The Five Phases · 五行 · wu xing

Not four elements but five phases — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — and not substances so much as movements, stages in a turning. They run two cycles: generating (wood feeds fire, fire makes ash-earth, earth bears metal, metal draws water, water grows wood) and overcoming (water quenches fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood, wood breaks earth, earth dams water). Notice the geometry: a closed wheel with no first and no last, no top and no bottom — where the Kabbalah's four elements answer to the four letters of the Name and stack into a hierarchy of worlds. Chinese cosmology has no "air"; it has wood and metal, and it does not climb — it circulates.