Wuxing (Chinese philosophy)

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Wuxing (Chinese: 五行; pinyin: wǔxíng),^[a] usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents,^[2] is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain a wide array of phenomena, including cosmic cycles, the interactions between internal organs, the succession of political regimes, and the properties of herbal medicines.

The agents are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.^[b] The wuxing system has been in use since it was formulated in the second or first century BCE during the Han dynasty. It appears in many seemingly disparate fields of early Chinese thought, including music, feng shui, alchemy, astrology, martial arts, military strategy, I Ching divination, and traditional medicine, serving as a metaphysics based on cosmic analogy.

Wuxing originally referred to the five major planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Venus), which were with the combination of the Sun and the Moon, conceived as creating five forces of earthly life. This is why the word is composed of Chinese characters meaning "five" (五; wǔ) and "moving" (行; xíng). "Moving" is shorthand for "planets", since the word for planets in Chinese literally translates as "moving stars" (行星; xíngxīng).^[6] Some of the Mawangdui Silk Texts (before 168 BC) also connect the wuxing to the wude (五德; wǔdé), the Five Virtues and Five Emotions.^[7][8] Scholars believe that various predecessors to the concept of wuxing were merged into one system with many interpretations during the Han dynasty.^[9]

Wuxing was first translated into English as "the Five Elements", drawing deliberate parallels with the Greek arrangement of the four elements.^[10][8] This translation is still in common use among practitioners of Traditional Chinese medicine, such as in the name of Five Element acupuncture.^[11] However, this analogy is misleading. The four elements are concerned with form, substance and quantity, whereas wuxing are "primarily concerned with process, change, and quality".^[12] For example, the wuxing element "Wood" is more accurately thought of as the "vital essence" of trees rather than the physical substance wood.^[13] This led sinologist Nathan Sivin to propose the alternative translation "five phases" in 1987.^[14] But "phase" also fails to capture the full meaning of wuxing. In some contexts, the wuxing are indeed associated with physical substances.^[15] Historian of Chinese medicine Manfred Porkert proposed the (somewhat unwieldy) term "Evolutive Phase".^[15] Perhaps the most widely accepted translation among modern scholars is "the five agents", proposed by Marc Kalinowski.^[16]

In traditional doctrine, the five phases are connected in two cycles of interactions: a generating or creation (生 shēng) cycle, also known as "mother-son"; and an overcoming or destructive (克 kè) cycle, also known as "grandfather-grandson" (see diagram). Each of the two cycles can be analyzed going forward or reversed. There is also an "overacting" or excessive version of the destructive cycle.^{[citation needed]}

The generating cycle (相生 xiāngshēng) is:

• Wood feeds Fire
• Fire produces Earth (ash, lava)
• Earth bears Metal (geological processes produce minerals)
• Metal collects Water (water vapor condenses on metal, for example)
• Water nourishes Wood (Water flowers, plants and other changes in forest)

The reverse generating cycle (相洩/相泄 xiāngxiè) is:

• Wood depletes Water
• Water rusts Metal
• Metal impoverishes Earth (erosion, destructive mining of minerals)
• Earth smothers Fire
• Fire burns Wood (forest fires)

The destructive cycle (相克 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

The excessive destructive cycle (相乘 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.

A reverse or deficient destructive cycle (相侮 xiāngwǔ or 相耗 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)

In Ziwei divination, neiyin (納音) further classifies the Five Elements into 60 ming (命), 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.

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

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 wind.
• Fire/Summer: a period of swollen, flowering, expanded with heat.
• Earth can be seen as a period of 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 stability, leveling and dampness.
• Metal/Autumn: a period of harvesting, transmuting, contracting, collecting and dryness.
• Water/Winter: a period of retreat, stillness, consolidation and coolness.

The art of feng shui (Chinese geomancy) is based on wuxing, with the structure of the cosmos mirroring the five phases, as well as 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.^[17]

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.

According to the Warring States period political philosopher Zou Yan (c. 305–240 BCE), each of the five elements possesses a personified virtue (德; dé), which indicates the foreordained destiny (運; yùn) of a dynasty; hence the cyclic succession of the elements also indicates dynastic transitions. Zou Yan claims that the Mandate of Heaven sanctions the legitimacy of a dynasty by sending self-manifesting auspicious signs in the ritual color (yellow, blue, white, red, and black) that matches the element of the new dynasty (Earth, Wood, Metal, Fire, and Water). From the Qin dynasty onward, most Chinese dynasties invoked the theory of the Five Elements to legitimize their reign.^[18]

The interdependence of zangfu networks in the body was said to be a circle of five things, and so mapped by the Chinese doctors onto the five phases.^[19][20]

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. Furthermore, in combination the two systems are a formative and functional study of postnatal and prenatal influencing on genetics, psychology, sociology and ecology.^[21][22][23]

The Huainanzi and the Yueling chapter (月令; Yuèlìng) of the Book of Rites make the following correlations:

• Qing is a Chinese color word used for both green and blue. Modern Mandarin has separate words for each, but like many other languages, older forms of Chinese did not distinguish between green and blue.^[25]
• 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 tuning. The Chinese shi'er lü system of tuning is closest to the ancient Greek tuning of Pythagoras.^[26]

Tai chi uses the five elements to designate different directions, positions or footwork patterns: forward, backward, left, right and centre, or three steps forward (attack) and two steps back (retreat).^[18]

The Five Steps (五步; wǔ bù):

• Jinbu (进步; 進步; jìnbù) – forward step
• Tuibu (退步; tùibù) – backward step
• Zuogu (左顾; 左顧; zǔogù) – left step
• Youpan (右盼; yòupàn) – right step
• Zhongding (中定; zhōngdìng) – central position, balance, equilibrium

The martial art of xingyiquan uses the five elements metaphorically to represent five different states of combat.

Wuxing heqidao, Gogyo Aikido (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, yang and five-element Traditional Chinese medicine. Its movements, exercises, and teachings cultivate, direct, and harmonise the qi.^[18]

The Japanese term is gogyo (Japanese:五行, romanized: gogyō). During the 5th and 6th centuries (Kofun period),^[27] Japan adopted various philosophical disciplines such as Taoism, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism through monks and physicians from China. As opposed to theory of Godai that is form based and was introduced to Japan through India and Tibetan Buddhism^[28] evolving the Onmyōdō system. In particular, wuxing was adapted into gogyo. These theories have been extensively practiced in Japanese acupuncture and traditional Kampo medicine.^[29][30]

• Acupuncture
• Classical element
• Color in Chinese culture
• Flying Star Feng Shui
• Humorism
• Qi
• Wuxing painting
• Zangfu
• Yin and yang

• Feng Youlan (Yu-lan Fung), A History of Chinese Philosophy, volume 2, p. 13
• Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, volume 2, pp. 262–23.
• Maciocia, G. (2005). The Foundations of Chinese Medicine (2nd ed.). London: Elsevier Ltd.
• Chen, Yuan (2014). "Legitimation Discourse and the Theory of the Five Elements in Imperial China". Journal of Song-Yuan Studies. 44: 325–364. doi:10.1353/sys.2014.0000. S2CID 147099574.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wu Xing.

• Wuxing (Wu-hsing). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002.