What are the "five elements" in our ancient culture?

The five elements in ancient culture refer to water, fire, gold, wood and earth.

The Five Elements are a systematic view of ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy, and are widely used in Chinese medicine, geomancy, fortune-telling, physiognomy and divination. The meaning of the five elements encompasses the five basic dynamics of water, fire, gold, wood and earth that lend themselves to the evolutionary process of yin and yang.

Ancient Chinese philosophers used the theory of the five elements to describe the formation of all things in the world and their interrelationships. It emphasizes wholeness and aims to describe the forms of movement of things as well as transformational relationships. Yin and Yang is the ancient doctrine of the unity of opposites, and the Five Elements is the original system theory.

Expanded Information:

The Five Elements of Taoism p>The earliest Taoist doctrine of the five elements aimed to describe the forms of movement of things as well as transformational relationships. The doctrine of the five elements is an ancient Chinese doctrine of taking images and comparing them.

It is not the five elements, but the attribution of everything to the five items of water, fire, wood, gold, and earth according to the nature of moistening the lower, inflaming the upper, curving and straightening, from the leather, and harvesting.

Different from the ancient Western doctrine of the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind, it is a theory that combines philosophy, divination, fortune-telling, calendars, Chinese medicine, sociology and many other studies.

The five elements refers to the ancient people to divide everything in the universe into five kinds of nature, that is, into wood, fire, earth, gold, water, and five categories, and call them the five elements.

Early see "Shangshu - Hongfan" records: five elements: one is water, two is fire, three is wood, four is gold, five is earth. Water is said to run down, fire is said to inflammation on the wood is said to be straight, gold is said to be from the leather, soil I harvest.

Run down as salty, inflammation as bitter, straight as acid, from the leather as Xin, harvest as sweet." Here, not only were all things in the universe categorized, but the nature and characteristics of each category were defined. Later generations, based on their knowledge of the five elements, created the theory of the five elements, this theory is mainly on top of the law of the five elements.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Five Elements