The Five Elements -- Fundamental Properties

It is uncertain when the concept of the Five Elements was invented, but all evidences pointed to the fact that the concept was very ancient indeed.

The Five Elements are: Metal, Wood (or Air/Wind), Water, Fire, Earth.

Incidentally, in Western cultures going way back to ancient Greece, there were talks (e.g. by Aristotle of around 350BC) describing the Four fundamental Elements of nature -- Water, Fire, Wind, Earth. Sometimes the element "Metal" is blended into "Earth" in Western cultures.

Notice that both Eastern and Western cultures seemed to invent their four/five elements at roughly the same times -- ancient Greece and the "Spring/Autumn" and "Warring States" periods in China.  This period in human history appears to be uniquely fertile for conceptual thoughts.

In China, the Five Elements were used broadly to categorize everyday objects and scientific items.  For example, the first five planets in the solar system were named with the Five Elements. Chinese medicine categorized all herbs and plants under each of the Five Elements, as well as all human organs and all sicknesses.

In fact, "Five Elements" is not a literal translation of the Chinese concept, which should more accurately be translated as the "Five Movements" (or "Five Phases", "Five Agents" in other literature). The strong emphasis on dynamics in Chinese fortune-telling is once again evident here. It is also possible that the Chinese name came from mapping the five elements to the first five visible planets in the solar system -- with the Chinese term for planets being "Moving Star".

Generating and Overcoming Cycles

A unique property of the Five Elements conceptual framework developed in China, as opposed to the four elements in Western societies -- and perhaps the underlying reason for this framework's longevity -- is the idea of "generating" (also known as "benefiting") and "overcoming" (also known as "harming").

Each element of the Five Elements "generates" another element in a predictable cycle:

... Metal generates Water generates Wood generates Fire generates Earth generates Metal...

The ordering of the Five Elements is usually represented in a cycle in the Generating Order (depicted clockwise):

In addition, each element in the Five Elements "overcomes" another element, which is defined as the element one after its next element in the Generating Order:

... Metal overcomes Wood overcomes Earth overcomes Water overcomes Fire overcomes Metal...

The Relationships

For each element in the Five Elements, there is one element that it generates (the one after it in the Generating Order) and one element that it overcomes. In addition, there is one element that generates it (the one before it in the Generating Order) and one element that overcomes it.  Together, the generate/overcome/generated-by/overcome-by properties represented the unique relationships of each elements with the other four elements.

These relationships are so important that there are names given to each relationship:

Same element = 兄弟 (siblings, essentially one's peers, or oneself)
Generates = 子孫 (children, essentially beneficiaries)
Overcomes = 妻財 (wife/wealth, essentially things under one's control)
Generated by = 父母 (parents, essentially benefactors)
Overcome by = 官鬼 (authorities/demons, essentially things that have control)

Relationships are used wide in Chinese fortune-telling by mapping the object or issue under question into one of the five categories, and this creates the extremely important concept of 用神 (applicable or target relationship). For example, when questioning things related to money (which is categorized as things under one's control), one first obtains a "base" element (via various methods), then make predictions based on the element which is "overcome by" the base element.  Essentially, the element overcome by the base element is the 用神 (target), and the base element is the 原神 (source). If, however, the question is related to one's career, the element which "overcomes" the base element will be used as the target instead.

Therefore, a unique application of the Five Elements with regards with fortune telling is not by categorizing question types under each of the five elements, but under each of the five possible relationships.  Predictions are then generally made by inspecting the actual value of the "target" element and whether it is enhanced or subdued by external forces.

Applications of Relationships in Other Fortune-Telling Systems

The importance of using relationships instead of the five elements cannot be emphasized enough.

Many Chinese fortune-telling systems use a disguised form of relationships.  For example, the Ziwei Nubmers system divide a circle into 12 equal houses, but bases most predictions regarding career/business, for example, on the "Careers House", which is located 120 degrees off the "Base House". Predictions regarding money, however, are looked at in the "Money House", which is located 120 degrees off the "Base House" in the opposite direction.  These two relative positions map roughly (although not perfectly due to angle differences) to the "overcome-by" and "overcoming" positions in the Five Elements.

 As will be seen in future entries, many other systems (e.g. the Four Pillars) use a relative -120 degrees from the basis vector to look into fortunes for career/business, and +120 degrees for monetary issues.