Five Elements, Twenty Relationships

There are five elements in Chinese astrology, not four: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water. Between five elements there are twenty ordered pairs, and the system names all twenty. Nothing is left unrelated. That structure, rather than the list, is what the elements actually are.

The first cycle is generating, and it runs in a circle. Wood feeds fire; fire burns down to ash and makes earth; earth bears metal in its seams; metal carries water; water grows wood. One explanation for the metal step is condensation, water beading on a cool surface. Five steps, and you are back where you started.

The second cycle is controlling, and it skips a step. Wood parts earth with its roots; earth dams water; water quenches fire; fire melts metal; metal cuts wood. Draw the five in a ring and generating is the rim, while controlling is the star drawn inside it. Each element controls the one two places on, and is controlled by the one two places back.

So each element sits in four relations at once: it feeds one, is fed by one, controls one, is controlled by one. Four ties each, twenty in all. When you look at your own four pillars, count the elements, then notice what is absent. A chart thick with wood and no metal has nothing to prune it, and the absence is read as carefully as the excess.

Four elements make a set of ingredients. Five make a system, because the fifth closes the circle and leaves room for the star inside it. What you are reading is never one element on its own. It is what that element does to the others, and what they do back.