Earth Element in the Chinese Zodiac

Earth among the five phases

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says the Chinese term wuxing means “five processes” or “five phases” and names a fivefold scheme found throughout traditional Chinese thought. The five it lists are wood, fire, earth (tu), metal and water, regarded as “dynamic, interdependent modes or aspects of the universe’s ongoing existence and development.”

Earth in the production and conquest cycles

The same article says Han thinkers used the system to account for an ordered sequence or cycle of change. In the “mutual production” series, it says, “fire produced earth” and “earth produced metal”. In the “mutual conquest” series, “wood conquered earth” and “earth conquered water”.

The entry “Yinyang Wuxing” on Encyclopedia.com, credited there to Aihe Wang (2005) in the Encyclopedia of Religion, calls the mutual conquest and mutual generation cycles the two most common and widely used. It writes the relations with a word in parentheses beside each: fire generates earth (ash), earth generates metal (ore), wood conquers earth (plowing) and earth conquers water (damming).

The same entry also describes a political use. Zou Yan and his followers used the conquest cycle to articulate a theory of dynastic transmission, in which heaven would show favorable signs for each new dynasty: yellow for a dynasty ruled by the power of earth, and green for a dynasty of wood. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds, of its conquest series, that if a ruling dynasty’s emblem was water, one might anticipate it being overcome by a dynasty whose emblem was earth.

What the sources pair with earth

The Encyclopedia.com entry includes a table of wuxing attributes. In its row for earth, the planet is Saturn, the color yellow, the season midsummer, the direction center and the taste sweet.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls the Shujing a collection of documentary materials related to the ancient history of China. In the same passage, the article says, each element has its nature more fully explained for the first time: water moistens and descends, fire burns and ascends, wood bends and straightens, metal yields and changes, and earth receives and gives, “such as through seeds and crops”.

The five elements in the zodiac

A University of Sydney news article on Lunar New Year says each zodiac year also corresponds to one of five elements, listed there as metal, wood, water, fire or earth, and that combining the twelve animals with the five elements forms a sixty-year cycle.

A National Geographic article says the Chinese lunar calendar also rotates between the five traditional Chinese elements, listing them as earth, wood, fire, metal and water. It adds that while the animal rotates each year, the element only rotates every two years.