The five elements are Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. They are a fundamental and integral part of Chinese thought, common to medicine, architecture, astrology, music, art, martial strategy and combat. For both the ancient Chinese and modern human, the five elements are a simple yet inclusive way of seeing the universe and all that is contained therein.
interdependency of the five elements
The five elements can be arranged either in a circle, showing the cycle of life, or in a cross formation. The circle formation shows water (at the bottom) feeding wood, which burns to make fire (at the top), whose ashes make soil, within which trace metals condense and hold water, which feeds wood etc. The cross formation shows water at the bottom giving substance to form or matter; fire at the top instigating movement; wood emerging from water on the left, reaching for fire overhead; to the right, metal having been created by fire descends into water, and finally earth in the middle (the combination of water, wood, fire and metal) turning round and round.
the technical bit
What is interesting about these concepts is that modern science is now able to validate them. For instance, we now understand that where there is warmth and water (at least on Earth) there is life. We also now understand that all the metals found here on Earth were originally forged at the centre of stars, something that the ancients may not have understood in detail, but at least they understood the principle that fire creates metal. Once we start to delve into five element theory we start to see the fusion of science, spirituality, folk law and myth. Click the link for a short list of the many correspondences of the five phases including season, climate, flavour, direction, position, movement, transformation, colour, sound, odour and emotion.
etymology of the term element
The term ‘element’ is a translation of the character 行 xing, meaning to step 彳 (chi) and stop 亍 (chu). It can be used and translated (as with most Chinese characters) in many different ways. In English we arrive at several meanings, those being, to march (like an army), a phase, period, a step, a movement or element.
history of the five elements
The precise origin of the theory of the five elements, or five phases, is not known. References to a sequential theory of ‘five virtues’ can be found as far back as the fifth century B.C Around the third and second centuries B.C. increasingly complex patterns of five fold classifications emerged. These culminated in an apparent halting, of this evolving science, in the first century A.D. with an eminent author of the time ridiculing his contemporaries in their attempts to classify all types of natural phenomena into five elements or phases. It took exactly one thousand years from that point, before the doctrine of systematic correspondences was resurrected as the foundation of physiology, diagnosis, pathology and treatment we use today.1
1 P Unschuld, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen, University of California Press, 2003