Wu Xing Totally Explained

Everything about Chinese Five Elements totally explained

In traditional Chinese philosophy, natural phenomena can be classified into the Wu Xing, or the Five Phases, usually poorly translated as five elements, five movements or five steps.
Note that the five elements are chiefly an ancient mnemonic device for systems with 5 stages; hence the preferred translation of "Phase" over "Element".
The elements are:

metal (Chinese:, pinyin: jīn, )
wood (Chinese:, pinyin: mù)
water (Chinese:, pinyin: shuǐ)
fire (Chinese:, pinyin: huǒ), and
earth (Chinese:, pinyin: tǔ, ).

The system of five phases was used for describing interactions and relationships between phenomena. It was employed as a device in many fields of early Chinese thought, including seemingly disparate fields such as geomancy or Feng shui, astrology, traditional Chinese medicine, music, military strategy and martial arts.
Traditional Taijiquan schools relate them to footwork and refer to them as five "steps". The system is still used as a reference in some forms of complementary and alternative medicine and martial arts. Some claim the original foundation of these are the concept of the Five Cardinal Points.

Cycles

The doctrine of five phases describes two Cycles of Balance, a generating or creation (生, shēng) cycle and an overcoming or destruction (克/剋, kè) cycle of interactions between the phases.

Generating

The common memory jogs to help remember which order the phases are in are:

Wood feeds Fire;

Fire creates Earth (ash);

Earth bears Metal;

Metal carries Water (as in a bucket or tap);

Water nourishes Wood. Other common words for this cycle include "begets", "engenders" and "mothers"

Overcoming

Wood parts Earth;

Earth absorbs Water;

Water quenches Fire;

Fire melts Metal;

Metal chops Wood. This cycle might also be called "controls", "restrains" or "fathers".
There are also two Cycles of Imbalance, an overacting cycle (cheng) and an insulting cycle (wu).

Cosmology and feng shui

According to Wu Xing theory, the structure of the cosmos mirrors the five elements. Each "element" has a complex series of associations with different aspects of nature, as can be seen in the following table. In the ancient Chinese form of geomancy known as Feng Shui practitioners all based their art and system on the five elements (Wu Xing). All of these elements are represented within the Bagua. Associated with these elements are colors, seasons and shapes; all of which are interacting with each other.
Based on a particular directional energy flow from one element to the next, the interaction can be expansive, destructive, or exhaustive. With proper knowledge of such aspect of energy flow will enable the Feng Shui practitioner to apply certain cures or rearrangement of energy in a beneficial way.

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Color	Green	Red	Yellow	White	Blue or Black
Direction	east	south	center / zenith	west	north
Planet	Jupiter	Mars	Saturn	Venus	Mercury
Heavenly creature	Azure Dragon 蒼龍 or 青龍	Vermilion Bird 朱雀	Yellow Dragon or Yellow Qilin 黃龍 or 黃麟	White Tiger 白虎	Black Tortoise 玄武
Heavenly Stems	,	,	,	,	,
Phase	New Yang	Full Yang	Yin/Yang balance	New Yin	Full Yin
Energy	Generative	Expansive	Stabilizing	Contracting	Conserving
Season	Spring	Summer	Change of seasons (Every third month)	Autumn	Winter
Climate	Windy	Hot	Damp	Dry	Cold
Development	Sprouting	Blooming	Ripening	Withering	Dormant
Livestock	dog	sheep/goat	cattle	chicken	pig
Fruit	plum	apricot	jujube(dates)	peach	chestnut
Grain	wheat	beans	rice	hemp	millet

Bagua

The elements have also been correlated to the eight trigrams of the I Ching:

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
I Ching	Wood, splinter	Fire, lightning	Earth, sand	Metal, iron	Water, ice
Trigrams	:	(☴ 巽 xùn) >:: (☳ 震 zhèn)	>:\| (☲ 離 lí)	::: (☷ 坤 kūn) ::> (☶ 艮 gèn)			: (☱ 兌 duì)	:>: (☵ 坎 kǎn)

Chinese medicine

The interdependence of organ networks in the body was noted to be a circle of five things, and so mapped by the Chinese doctors onto the five phases. For instance, the Liver (Wood phase) is said to be the "mother" of the heart (Fire phase), and the Kidneys (Water phase) the mother of the Liver. The key observation was things like kidney deficiency affecting the function of the liver. In this case, the "mother" is weak, and can't support the child. However, the Kidneys control the heart along the Ke cycle, so the Kidneys are said to restrain the heart. Many of these interactions can nowadays be linked to known physiological pathways (such as Kidney pH affecting heart activity).
The key thing to keep in mind with the Chinese medical application of the five elements is that it's only a model, and it's known to have exceptions. However, in general the device seems to be useful for arriving at good clinical results, so they were kept by the critically thinking Chinese medical doctors and researchers since they were first introduced.
The citation order of the Five Phases, for example, the order in which they're cited in the Bo Hu Tong and other Han dynasty texts, is Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. The organs are most effectively treated, according to theory, in the following four-hour periods throughout the day, beginning with the 3 a.m. to 7 a. m. period: Metal organs (see the list below), Earth organs, Fire₁ organs, Water organs, Fire₂ (the "non-empirical" Pericardium and Triple Burner organs), and Wood organs, which is the reverse of the citation order (plus an extra use of Fire and the non-empirical organs to take care of the sixth four-hour period of the day). These two orders are further related to the sequence of the planets going outward from the sun (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, or Water, Metal, Fire, Wood, and Earth) by a star diagram similar to the one shown above.

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Planet	Jupiter	Mars	Saturn	Venus	Mercury
Mental Quality	Sensitivity	Creativity	Clarity	Intuition	Spontaneity
Negative Emotion	anger, frustration	over-excitation	worry, anxiety	grief, sadness	fear, lack of will
Positive Emotion	Patience	Joy	Empathy,Love	Courage	Calmness
Zang (yin organs)	liver	heart/pericardium	spleen/pancreas	lung	kidney
Fu (yang organs)	gall bladder	small intestine/San Jiao	stomach	large intestine	urinary bladder
Sensory organ	eye	tongue	Mouth	nose	ears
Body Part	Tendons	Pulse	Muscle	Skin	Bones
Body Fluid	Tears	Sweat	Saliva	Mucus	Urine
Finger	index finger	middle finger	thumb	ring finger	little finger
Sense	sight	speech	taste	smell	hearing
Taste	sour	bitter	sweet	pungent	salty
Smell	Rancid	Scorched	Fragrant	Putrid	Rotten
Life	birth	youth	adulthood	old age	death

Chinese astrology

Chinese astrology is based upon the interaction of the five elements with the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac, to produce the well-known 60 year cycle of signs.

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Heavenly Stem	Jia 甲 Yi 乙	Bing 丙 Ding 丁	Wu 戊 Ji 己	Geng 庚 Xin 辛	Ren 壬 Gui 癸
Birth year ends with	4, 5	6, 7	8, 9	0, 1	2, 3

For example, assume someone is born in the year 1953, the year of the Snake. Because her birth year ends with 3, her element is Water; therefore, she was born in the year of the Water Snake.

Music

The Yuèlìng chapter (月令篇) of the Lǐjì (禮記) and the Huáinánzǐ (淮南子) make the following correlations:

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Colour	Green	Red	Yellow	White	Blue
Direction	east	south	center	west	north
The Chinese Five-note Scale	jué 角 (mi)	zhǐ 徵 (so)	gōng 宮 (do)	shāng 商 (re)	yǔ 羽 (la)

(Notes:

The Chinese word 青 qīng, traditionally translated as azure in this context, includes the range in the spectrum from green to blue, with shades down to black.)

In modern Western music, various seven note or five note scales (for example, the major scale) are defined by selecting seven or five frequencies from the set of twelve semi-tones in the Equal tempered tuning. The Chinese "lǜ" tuning is closest to the ancient Greek tuning of Pythagoras. See Chinese musicology.)

Martial arts

Xingyi

Xingyiquan uses the five elements to metaphorically represent five different states of combat.

Element	Fist	Chinese	Pinyin	Description
Wood	Crushing	崩	Bēng	To collapse, as a building collapsing in on itself.
Fire	Pounding	炮	Pào	Exploding outward like a cannon while blocking.
Earth	Crossing	橫	Héng	Crossing across the line of attack while turning over.
Metal	Splitting	劈	Pī	To split like an axe chopping up and over.
Water	Drilling	鑽	Zuān	Drilling forward horizontally like a geyser.

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