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Wuxing (Chinese: 五行; pinyin: wǔxíng; Jyutping: Ng⁵ Hang⁴),^[a] translated as Five Moving Ones, Five Circulations, Five Types of Energy, Five Elements, Five Transformations, 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.

The Five Moving Ones are traditionally associated with the classical planets: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn as depicted in the etymological section below. In ancient Chinese astronomy and astrology, which spread throughout East Asia, there was a reflection of the seven-day planetary order of Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.^[3][b] When in their "heavenly stems" generative cycle as represented in the below cycles section and depicted in the diagram above, they run consecutively clockwise (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water).^[8] When in their overacting destructive arrangement of Wood, Earth, Water, Fire, Metal, natural disasters, calamities, illnesses, and disease will ensue.

The wuxing system was in use before, but was formulated in 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.

Wuxing originally referred to the five classical planets (from brightest to dimmest: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Saturn), which together with the Sun and the Moon, were conceived as creating the five forces of earthly life (including yang and yin). 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 Chinese word for planets is translated as "moving stars" (行星; xíngxīng).^[9] Some of the Mawangdui Silk Texts (before 168 BCE) also connect the wuxing to the wude (五德; wǔdé), the Five Virtues and Five Emotions.^[10][11] Scholars believe that various predecessors of the concept of wuxing were merged into a single system of many interpretations during 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, Five Element Qigong and Japanese meridian therapy.^[15][16][17]However, this analogy could be misleading as the four elements are concerned with form, substance and quantity. In contrast, the post-heaven arrangement of the wuxing is "primarily concerned with process, change, and quality".^[18] 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.^[19] This led sinologist Nathan Sivin to propose the alternative translation "five phases" in 1987.^[20] But "phase" also fails to capture the full meaning of wuxing. In some contexts, the wuxing are indeed associated with physical substances.^[21] Historian of Chinese medicine Manfred Porkert proposed the (somewhat unwieldy) term "Evolutive Phase".^[21] Perhaps the most widely accepted translation among modern scholars is the "five agents" or "five transformations".^[22][23]

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 either a forward or a reverse 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]}

The generative cycle (相生 xiāngshēng) is:

• Wood feeds Fire as fuel
• Fire produces Earth (ash, lava)
• Earth bears Metal (geological processes produce minerals)
• Metal collects, filters and purifies Water (water vapor condenses on metal, for example)
• Water nourishes Wood (water leads to growth of flowers, plants and other changes in nature)

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

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.

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)

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)

In Ziwei divination, nayin (納音) further classifies the Five Elements into 30 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.

The wuxing schema is applied to explain phenomena in various fields.

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, the expansion of which generates vitality and movement; associated with wind.
• Fire/Summer: a period of fruition and ripening flowering; 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 reclusiveness, stillness, consolidation and coolness.

The art of feng shui (Chinese geomancy) is based on wuxing, with the structure of the cosmos mirroring the five phases, as well as bagua (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.^[24]

An interaction or energy flow can be expansive, destructive, or exhaustive, depending on the cycle it belongs to. By understanding these energy flows, a feng shui practitioner attempts to rearrange energy to benefit the client.^[c]

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 ritual colors (white, blue, black, red, and yellow) that match the element of the new dynasty (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth). From the Qin dynasty onward, most Chinese dynasties invoked the theory of Wude Zhongshi Shuo (五德終始說) known as the Five Virtues dynastic succession theory that legitimized atheir reign.^[26]

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.^[27][28]

In order to explain the integrity and complexity of the human body, Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners use the Five Elements theory to classify the endogenous influences on organs, physiological activities, pathological reactions, and environmental (exogenous) influences. This diagnostic capacity is extensively used in traditional five-phase, stems and branches acupuncture today, as opposed to the modern use of Confucian-styled eight principles based Traditional Chinese medicine.^[29][30][31]

The Huainanzi and the Yueling chapter (月令; Yuèlìng) of the Book of Rites make the following correlations:

• Qing (Cyan) 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.^[33]
• 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 semitones in the Equal tempered tuning. The Chinese shi'er lü system of tuning is closest to the ancient Greek tuning of Pythagoras.^[34]

With wuxing as an influential philosophical concept, several Chinese martial arts and a few other East Asian styles incorporate five-phase concepts into their systems.

Tai chi trains and focuses on five basic qualities as part of its overarching strategy.^[26]

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 five distinct energies. Energy work is subtle, so one normally starts out by 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, the realization of the five energies has three basic levels: obvious power, subtle power, and 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, Taoist 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 and yang as well as five-element Traditional Chinese medicine. Its movements, exercises, and teachings cultivate, direct, and harmonise the qi.^[26][35]

The Japanese term is gogyo (Japanese: 五行, romanized: gogyō). During the 5th and 6th centuries (Kofun period),^[36] Japan adopted various philosophical disciplines such as Taoism, Chinese Buddhism, and Confucianism through monks and physicians from China, helping to evolve the Onmyōdō system. In contrast, the theory of Godai is a form-based philosophy introduced to Japan from India and Tibetan Buddhism.^[37] Both theories have been extensively practiced in the Japanese arts including acupuncture and traditional Kampo medicine.^[38][39]

• Acupuncture
• Chinese Zodiac
• Classical element
• Color in Chinese culture
• Five Races Under One Union
• Flying Star Feng Shui
• Humorism
• Qi
• Wude Zhongshi Shuo
• Wufang Shangdi
• Wuxing painting
• Zangfu
• Yin and yang

• Feng Youlan (Yu-lan Fung), A History of Chinese Philosophy, volume 2, p. 13
• Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, volume 2, pp. 262–23.
• Maciocia, G. (2005). The Foundations of Chinese Medicine (2nd ed.). London: Elsevier Ltd.
• Chen, Yuan (2014). "Legitimation Discourse and the Theory of the Five Elements in Imperial China". Journal of Song-Yuan Studies. 44: 325–364. doi:10.1353/sys.2014.0000. S2CID 147099574.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wu Xing.

• Wuxing (Wu-hsing). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002.