Wu Xing (Five Phases)

The wu xing (wood, fire, earth, metal and water), are the five phases of Chinese cosmology, better understood as processes or agents than as static substances. They stand in two principal cycles: the generating cycle, in which each produces the next (wood feeds fire, fire makes ash and so earth, earth bears metal, metal carries water, water nourishes wood), and the overcoming cycle, in which each controls another.

The five phases are one of the great organising schemes of Chinese thought, sorting seasons, directions, colours, organs, emotions, flavours and much else into five correspondences, and running through medicine, divination, feng shui and statecraft.

The power of the wu xing lies in the cycles: because the phases generate and overcome one another in fixed order, the scheme models change and interaction rather than mere classification, and it is used to explain how one thing gives rise to or checks another, in the body, in the seasons, in the relations of things. It pairs with yin and yang as the basic framework of Chinese natural philosophy.

The atlas gives each phase its correspondences and its place in the generating and overcoming cycles. The stems, branches, organs and directions the phases organise are treated in their own categories under Eastern Systems.