(Chinese Philosophy Introduction 1)

What is the Five Elements?

Bad weather. Recently, I keep thinking about our position in the world, I mean the whole society. So I resort to the traditional Chinese knowledge and ancient philosophy, whose books are the easiest to find and read here. I read the Yi Ching, or the Book of Changes as it means literally, several times, and compared it to the Chinese medicine. Surprisingly, I saw a incredible perfectly integrated and precise system in its theory of understanding the mechanism, both in the description of the statics and the explanation of the dynamics.

Here I’d like to give a brief introduction about one of the core theories in the ancient Chinese philosophy, the Five Elements Theory.

As known, the five elements are the Wood, the Earth, the Water, the Fire and the Gold, of which the whole world is composed. Apparently, the five elements cover much more than their literally meanings, and the understanding about their meanings is the entrance key of the whole theory.

Firstly, we should establish a category of similar objects, movements and regulations. In one of the ancient medicine book, the Nan Ching, it says, the wood is about the curved and the straight, the earth is to support, the water is to clean and moisten, the fire is about something going up and fierce and the gold is about revolution and dividing.

Literally, the wood is the body of a tree, and it is vigorous and growing. So we can relate it to something growing or developing, containing the power of life. The earth is the base, supporting everything, trees, livers, seas, animals, metals, everything, so it represents the function of supporting. The water, apparently, has the function of cleaning, moistening and nurturing, so everything similar can be included in it. The fire is hot, fierce, rising up, anger, powerful and giving off. And the last the gold, represents the metal, sharp, ruthlessly cutting, separating something, and anything alike.

Thus it is not difficult for us to find that with a human central angle, almost everything in the world is within the range, and to step further, we can divide each element into two different categories, Yin and Yang, representing the mother-like nurturing and following part and the father-like creating and struggling part. For instants, the wood of Yang, is the great pillar of the world, high trees, stable and strong; while the wood of Yin, is much more like the flower and the weed, decorating and patching up. The fire of Yang is like the power of sun, shining everything, and the fire of Yin is the light of the lamps and the candles, also patching up the insufficiency of the fire of Yang. In this logic, every element can have its two parts, which are integrated and patching up each other.

The central theory of the Five Elements is the system of Producing and Restraining. Now we categorized everything in the world by their characters into five piles, they tend to have the relationship or links among themselves. And all these links, together, form a system of balance.

Let’s come to the producing circle. The wood is living in the dirt, and nurturing by the water, so water produces the wood. The wood can be burn, and be the source of fire, so the wood produces the fire. The fire, specially the lava in the earth, comes out and forms the dirt, the stone and the crust, so fire produces the earth. The gold, the metal, is buried in the earth, so the earth produces the gold. Last, the metal of sharp separates the water from the earth and the air, so the gold produces the water. Altogether, it is formed a circle, producing circle, Wood-Fire-Earth-Gold-Water-Wood, and so on.

Similarly, elements seem to restrain each other, what we call a restraining circle. The gold is cutting the wood; the wood lives on the earth and controls the earth; the earth is to block and controls the water; the water can put out fire; and the metal can be melted by the heat of the fire. So we get the restraining circle, Gold-Wood-Earth-Water- Fire-Gold, and so on.

The two circles, the Yin and Yang parts of each element, form a perfectly integrated system that explaining how everything in the world works.

(The next, I would introduce the Divinatory Symbols in I-Ching.)