What do the five elements mean

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

The five elements, also known as the doctrine of the five elements, are a fundamental way of understanding the world. The meaning of the five elements encompasses the five basic dynamics that lend themselves to the evolutionary process of yin and yang: gold (for convergence), wood (for growth), water (for infiltration), fire (for destruction), and earth (for fusion). 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.

The concept of the five elements began in the book of Shangshu, which simply referred to the five common natural materials: water, fire, wood, gold, and earth; and then, through the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the two Han Dynasty, the development and evolution, on the basis of the idea of phases of life and death, and then attached to the yin and yang, the four seasons, the five sides, the five virtues, and other elements of the formation of a complete model of the system of the five elements.

Doctrine application:

The doctrine of the five elements is the core of traditional Chinese culture, everything in the universe is composed of wood, fire, earth, gold, water, and the operation of the five basic elements of the cycle (movement) and the cycle of changes in the birth of grams, is often regarded as the ancient philosophy of simple materialism. Five elements in the human body to speak, on behalf of the five viscera and six bowels, each belonging to; A - gall bladder, B - liver, C - small intestine, D - heart, E - stomach, F - spleen, G - large intestine, C - lungs, non - bladder, Dec - kidneys, the ten basic, must be very familiar with.

The doctrine of the five elements is an original creation of the ancient Chinese working people, its glorious philosophical ideas, the development of China's scientific endeavors have a very significant role in promoting. The essence of the doctrine of the five elements, that the world is composed of wood, fire, earth, gold, water, the five most basic physical characteristics of the conditions, the development of all kinds of things and phenomena in the natural world, change, are these five different conditions of constant movement and interaction results.