( zh, c=五行, p=wǔxíng), usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents, is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain a wide array of phenomena, including terrestrial and celestial relationships, influences, and cycles, that characterise the interactions and relationships within

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

and social relationships and education within

Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the Cradle of civilization#Ancient China, world's earliest cultures, said to originate five thousand years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia called the Sinosphere as a whole ...

. The five agents are traditionally associated with the classical planets

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

, Mercury,

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

as depicted in the

etymological Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

section below. In ancient

Chinese astronomy Astronomy in China has a long history stretching from the Shang dynasty, being refined over a period of more than 3,000 years. The Ancient China, ancient Chinese people have identified stars from 1300 BCE, as Chinese star names later categori ...

and

astrology Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...

, that spread throughout East Asia, was a reflection of the seven-day planetary order of

Fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

Water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

Wood Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

Metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

.), they are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. In the order of "mutual overacting" ( zh, c=相克, p=xiāngkè, labels=no), they are Wood, Earth, Water, Fire, and Metal. When in their "heavenly stems" generative cycle as represented in the below cycles section and depicted in the diagram above running consecutively clockwise (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water). When in their overacting destructive arrangement of Wood, Earth, Water, Fire, Metal, natural disasters, calamity, illnesses and disease will ensue. The ''wuxing'' system has been in use since the second or first century BCE during the

Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...

. It appears in many seemingly disparate fields of early Chinese thought, including

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

feng shui Feng shui ( or ), sometimes called Chinese geomancy, is a traditional form of geomancy that originated in ancient China and claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term ''feng shui'' mean ...

alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

martial arts Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practiced for a number of reasons such as self-defence; military and law enforcement applications; combat sport, competition; physical, mental, and spiritual development; entertainment; ...

military strategy Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired Strategic goal (military), strategic goals. Derived from the Greek language, Greek word ''strategos'', the term strategy, when first used during the 18th ...

, ''

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yijing'' ( ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The ''I Ching'' was originally a divination manual in ...

'' divination,

and

traditional medicine Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous medicine or folk medicine) refers to the knowledge, skills, and practices rooted in the cultural beliefs of various societies, especially Indigenous groups, used for maintaining health and treatin ...

, serving as a

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

based on cosmic analogy.

Etymology

''Wuxing'' originally referred to the five

classical planet A classical planet is an astronomical object that is visible to the naked eye and moves across the sky and its backdrop of fixed stars (the common stars which seem still in contrast to the planets), appearing as wandering stars. Visible to huma ...

s (from brightest to dimmest:

, Mercury,

), which were with the combination of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

and the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

, conceived as creating the five forces of earthly life (including yang and yin). This is why the word is composed of Chinese characters meaning "five" ( zh, c=五, p=wǔ, labels=no) and "moving" ( zh, c=行, p=xíng, labels=no). "Moving" is shorthand for "planets", since the word for planets in Chinese has been translated as "moving stars" ( zh, c=行星, p=xíngxīng, labels=no).Dr Zai, J
''Taoism and Science: Cosmology, Evolution, Morality, Health and more''
Ultravisum, 2015. Some of the Mawangdui Silk Texts (before 168 BC) also connect the ''wuxing'' to the ''wude'' ( zh, c=五德, p=wǔdé, labels=no), the Five Virtues and Five Emotions . Nathan Sivin (1987), ''Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China'', p. 72. Scholars believe that various predecessors to the concept of ''wuxing'' were merged into one system of many interpretations in the

. ''Wuxing'' was first translated into English as "the Five Elements", drawing parallels with the Greek and Indian Vedic static, solid or formative arrangement of the four elements. Nathan Sivin (1987), ''Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China'', p. 73. This translation is still in common use among practitioners of

Traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medicine, alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. A large share of its claims are pseudoscientific, with the majority of treatments having no robust evidence ...

, such as in the name of Five Element acupuncture and Japanese meridian therapy. However, this analogy could be misleading as the four elements are concerned with form, substance and quantity, whereas the post-heaven arrangement of the ''wuxing'' are "primarily concerned with process, change, and quality". Nathan Sivin (1995), "Science and Medicine in Chinese History", in his ''Science in Ancient China'' (Aldershot, England: Variorum), text VI, p. 179. For example, the ''wuxing'' element "

" is more accurately thought of as the " vital essence" and growth of trees rather than the physical innate substance wood. This led

sinologist Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilizatio ...

Nathan Sivin to propose the alternative translation "five phases" in 1987. Nathan Sivin (1987), ''Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China'' (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan) p. 73. But "phase" also fails to capture the full meaning of ''wuxing''. In some contexts, the ''wuxing'' are indeed associated with physical substances. Historian of Chinese medicine Manfred Porkert proposed the (somewhat unwieldy) term "Evolutive Phase". Perhaps the most widely accepted translation among modern scholars is the "five agents" or "five transformations".

Cycles

In traditional doctrine, the five phases are connected in two cycles of interactions: a promoting or generative ( ''shēng'') cycle, also known as "mother-son"; and an overacting or destructive ( ''kè'') cycle, also known as "grandfather-grandson" (see diagram). Each of these cycles can be interpreted and analyzed in a forward or reversed direction. In addition to the aforementioned cycles there is also what is considered an "overacting" or excessively generating version of the destructive cycle.

Inter-promoting

The generative cycle ( ''xiāngshēng'') is: *Wood feeds Fire as fuel *Fire produces Earth (ash, lava) *Earth bears Metal (geological processes produce minerals) *Metal collects, filters and purifies Water (water vapor condenses on metal, for example) *Water nourishes Wood (water leads to growth of flowers, plants and other changes in nature)

Inter-regulating

The destructive cycle ( ''xiāngkè'') is: *Wood grasps (or stabilizes) Earth (roots of trees can prevent soil erosion) *Earth contains (or directs) Water (dams or river banks) *Water dampens (or regulates) Fire *Fire melts (or refines or shapes) Metal *Metal chops (or carves) Wood

Overacting

The excessive destructive cycle ( ''xiāngchéng'') is: *Wood depletes Earth (depletion of nutrients in soil, over-farming, overcultivation) *Earth obstructs Water (over-damming) *Water extinguishes Fire *Fire melts Metal (affecting its integrity) *Metal makes Wood rigid to easily snap.

Weakening

The reverse generative cycle (/ ''xiāngxiè'') is: *Wood depletes Water *Water rusts Metal *Metal impoverishes Earth (erosion, destructive mining of minerals) *Earth smothers Fire *Fire burns Wood (forest fires)

Counteracting

A reverse or deficient destructive cycle ( ''xiāngwǔ'' or ''xiānghào'') is: *Wood dulls Metal *Metal de-energizes Fire (conducting heat away) *Fire evaporates Water *Water muddies (or destabilizes) Earth *Earth rots Wood (buried wood rots)

Celestial stem

Ming nayin

In Ziwei divination, ''nayin'' () further classifies the Five Elements into 60 ''ming'' (), or life orders, based on the ganzhi. Similar to the astrology zodiac, the ''ming'' is used by fortune-tellers to analyse individual personality and destiny.

Applications

The ''wuxing'' schema is applied to explain phenomena in various fields.

Phases of the year

The five phases are around 73 days each and are usually used to describe the transformations of nature rather than their formative states. *Wood/Spring: a period of growth, expanding which generates abundant vitality, movement and as a consequence is associated with wind. *Fire/Summer: a period of fruition, ripening flowering, and associated with heat. *Earth can be seen as a period of stability and stillness transitioning between the other phases or seasons or when relating to transformative seasonal periods it can be seen as late Summer. This period is associated with centralisation, leveling and dampness. *Metal/Autumn: a period of moving inward it is associated with collection, harvesting, transmuting, contracting, loss and dryness. *Water/Winter: a period of reclusivness, stillness, consolidation and coolness.

Cosmology and feng shui

Wuxing - Five Elements - Cycle Balance Imbalance

The art of feng shui (Chinese

geomancy Geomancy, a compound of Greek roots denoting "earth divination", was originally used to mean methods of divination that interpret geographic features, markings on the ground, or the patterns formed by soil, rock (geology), rocks, or sand. Its d ...

) is based on ''wuxing'', with the structure of the cosmos mirroring the five phases, as well as

bagua The ''bagua'' ( zh, c=八卦, p=bāguà, l=eight trigrams) is a set of symbols from China intended to illustrate the nature of reality as being composed of mutually opposing forces reinforcing one another. ''Bagua'' is a group of trigrams—co ...

(the eight trigrams). Each phase has a complex network of associations with different aspects of nature (see table): colors, seasons and shapes all interact according to the cycles.Chinese Five Elements Chart
Information on the Chinese Five Elements from Northern Shaolin Academy in Microsoft Excel 2003 Format An interaction or energy flow can be expansive, destructive, or exhaustive, depending on the cycle to which it belongs. By understanding these energy flows, a feng shui practitioner attempts to rearrange energy to benefit the client.

Dynastic transitions

According to the Warring States period political philosopher

Zou Yan Zou Yan (; 305 BC240 BC) was a Chinese philosopher and spiritual writer of the Warring States era, Warring States-era. He was best known as the representative thinker of the Yin and Yang School (or School of Naturalists) during the Hundred School ...

( BCE), each of the five elements possesses a personified virtue ( zh, c=德, p=dé, labels=no), which indicates the foreordained destiny ( zh, c=運, p=yùn, labels=no) of a dynasty; hence the cyclic succession of the elements also indicates dynastic transitions. Zou Yan claims that the

Mandate of Heaven The Mandate of Heaven ( zh, t=天命, p=Tiānmìng, w=, l=Heaven's command) is a Chinese ideology#Political ideologies, political ideology that was used in History of China#Ancient China, Ancient China and Chinese Empire, Imperial China to legit ...

sanctions the legitimacy of a dynasty by sending self-manifesting auspicious signs in the ritual color (white, green, black, red, and yellow) that matches the element of the new dynasty (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth). From the Qin dynasty onward, most Chinese dynasties invoked the theory of the Five Elements to legitimize their reign.

Chinese medicine

The interdependence of '' zangfu'' networks in the body was said to be a circle of five things, and so mapped by the ancient Chinese doctors onto categories of syndromes and patterns called the five phases. In order to explain the integrity and complexity of the human body, Chinese medical scientists and physicians use the Five Elements theory to classify the human body's endogenous influences on organs, physiological activities, pathological reactions, and environmental or exogenous (external, environmental) influences. This diagnostic capacity is extensively used in traditional five phase acupuncture today, as opposed to the modern Confucian styled eight principles based Traditional Chinese medicine. In combination the two systems are a formative and functional study of postnatal and prenatal influencing on genetics in the form of

epigenetics In biology, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that happen without changes to the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix ''epi-'' (ἐπι- "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "on top of" or "in ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

physiology Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ syst ...

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

and

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

Music

The ''

Huainanzi The ''Huainanzi'' is an ancient Chinese text made up of essays from scholarly debates held at the court of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, before 139 BCE. Compiled as a handbook for an enlightened sovereign and his court, the work attempts to defi ...

'' and the ''Yueling'' chapter ( zh, c=月令, p=Yuèlìng, labels=no) of the ''

Book of Rites The ''Book of Rites'', also known as the ''Liji'', is a collection of texts describing the social forms, administration, and ceremonial rites of the Zhou dynasty as they were understood in the Warring States and the early Han periods. The '' ...

'' make the following correlations: * ''

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

'' is a Chinese color word used for both green and blue. Modern

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

has separate words for each, but like many other languages, older forms of Chinese did not distinguish between green and blue. * In most modern music, various five note or seven note scales (e.g., the major scale) are defined by selecting five or seven frequencies from the set of twelve semi-tones in the

Equal tempered An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system that approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into steps such that the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same. This system ...

tuning. The Chinese '' shi'er lü'' system of tuning is closest to the ancient Greek tuning of Pythagoras.

Martial arts

Wuxing being an influential philosophical concept, there are several Chinese martial arts and a few other east Asian styles that incorporate five phases concepts into their systems.

Tai chi is a Chinese martial art. Initially developed for combat and self-defense, for most practitioners it has evolved into a sport and form of exercise. As an exercise, tai chi is performed as gentle, low-impact movement in which practitioners ...

trains and focuses on five basic qualities as part of its overarching strategy. The Five Steps () are: *''Lǎo Jìnbù'' (老進步) – always step forward *''Juébù Tuìbù'' (絕不退步) – never step backward *''Yòupàn'' (右盼) – watch right *''Zuǒgù'' (左顧) – beware left *''Zhōngdìng'' (中定) – center pole, point, pivot neutral posture, maintain balance, maintain equilibrium. These five steps are not mutable states in tai chi. '' Xingyi Quan'' uses the five elements metaphorically to represent ideally five different energies, but energy work is subtle, so normally one starts out learning five basic techniques with complementary footwork to teach the basic concepts behind the energies. Ideally one can use any technique with any kind of energy, but there are different levels of skill one must go through. In Xingyi Quan, realization of the five energies has three basic levels: Obvious power, subtle power, mysterious power. The Five Animals in Shaolin martial arts are an extension of the Wuxing theory as their qualities are the embodiment and representation of the energetic qualities of the five phases in the animal kingdom. They are the, * Tiger - Fire (fierce and powerful) * Monkey - Metal (hunched over) * Snake - Water (flexible) * Crane - Wind (evasive) * Mantis - Earth (steady and rooted) '' Wuxing Heqidao'', (Gogyo

Aikido Aikido ( , , , ) is a gendai budō, modern Japanese martial art which is split into many different styles including Iwama Ryu, Iwama Shin Shin Aiki Shuren Kai, Shodokan Aikido, Yoshinkan, Renshinkai, Aikikai, and Ki Aikido. Aikido is now practic ...

五行合气道) is a life art with roots in Confucian, Taoists and Buddhist theory. It centers around applied peace and health studies rather than defence or physical action. It emphasizes the unification of mind, body and environment using the physiological theory of

yin and yang Originating in Chinese philosophy, yin and yang (, ), also yinyang or yin-yang, is the concept of opposite cosmic principles or forces that interact, interconnect, and perpetuate each other. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary an ...

as well as five-element

. Its movements, exercises, and teachings cultivate, direct, and harmonise the '' qi''.

Gogyo

The Japanese term is ''gogyo'' ( Japanese: ,

romanized In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...

: gogyō). During the 5th and 6th centuries (

Kofun period The is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is ...

), Japan adopted various philosophical disciplines such as

Taoism Taoism or Daoism (, ) is a diverse philosophical and religious tradition indigenous to China, emphasizing harmony with the Tao ( zh, p=dào, w=tao4). With a range of meaning in Chinese philosophy, translations of Tao include 'way', 'road', ' ...

Chinese Buddhism Chinese Buddhism or Han Buddhism ( zh, s=汉传佛教, t=漢傳佛教, first=t, poj=Hàn-thoân Hu̍t-kàu, j=Hon3 Cyun4 Fat6 Gaau3, p=Hànchuán Fójiào) is a Chinese form of Mahayana Buddhism. The Chinese Buddhist canonJiang Wu, "The Chin ...

and

Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China, and is variously described as a tradition, philosophy, Religious Confucianism, religion, theory of government, or way of li ...

through monks and physicians from China helping to evolve the '' Onmyōdō'' system. As opposed to theory of Godai that is form based philosophy that was introduced to Japan through India and Tibetan Buddhism. These theories have been extensively practiced in Japanese

acupuncture Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine and a component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in which thin needles are inserted into the body. Acupuncture is a pseudoscience; the theories and practices of TCM are not based on scientif ...

and traditional Kampo medicine.

Notes

References

External links

Wuxing (Wu-hsing)
''The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', . {{Authority control Classical Chinese philosophy Taoist cosmology Eastern esotericism