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Wuxing (Chinese philosophy)
Chinese five elements From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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 terrestrial and celestial relationships, influences, and cycles, that characterise the interactions and relationships within science, medicine, politics, religion and social relationships and education within Chinese culture.
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The five agents are traditionally associated with the classical planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn as depicted in the etymological section below. In ancient Chinese astronomy and astrology, that spread throughout East Asia, was a reflection of the seven-day planetary order of Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, Earth.[3][b] When in their "heavenly stems" generative cycle as represented in the below cycles section and depicted in the diagram above running consecutively clockwise (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water).[8] When in their overacting destructive arrangement of Wood, Earth, Water, Fire, Metal, natural disasters, calamity, illnesses and disease will ensue.
The wuxing system has been in use since 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, religion and traditional medicine, serving as a metaphysics based on cosmic analogy.
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Etymology
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Wuxing originally referred to the five classical planets (from brightest to dimmest: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Saturn), which were with the combination of the Sun and the Moon, conceived as creating yang and yin of the 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 has been translated as "moving stars" (行星; xíngxīng).[9] 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 .[10][11] Scholars believe that various predecessors to the concept of wuxing were merged into one system of many interpretations in the Han dynasty.[12]
Wuxing was first translated into English as "the Five Elements", drawing parallels with the Greek and Indian Vedic static, solid or formative arrangement of the four elements.[13][14][11] This translation is still in common use among practitioners of Traditional Chinese medicine, such as in the name of Five Element acupuncture and Japanese meridian therapy.[15][16] However, this analogy could be misleading as the four elements are concerned with form, substance and quantity, whereas the post heaven arrangement of the wuxing are "primarily concerned with process, change, and quality".[17] For example, the wuxing element "Wood" is more accurately thought of as the "vital essence" and growth of trees rather than the physical innate substance wood.[18] This led sinologist Nathan Sivin to propose the alternative translation "five phases" in 1987.[19] But "phase" also fails to capture the full meaning of wuxing. In some contexts, the wuxing are indeed associated with physical substances.[20] Historian of Chinese medicine Manfred Porkert proposed the (somewhat unwieldy) term "Evolutive Phase".[20] Perhaps the most widely accepted translation among modern scholars is the "five agents" or "five transformations".[21][22]
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Cycles
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In traditional doctrine, the five phases are connected in two cycles of interactions: a promoting or generative (生 shēng) cycle, also known as "mother-son"; and an overacting or destructive (克 kè) cycle, also known as "grandfather-grandson" (see diagram). Each of these cycles can be interpreted and analyzed in a forward or reversed direction. In addition to the aforementioned cycles there is also what is considered an "overacting" or excessively generating version of the destructive cycle.[citation needed]
Inter-promoting
The generative 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)
Inter-regulating
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
Overacting
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.
Weakening
The reverse generative 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)
Counteracting
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)
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Celestial stem
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Ming nayin
In Ziwei divination, nayin (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.
Applications
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The wuxing schema is applied to explain phenomena in various fields.
Phases of the year
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 as a consequence is associated with wind.
- Fire/Summer: a period of fruition, ripening flowering, and associated with heat.
- Earth can be seen as a period of stability and 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 centralisation, leveling and dampness.
- Metal/Autumn: a period of moving inward it is associated with collection, harvesting, transmuting, contracting, loss and dryness.
- Water/Winter: a period of reclusivness, stillness, consolidation and coolness.
Cosmology and feng shui
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.[23]
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.[c]
Dynastic transitions
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 (white, green, black, red, and yellow) that matches the element of the new dynasty (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth). From the Qin dynasty onward, most Chinese dynasties invoked the theory of the Five Elements to legitimize their reign.[25]
Chinese medicine
The interdependence of zangfu networks in the body was said to be a circle of five things, and so mapped by the ancient Chinese doctors onto categories of syndromes and patterns called the five phases.[26][27]
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. In combination the two systems are a formative and functional study of postnatal and prenatal influencing on genetics in the form of epigenetics, biology, physiology psychology, sociology and ecology.[28][29][30]
Music
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.[32]
- 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.[33]
Martial arts
Wuxing being an influential philosophical concept, there are several Chinese martial arts and a few other east Asian styles that incorporate five phases concepts into their systems.
Tai chi trains and focuses on five basic qualities as part of its overarching strategy.[25]
The Five Steps (五步; wǔ bù) are:
- Lǎo Jìnbù (老進步) – always step forward
- Juébù Tuìbù (絕不退步) – never step backward
- Yòupàn (右盼) – watch right
- Zuǒgù (左顧) – beware left
- Zhōngdìng (中定) – center pole, point, pivot neutral posture, maintain balance, maintain equilibrium.
These five steps are not mutable states in tai chi.
Xingyi Quan uses the five elements metaphorically to represent ideally five different energies, but energy work is subtle, so normally one starts out learning five basic techniques with complementary footwork to teach the basic concepts behind the energies. Ideally one can use any technique with any kind of energy, but there are different levels of skill one must go through.
In Xingyi Quan, realization of the five energies has three basic levels: Obvious power, subtle power, mysterious power.
The Five Animals in Shaolin martial arts are an extension of the Wuxing theory as their qualities are the embodiment and representation of the energetic qualities of the five phases in the animal kingdom. They are the,
- Tiger - Fire (fierce and powerful)
- Monkey - Metal (hunched over)
- Snake - Water (flexible)
- Crane - Wind (evasive)
- Mantis - Earth (steady and rooted)
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.[25][34]
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Gogyo
The Japanese term is gogyo (Japanese: 五行, romanized: gogyō). During the 5th and 6th centuries (Kofun period),[35] Japan adopted various philosophical disciplines such as Taoism, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism through monks and physicians from China helping to evolve the Onmyōdō system. As opposed to theory of Godai that is form based philosophy that was introduced to Japan through India and Tibetan Buddhism.[36] These theories have been extensively practiced in Japanese acupuncture and traditional Kampo medicine.[37][38]
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See also
Notes
- Japanese: gogyō (五行);[1] Korean: ohaeng (오행); Vietnamese: ngũ hành (五行)
- This order of presentation is known as the "Days of the Week" sequence. In the order of "mutual generation" (相生; xiāngshēng), they are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.[4] In the order of "mutual overacting" (相克; xiāngkè), they are Wood, Earth, Water, Fire, and Metal.[5][6][7]
- This order of presentation is known as the "Guoyu", "Bai Hu Tong" or "Shiming" sequence, which is common in feng shui.[24]
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References
Further reading
External links
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