Water Element in the Chinese Zodiac

Water among the five phases

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) says the Chinese term wuxing, “five processes” or “five phases”, refers to a fivefold scheme found throughout traditional Chinese thought. It names the five as wood, fire, earth, metal and water (shui).

The IEP also cites a text’s record for a year of the reign of Duke Wen that calls water, fire, metal, wood, earth and grains “the six natural resources (or treasures)”.

What the sources tie to Water

Encyclopedia.com’s entry on yinyang and wuxing has a table of attributes for each phase. Its Water row lists the planet Mercury, the color black, the season winter, the direction north and the taste salty.

In its section on wuxing before the Han dynasty, the IEP says that “for the first time” each element has its nature more fully explained: “water moistens and descends”, while “fire burns and ascends”. It adds that fire and water “are presented as opposites”, and that wood and metal are not.

Discussing wuxing and the body in traditional Chinese thought, the IEP says that a disease considered energetic or fiery could be overcome by a medicine correlated with cooling associated with water.

Water in the two cycles

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

Encyclopedia.com calls the mutual conquest and mutual generation cycles the two most common and widely used. It glosses the steps this way: water conquers fire (extinguishing), earth conquers water (damming), metal generates water (melting), and water generates wood (irrigation).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says cyclical change could be theorized through progressions of generation or overcoming among the five phases, which it lists as wood, earth, fire, water and metal.

Water as an emblem

Encyclopedia.com says Zou Yan arranged ancient history in a cycle of conquest and predicted that “a new dynasty of water, in black color, was due to rise”. It adds that the first empire of Qin adopted this theory and “claimed the phase water and the ritual color black”.

The IEP says: “If a ruling dynasty’s emblem was water, one might anticipate it being overcome by a dynasty whose emblem was earth.”

The five elements in the zodiac

The University of Sydney says each zodiac year also corresponds to one of five elements, “metal, wood, water, fire, or earth”, and National Geographic says the animal rotates each year while the element only rotates every two years.

A page for kids from the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County describes the personality it associates with Water elements this way: “Water elements are calm, clever, and adaptable, which can look like simply going with the flow.”