Five elements

The elements move in two cycles, and each runs one way. In the feeding cycle each one nourishes the next: Wood feeds Fire, Fire feeds Earth, Earth feeds Metal, Metal feeds Water, and Water feeds Wood. In the checking cycle each one restrains the element two steps ahead: Wood checks Earth, Earth checks Water, Water checks Fire, Fire checks Metal, and Metal checks Wood.

The pentagon on My Chart is drawn in feeding order, so each corner feeds the next one around and checks the corner two steps ahead. Checking is not harm in itself. In measure it keeps an element in its course, the way banks hold a river. Only when it far outweighs what it checks does it wear that element down.

Each pillar has two characters, a stem on top and a branch below, and each one belongs to an element. A branch's animal has its element too: the Rat is Water and the Dragon is Earth. The pentagon counts those eight characters once each, so every character is 12.5% of your chart. Without a birth hour there are six, and each is about 16.7%. That is why the shares move in steps. When two or more elements share the top count, the section names them all rather than picking one.

Each animal also holds other stems inside it, its hidden stems. In the table this app follows, the Rat, Rabbit and Rooster hold two and the other nine hold three, and other tables list fewer. The Dragon is mostly Earth, with some Wood and a little Water. The pentagon leaves the hidden stems out and gives every character the same weight, because it shows what is written in your chart. So an element can read 0% here and still be held inside an animal.

The readings that ask how strong your day element is, or whether an element is truly absent, count the hidden stems. The strength reading also gives the most weight to your month pillar's animal, which carries the season you were born in, and the next most to your day pillar's animal, the seat your day element sits on. Putting the month first is the classical rule, and putting the day's animal second is a common modern one. Those readings are behind your helpful and caution elements, your traits and your pair readings.

Other calculators may count another way, for example by folding the hidden stems into the shares they show, so the same chart can show different numbers. Each is an honest count. They answer different questions.

Your day element, the element on your day stem, stands for you. Every element, yours included, has one of five relationships to it, and those are the small words under each element on My Chart:

• You and your kind: the same element as yours.
• What you produce: the element yours feeds.
• What you manage: the element yours checks.
• What presses on you: the element that checks yours.
• What supports you: the element that feeds yours.

If your day element is Wood: Wood is you and your kind, Fire is what you produce, Earth is what you manage, Metal is what presses on you, and Water is what supports you. Your own element often appears more than once in a chart, which is why its row says you and your kind rather than only you.

Classical saju names these five relationships as the groups behind the ten gods, the labels on each stem in Four pillars. Each group splits in two by whether that character's yin or yang matches your day stem's, which makes ten.

A high share is not a better chart, and a low one is not a lack in you. A chart crowded with one element tends to lean on it, and a quiet element can be the one that brings the chart into balance.

In this app, which elements help your chart is worked out from how strong your day element is and the season you were born in, not from which share is largest. Helpful and caution elements explains how, and names the classical routes it leaves out.