When I first began learning Five Element theory, it had, in retrospect, a slightly cartoonish quality. Fire was happy, earth needy, wood angry, water scared and metal was somewhere out in left field (and somewhat superior- everyone has a lens, even great teachers). Given those options, everyone wanted to be declared of fire constitution as the other options sucked.
I hung in there- I even had a consult with J. R. Worsley. At that point, my practitioner had declared me to be water constitution (his lens). After the consult, I wanted to know the verdict. He demurred. “Sit with the treatment, let’s talk about it the next time we see each other.”
“No problem,” I said. “But if it’s earth, I’m going to fucking kill you.” You can guess how that went…
Thankfully, I moved on to another teacher, one who not only embraced the yin yang of each element, but more importantly taught us how to see it.
Look for the potential. See that first. If all you look for is pathology, that is all you will see.
I stopped making active death threats to my practitioners and began unlearning…
In health, all five elements span a range. They carry within a level of adaptability without which life ends. Earth moves from center to periphery and back again. Wood has the birth of the ten thousand beings and the ability to send them over the hill to their deaths. Water is both stillness and movement. Fire is both the warmth and the burning away. And then there is the malleability of metal. Contrast it to wood-measure thrice, cut once, they say. Yet metal can be melted down, reformed, and melted again.
Malleability has Latin roots in malleus (hammer) but even deeper roots in mele (crush or grind). Metal is shaped by the hands of the creator…These are not the fluffy hands that style your hair at the beauty shop. This is the inexorable grinding of this human life.
'The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small. Sextus Empiricus.
Will we change? Will we transform? Will we accept the invitation of the creator? Fools Crow understood the deal.
Metal is the shapeshifter, the wanderer of the liminal spaces, the wicasa wakan of hollow bones. The gap between sunset and nightfall, between exuberant yang of summer and the yin quietude of winter, between the exit and the entrance. You won’t fit into the gap between the worlds if you insist on maintaining your shape. Or the complexion you had in your twenties.
Even today, there are magicians, sorcerers and wizards. (Note- as a modern human, you may think magic isn’t a thing. I invite you to expand your definition. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that I flick a switch and light comes on is bloody magic. Just as a starting point.) Anyone can be a magician- looks real, but isn’t. Think botox. Sorcerers dare force the shaping- they are the alchemists seeking eternal life via a myriad of elixirs and potions (vitamins, peptides and frozen heads).
The wizard yields to the forces of nature and the spirits and is transformed…In our world of me me me, malleability isn’t prized. (It’s hard to monetize.) It harkens back to an earlier time when we either adapted to the forces around us or simply succumbed. Today if I want raspberries in January, I can just go to Walmart. In prior centuries, if I had gone looking for them out of season, I might end up frozen in a snowbank.
Do I like modern conveniences? Yes. Am I aware that I pay a price for them? Yes. Do I see others paying that price every day? Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s autumn- every day in my treatment room, I hear people talk about how they are already struggling with the lessening of the light. Summer is gone and the descent of autumn fills them with dread…
To find our way, we must dig deeper. Metal doesn’t just appear. The world isn’t littered with shiny ingots. It starts as ore. As a bunch of boring rocks that generally require a lot of time and energy to find in the first place. Rocks that must be crushed and heated and pounded over and over again in order to release their brilliance. Part of malleability is being tempered- heat and cooled again and again in the pursuit of strength and elasticity.
This is not a fun weekend personal growth workshop. But it is a doorway into the magic. Leave aside the willfulness of humans and head out into falling leaves and the changing light. The ten thousand beings are all out there waiting for you to show up, little human. Take the furry ones as your teacher. Remember- the wolf in autumn doesn’t change its fur, rather its fur is changed.