Fire Element in the Chinese Zodiac

Fire among the five phases

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says the Chinese term wuxing means “five processes” or “five phases”, and it names the five as wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy likewise lists fire among the five phases.

What the sources say about Fire

In its account of a chapter called Hong Fan, the Internet Encyclopedia says each of the elements has its nature more fully explained, and fire “burns and ascends”. It adds that fire and water are presented as opposites, while wood and metal are not.

An entry on Encyclopedia.com, credited to Aihe Wang and the Encyclopedia of Religion, has a table of wuxing attributes. In the row for Fire it gives the planet Mars, the color red, the season summer, the direction south and the taste bitter. The Internet Encyclopedia also gives “fire, red, summer” as one set of correlates for the wuxing.

The Internet Encyclopedia quotes the Baihu tongyi, a record of state-sponsored debates, on why a mature son should stay with his parents: he “models himself on fire that does not depart from wood.”

Fire in the two cycles

Wang’s entry describes the two most common cycles as the mutual conquest and mutual generation cycles, and gives an image for each link. In the generation cycle, wood generates fire (burning) and fire generates earth (ash). In the conquest cycle, water conquers fire (extinguishing) and fire conquers metal (melting).

Wang adds that Zou Yan and his followers used the conquest cycle for a theory of dynastic transmission, in which a dynasty of wood would be conquered by one associated with metal, which in turn would be conquered by a dynasty of fire. The Internet Encyclopedia says the Han was thought to rule under the red phase of fire, and that the rebel Yellow Turbans tried to exploit the ideas that red would be conquered by yellow and fire by water.

The elements in the zodiac tradition

A University of Sydney article featuring Xiaohuan Zhao, Professor of Sinology, says that each year corresponds to one of five elements: metal, wood, water, fire or earth. The article adds that the Fire element is determined by certain Heavenly Stems, and that only when the Heavenly Stem is one of those does it correspond to the Fire element in the Five Phases.

A National Geographic article by Ronan O’Connell says the Chinese lunar calendar also rotates between five traditional elements, and that while the animal rotates each year, the element rotates only every two years.