Chinese Elements

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Chinese Elements
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Post # 1
If we have Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Why is it that the chinese people took out air and added wood and metal?
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Re: Chinese Elements
By:
Post # 2
Different cultures different philosophies
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Re: Chinese Elements
By: / Beginner
Post # 3
Even though I'm Chinese, I have no idea. They took out air? Then how do we breathe? Wood is earth and metal is also earth……I'm interested in Chinese magick but I've never gotten into it..
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Re: Chinese Elements
By: / Novice
Post # 4
The traditional chinese elements are Wood, Earth, Metal, Fire and Water.
Reason why? I dont necessarily know. But I know that Western elements are made from other elements around the world. Metal and Wood originated from Iran and China. Water, Fire and Earth came from parts of Greece, India, China and Iran *again*, and then there's air and aether, which comes from Greece and India.
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Re: Chinese Elements
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Post # 5
I've read books about this. It has a lot of health purposes. If your body has too much metal or another element, it's said in the Chinese culture that you would want to balance your body and get rid of the excess element that there's an over abundance of.
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Re: Chinese Elements
By: / Adept
Post # 6
Don't think of "elements" when you think of the five phases of Chinese cosmology, like the "things" of water, earth, etc. - the word element is a poor translation of the Chinese character. The Five Elements refer to five different energetics. Phases is a more accurate way to define it. We're talking about a tenet of Daoist philosophy that many healing systems and martial arts are based around, not to mention a cosmological construct that helps millions of people make meaning out of life.

Think of the energetic shifts as the year changes, as humans move from unknowing and mystery, to the impulse of a blade of grass to push through the snow, to the dance of partnership in the summer, gratitude and compassion, to letting go, back into the unknowing.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing

Remember, when talking about philiosophy and religion: The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao, and he who speaks doesn't know - and he who knows doesn't speak.
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Re: Chinese Elements
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Post # 7

The trigrams are related to taiji philosophy and the wu xing, or "five elements" The relationships between the trigrams are represented in two arrangements, the Primordial (Earlier Heaven) or "Fuxi" bagua and the Manifested (Later Heaven) or "King Wen" bagua. The trigrams have correspondences in astronomy, astrology, geography, geomancy, anatomy, the family, and elsewhere.

Those five elements are metal, fire, earth, wood, and water. The Water (Kan) and Fire (Li) trigrams correspond directly with the Water and Fire elements. The element of Earth corresponds with both the trigrams of Earth (Kun) and Mountain (Gen). The element of Wood corresponds with the trigrams of Wind (Xun) (as a gentle but inexorable force that can erode and penetrate stone) and Thunder (Zhen). The element of Metal corresponds with the trigrams of Heaven (Qian) and Lake (Dui).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_gua

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Re: Chinese Elements
By:
Post # 8
Isn't it Tao, it might be both I don't know, sorry lady gray if this offends you didn't mean to be offensive
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Re: Chinese Elements
By: / Novice
Post # 9
Dao and Tao are the same word in chinese, its just different phonetic adaptations from Europe and such, if im correct.
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Re: Chinese Elements
By: / Adept
Post # 10
No offense taken! Chinese, being a character-based written language, is incredibly hard to translate into English, which is an alphabet-based written language; therefore there are several systems, pinyin and Wade-Giles being the two most frequently used.

In the early 90's the world decided (?) to standardize translation and they settled on pinyin as the system of choice. I write Chinese-English words daily as a part of my profession, so i've decided to side with the rest of the world and settled on using the pinyin translation. Both are acceptable, really.

Pinyin for Daoism is Daoism; Wade-Giles is Taoism. Pinyin for qi is qi; Wade-Giles is chi. Pinyin for taiji is taiji; Wade-Giles is t'ai chi, etc.
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