Five elements (Chinese philosophy)

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Five elements (Chinese philosophy)

In many traditional Chinese theory field, matters and its developmental movement stage can be classified into the Wu Xing , or the Five Movements, Five Phases or Five Steps/Stages, traditionally translated as Five Elements.

The Wu Xing are chiefly an ancient mnemonic device for systems with 5 stages; hence the preferred translation of "movements", "phases" or "steps" over "elements", and Mu is Tree rather than Wood.

The movements are:

The system of five phases was used for describing interactions and relationships between phenomena.

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Tree, traditionally Wood (Chinese: ?, pinyin: mù)
Fire (Chinese: ?, pinyin: huo)
Earth
Earth (Wu Xing)

Earth is the changing point of the matter. Earth is the third one of Wu Xing.Earth is a balance of both yin and yang, the feminine and masculine together....
(Chinese: ?, pinyin: tu)
Metal (Chinese: ?, pinyin: jin)
Water
Water (Wu Xing)

Water is the low point of the matter, or the matter's dying or hiding stage. Water is the fifth one of Wu Xing.Water is yin in character, its energy is downward and its motion is stillness and conserving....
(Chinese: ?, pinyin: shui)

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

Feng shui

Feng shui is an ancient Chinese system of aesthetics believed to utilize the Laws of both heaven and Earth to help one improve life by receiving positive Qi....
, astrology

Chinese astrology

Chinese astrology is based on the astronomy and traditional calendars. The Chinese astrology does not calculate the positions of the sun, moon and planets at the time of birth....
, traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine includes a range of traditional medicine practices originating in China. Although well accepted in the mainstream of medical care throughout East Asia, it is considered an alternative medicine system in much of the western world....
, music

Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
, military strategy

Military strategy

Military strategy is a policy implemented by military organizations to pursue desired Strategic goal s. Derived from the Greek language strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops....
and martial arts

Martial arts

Martial arts are systems of codified practices and traditions of training for combat. While they may be studied for various reasons, martial arts share a single objective: to physically defeat other persons and to defend oneself or others from physical threat....
.

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

Cardinal direction

The four cardinal directions or cardinal points are north, south, east, and west, commonly denoted by their initials - N, S, E, W. They are mostly used for geography orientation on Earth but may be calculated anywhere on a rotating astronomical object....
.

Cycles

The doctrine of five phases describes two cycles, a generating or creation (?, sheng) cycle, also known as "mother-son", and an overcoming or destruction (?/?, kè) cycle, also known as "grandfather-nephew", of interactions between the phases.

Generating

The common memory jogs, which help to remind in what order the phases are, are:

Wood feeds Fire;
Fire creates Earth (ash);
Earth bears Metal;
Metal carries Water (as in a bucket or tap, or water condenses on metal);
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.

Also:

Wood absorbs Water;
Water rusts Metal;
Metal breaks up Earth;
Earth smothers Fire;
Fire burns Wood.

This cycle might also be called "controls", "restrains" or "fathers".

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

Geomancy

File:Geomantic_instrument_Egypt_or_Syria_1241_1242_CE_Muhammad_ibn_Khutlukh_al_Mawsuli.jpgFile:Geomantic instrument Egypt or Syria 1241 1242 CE detail 1.jpg...
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 way they believe to be beneficial for the receiver of the Feng Shui "Treatment."

Movement	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Color Color Color or colour is the visual perception property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others....	Green Green Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520?570-Nanometre....	Red Red Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 625?740 Nanometer....	Yellow Yellow Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, but does not significantly stimulate the S cone cells; that is, light with much red and green but not very much blue....	White White White is a color, the Color vision#Physiology of color perception which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in near equal amount and with high brightness compared to the surroundings....	Black Black Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflection light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light.... or Blue Blue Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440?490 Nanometre....
Direction	east East East is a Direction in geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points, opposite of west and at right angles to north and south....	south South South is one of the cardinal directions and is opposite to the north.By Western world Norm , the bottom side of a map is south; the southern direction has azimuth or bearing of 180?....	center	west West West is most commonly a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction or geography.West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points....	north North North is one of the four cardinal directions, specifically the direction that, in Western culture, is treated as the fundamental direction:...
Planet Planet A planet , as 2006 definition of planet by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting a star or Stellar evolution#Stellar remnants that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared the neighbourhood of planetesimals....	Jupiter Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the Solar system by size planet within the Solar System. It is two and a half times as massive as all of the other planets in our Solar System combined....	Mars MARS In cryptography, MARS is a block cipher that was IBM's submission to the Advanced Encryption Standard process. MARS was selected as an AES finalist in August 1999, after the AES2 conference in March 1999, where it was voted as the fifth and last finalist algorithm....	Saturn Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant....	Venus Venus Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus , the Roman mythology goddess of love....	Mercury Mercury (planet) Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest Orbital eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt....
Heavenly creature Chinese constellation Chinese constellations are the way ancient Chinese grouped the stars. They are very different from the modern International Astronomical Union recognized constellations....	Azure Dragon Azure Dragon (Chinese constellation) The Azure Dragon is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the Azure Dragon of the East , and it is known as Seiryuu in Japan and Cheongryong in Korea.... ?? or ??	Vermilion Bird Vermilion Bird (Chinese constellation) The Vermilion Bird is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. According to Wu Xing, the Taoist five-elemental system, it represents the fire-element, the direction south, and the season summer correspondingly.... ??	Yellow Dragon Huang Long (mythology) Huang Long is a hornless dragon who once emerged from the River Luo and presented the legendary Emperor Fu Xi with the elements of writing. According to legend, when it appeared before Fu Xi, it filled a hole in the sky made by the monster Kung Kung.... or Yellow Qilin Qilin The Qilin , also spelled Kylin, Kirin, or K? l?n is a mythical hooved Chinese culture Chimera creature known throughout various East Asian cultures, and is said to appear in conjunction with the arrival of a sage.... ?? or ??	White Tiger White Tiger (Chinese constellation) The White Tiger is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the White Tiger of the West , and is known as Byakko in Japan and Baekho in Korea.... ??	Black Tortoise Black Tortoise (Chinese constellation) The Black Tortoise is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. The word for "tortoise" was taboo; and the entire entity is not just the tortoise itself, but both the tortoise and the snake.... ??
Heavenly Stems Heavenly Stems The ten Celestial Stems , sometimes known as Heavenly Stems, are the elements of an ancient China cyclic character numeral system: Jia , Yi , Bing , Ding , Wu , Ji , Geng , Xin , Ren , Gui ....	?, ?	?, ?	?, ?	?, ?	?, ?
Phase	New Yang	Full Yang	Yin/Yang balance	New Yin	Full Yin
Energy Energy In physics, energy is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of Work_ that can be performed by a force. Energy is an attribute of objects and systems that is subject to a conservation law....	Generative	Expansive	Stabilizing	Contracting	Conserving
Season Season A season is one of the major divisions of the year, generally based on yearly periodic changes in weather.Seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the Axial tilt....	Spring	Summer	Change of seasons (Every third month)	Autumn	Winter
Climate Climate Climate encompasses the temperatures, humidity, atmospheric pressure, winds, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other Meteorology elements in a given region over long periods of time, as opposed to the term weather, which refers to current activity of these same elements....	Windy Windy "Windy" is a pop music song written by Ruthann Friedman and recorded by The Association. Released in 1967, the song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in July of that year....	Hot Temperature In physics, temperature is a physical property of a Physical system that underlies the common notions of hot and cold; something that feels hotter generally has the greater temperature....	Damp	Dry Dry Dry may refer to:* Lack of water* Lack of alcohol * Dryness, the lack of sugar in a drink* Dry , an album by PJ Harvey* Dry , a memoir by Augusten Burroughs...	Cold Cold Cold describes the condition of coldness.Cold may also refer to:Common cold, a type of Upper respiratory tract infectionChinese_food_therapy#Cantonese_classification_of_food...
Development Development Development may refer to:...	Sprouting	Blooming	Ripening	Withering	Dormant
Livestock Livestock Livestock is the term used to refer to a domesticated animal intentionally reared in an agricultural setting to produce things such as food or fibre, or for its labour....	dog Dog The dog is a domesticated subspecies of the Gray Wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties....	sheep Sheep #REDIRECT Domestic sheep... /goat Goat The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep: both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae....	cattle Cattle Cattle, colloquially referred to as cows, are domestication ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. They are raised as livestock for meat , dairy products , leather and as draft animals ....	chicken Chicken The chicken is a Domestication fowl. Recent evidence suggests that domestication of the chicken was under way in Vietnam over 10,000 years ago....	pig Pig Pigs, also called hogs or swine, are a genus of even-toed ungulates within the Family Suidae. The name pig, hog, or swine most commonly refers to the Domestic pig in everyday parlance, but technically encompasses several distinct species, including the Wild Boar....
Fruit Fruit The term fruit has different meanings dependent on context, and the term is not synonymous in food preparation and biology. In botany, which is the scientific study of plants, fruits are the ripened Ovary of flowering plants....	plum Plum A plum or gage is a drupe tree in the genus Prunus, subgenus Prunus. The subgenus is distinguished from other subgenera in the shoots having a terminal bud and the side buds solitary , the flowers being grouped 1-5 together on short stems, and the fruit having a groove running down one side, and a smooth stone....	apricot Apricot The Apricot is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation, but most likely in northern and western China and Central Asia, possibly also Korea and Japan....	jujube Jujube *Ziziphus zizyphus* , commonly called Jujube, Red Date , or Chinese Date, is a species of Ziziphus in the buckthorn family Rhamnaceae, used primarily for its fruits.... (dates)	peach Peach The peach is known as a species of Prunus native to China that bears an edible juicy fruit also called a peach. It is a deciduous tree growing to 5?10 m tall, belonging to the subfamily Prunoideae of the family Rosaceae....	chestnut Chestnut Chestnut , is a genus of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the Beech family Fagaceae, native to temperate climate regions of the Northern Hemisphere....
Grain GRAIN GRAIN is an international non-governmental organization based in Barcelona, Spain, which works toward sustainable agriculture. It was formed upon the realization that the genetic diversity of the world's food crops are being drastically eliminated....	wheat Wheat Wheat , is a worldwide cultivated Poaceae from the Levant region of the Middle East. Globally, after maize, wheat is the second most-produced food among the cereal just above rice....	beans	rice Rice Rice is a staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in tropical Latin America, and East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, making it the second-most consumed cereal grain, after maize....	hemp Hemp File:Industrialhemp.jpgHemp is the common name for plants of the entire genus Cannabis, although the term is often used to refer only to Cannabis strains cultivated for industrial use....	millet Millet The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal Crop or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a scientific classification group, but rather a functional or agronomic one....

Ba gua

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

I Ching

The I Ching , or ?Y? Jing? ; also called Classic of Changes or Book of Changes is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts....
:

Movement	Metal	Earth	Wood	Wood	Water	Fire	Earth	Metal
I Ching	Heaven	Earth	Thunder	Wind	Water	Fire	Mountain	Lake
Trigrams	? ? qián	? ? kun	? ? zhèn	? ? xùn	? ? kan	? ? lí	? ? gèn	? ? duì

Chinese medicine

The interdependence of Zang Fu 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 cannot 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 is only a model, and it is 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, i.e., the order in which they are 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.

The sequence of the five elements(Traditional Chinese medicine):promotion,inhibition,Cheng (bullying),Wu(insult)

Movement	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Planet Planet A planet , as 2006 definition of planet by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting a star or Stellar evolution#Stellar remnants that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared the neighbourhood of planetesimals....	Jupiter Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the Solar system by size planet within the Solar System. It is two and a half times as massive as all of the other planets in our Solar System combined....	Mars MARS In cryptography, MARS is a block cipher that was IBM's submission to the Advanced Encryption Standard process. MARS was selected as an AES finalist in August 1999, after the AES2 conference in March 1999, where it was voted as the fifth and last finalist algorithm....	Saturn Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant....	Venus Venus Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus , the Roman mythology goddess of love....	Mercury Mercury (planet) Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest Orbital eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt....
Mental Quality	Sensitivity Sensitivity Sensitivity may refer to:* Allergy* Sensitivity * Sensitivity * Sensitivity * Sensitivity and specificity are related concepts in statistics...	Creativity Creativity Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts....	Clarity Clarity Clarity is the property of being clear or transparent.Clarity can refer to one's ability to clearly visualize an object or concept, as in thought, understanding, and the "mind's eye", as well as the traditional notion of visual perception, that is, with the actual eyes....	Intuition Intuition Intuition has many related meanings, usually connected to the meaning "ability to sense or know immediately without reasoning", and is often regarded as a divine or prophetic power, including:...	Spontaneity
Emotion Emotion An emotion is a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior.Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from an individual point of view....	anger Anger Anger is an emotional state that may range from minor irritation to intense rage. The physical effects of anger include increased heart rate, blood pressure,and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline....	happy, over-happy	anxiety Anxiety Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, fear, or worry....	grief Grief Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions.... , sadness Sadness File:A child sad that his hot dog fell on the ground.jpgSadness is an emotion characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, and helplessness....	fear Fear Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of pain.... , scare
Zang (yin organs Yin and yang In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn.... )	liver Liver The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals; it has a wide range of functions, a few of which are detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion....	heart Heart The heart is a muscle organ in all vertebrates responsible for pumping blood through the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions, or a similar structure in annelids, mollusks, and arthropods.... /pericardium Pericardium The pericardium is a double-walled sac that contains the heart and the roots of the great vessels....	spleen Spleen The spleen is an organ found in all vertebrate animals. In humans, the spleen is located in the abdomen of the body, where it functions in the destruction of redundant red blood cells, and holds a reservoir of blood.... /pancreas Pancreas The pancreas is a gland Organ in the digestive system and endocrine system of vertebrates. It is both an endocrine gland , as well as an exocrine gland, secreting pancreatic juice containing Digestion enzymes that pass to the small intestine....	lung Lung The lung is the essential respiration organ in air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located in the chest on either side of the heart....	kidney Kidney The kidneys are Organ that have numerous biological roles. Their primary role is to maintain the homeostasis balance of bodily fluids by filtering and secreting Metabolomics#Metabolitess and minerals from the blood and excreting them, along with water , as urine....
Fu (yang organs Yin and yang In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn.... )	gall bladder	small intestine Small intestine In vertebrates, including mammals, reptiles, birds, and bony fish, the small intestine is the part of the gastrointestinal tract following the stomach, and is where the vast majority of digestion takes place.... /San Jiao San Jiao San Jiao is a term found in traditional Chinese medicine , as part of modelling the workings of the human body attempted by early Chinese medical writers....	stomach Stomach In most mammals, the stomach is a hollow muscular organ of the gastrointestinal tract involved in the second phase of digestion, following mastication....	large intestine Large intestine The large intestine is the last part of the digestive system?the final stage of the alimentary canal?in vertebrate animals. Its function is to absorb water from the remaining indigestible food matter, and then to pass this useless feces from the body....	urinary bladder Urinary bladder In anatomy, the urinary bladder is a solid, muscle, and distensible organ that sits on the pelvic floor in mammals. It is the organ that collects urine excreted by the kidneys prior to disposal by urination....
Sensory organ Organ (anatomy) In biology, an organ is a biological tissue that performs a specific function or group of functions. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues....	eye Eye Eyes are Organ that detect light, and send signals along the optic nerve to the visual system and other areas of the brain. Complex optical systems with resolving power have come in ten fundamentally different forms, and 96% of animal species possess a complex optical system....	tongue Tongue The tongue is skeletal muscle on the floor of the mouth that manipulates food for chewing . It is the primary organ of taste. Much of the upper surface of the tongue is covered in papillae and taste buds....	Mouth Mouth The mouth, buccal cavity, or oral cavity is the first portion of the alimentary canal that receives food and begins digestion by mechanically breaking up the solid food particles into smaller pieces and mixing them with saliva....	nose Nose Anatomically, a nose is a protuberance in vertebrates that houses the nostrils, or nares, which admit and expel air for Respiration in conjunction with the mouth....	ears EARS EARS may refer to:* Electoral software* Emirates Amateur Radio SocietySee also* Ears...
Body Part	Tendon Tendon A tendon is a tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable of withstanding tension . Tendons are similar to ligaments except that ligaments join one bone to another.... s	Pulse Pulse In medicine, a person's pulse is the throbbing of their artery. It can be palpated in any place that allows for an artery to be compressed against a bone, such as at the neck , at the wrist , behind the knee , on the inside of the elbow , and near the ankle joint ....	Muscle MUSCLE MUSCLE is public domain, multiple sequence alignment software for protein and nucleotide sequences.MUSCLE is integrated into UGENE bioinformatics tool as a plugin....	Skin Skin The skin is the outer covering of the body, also known as the epidermis. It is the largest organ of the integumentary system made up of multiple layers of epithelial biological tissue, and guards the underlying muscles, bones, ligaments and organ s....	Bone Bone Bones are rigid organ that form part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They function to move, support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red blood cell and white blood cells and store minerals.... s
Body Fluid	Tears Tears Tears are the liquid product of a process of lacrimation to clean and lubricate the eyes. The word lacrimation may also be used in a medical or literary sense to refer to crying....	Sweat SWEAT *SWEAT* is an OLN/The Sports Network television program hosted by Julie Zwillich that aired in 2003-2004.Each of the 13 half-hour episodes of SWEAT features a different outdoor sport: kayaking, mountain biking, ice hockey, beach volleyball, soccer, windsurfing, Sport rowing, Ultimate , triathlon, wakeboarding, snowboarding, telemark skiin...	Saliva Saliva Saliva is the watery and usually frothy substance produced in the mouths of humans and most other animals. Saliva is produced in and secreted from the salivary glands....	Mucus Mucus In vertebrates, mucus is a slippery secretion produced by, and covering, mucous membranes. It is a viscous colloid containing antiseptic enzymes and immunoglobulins that serves to protect Epithelium in the respiratory,...	Urine Urine Urine is a liquid waste product of the body secreted by the kidneys by a process of filtration from blood called urination and excreted through the urethra....
Finger Finger A finger is a type of digit , an organ of manipulation and sensation found in the hands of humans and other primates.Normally humans have five digits, termed phalanges, on each hand ....	index finger Index finger The index finger, also referred to as, pointer finger, forefinger, trigger finger, digitus secundus, or digitus II, is the second finger of a human hand....	middle finger Middle finger The middle finger is the third digit of the human hand, located between the index finger and the ring finger. It is also called the third finger, digitus medius, digitus tertius, or digitus III in anatomy....	thumb Thumb The thumb is the Human_anatomical_terms#Anatomical_directions-most finger of the hand. The English adjective for thumb is pollical....	ring finger Ring finger The ring finger is the fourth digit of the human hand, and the second most ulnar finger, located between the middle finger and the little finger....	little finger Little finger The little finger, often called the pinky in American English and pinkie in Scottish English , is the most Anatomical terms of location#Relative directions in the limbs and usually smallest finger of the human hand, opposite the thumb, next to the ring finger....
Sense Sense Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception....	sight Visual perception Visual perception is the ability to interpret information from visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight or vision....	speech	taste Taste Sorry, no overview for this topic	smell Olfaction Olfaction refers to the sense of smell. This sense is mediated by specialized sensory cells of the nasal cavity of vertebrates, and, by analogy, sensory cells of the antennae of invertebrates....	hearing Hearing (sense) Hearing is one of the traditional five senses. It is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations via an organ such as the ear. The inability to hear is called deafness....
Taste Taste Sorry, no overview for this topic	sour	bitter	sweet	pungent	salt Salt A salt, in chemistry, is defined as the product formed from the neutralisation reaction of acids and base . Salts are ionic compounds composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically electric charge .... y
Smell Olfaction Olfaction refers to the sense of smell. This sense is mediated by specialized sensory cells of the nasal cavity of vertebrates, and, by analogy, sensory cells of the antennae of invertebrates....	Rancid Rancidification Rancidification is the decomposition of fats, oils and other lipids by hydrolysis or oxidation, or both. Hydrolysis will split fatty acid chains away from the glycerol backbone in glycerides....	Scorched	Fragrant	Rotten Rotten Things that are related to the word rotten:* Aus-Rotten - political hardcore punk group* Biodegradation- the process of rotting* Calabash Nebula - known as the Rotten Egg Nebula...	Putrid
Life Life Life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biological processes such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation....	birth Childbirth Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the delivery of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus. The process of normal human childbirth is categorized in three stages of labour: the shortening and dilation of the cervix, descent and delivery of the infant, and delivery of the placenta.....	youth Youth Youth is the period between childhood and adulthood, generally from ages 13-21. An individual's actual maturity may not correspond to their chronological age, as immature individuals exist at all ages....	adulthood	old age Old age Old age consists of ages nearing or surpassing the average life span of human beings, and thus the end of the human biological life cycle. Euphemisms and terms for old people include seniors ? chiefly an American usage ? or elderly....	death Death Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that define a life organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby....

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.

Movement	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Heavenly Stem	Jia ? Yi ?	Bing ? Ding ?	Wu ? Ji ?	Geng ? Xin ?	Ren ? Gui ?
Birth year ends with	4, 5	6, 7	8, 9	0, 1	2, 3

Music

The Yuèlìng chapter of the Lijì and the Huáinánzi make the following correlations:

Movement	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Colour	Green Green Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520?570-Nanometre....	Red Red Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 625?740 Nanometer....	Yellow Yellow Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, but does not significantly stimulate the S cone cells; that is, light with much red and green but not very much blue....	White White White is a color, the Color vision#Physiology of color perception which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in near equal amount and with high brightness compared to the surroundings....	Blue Blue Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440?490 Nanometre....
Direction	east East East is a Direction in geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points, opposite of west and at right angles to north and south....	south South South is one of the cardinal directions and is opposite to the north.By Western world Norm , the bottom side of a map is south; the southern direction has azimuth or bearing of 180?....	center	west West West is most commonly a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction or geography.West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points....	north North North is one of the four cardinal directions, specifically the direction that, in Western culture, is treated as the fundamental direction:...
The Chinese Five-note Scale	jué ? (mi)	zhi ? (so)	gong ? (do)	shang ? (re)	yu ? (la)

(Notes:

The Chinese word ? qing, has many meanings, including green, azure
Azure (color)

Azure is a blue color on the HSL color space at 210 degrees. Azure is the hue that is halfway between blue and cyan. Its complementary color is orange ....
, cyan
Cyan

Cyan may be used as the name of any of a number of a range of colors in the blue/green part of the spectrum. In reference to the visible spectrum cyan is used to refer to the color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light or the removal of red from white light....
, and black. It refers to green in Wu Xing.)
In most modern music, various seven note or five note scales (e.g., 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 "lu" tuning is closest to the ancient Greek tuning of Pythagoras. See Chinese musicology
Chinese musicology

Chinese musicology is the academic study of traditional Chinese music. This discipline has a very long history....
.)

Martial arts

Taijiquan

Taijiquan uses the five elements to designate different directions, positions or footwork patterns. Either forward, backward, left, right and centre, or three steps forward (attack) and two steps back (retreat).

The Five Steps (?? wu bù):

Chin Pu (?? jìn bù) - Forward step.

T'ui Pu (?? tùi bù) - Backward step.

Tsuo Ku (?? (simpl.: ??) zuo gù) - Left step.

You P'an (?? yòu pàn) - Right step.

Chung Ting (?? zhong dìng) - The central position, balance, equilibrium.

Xingyiquan

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

Movement	Fist	Chinese Chinese language Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....	Pinyin Pinyin Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu is the Chinese Language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"....	Description
Wood	Crushing	?	Beng	To collapse, as a building collapsing in on itself.
Fire	Pounding	?	Pào	Exploding outward like a cannon while blocking.
Earth	Crossing	?	Héng	Crossing across the line of attack while turning over.
Metal	Splitting	?	Pi	To split like an axe chopping up and over.
Water	Drilling	?	Zuan	Drilling forward horizontally like a geyser.

Bibliography

Feng Youlan
Feng Youlan

Feng Youlan or Fung Yu-Lan was a Chinese philosopher who was important for reintroducing the study of Chinese philosophy....
(Yu-lan Fung), A History of Chinese Philosophy, volume 2, p. 13
Joseph Needham
Joseph Needham

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, Companion of Honour, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy , also known as Li Yuese , was a British academic and sinologist known for his research and writing on the history of Science and technology in China....
, Science and Civilization in China, volume 2, pp. 262-23
Maciocia, G. 2005, The Foundations of Chinese Medicine, 2nd edn, Elsevier Ltd., London

External links

Corrections to English translation errors in textbooks
Malaysia I Ching Net
Five Element interrelationships, concordances and causative factors.
Find your Chinese Zodiac sign based on your date of birth.
A model of transition from the traditional elements

Five elements (Chinese philosophy)

Cycles

Generating

Overcoming

Cosmology and feng shui

Ba gua

Chinese medicine

Chinese astrology

Music

Martial arts

Taijiquan

Xingyiquan

See also

Bibliography

External links