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Five Elements

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In traditional Chinese thought, natural phenomena can be classified into five elements, or phases: wood, fire, earth, metal, water (Chinese: 木火土金水). These Five Phases (五行 wǔxíng) are not materials as the names imply, rather they are metaphors for describing how interactions and relationships between phenomena. (Five phases is another way of translating 五行 - literally, "five go").

The doctrine of five phases describes both a generating (生 Shēng) cycle and an overcoming (克 Kè) cycle of interactions between the phases. In the generating cycle, wood generates fire; fire generates earth; earth generates metal; metal generates water; water generates wood. In the overcoming cycle, wood overcomes earth; earth overcomes water; water overcomes fire; fire overcomes metal; metal overcomes wood. The doctrine of five phases was employed in many fields of early Chinese thought, including seemingly disparate fields such as music, medicine, and military strategy.

1 Correlations among the Five Elements and other categories
2 Note
3 See also
4 References

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Correlations among the Five Elements and other categories

The Yue Ling (Monthly Commands) and the Huai Nan Zi make the following correlations:

Correspondences
	Element	Direction	Color	Musical Note
1	Wood	east	blue^*	jué 角 (mi)
2	Fire	south	red	zhǐ 徵 (sol)
3	Earth	center	yellow	gōng 宮 (do)
4	Metal	west	white	shāng 商 (re)
5	Water	north	black	yǔ 羽 (la)

Note: Blue includes green.

Some other correspondences are shown below:

Correspondences
	Element	Heavenly Creature	Season	Direction	Planet	Tastes	Sense	Viscera	Finger
1	Wood	Qīng-lóng (青龍) the Blue Dragon	Spring	east	Jupiter	sour	sight	liver	ring finger
2	Fire	Zhū-què (朱雀) the Red Phoenix	Summer	south	Mars	bitter	sound	heart	middle finger
3	Earth	Huáng-lóng (黃龍) the Yellow Dragon	Change of seasons	center	Saturn	sweet	smell	spleen	index finger
4	Metal	Bái-hǔ (白虎) the White Tiger	Autumn	west	Venus	hot	taste	lung	thumb
5	Water	Xuán-wǔ (玄武) the Black Tortoise-Serpent	Winter	north	Mercury	salty	touch	kidney	little finger

They also correlate to the 8 trigrams of the I Ching.

Correspondences
	Element	I Ching	trigrams
1	Wood	Wind, Thunder	:\|\| (☴ 巽 xùn) \|:: (☳ 震 zhèn)
2	Fire	Fire	\|:\| (☲ 離 lí)
3	Earth	Earth, Mountain	::: (☷ 坤 kūn) ::\| (☶ 艮 gèn)
4	Metal	Sky, Lake	\|\|\| (☰ 乾 qián) \|\|: (☱ 兌 duì)
5	Water	Water	:\|: (☵ 坎 kǎn)

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Note

Western parallels and contrasts, revolving instead around only four elements, called the "temperaments" or the four humours in Western physiology, psychology and pre-scientific medicine, from the time of the pre-Classical Greeks until the 18th century Enlightenment, also informed the historical study called alchemy that led to chemistry.

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