Category
Wu Xing (Five Phases)
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The wu xing (wood, fire, earth, metal and water), are the five phases of Chinese cosmology, better understood as processes than as substances. They stand in two principal cycles: generating, in which each produces the next, and overcoming, in which each restrains another. The scheme organises Chinese medicine, calendrics, feng shui and traditional political theory, and was systematised during the Han dynasty.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 5
- What Defines This Grouping
- Five phases understood as processes rather than substances, standing in fixed generating and overcoming cycles: the correlative scheme that sorts seasons, directions, organs, flavours and much else into fives. 1
- Size of the Traditional Set
- 5 phases 1
Origins
- Origin of the Name
- Chinese wu xing, "five goings" or "five phases". The older rendering "five elements" misleads: the xing are processes, not materials. 1
Attestation
- Era of Attestation
- Systematised as a correlative cosmology in the Warring States and Han periods. 1
Learn More
The 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.
A Grammar of Correspondence
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.
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