wǔ xīng
Also rendered: The five planets (this site; literal, and it keeps the count — five because there are five circuits, not because there are five visible stars) · Wu xing (transliteration; homophonous with 五行 the five phases, and the two are related but not the same word)
Reviewed · 2026-10-08
At a glance
The five wandering stars as a single set: Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury, one to each of the five circuits. The chapter uses them one at a time throughout its ten tables and names them together once, in the question that opens its last movement — whether the planets answer to a sudden change as well as to the settled course of the year. The answer is no, and the reason is that they move by what they receive from heaven: 應常不應卒, they answer to the constant and not to the sudden. What follows is the chapter’s account of how a star is read — by its halting, its size, its colour, and the direction it takes.
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.
| This site | the five planets | literal from 五 and 星; the chapter needs the set, because its argument is that all five answer to the year and none of them to the sudden |
| Transliteration | wu xing | how the phrase is written in discussions of the 運氣 method; right about the referent, and it collides with the five phases |
| Descriptive | the five wandering stars | exact, and it says what kind of star they are; the chapter's own word says only that there are five |
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