Resources / Taoist cosmology
Five Phases Wheel
Wǔxíng, the five phases, are five modes of change, not five substances. Choose a phase to see what it generates and controls, what generates and controls it, and how control goes wrong in excess and in reverse.
Phase 1 of 5 · generating order
Wood
Mù · Spring · East
木
相生 xiāngshēng, generating order. Each phase gives rise to the next, clockwise round the rim: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood again.
- Generates
- Generated by
- Controls
- Controlled by
- Season
- Spring
- Direction
- East
- Colour
- Green-blue青 qīng
- Planet
- Jupiter歲星 the Year Star
- Organ
- Liver肝 gān
Earth and the four seasons
Three ways to fit five phases into a year
Spring 72 days · Summer 72 · Late summer 72 · Autumn 72 · Winter 72
Earth takes a season of its own between summer and autumn, the long summer (長夏 chángxià) of the Neijing. Drawn as five equal periods of seventy-two days, as the Huainanzi divides the year.
Correspondences
The phases in the correlative tables
Wood木 MùSpring · East
- SeasonLüshi Chunqiu
- Spring
- DirectionHuainanzi 3
- East
- ColourLüshi Chunqiu
- Green-blue 青 qīng
- PlanetHuainanzi 3, Shiji 27
- Jupiter, the Year Star 歲星
- OrganSuwen 4–5
- Liver 肝 gān
- MovementAetherica gloss
- Upward emergence
Fire火 HuǒSummer · South
- SeasonLüshi Chunqiu
- Summer
- DirectionHuainanzi 3
- South
- ColourLüshi Chunqiu
- Red 赤 chì
- PlanetHuainanzi 3, Shiji 27
- Mars, Sparkling Deluder 熒惑
- OrganSuwen 4–5
- Heart 心 xīn
- MovementAetherica gloss
- Radiant culmination
Earth土 TǔLate summer / transitions / centre · Centre
- SeasonLüshi Chunqiu
- Late summer / transitions / centre
- DirectionHuainanzi 3
- Centre
- ColourLüshi Chunqiu
- Yellow 黃 huáng
- PlanetHuainanzi 3, Shiji 27
- Saturn, the Quelling Star 填星
- OrganSuwen 4–5
- Spleen 脾 pí
- MovementAetherica gloss
- Integration and support
Metal金 JīnAutumn · West
- SeasonLüshi Chunqiu
- Autumn
- DirectionHuainanzi 3
- West
- ColourLüshi Chunqiu
- White 白 bái
- PlanetHuainanzi 3, Shiji 27
- Venus, Great White 太白
- OrganSuwen 4–5
- Lung 肺 fèi
- MovementAetherica gloss
- Contraction and refinement
Water水 ShuǐWinter · North
- SeasonLüshi Chunqiu
- Winter
- DirectionHuainanzi 3
- North
- ColourLüshi Chunqiu
- Black 黑 hēi
- PlanetHuainanzi 3, Shiji 27
- Mercury, the Chronograph Star 辰星
- OrganSuwen 4–5
- Kidney 腎 shèn
- MovementAetherica gloss
- Descent, storage, and renewal
Seasons and colours are those of the monthly ordinances in the Lüshi Chunqiu (about 239 BCE), where each season's power lies in its phase and the ruler dresses in its colour. Directions and planets are those of the Huainanzi's chapter on the patterns of heaven (139 BCE), with the planets named as in Sima Qian's Treatise on the Celestial Offices (Shiji 27). The organs are the Huangdi Neijing Suwen's, given as history and not as guidance; the ordinances themselves have a different, sacrificial set, in which spring takes the spleen. The movement glosses are the site's own summaries.
The oldest list
The Hong Fan counts them in another order
Shangshu, Hong Fan, the first of its nine divisions; the English is after James Legge's translation of 1865.
See the five numbers in the He TuThe tradition
Wu xing, the five phases (also rendered five agents or five processes), names Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water as modes of change rather than substances. The five first appear as a list in the Hongfan chapter of the Book of Documents. In the late Warring States, Zou Yan's school used them to explain the succession of dynasties, and under the Han they became the frame of a correlative cosmology joining seasons, directions, colours, planets, organs and tones.
Two orders govern them. In the generating order (sheng) each phase gives rise to the next: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and back to Wood. In the controlling order (ke) each restrains the phase two steps on: Wood restrains Earth, Earth Water, Water Fire, Fire Metal, Metal Wood. The medical classics add two disorders of control: overacting (cheng), control in excess, and counteracting (wu, often translated insulting), control turned back on the controller.
Reading the instrument
- Fire stands at the crown and the generating order runs clockwise round the rim, as the wheel is usually drawn. With south at the top, Wood falls on the left, in the east, and Water below, in the north.
- Choose a phase to light its four relations: the arc it feeds and the arc that feeds it, the chord it restrains and the chord that restrains it. The readouts name each, and each is a way to that phase. The bright arrow is the relation in hand, and the left and right arrow keys move along the row of phases.
- The overlay chooses what the wheel draws: the generating arcs, the controlling star, overacting (control in excess, drawn heavy), counteracting (control reversed, drawn against the star), or all of them. With all four drawn, tapping a chord again steps through its three relations.
- Compare names how any two phases stand to each other in both orders.
- The year strip shows three ways of fitting Earth into four seasons: at the centre, as a late summer of its own, or as the last eighteen days of every season.
- Medical correspondences are history, never guidance.
Where it descends from
- Shangshu (Book of Documents), Hongfan
- The earliest list of the five, water, fire, wood, metal and earth, each with its nature.
- Lüshi Chunqiu, the monthly ordinances
- Compiled about 239 BCE: each season's phase and colour. Its sacrificial organs differ from the Suwen's.
- Huainanzi
- The Han compendium of 139 BCE. Its astronomical chapter gives the phases their directions and planets, and divides the year into five periods of seventy-two days.
- Huangdi Neijing Suwen
- The medical classic: the organs of the five (chapters 4 and 5), late summer for Earth, Earth's share of the last eighteen days of each season (chapter 29), and the excess and reversal of control (chapter 67).
- Sima Qian, Shiji, Treatise on the Celestial Offices
- Names the five planets with their phases: the Year Star (Jupiter) for Wood, Sparkling Deluder (Mars) for Fire, the Quelling Star (Saturn) for Earth, Great White (Venus) for Metal and the Chronograph Star (Mercury) for Water.
- Wuxing zhan (Five Planets Divination), Mawangdui silk manuscript
- Buried in 168 BCE; its tables of Jupiter, Saturn and Venus begin in 246 BCE.
- Benebell Wen, "Chinese Astrology circa 246 BC: Wuxian Five Star Divination"
- A modern article on early Chinese five-star divination, from which the instrument's planetary column was first drawn.
What this does not claim
The phases classify change; they are not a chemistry, and the correspondences are traditional associations that vary between texts and periods. Medical correspondences are given as history only: nothing here is a diagnosis or a treatment. The overacting and counteracting cycles are the medical tradition's account of imbalance; the images given for counteracting (earth too heavy snaps the wood, and so on) are those of the later fate-calculation manuals. The one-line movement glosses are Aetherica's, offered as such.
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