Knowledge Base/Fundamentals/Five Phases
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基础理论

Five Phases wǔ xíng · 五行

Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water are five patterns of change, not five kinds of matter. Each is tied to a direction of movement (Wood expands, Metal contracts, Water descends and stores, Fire rises, Earth stabilises the centre), plus an organ pair, a season, a colour, an emotion and a flavour.

Practitioners reason with two relations — generating (Wood feeds Fire) and controlling (Water controls Fire). It is a relational framework for thinking about how systems influence each other.

木火土金水是五种"变化方式",不是五种物质。每一行对应一种运动趋向(木升发、金收敛、水下行而藏、火炎上、土居中运化),并对应一对脏腑、一个季节、一种颜色、一种情志、一种味道。

中医用"相生"(木生火)与"相克"(水克火)来推理系统之间如何互相影响。它是一个用来思考系统关系的关系型框架。

Classical theory · Huangdi Neijing

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