Glossary entry
The five elements (五行, wu xing)
Wu xing, the five elements: 木 wood, 火 fire, 土 earth, 金 metal, 水 water. They are assigned to the ten stems, to the seasons and to the directions; in the method used here they say what a stretch of time adds and what it drains.
Where they are assigned
Each element takes two of the ten stems: 甲乙 wood, 丙丁 fire, 戊己 earth, 庚辛 metal, 壬癸 water. A year therefore carries an element as well as an animal — 2020 was 庚子, metal on the rat, written Metal Rat.
How a reading uses them
As supply and demand: which element is heavy in the chart, which is thin, and what the current decade and year add to that. The reading here does not reduce a person to one element, and does not sell anything to top it up.
Questions
Is my element the same as my birth year element?
Yes — the element of your birth year comes from its stem, and the zodiac lookup shows it with the animal: Metal Rat, Water Horse and so on.
Do the elements decide anything?
They describe supply: what a chart has plenty of and what it has to borrow. The reading states that; the decisions stay with the person.
Zi Wei Dou Shu chart, free See a completed reading first The full glossary