Five Elements五行

The Five Elements are an old classification that sorts the qualities of the world into Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. In the name, the second character means to go or to move, and the elements describe kinds of movement rather than fixed substances: growing, spreading, gathering, harvesting, and seeping. The five are linked by a producing cycle, in which each gives rise to another, and a controlling cycle, in which each holds another in check, so none is read in isolation. All ten stems and twelve branches belong to one of the five, so any character in a chart can be restated as an element.

• 五five (Korean reading: o)
• 行to go, to walk (Korean reading: haeng)

Five on the move: qualities that keep circulating without pause.

This service counts the element of all eight characters, four stems and four branches, one each. A branch counts by its surface element, the Hidden Stems inside are not added, and with the birth hour unknown six characters are counted without the Hour Pillar. An element with 3 or more is marked plentiful, and one with 0 is marked as none. The producing order runs Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, while the controlling order skips a step: Wood over Earth, Earth over Water, and so on.

An element count shows at a glance which qualities a chart leans on. A plentiful element is read as a strength you use naturally, and one at zero as a strength less familiar to you that is worth using on purpose. Having none of an element does not erase its quality; it can also show a clear focus on the others. Beside the Day Master's element, the count also hints whether the plentiful side supports or presses on you.

In the chart 庚午 (Geng Wu), 辛巳 (Xin Si), 丁丑 (Ding Chou), 丁未 (Ding Wei), Fire appears four times: both 丁 (Ding) stems, 午 (Wu), and 巳 (Si). Earth appears in 丑 (Chou) and 未 (Wei), Metal in 庚 (Geng) and 辛 (Xin), and Wood and Water nowhere, so Fire is marked plentiful and those two as none.

• A common idea

  An element you have none of has to be supplied through a name or objects.

  How we read it

  Advice to fill a scarce element with names or colours is an everyday custom spread by readings that seek the characters a chart needs and try to supply them. This service uses the counts only to read leanings and recommends no purchases or changes.

Some methods add Hidden Stems to the element count, or give extra weight to powerful seats such as the month branch. Counted that way, the same chart can show different amounts. This service counts each of the eight characters once, all equally.