The five essential elements for global well-being

All the old traditions –derived from a common primordial tradition– they speak of the cosmic orderof a superior organization that assigns each being a precise place in the complex architecture of the universe.

In this way, everything in it is made of the concretion or harmonic meeting of five elements that, combined with each other in different proportions, form the structure of all beings and even of the universe itself.

In the eternal succession of cycles, the elements are grouped in a dynamic balancehe kosmosuntil, after its period of existence, the balance is broken, the elements dissolve in the chaos… and everything starts again. TO

Thus, for traditional cosmology and medicine, both in the East and in the West, all beings are connected by energy flows that generate them, give them their own characteristics and relate them to each other.

The components of the cosmic order

With the passage of time, and with the birth of new civilizations, These forces have received different names. that answer in essence to the same fundamentals. They are all at the same time manifestations of the macrocosm –heaven, earth, subterranean waters and fire inside the earth– and of the microcosm –the physical, mental, astral or etheric body.

Bon, the ancient Tibetan philosophymentions five essential materials of all phenomena: water, air, fire, earth and space, which constitute the relationship with the superior world. buddhism He speaks of four “sensible qualities” that correspond to the first four: fluidity with water, movement with air, temperature with fire, and solidity with earth. Vedasancient sacred books of the Hinduismdescribe five major elements: pull (water), pavane (air), agni (fire) and bhumi (earth), created from the akasha (ether).in Chinathe five elements are called wu xing –a word that alludes to movement or transformation– and they are water, wood, fire, earth and metal. For its part, the japanese tradition –with influences from the last three– calls them godaiwhich literally means “big five”, and they are: water –representing fluidity–, air –expansion and freedom of movement–, fire –passion, growth–, earth –solidity– and the void or the sky – which symbolizes pure energy, things that are not of this world.

The original elements in western cultures

The teachings of the East reached the West by various routesto the druids, to the orphic mysteries, to the Pythagoreans, to philosophers, physicists and doctors.

He kore kosmoua book attributed to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, exposes through the mouth of the Egyptian goddess Isis the doctrine of the elements: “Of living beings, my son, some make friends with fire, and some with water, some with air and some with earth, and some with two or three of these and some with all of them.”Empedocles I call them rhizomata (roots), bringing together the theories of his ancestors -such as Heraclitus and Thales of Miletus-, and postulated that all things were a mixture of water, earth, fire and air, which were related to each other according to two principles, philia (union) and neikos (discord), in a continuous cycle of changes in which there is neither birth nor death, but transformation. Subsequently, Aristotle he added the fifth element of the Eastern tradition, ether, and related the other four to qualities: water is cold and humid, earth is dry and cold, fire is hot and dry, and air is humid and hot. astrology as alchemy, in their transit from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, integrated to a greater or lesser extent the doctrine of the elements. Thus, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces are water signs; Virgo, Taurus and Capricorn, from land; Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, from fire; and Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, from airFor its part, alchemy considered that the four terrestrial elements are manifested through three principles: the principle of combustion, represented by sulfur; the principle of volatility, represented by mercury, and that of solidity, by salt.

With the birth of modern science, from the 16th century, there was a reduction of the vision of nature to its purely material aspects; the elements came to be identified with States of the material: solid (earth), liquid (water), gaseous (air) and plasma (fire).

The impact of the elements on health

Based on this vision of the universe as a machine that can be dominated and manipulated by the human being, the modern West has created a medicine far removed from nature.

But all these interrelationships between elements or materialsqualities, energies, attitudes, emotions… were not established by chance or for purely aesthetic reasons, but rather they had a reason for being within the framework of a conception of the world and of life in which all things are connected by deep meaningful ties.

That visionwhich today we call holisticallowed the traditional health sciences – Tibetan, Ayurvedic or Chinese – to develop a deep understanding of the human being and apply it to the maintenance of health and the cure of diseases.

Later, this knowledge influenced the medical conceptions of antiquitywhich, until the beginning of modernity, they retained a global vision of the human being and of health and diseasecontemplating at the same time the physicochemical aspects and the emotional, mental or spiritual factors.

Faced with the limited vision of modern medicine, traditional chinese medicineFor example, thousands of years ago takes into account the psycho-emotional causes of illnesses. Thus, it bases diagnoses and curative techniques on signs that go beyond the ponderable or measurable elements on which modern pharmacology and new health technologies are based.

It was not until a few years ago that current medicine began to consider the role of mental and emotional factors in health.

The traditional Chinese conception is based on the flow of vital energy, chiand in relating its manifestations with biological processes, attitudes, emotions, evolutionary stages, senses, seasons, organs and viscera.

Each of the five main human organs possesses the vibratory energy of an element: the kidneys, that of water; the liver, that of wood; the heart, that of fire; the earth, that of the pancreas, and the lungs, that of metal. vital energy circulates going through these organs in cycles that mark daily and seasonal biorhythms; imbalances or diseases appear when it stagnates or its flow is altered.

How to recover the natural flow of the elements in your daily life?

Some daily practices can direct our attention towards the four terrestrial elements to integrate them as health source.