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29-734: In response to Wuxing thought and Tu Shi, the founder of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang , is said to be the son of the Red Emperor; in the Han dynasty God of the Five Directions , the Red Emperor represents the Southern God. Among the Taoist deities, there are also deities that use the title of Red Emperor, such as Hung Shing . The title has been used to refer to Yan Emperor , Shennong [ 1 ] , Emperor Yao and Zhurong . He

58-505: A metaphysics based on cosmic analogy. Wuxing originally referred to the five major planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Venus), which were with the combination of the Sun and the Moon, conceived as creating five forces of earthly life. This is why the word is composed of Chinese characters meaning "five" ( 五 ; wǔ ) and "moving" ( 行 ; xíng ). "Moving" is shorthand for "planets", since

87-486: A feng shui practitioner attempts to rearrange energy to benefit the client. 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

116-636: A wide array of phenomena, including cosmic cycles, the interactions between internal organs , the succession of political regimes, and the properties of herbal medicines . The agents are Fire , Water , Wood , Metal , and Earth . The wuxing system has been in use since it 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, and traditional medicine , serving as

145-479: Is gogyo ( Japanese : 五行 , romanized :  gogyō ). During the 5th and 6th centuries ( Kofun period ), Japan adopted various philosophical disciplines such as Taoism , Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism through monks and physicians from China. As opposed to theory of Godai that is form based and was introduced to Japan through India and Tibetan Buddhism evolving the Onmyōdō system. In particular, wuxing

174-474: Is a life art with roots in Confucian, Taoists 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, yang and five-element Traditional Chinese medicine . Its movements, exercises, and teachings cultivate, direct, and harmonise the qi . The Japanese term

203-474: Is also associated with Chīyóu ( 蚩尤 ), the god of some southern peoples, in both iconography and myth, as both Shennong Yandi and Chiyou fought against the Yellow Emperor, although Chiyou is traditionally considered more violent and has the horns of a fighting bull, while Shennong Yandi is more peaceful and has the horns of a plowing buffalo. He is the manifestation of the supreme God associated with

232-434: Is based on wuxing , with the structure of the cosmos mirroring the five phases, as well as 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. An interaction or energy flow can be expansive, destructive, or exhaustive, depending on the cycle to which it belongs. By understanding these energy flows,

261-485: Is considered to be the Red Emperor. Legend has it that Liu Bang was the son of the Red Emperor after Yao.。 Zhurong is often identified with the Red Emperor Wuxing (Chinese philosophy) Wuxing ( Chinese : 五行 ; pinyin : wǔxíng ), usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents , is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain

290-454: Is extensively used in traditional five phase acupuncture today, as opposed to the modern Confucian styled eight principles based Traditional Chinese medicine. Furthermore, in combination the two systems are a formative and functional study of postnatal and prenatal influencing on genetics, psychology, sociology and ecology. The Huainanzi and the Yueling chapter ( 月令 ; Yuèlìng ) of

319-512: The Book of Rites make the following correlations: Tai chi uses the five elements to designate different directions, positions or footwork patterns: forward, backward, left, right and centre, or three steps forward (attack) and two steps back (retreat). The Five Steps ( 五步 ; wǔ bù ): The martial art of xingyiquan uses the five elements metaphorically to represent five different states of combat. Wuxing heqidao , Gogyo Aikido (五行合气道)

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348-581: The Mandate of Heaven sanctions the legitimacy of a dynasty by sending self-manifesting auspicious signs in the ritual color (yellow, blue, white, red, and black) that matches the element of the new dynasty (Earth, Wood, Metal, Fire, and Water). From the Qin dynasty onward, most Chinese dynasties invoked the theory of the Five Elements to legitimize their reign. The interdependence of zangfu networks in

377-434: The wuxing element " Wood " is more accurately thought of as the " vital essence " of trees rather than the physical substance wood. This led sinologist Nathan Sivin to propose the alternative translation "five phases" in 1987. But "phase" also fails to capture the full meaning of wuxing . In some contexts, the wuxing are indeed associated with physical substances. Historian of Chinese medicine Manfred Porkert proposed

406-444: The (somewhat unwieldy) term "Evolutive Phase". Perhaps the most widely accepted translation among modern scholars is "the five agents", proposed by Marc Kalinowski. In traditional doctrine, the five phases are connected in two cycles of interactions: a generating or creation ( 生 shēng ) cycle, also known as "mother-son"; and an overcoming or destructive ( 克 kè ) cycle, also known as "grandfather-grandson" (see diagram). Each of

435-455: The Five Elements into 60 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. The art of feng shui (Chinese geomancy )

464-511: The body was said to be a circle of five things, and so mapped by the Chinese doctors onto the five phases. In order to explain the integrity and complexity of the human body, Chinese medical scientists and physicians use the Five Elements theory to classify the human body's endogenous influences on organs, physiological activities, pathological reactions, and environmental or exogenous (external, environmental) influences. This diagnostic capacity

493-419: The characters used in later traditional versions. Many characters are formed by combining two simpler characters: one indicating a general category of meaning, and the other to guide pronunciation. Where the traditional texts have both components, the silk texts frequently give only the phonetic half of the character. There are several hypotheses to explain this: In addition to partial characters mentioned above,

522-506: The earlier text, although both may be derived from the same parent text. Both Mawangdui texts place the de section (chapters 38–81) before the dao section (chapters 1–37), whereas the received text places the dao section first. D. C. Lau and Robert G. Henricks have made new translations of the Tao Te Ching based on the silk text, largely ignoring the received texts, although Henricks' translation compares received versions with

551-485: The earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts (such as the I Ching ), two copies of the Tao Te Ching , a copy of Zhan Guo Ce , works by Gan De and Shi Shen , and previously unknown medical texts such as Wushi'er Bingfang ( Prescriptions for Fifty-Two Ailments ). Scholars arranged them into 28 types of silk books. Their approximately 120,000 words cover military strategy, mathematics, cartography, and

580-466: The essence of fire; his animal form is the Red Dragon ( 朱龙 Zhūlóng ) and his stellar animal is the phoenix. He is the god of agriculture, animal husbandry, medicinal plants and market. In broader conceptualisation, he is the god of science and craft, and the patron of doctors and apothecaries. His astral body is Mars . The Yi Zhou Shu states that Chiyou was once a vassal of the Red Emperor and

609-560: The fifth century AD. However, in some important aspects they differ noticeably from the received texts known before their discovery. Most received versions of the Tao Te Ching are in substantial agreement. Occasionally two versions will have a homonym , and a third text with a character which is a synonym for one of the first two characters is useful. There are two Mawangdui Laozi texts, namely A (甲; written in earlier small seal script ) and B (乙; written in later clerical script ). Texts A and B were copied at different times, with A being

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638-491: The six classical arts: ritual, music, archery, horsemanship, writing, and arithmetic. The texts were buried in tomb number three at Mawangdui (which was sealed in 168 BC), and were hidden until their late-20th-century discovery. Some were previously known only by title, and others are previously unknown commentaries on the I Ching . In general, they follow the same sequence as the received versions, which were passed down by copying and recopying texts collected and collated during

667-674: The text found in the tomb. In 1990, sinologist Victor H. Mair translated the Ma-wang-tui version; Mair considered this earliest-known version (by 500 years) more authentic than the most commonly translated texts. The two silk books are part of the Cultural Relics from the Mawangdui Tombs collection at the Hunan Provincial Museum . The Chinese characters in the silk texts are often only fragments of

696-895: The title of Shennong and replaced Fuxi as the common lord of the world.。 Shennong often identified with the Red Emperor The saying that Yao was the Red Emperor originated in the Han dynasty. The Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), citing the Shippen and the Da Dai Li (Records of the Grand Ritual), states that Yao was one of the Five Emperors. In line with the Five Virtues of the Beginning, Yao

725-515: The two cycles can be analyzed going forward or reversed. There is also an "overacting" or excessive version of the destructive cycle. The generating cycle ( 相 生 xiāngshēng ) is: The reverse generating cycle ( 相 洩 / 相 泄 xiāngxiè ) is: The destructive cycle ( 相 克 xiāngkè ) is: The excessive destructive cycle ( 相 乘 xiāngchéng ) is: A reverse or deficient destructive cycle ( 相 侮 xiāngwǔ or 相 耗 xiānghào ) is: In Ziwei divination, neiyin ( 納音 ) further classifies

754-534: The word for planets in Chinese literally translates as "moving stars" ( 行星 ; xíngxīng ). Some of the Mawangdui Silk Texts (before 168 BC) also connect the wuxing to the wude ( 五德 ; wǔdé ), the Five Virtues and Five Emotions. Scholars believe that various predecessors to the concept of wuxing were merged into one system with many interpretations during the Han dynasty . Wuxing

783-631: Was adapted into gogyo. These theories have been extensively practiced in Japanese acupuncture and traditional Kampo medicine. Mawangdui Silk Texts The Mawangdui Silk Texts ( traditional Chinese : 馬王堆帛書 ; simplified Chinese : 马王堆帛书 ; pinyin : Mǎwángduī Bóshū ) are Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk which were discovered at the Mawangdui site in Changsha , Hunan , in 1973. They include some of

812-597: Was appointed to rule the land of Shaohao . As Chiyou became more powerful, he fought with the Red Emperor in Zhuolu . The Red Emperor was defeated and turned to the Huang Di for help. The Yellow Emperor defeated Chi You and restored peace to the world.。 According to Wang Fu's "The Theory of Subtlety", the Flame Emperor's Shennong clan  [ zh ] , son of the divine dragon, called himself Yan Di, inherited

841-532: Was first translated into English as "the Five Elements", drawing deliberate parallels with the Greek arrangement of the four elements . This translation is still in common use among practitioners of Traditional Chinese medicine , such as in the name of Five Element acupuncture. However, this analogy is misleading. The four elements are concerned with form, substance and quantity, whereas wuxing are "primarily concerned with process, change, and quality". For example,

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