The Five Elements

Every animal in your chart carries one of these. Your year has an element, your month has one, your day has one, and each animal has an element of its own underneath. Learn the five and the rest of the chart opens up.

Wood

Wood is growth. Think of sap rising in spring, a shoot pushing up through hard ground, a tree reaching for light it cannot see yet. Wood people are generous and warm, and they tend to be the ones who see what somebody could become long before that person sees it themselves. They make natural teachers, mentors and parents, and they celebrate other people's wins without keeping score.

Wood is creative and flexible. It bends round an obstacle rather than fighting it, and it keeps generating new ideas whether or not anyone asked. Its optimism is earned, built on the knowledge that things grow.

The shadow of Wood is impatience with growth itself. Wood wants the tree now and is disappointed by the seedling. It also struggles to say no, and spreads itself across too many good causes. Years ending in 4 or 5 are Wood years.

Fire

Fire is passion. It is warmth, light, enthusiasm and the willingness to go first. Fire people feel everything at full strength and say so, and that openness is why people trust them. They lead by lighting up a room rather than by managing it, and others follow because the belief is contagious.

Fire has courage. It walks into the uncertain place while the others are still weighing it up, and it would rather fail at something real than succeed at something dull. It is magnetic, and it knows it.

The shadow of Fire is burnout. Fire finds rest boring, and if life gets too quiet it has been known to start a drama just to feel the heat again. The lesson for Fire is that a steady flame gives more light than a bonfire, and lasts the night. Years ending in 6 or 7 are Fire years, and 2026 is one.

Earth

Earth is the ground everything else stands on. Earth people are steady, practical and reliable in a way that others lean on without noticing they are doing it. They remember the birthday, check on the friend who went quiet, and show up when they said they would. In a crisis the Earth person is the calm voice, and the reason is simple: they are still standing.

Earth builds. It likes to make real things, a garden, a business, a home, a meal, and it has the patience to do it properly over years. It is careful with money because security lets it look after its people.

The shadow of Earth is a dislike of change. What was built can become a wall, and Earth can keep carrying people who needed to learn to carry themselves. Years ending in 8 or 9 are Earth years.

Metal

Metal is clarity. Picture a well made blade, or a bell, or the structure inside a building that you never see and could not live without. Metal people have strong principles and live by them, and that consistency is why their word carries weight. They can cut through a confused situation and name what matters, and they would rather do one thing to a high standard than ten things adequately.

Metal has a strong sense of fairness. It notices injustice and finds it hard to walk past. It leads by competence, and it holds itself to the same standard it asks of everyone else.

The shadow of Metal is rigidity. The clear line becomes a hard one, the high standard becomes perfectionism, and the softer feelings get filed under weakness. Metal's work is to learn that bending is allowed. Years ending in 0 or 1 are Metal years.

Water

Water is depth. It is the deep river, the still pool, the tide that moves whether or not anyone is watching. Water people read a room before anyone has spoken. They know what you are feeling before you have said it, and they can tell you a hard truth in a way you can actually hear. They are the diplomats, the counsellors, the quiet friend everybody ends up confiding in.

Water adapts. It flows round what it cannot move, and it understands that fighting what is only makes suffering. It is drawn to the big questions, meaning, purpose, what all this is for, and it thinks in patterns rather than lists.

The shadow of Water is overwhelm. It absorbs other people's weather and forgets which feelings were its own, and its flexibility can turn into never taking a stand. Water's work is boundaries. Years ending in 2 or 3 are Water years.

The two cycles

The five elements sit on a wheel, and they move round it in two ways.

The first is the generating cycle, where each element feeds the next. Wood feeds Fire. Fire makes Earth, as ash. Earth bears Metal, as ore. Metal carries Water, the way dew gathers on a blade. Water feeds Wood. Go round once and you are back at the start. This is the parent and child cycle, and in a chart it shows where one part of you nourishes another.

The second is the controlling cycle, where each element keeps another in check. Wood parts Earth, as roots split ground. Earth dams Water. Water quenches Fire. Fire melts Metal. Metal cuts Wood. This is the cycle of restraint, and it is no more sinister than a riverbank. Without it, nothing would hold a shape.

Your year element

The last digit of your birth year gives your year element, with the standing caveat that a January or early February birth may belong to the year before. 0 and 1 Metal, 2 and 3 Water, 4 and 5 Wood, 6 and 7 Fire, 8 and 9 Earth. Even digits are yang and odd digits yin, which the Yin and Yang page explains. So 1966 and 2026 are both Fire Horse years, 1990 was a Metal Horse year and 2002 a Water Horse year, and those three Horses have very different gaits.

The animal's own element

Each animal also has a fixed element of its own, which never changes. Rat is Water. Ox is Earth. Tiger and Rabbit are Wood. Dragon is Earth. Snake and Horse are Fire. Goat is Earth. Monkey and Rooster are Metal. Dog is Earth. Pig is Water.

The year element sits on top of the animal's own element, and the two layer. A Fire Horse is Fire on Fire, which is why 2026 runs as hot as it does. A Water Horse is Water poured over Fire, a Horse with its heat held in check and a cooler head. A Metal Rat is Metal carrying Water, the generating cycle, so the two agree. A Fire Rooster is Fire melting Metal, the controlling cycle, which gives a Rooster with more friction inside it and, often, more to say.

When one element runs the chart

Put your year, your month and your day together and you have three elements, plus the animals' own underneath. Most charts have a mix. Some do not, and I notice those at once.

A chart heavy in Fire belongs to somebody who cannot sit still and lights up every room they enter, and who will need to learn rest the hard way. Heavy Earth is the person everyone leans on, who may never ask who they can lean on. Heavy Metal is principled to the bone and needs reminding that people are allowed to be messy. Heavy Water is all feeling and intuition, and needs an edge to its pool. Heavy Wood is forever planting and rarely stays for the harvest. None of these is a fault. The chart is telling you where the balance will have to come from, and that is usually from somewhere outside yourself.

Five, where the West has four

If you know the Western elements from The Elements and Modes page, or the four suits of the tarot from The Four Suits, the overlap is partial and it pays to keep the two apart. Western fire and Chinese Fire are close cousins. Western water and Chinese Water are too. Western earth splits in the Chinese system into Earth, the ground, and Metal, the structure. Western air has no Chinese equivalent, and the Chinese Wood, the element of growth, has no Western one. They are two maps of the same country drawn by different hands, and I use both without expecting them to match.

Which of the five do you have too much of, and which do you keep having to borrow?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Eight Trigrams