Five phases / 木 Mù
The Wood phase
Wood 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 木 is better read as wood growing than as the material itself.
- Season
- Spring
- Direction
- East
Two movements · four fixed relations
What Wood 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 Wood
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 wood governs spring.
Twelve appearances in sixty positions
Wood 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 11984
- Position 21985
- Position 111994
- Position 121995
- Position 212004
- Position 222005
- Position 312014
- Position 322015
- Position 412024
- Position 422025
- Position 512034
- Position 522035
A separate named association
The Wood 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.