Earth

The golden time of the year is late summer when the fruits are ripening  and glowing in the bright sunshine. It is the time when mother earth offers her nutritious  fruits with great generosity  to all those who are in need.

There is such a wide range of  aspects concerning the earth that there are three signs to indicate the earth:

The basic sign is Tu which means earth, ground, soil, dust, land, region, native as well as  fertile arable soil. The sign indicates that all things and living beings are brought forward, are born from the earth.

The sky and the earth are the first manifestations of Dao after the original Qi has divided itself into Yin and Yang. The sign Di indicates the young Yin that has more weight and sinks to the bottom and materializes into the earth. This earth Di is the land, region, ground on which we are standing and that provides us grounding and rootedness. It is our easily comprehensible and with our senses measurable space for living - our home.

The third sign for the earth is Kun which means female, obedient and submitted. It is the pure Yin, the receiving element. Kun is the mother that nourishes and that is flexible. Kun supports the creative Yang and is beneficent to it. A Chinese saying expresses their relationship:

“The Vater (=Yang) is the head of the family, the mother (= Yin) is the neck. She moves the head into the direction that she wants.”

The earth as symbol for universal fertility and distributor of motherly care needs a place from where she can work and have a fruitful effect. So the right place for the earth is the middle, the center.

In contrast with the other elements, the earth has not a specific season that it is related to. As a phase of balance and harmony the earth works on the changes between the different seasons. Even though late summer seems the time when the earth is most obvious, it is the hottest time of the year (= dog days), the time of ripening fruits..

The activity of the earth is balancing and harmonizing, neutralizing contrasts. It stimulates the reflexion on our empathy for others, on our relationship towards our environment, on the right measure for the food we eat and on our point of view in our lives. The element earth provides moisture for the body. The related planet is Saturn which is the center in Chinese astrology. There is no direction related to the earth as it is the middle or the center.

The taste that is related to the earth is sweet which also means everything that stimulates the senses and the free will to do something. The smell that is related to the earth is the aromatic perfume that is fragrant and pleasant, likely to the sweet smell that the fermentation of millet produces. The related colour is yellow and the related instrument is the drum. The animals that are related to the earth are the naked ones, which is another expression for the human beings and among the domestic animals it is the ox / cow. In Chinese astrology this animal is the symbol of steadiness and persistence, reliability and objective logic.

The corn that is related to the earth is the millet, the fruit is the jujuba and the vegetable is the sunflower. The symbolic number is five - Wu (as in Wu Xing).

The earth’s voice is singing, spontaneous activities are belching and moistening. The external aspect is the flesh, the muscles and the opening to the outside world is the mouth. The earth shows its splendour in the lips and its liquid is the saliva.

The organs that are related to the earth are  the stomach (= nutrition, middle) and the spleen.

Sources:

Udo Lorenzen / Andreas Noll, Die Wandlungsphasen der traditionellen chinesischen Medizin, Band 3, 1996 München

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