#five phases

The philosophy of Wu Xing (五行), often translated as the "Five Phases," "Five Elements," or "Five Agents," is a cornerstone of classical Chinese cosmology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. It is not a theory of static substances (like the Greek classical elements), but a dynamic system describing the patterns of change, transformation, and relationship in the universe.

Core Definition: Phases, Not Elements

The term itself clarifies the concept:

Wu (五): Five.

Xing (行): To walk, to move, to act, to conduct.

Thus, Wu Xing are the "Five Movements" or "Five Conducts." They represent five qualities of energy, processes of change, or modes of influence that are observable in all natural and human phenomena.

The Five Phases and Their Correspondences

Each Phase is associated with a cluster of qualities, creating a comprehensive symbolic system:

Wood (木, Mù):

Quality: Birth, growth, expansion, flexibility, upward/outward movement.

Season: Spring

Direction: East

Climate: Wind

Color: Green/Blue

Organ (Yin/Yang): Liver (Yin) / Gallbladder (Yang)

Emotion: Anger (righteous indignation)

Fire (火, Huǒ):

Quality: Peak activity, transformation, warmth, dynamism, upward movement.

Season: Summer

Direction: South

Climate: Heat

Color: Red

Organ: Heart (Yin) / Small Intestine (Yang)

Emotion: Joy (or its excess, mania)

Earth (土, Tǔ):

Quality: Neutrality, stability, nourishment, transformation, center.

Season: Late Summer (the transition between seasons)

Direction: Center

Climate: Dampness

Color: Yellow

Organ: Spleen (Yin) / Stomach (Yang)

Emotion: Pensiveness, worry

Metal (金, Jīn):

Quality: Contraction, refinement, structure, determination, inward/downward movement.

Season: Autumn

Direction: West

Climate: Dryness

Color: White

Organ: Lungs (Yin) / Large Intestine (Yang)

Emotion: Grief

Water (水, Shuǐ):

Quality: Rest, conservation, potential, flow, downward movement.

Season: Winter

Direction: North

Climate: Cold

Color: Black/Blue

Organ: Kidneys (Yin) / Bladder (Yang)

Emotion: Fear

The Two Foundational Cycles of Interaction

The true philosophy lies in the dynamic, relational rules governing how the Phases interact. Balance is found in the flow between them, not in their static equality.

1. The Generative (Sheng) Cycle: "Mother-Child"

This is a cycle of nourishment and promotion.

Wood feeds Fire (as fuel).

Fire creates Earth (as ash).

Earth bears Metal (as ore).

Metal collects Water (as condensation on metal).

Water nourishes Wood (as rain for trees).

Each Phase is the "mother" of the next and the "child" of the previous.

2. The Restrictive (Ke) Cycle: "Grandparent-Grandchild"

This is a cycle of control, regulation, and restraint (not destruction).

Wood restrains Earth (roots break up soil).

Earth restrains Water (dams and banks channel water).

Water restrains Fire (water extinguishes fire).

Fire restrains Metal (fire melts metal).

Metal restrains Wood (an axe chops wood).

These two cycles work together to maintain dynamic equilibrium. An imbalance occurs when one cycle becomes too strong (over-acting) or too weak (under-acting).

Philosophical Principles and Applications

The Wu Xing is more than a list; it's a system of analogical thinking applied to all domains of life:

Medicine (Traditional Chinese Medicine): Health is the balanced flow of Qi (vital energy) through organ systems corresponding to the Phases. Diagnosis identifies which Phase is deficient or excessive, and treatment (acupuncture, herbs, diet) aims to restore balance via the generative and restrictive cycles.

Statecraft and History: Dynasties were associated with a Phase (e.g., Han = Fire). The "Mandate of Heaven" could be seen as passing according to these cycles. A corrupt ruler of the "Fire" dynasty might be overthrown by a movement embodying "Water" (which restrains Fire).

Feng Shui (Geomancy): The arrangement of space (homes, cities, tombs) is analyzed to harmonize the environmental energies with the Wu Xing, promoting health, prosperity, and harmony.

Martial Arts: Movements, strategies, and even times for training are linked to the Phases. An attack might follow the generative cycle (Wood-style move setting up a Fire-style finish) or exploit the restrictive cycle (a Water-like deflection against a Fire-like aggressive strike).

Personal Character and Ethics: The ideal person embodies a balance of the Phases—the growth of Wood, the warmth of Fire, the stability of Earth, the integrity of Metal, and the wisdom of Water.

Wu Xing and Daoism

Within Daoism:

Wu Xing expresses the Dao’s movement

harmony arises through alignment, not control

imbalance produces disorder and suffering

Wisdom means responding to cycles, not resisting them.

Wu Xing and Confucianism

Confucians apply Wu Xing socially and ethically:

political legitimacy follows cosmic harmony

moral cultivation mirrors natural balance

disorder reflects misalignment of roles

Ethics becomes ecological rather than abstract.

Conclusion: A Philosophy of Dynamic Harmony

The philosophy of Wu Xing is a holistic, correlative cosmology. It teaches that everything in the universe is interconnected through these five fundamental modes of change. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is part of a continuous cycle of generation and restraint.

Its wisdom is relational and process-oriented. It does not ask, "What is this made of?" but rather, "How does this change? What does it nurture, and what restrains it? How does it fit into the larger cycles of nature and life?"

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The 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching (for interactive version click here)

(continued from here)

In speaking of "Taoist thought" I have often throughout this work used the term as a convenient shorthand for "primeval Chinese thought." Strictly speaking, this usage is historically incorrect. Laozi is traditionally regarded as the founder of Taoism and is associated with "primordial" or "original" Taoism. Whether he actually existed is disputed.  According to tradition the classic text attributed to him, the Tao Te Ching, was written around the 6th century BCE. The oldest extant text, however, dates to the late 4th century BCE. The earliest strata of the I Ching predate both these historical periods by many centuries, if not millennia.  Taoism derived its cosmological notions from the philosophy of yin and yang,  and from that of the  Five Phases  or  Five Elements. Both these schools of thought were overwhelmingly  influenced and shaped  by exposure to the oldest known text of ancient Chinese classics, the I Ching.[1]

The actual symbolic logic of Taoism,  although derived from the I Ching is extremely simplistic compared with that of the original upon which it is based. Whereas the philosophy of yin and yang as presented in the Tao Te Ching comprises little more than a two-dimensional cycle of two-valued elements,  in the I Ching these two represent vectors in a six-dimensional combinatorial manifold of 64 hexagrams (1,2). Clearly, it is a difference like that  between night and day.  It is,  in fact,  a literal comparing of 22 with 26, the latter holding many more possibilities. The actual difference[2]  in the  logic and geometry  emerging from the two is greater even than it appears at first. It eventuates not from just a simple geometric progression but from a mandalic intertwining and association of logical elements that give rise to different amplitudes of dimension as well as to a greater number of dimensions.  This mandalic interweaving leads also to a richer catalogue of relationship types.[3]

Long viewed as mainly an ancient text of Chinese divination, the I Ching encompasses many more categories of thought - - - among them symbolic logic, geometry, and combinatorics.  As a treatise which deals with combinatorics alone, it soars without equal, the first known compendium of combinatorial elements and still one of the finest. The logic and geometry  that are embedded in the  hexagram system  of the I Ching are best understood in terms of dimensions and vectors akin to those in Cartesian systematics, and of logic gates analogous to the truth tables of Boolean algebra. And still the cognoscente will want to explore beyond the pertinency of these disciplines as also beyond Taoism to find the full meaning and intent of the I Ching.[4]

Having existed for millenia,  and itself a treatise regarding change[5] in its many aspects, it would be inconceivable that the I Ching as we have it today is as it was in its beginnings. Popular at all societal levels through its entire existence,  reinterpretations and reworkings  have been myriad. Confucianism in particular interlaced its own brand of philosophical and "ethical-sociopolitical teachings"  during and after  the fifth century BCE. Other schools of thought added their unique perspectives to what became essentially  a massive melting pot of schematization,  one not always self-consistent by any means.

When one attempts to uncover the original face of the I Ching the difficulties encountered soon appear insurmountable. If involved in such a venture,  it is imperative to bear in mind the bedrock strata of the work were in some ways more ingenuous, and in some more intricate, than the traditional version that has come down to us.  The earliest layers arose in context of a preliterate oral tradition with all the many unique aspects of being that entails. In some ways the golden age of the I Ching ended with coming of the written word and literacy. The multidimensional logic that was readily accommodated by an oral tradition foundered and eventually was all but lost in the unrelenting techno-sociological onslaught of script with its associated inevitable linearity. Anyone who hopes to excavate the buried multidimensional logic of the primordial I Ching can expect to do a good deal of laborious digging.

(continued here)

Image: Source. Originally from Richard Wilhelm's and Cary F. Baynes translation "I Ching: Or, Book of Changes" [3rd. ed., Bollingen Series XIX, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967, 1st ed. 1950)]

Notes

[1] Two diagrams known as bagua (or pa kua) that figure prominently in the I Ching and its Commentaries predate their appearances in the I Ching. The Lo Shu Square is sometimes associated with the  Later Heaven arrangement  of the bagua or trigrams, and the  Yellow River Map  is sometimes associated with the Earlier Heaven arrangement of trigrams. Both are linked to astronomical events of the sixth millennium BCE. Although part of Chinese mythology, they played an important role in development of Chinese philosophy.  The Lo Shu Square is intimately connected with the legacy of the most ancient Chinese mathematical and divinatory traditions.  The Lo Shu is the  unique normal magic square (1, 2) of order three (every normal magic square of order three is derived from Lo Shu by rotation or reflection). [Wikipedia]

[2] Taking into account both changing lines and unchanging lines of hexagrams there are four possible variants for each line:  unchanging yin,  unchanging yang, changing yin,  and changing yang.  This results in a total of  46  or 4096  possible different line combinations for each six-line figure.  This allows for an enormous number of logical / geometric configurations,  all of which map to various points of the mandalic cube or, in terms of  Cartesian coordinates,  to discretized points of the three-dimensional cube bounded by  the eight Cartesian triads which have coordinates of  +1  and/or  -1  in all possible combinations (corresponding to the eight trigrams.) To this point changing lines have not been discussed to avoid overcomplicating already complicated matters too soon.  Changing lines play an indispensable role in all changes of yin lines to yang lines and vice versa,  and therefore, in changes of one hexagram to another.  They are also essential elements in formation of the geometric line segment generated by the I Ching hexagrams which I have earlier referred to as the  "Taoist line"  and which we have yet to broach fully. Mandalic line segments uniformly comprise sixteen interrelated elements,  hexagrams with changing and/or unchanging lines.  Though various mandalic line segments have different compositions in terms of six-dimensional hexagrams,  these hexagrams can always be reduced in logical and geometrical terms to  sixteen bigram forms containing changing and/or unchanging lines. These bigram sets are all identical. No other variants are possible, since 42 equals 16. In this sense there is a single species of mandalic line segment but one which takes on different characteristics in different dimensional contexts.  Every hexagram has a commentary appended to each of its six lines,  which annotation is intended to be reflected upon only if the line is a changing one at time of consulting the oracle. Justly put, this system is brilliant beyond belief.

[3] Understand here that 'relationship types' may variously refer to human relationships in a society, to particle relationships in context of the atom, or to any other species of relationship one might imagine.

[4] For an exhaustive listing of links to I Ching related materials on the Web see here.

[5] Indeed, an alternative name of the I Ching in English is Book of Changes. The ensconced multidimensional logic encoded in the original work purports to be a microcosm describing all possible pathways of change, and their incessant changing relationships in the greater macrocosm of the universe.

© 2015 Martin Hauser

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