wǔ luàn
Also rendered: the five derangements (Says the order has been upset) · the five disorders (Flat, and the chapter uses 病 for that) · the five confusions (Too mental for what is described) · wu luan (Bare transliteration)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Five states, every one of them produced by evil crossing a line it should not cross. Entering yang it makes mania; entering yin, obstruction; striking yang, disease of the crown of the head; striking yin, loss of voice. Then two more, which are the same rule read from the other side: yang going into yin makes quiet, yin coming out to yang makes anger. What the chapter is really giving is a way to place an illness by its manner — the raving patient and the silent one are on opposite sides of one line, and so are the quiet one and the furious one.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Wiseman & Feng | the five disorders | They use their standing word for 亂 so that the same term serves wherever it appears. |
| Unschuld | the five [ways evil qi] causes disorder | He supplies the subject, since the sentence is about what evil does. |
| This site | the five derangements | The dictionary's own gloss is the opposite — 亂 is putting in order — and the medical sense is the disorder that needs it. Disorder would also collide with 病, four entries earlier in the same chapter. |
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