Starpath · Culture and history
Yin, yang and the five elements
Two complementary forces and five phases: the shared vocabulary of Chinese cosmology.
Yin and yang describe complementary qualities: receptive and active, cool and warm, inward and outward. Each stem and branch is one or the other.
The five elements, or phases, are wood, fire, earth, metal and water. They describe how things grow, peak, settle, gather and rest. Each one feeds the next (wood feeds fire, fire leaves earth, earth bears metal, metal carries water, water nourishes wood) and each one also checks another.
In Zi Wei Dou Shu each principal star has an element, and your bureau is named after one. They add nuance to a reading rather than decide it.