Keys
Left to Right:
Clavis Artis Illustration, late 17th–early 18th century, Germany (though attributed to a 13th century manuscript written on dragon skin): An alchemical scene shows a man, possibly Zoroaster, considered the father of alchemy, gazing at a fiery shooting star near a brick tower. Distracted by the sky, he overlooks a giant lizard drinking red liquid from a decanter.
Aqua from Series of Circular Designs with the Four Elements by Crispijn de Passe the Elder, 1590–1612.
Hand-carved rock crystal Gorintō, 13th century Japan: This five-part memorial symbolizes the five elements—earth, water, fire, wind, and space—stacked in geometric shapes reaching towards the heavens.
Kalachakra Cosmology Illustration, 16th century Tibet: The Cosmic Man embodies an inner cosmology aligned with the six elements, with each finger symbolizing one of the five elements.
Bunian Tu by Yan Liben, ca. 601–670, China: A silk handscroll depicting Emperor Taizong of Tang receiving Gar, the ambassador of Tibet. The narrative justification of China’s imperial rule legitimacy included the system of wuxing 五行, as each element represented the dynastic regime and the proper succession replicated the succession of the five elements.
Contemporary card readers may recognize the four elements as associated with the four suits in cartomancy, and understanding a brief history of their development across cultures can help us expand our associative framework in preparation to read the Fox Flower Method.
The English word "element" derives from a Greek term stoikheion meaning "step" or "component part," translated into Latin as "elementum." Ancient scholars and philosophers perceived four elements, later adding a fifth, as the irreducible components of the universe and all it contained. These were water, earth, fire, air, and ether (i.e. "space" or "void."). Various civilizations and different cultures have perceived the natural world in similar terms to these building blocks. Nearly 4,000 years ago, the ancient Babylonians worshipped four gods, each representing one of four cosmic elements: sea, earth, sky, and wind. Later, in Iron Age India, ancient sacred texts describe the pancha mahabhuta, or “five great elements" of space (or "ether"), air, fire, water and earth.
In the Hindu tradition, these great elements were thought to have been divinely bestowed and fundamental to the cycle of creation and dissolution. Buddhism similarly recognized the cattāro mahābhūtāni, or Four Great Elements, of earth, water, fire, and air or wind, with some texts referencing a fifth element of space. The earliest Buddhist texts dating from the 5th century BCE explain that the four primary material elements are solidity, fluidity, temperature, and mobility, characterized as earth, water, fire, and air, respectively. In the 7th century BCE, the Persian philosopher Zoroaster wrote of the sacred nature of earth, water, air and fire. He noted these four elements were "essential for the survival of all living beings."
From pre-Socratic times the Ancient Greeks recognized four basic elements: earth, water, air, and fire. These were first proposed by Empedocles, a philosopher from Sicily who lived around 450 BCE. The Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle (384-322 BCE) perceived that, while earth, water, air, and fire were corruptible, the stars in the heavens seemed permanent and unchanging. He therefore added a fifth element, ether, reasoning that the perpetual stars must be made of some unchangeable heavenly matter. Aristotle’s conception of the five classical elements was carried forward by philosophers and scholars for centuries, shaping Western thought until the rise of modern chemistry during the Enlightenment in the 18th century. It was after this shift that divination with cards began to gain recognition in mainstream culture, aligning with the elemental associations of each card for divinatory purposes.
Earlier In China, and later in Korea, the five basic elements also played an important role, though in a different way. In the 3rd century BCE, the Chinese sage and philosopher Zou Yan set forth a cosmological theory incorporating the five elements of earth, wood, fire, metal, and water. These came to be known as Wuxing, often translated as the five elements, but more accurately the "five phases" or the "five changes." Thus, while the Greek conception of the five elements described separate compositional substances of all things, Wuxing conceives of elements as basic energies succeeding one another in a cyclic pattern like the seasons of the year.
The term “Wuxing” first appeared without specific reference to the five elements in Guo Yu (Discourses of the States) of Western Zhou in the 8th century BCE. Scholars believe its predecessor concepts merged into a unified system during the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), through the publication of influential texts such as the Shangshu (Book of Documents) and Huainanzi (The Book of Master Huainan). In these works, each element was attributed properties and symbols, expanding upon their conceptualization as physical substances. Wuxing philosophy influences other branches of Eastern philosophy, including astrology, cosmology, feng shui, and traditional Chinese medicine.
Japanese traditions use a set of elements called the "godai," literally "five great." These five are earth, water, fire, wind/air, and void. These came from Indian Vastu shastra philosophy and Buddhist beliefs – in addition, the classical Chinese Wuxing are also prominent in Japanese culture. Earth represented things that were solid. Water represented things that were liquid. Fire represented things that destroy. Wind represented things that moved. Void or Sky/Heaven represented things not of our everyday lives.
While the Fox Flower Method incorporates the older Chinese correspondences, it is useful to consider the presence of invisible elements like air and void as tangential to the functioning of what we can see, as Paul Coehlo wrote in The Alchemist, “When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you, and even men can turn themselves into the wind. As long as the wind helps, of course.”
Sources: TheCollector. "Wuxing: What Are the Five Elements of Chinese Philosophy?" TheCollector, https://www.thecollector.com/wuxing-five-elements-chinese-philosophy/.
Kindred Black. "Five Elements." Kindred Black, https://www.kindredblack.com/blogs/journal/five-elements.
Instructional References
The following tables serve as essential guides for understanding the Fox Flower Method, outlining the elemental associations for each suit. They provide key insights for interpreting the dynamics of conflict and resolution through the lens of the elements, enhancing the divinatory experience.
This table integrates correspondences from sifu Camelia's Playing Cards Module with principles from Taoism, including concepts specific to Feng Shui (Chinese geomancy), which is based on Wuxing, with the structure of the cosmos mirroring the five phases, as well as the eight trigrams. Each phase has a complex network of associations with different aspects of nature: colors, seasons and shapes all interact according to the cycles. It explains the elemental interpretations used in the Fox Flower Method, drawing on the physicality of each suit to derive additional symbolic meanings, seasonal and directional associations, and time-based/horary predictive insights that may guide further divination and prognostication.
This table outlines the traditional five phases and their interactions as foundational cycles in the Fox Flower Method. Two primary cycles—"generative" and "destructive"—operate in different forms. For instance, in an "overacting" variation of the destructive cycle, balance is disrupted by an excessive force. Each interaction or energy flow is classified as expansive, weakening, or exhaustive, depending on the cycle it follows. This information is applied to each pair of the method’s 5-Card spread and across the strings of the 9-Card spread.
Below is a chart rendered in the traditional circular format, showing a visual experiment exploring the connection between Wuxing, the ancient Chinese Five Elements theory, and color theory. Each element—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—is associated with specific colors, reflecting the energetic relationships that drive natural processes.
Toselli, Mauro. "A Color Theory According to Wuxing (aka Five Elements or Five Movements)." Mauro Toselli Blog. maurotoselli.com/blog/a-color-theory-according-to-wuxing-aka-five-elements-or-five-movements.