Five phases / 火 Huǒ
The Fire phase
Fire is one of the five phases — 五行, wu xing — that organise the whole system. A phase is not a substance but a stage of change, which is why 火 is better read as fire than as the material itself.
- Season
- Summer
- Direction
- South
Two movements · four fixed relations
What Fire gives—and what keeps it in check
Every phase stands in four fixed relations. Neither cycle is a ranking: generating and controlling are both necessary, and a system with only one would run away or seize up.
Where the phase enters a chart
The stems and branches that carry Fire
A phase reaches a chart through the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Each stem takes one phase in a yang and a yin form; the branches distribute the same five phases across the twelve animals.
01 · Two polarities
Heavenly stems
02 · 2 fixed branches
Earthly branches
These branches fall together in the calendar because fire governs summer.
Twelve appearances in sixty positions
Fire in the sixty-year cycle
Twelve of the sixty stem-branch pairs take a stem of this phase—one for each branch, alternating yang and yin. Read the records across rather than scanning a table.
- Position 31986
- Position 41987
- Position 131996
- Position 141997
- Position 232006
- Position 242007
- Position 332016
- Position 342017
- Position 432026
- Position 442027
- Position 532036
- Position 542037
A separate named association
The Fire sounds
纳音 assigns each pair of pillars one of thirty sounds, each named for an image. Six of them belong to this phase, and a pillar's sound is often a different phase from its stem.