Not sure which one you are asking from? Take the free reading →
Two ways to start
If one of the five already reads true, open it. If you cannot tell which one you are in, the free reading takes two minutes and names it from your date of birth.