11. Fire – key resonances
Chapter contents
Fire as a symbol78
The Fire Element in life78
The Fire Element in relation to the other Elements79
The key Fire resonances79
The supporting Fire resonances83
Fire as a symbol
The character for Fire
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The Chinese character for Fire, huo, represents ascending flames (see Weiger, 1965, lesson 126A). This is a simple representation of a fire, such as might be used for cooking. When this character was chosen to represent the Element, fire would have been used for cooking and undoubtedly for warming too. People would gather around fires as a source of heat and social contact would result. The hearth is symbolic of the heart of the home in all cultures.
The Fire Element in life
Fire in the world
The sun is clearly the Fire Element of nature. As the central focus of our solar system, it is the ultimate Fire. It burns and provides heat and light for almost all animals and vegetation. People are totally dependent on the sun for warmth and even minor variations in temperature can have catastrophic effects. Too much sun (and too little rain) can cause crops to fail, resulting in famine. Polar caps can melt, causing land to flood. Established species that are accustomed to a particular range of temperature are suddenly vulnerable and poorly adapted.
Fire within the person
The Fire Element manifests on a physical level through people’s sensitivity to heat and cold. One of the most crucial variables in people’s ability to function is being at the right temperature. Everyone has an acceptable range and as they go beyond that range their performance deteriorates. Personal range of temperature is often widest when people are young. This is because they have a balanced source of Fire within and a balanced source of Water to control the Fire. As people get older, their Water decreases and their Fire becomes less steady. They may discover that their ideal range of temperature has narrowed.
Emotionally the Fire Element manifests in being joyful. There are many factors contributing to people’s happiness, but the joy associated with Fire is significant. To be with others, sharing and communicating, generates and maintains the Fire within us. The pleasure in having satisfying human contact both nourishes the Fire Element and is made possible by the Fire being balanced.
An upward or downward cycle occurs according to the health of the Fire Element. Balanced Fire enables people to reach out and be nourished by human contact. The human contact, in turn, helps to keep the Fire nourished and in balance. Diminished Fire can discourage people from reaching out for more human contact and the lack of Fire nourishment further depletes the Element.
Strengthening the Fire Element with acupuncture treatment can make profound changes to a person and enhance their ability to connect with others. From this contact they become more able to nourish their own Fire. Chronic loneliness is not life enhancing. People need to allow the emotional rays of the sun to touch them. Those with depleted Fire Elements begin to crave for the rays of the sun to penetrate and warm and even melt them at their core. Such are the issues associated with Fire.
The Fire Element in relation to the other Elements
The Fire Element interacts with the other Elements through the sheng and ke cycles (see Chapter 2, this volume).
Fire is the mother of Earth
On the sheng cycle, Fire creates Earth. This relationship is not as obvious as Wood creating Fire, but when Fire burns, ashes are left and they become Earth. This means that when treating patients who have obvious Earth Element symptoms, such as digestive complaints, they may have originated in the mother Element, Fire. A practitioner may treat the mother to assist the child.
Wood is the mother of Fire
On the sheng cycle, Wood is the mother of Fire and creates Fire. For those who have built a camp fire by gathering wood, it is easy to understand how Wood creates Fire.
That Wood is the mother of Fire means that a symptom, for example, heart pain, which apparently arises from the Fire Element, may be the effect of the Wood Element upon the Fire Element. Thus, when a symptom is manifesting from the Organ of one Element, it is always wise to look at the state of the previous Element (for more on this, see Chapter 2, this volume). This is the ‘mother’ Element on the sheng cycle.
Water controls Fire
A fire hose illustrates how water can be used to control fire. In general, there are many body–mind functions that involve heat and which can be spoiled by too much fire. The control of inflammation, the drying out of joints and the rising up of excessive joy and excitation are all examples. In these cases, Water will contain, control and regulate the excesses of Fire.
Fire controls Metal
Fire controls Metal. It softens it and helps to shape it. When fashioning beautiful objects in gold, the gold must be heated in order to mould it to the desired shape. Should the Fire Element become deficient, then the balance of the Metal Element is harder to maintain. In this case the Lung itself is more likely to weaken, fail to distribute protective qi and fail to receive qi from the Heavens.
The key Fire resonances (Table 11.1)
The colour for Fire is red
The character for red
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The character for red is chi (Weiger, 1965, lessons 60N and 126B). As well as being a simple colour word, this character is also used as the technical term for the facial red that accompanies too much heat in the Heart. ‘Heart-fire’ is a pathological pattern where the Heart has accumulated excess heat.
| Colour | Red |
| Sound | Laughing |
| Emotion | Joy |
| Odour | Scorched |
Colour in nature
Had a divine artist painted the world, she or he used red sparingly. Sometimes the sky manifests beautiful tones of pink and red. Within species of flowers, red and its various variations appear frequently. The most common association with the colour red is probably blood. Later in the chapter it will be described how Blood is clearly connected with the Fire Element.
On an emotional level, red is associated with passion and especially with the Heart. No one draws a valentine with a green or blue heart on it. The Heart and the colour red are associated with love and relationships in many cultures. Significantly, the Chinese traditionally married not in white, but in red, the colour of love. In the West, it is a common custom on Valentine’s day to give red roses or cards with red hearts to our loved ones.
Facial colour
Fire can manifest either as too much red on the face or too little. This facial colour manifests under and beside the eyes, in the laugh lines or around the mouth. When red appears on the face in other areas this may indicate excess heat and may have nothing to do with an imbalance of the Fire Element. Because of this, where there is a red colour, the practitioner’s observation needs to stick strictly to the relevant facial areas. Practitioners rarely see red under the eyes, beside the eyes in the laugh lines or around the mouth, however. It is more common for patients to manifest ‘lack of red’.
What is lack of red? Practitioners expect there to be a normal amount of pink or red in the face. At certain times, for example when someone faints, people may say that the blood has drained out of someone’s face and the person has become ashen or grey. The practitioner is noticing an absence of the normal pink of a complexion, a rather dull bloodless colour. With respect to a longer-term and serious Fire imbalance, the dull lack of red can become greyer. This is generally the colour practitioners are looking for when examining the face. They look to the side of the eye and there is a patch where the usual pink seems to have been drained. On some patients lack of red is detected by a general dullness and lack of vitality in the colour of the face overall.
The sound for Fire is laughing
The character for laughing
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The Chinese character for laughing is xiao. On the top of this character is the radical for bamboo. Underneath this is the character for a man who is bending forward, possibly as someone having a belly laugh (see Weiger, 1965, lessons 77B and 61B).
Laughter in life
Laughter is the sound that naturally emanates from the Heart. The Chinese have many expressions about happiness and laughter. For example, one proverb states that, ‘A person should laugh three times a day to live longer’. Another says, ‘A good laugh makes you ten years younger, while worry turns the hair grey’. This suggests that laughter eases the Heart, increases relaxation and restores balance.
This principle is used in Chinese qi gong exercises. For example, ‘the inner smile’ is a simple exercise to smile and then let the feeling of the smile drop downwards in the body to relax the Organs. Laughing is an extension of this feeling. A good belly laugh can massage and relax our organs and raise our spirits. One well-known qi gong teacher purposely laughs loudly in his teaching sessions in order to increase the relaxation of the group.
The context of laughter
The time for laughter to be present is when pleasure or joy is being expressed. This may be during personal interaction where warmth is being exchanged or people are talking about remembered pleasurable experiences. Inappropriate contexts would be when there is loss, fear or feelings of anger or sympathy.
The voice tone of laughing
When a person has a laughing voice there is not necessarily actual laughter present, as in the notion of a belly laugh. The sound of laughing is almost a ‘pre-laugh’ without an actual laugh emerging (although it might). Fire is a very yang Element, so it is natural that in the same way that laughter seems to rise upwards and outwards, so does this sound. It is close enough to a laugh that listeners might easily feel that, were they to apply a gentle tickle, the sound would develop into a laugh. It doesn’t have to, however, because laughter is there in the sound of the voice.
The quickest way to appreciate this voice tone is to listen to people who are talking about enjoyable events or exchanging funny stories. While doing this they will usually have a laughing sound in their voices. If this sound is missing from their voices, the event or story sounds less funny. Another way to detect a laughing voice tone is to talk out loud as if enthusiastically telling someone you like about a really enjoyable time you had. You will feel your voice rise up and feel your face on the edge of a smile.
Five Element practitioners listen and notice if the voice tone and its content matches. For example, laughter should be present in the voice when a person is talking about things that are funny. If a person is often laughing out of context this is inappropriate. For example, a person may laugh whilst talking about painful experiences, or laughter may be completely absent when the subject is one of enjoyment or pleasure. In this case the sound in the voice may be indicating that the person is a Fire CF. There is a tendency for people to laugh in order to hide their nervousness. Practitioners need to be aware of this and not succumb to thinking all nervous laughter is evidence of the person being a Fire CF.
Lack of laughter
Some Fire CFs, especially those who tend towards lack of joy, have voices that have no sparkle or gaiety in them. The tone is monotonous and is easily mistaken for the groan of a Water CF. It has a tendency to sound rather croaky and flat.
The odour for Fire is scorched
The character for scorched
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The character for scorched is zhuo. The left-hand side is the character for fire and the right-hand side that of a ‘kind of spoon’ (Weiger, 1965, lessons 54H and 126A). Except for the inclusion of the character for fire, the character does not seem especially significant.
The odour of scorched is probably the easiest to describe of all the Five Element odours as it actually resembles what in ordinary life a person would describe as scorched. Some scorched smells to consider are:
• burnt toast
• clothes coming out of the tumble dryer
• a shirt that has just been scorched while ironing
• vegetables in a steamer which have just burnt dry
The scorched smell varies according to what is burning. In the same way, scorched will also vary from person to person according to their underlying qi (for more on diagnosing the odour, see Chapter 25, this volume). An elderly person’s scorched, or any other odour, smells quite different from that of a young child.
This odour can often be detected on a person who is feverish. The heat of the fever places a strain on the Pericardium and Triple Burner especially and this temporary imbalance produces a scorched odour. This scorched odour from a fever will not necessarily indicate that a person is a Fire CF.
The emotion for Fire is joy
The characters for joy
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The emotion corresponding to Fire is joy. There are two main characters for this emotion. One is xi and the other is le.
Xi (Weiger, 1965, lesson 165B) translates as elation and le (lessons 88C, 119K and 119) as joy (see also Larre and Rochat de la Vallée, 1996, p. 106). Another term is also used – bu le (see Weiger, 1965, lesson 133A for bu), which means an absence of joy. Elisabeth Rochat de Vallée notes the atypical nature of this phrase. The pathology of an emotion usually lies in its excess, not its absence (Larre and Rochat de la Vallée, 1996, pp. 106–108 and 118–120). She puts the two together in the following way. When the xi is out of balance people tend to become over-elated. When the le becomes imbalanced people tend to go into lack of joy (bu le).
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The description of these characters is helpful and enables the practitioner to gain a deeper understanding of joy. Xi describes the right hand striking the skin of an ancient drum. At the bottom of the character is a mouth depicting singing. The whole character describes singing and making music – the ability for people to enjoy themselves and have a good time. Based on the drum, the nature of the occasion is informal. Le is also related to music and shows a great drum with bells on either side. These are drums used in rites and ceremonies that are more formal occasions. They have a deeper sound than the drum of xi and make contact with the spirit. This character depicts a harmony and unity inside a person (Larre and Rochat de la Vallée, 1996, pp. 107–108).
Appropriate joy
Practitioners of Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture observe a person’s capacity to regularly and normally experience joy. Joyful incidents may occur at a social gathering interacting with friends, recounting a pleasurable event, enjoying food, watching a favourite striker score a goal or being in close contact with a lover or soul-mate. They vary enormously in their nature and intensity and are judged mainly by how they are experienced. They ‘feel good’, bring a smile to a person’s face and quicken the heart.
Five Element Constitutional Acupuncturists assess their patients’ capacity to feel joy and whether they can appropriately and smoothly move in and out of joy.
What are the pathological movements of joy?
Ling ShuChapter 8 gives us a clue:
The Heart is in control of the blood vessels and the spirit resides in the blood vessels. A hollowness of the energy in the Heart will cause the emotion of sadness; a solidness of the energy in the Heart will cause incessant laughter.
(Lu, 1972, p. 101)
The more robust the functioning of a patient’s Fire qi, the more it will support and facilitate a person’s ability to express joy appropriately.
Imbalanced Fire qi can have two consequences. One is that the Heart is too weak to allow the Fire qi to move through it and express all the stages of joy. These stages are entering into joy, going to the peak of the feeling and then descending out of joy back to a base level. A person who is unable to move through all of these stages has bu le, an absence of joy. For example, joy is in the air; other people in the group laugh, but one individual appears unable to join in, looks sad, and may have the additional distress at feeling left out. The Heart is responsible for the ‘radiance of the spirits’. Sometimes people try to join in and laugh with others but they are only going through the motions. Their joy has no conviction or radiance. It does not communicate genuine joy or warmth.
Another consequence of pathological Fire qi is an excessive or erratic movement in expressing joy. This might be described as fullness, but it can be better described as instability. The Fire qi does not flow in a steady manner and flashes up into elation in the form of slightly uncontrollable laughing or excitation. It can also be accompanied by internal agitation. This joy may flare up and become excessive but equally it can flare up and as rapidly fade away. The essential observation is that the joy and therefore the Fire qi does not flow smoothly. On the outside there is an appearance of joy but from the inside a person does not have the experience of feeling good.
A Fire CF patient described how when she was particularly low she could be with people that she really liked but be unable to join in. ‘Everyone may be having a good time but I can’t seem to feel happy although I desperately want to. It’s worse if there are strangers around. I am just missing some spark and I feel desperately unhappy.’
Which emotions injure the Fire Element? (Table 11.2)
The Fire Element is easily harmed by several of the emotions. Excess joy, xi le, harms the qi by making it ‘loose’ (Su WenChapter 39). This creates instability in the shen and tends to make many Fire CFs particularly volatile emotionally. Lack of joy, bu le, is also deleterious to the Fire Element. It is very difficult for a person to maintain their joie de vivre without joy, warmth and stimulation from others. Everyone needs contact and intimacy with others to lead complete lives and realise their potential. When a person becomes isolated and lacks companionship over an extended period of time, their Fire Element is cut off from a crucial source of nourishment. This is similar to when a plant has to endure too much shade. It usually survives, but it doesn’t thrive.
| Joyousness | Excitement. elation, euphoria, exhilaration, excessive enthusiasm, mania |
| Sadness | Misery, unhappiness, despair, gloom, sorrow, flatness, melancholy, downheartedness |
Sadness, bei, is probably the emotion that most affects a patient’s Fire Element. Bei makes the qi ‘disappear’. Sadness is an inadequate translation of the wide range of painful feelings that people feel in their Hearts. In childhood the pain of feeling unloved by parents, siblings or classmates can be devastating to a person’s Fire Element.
In adulthood the Fire Element can be devastated by the heartbreak associated with the decline and ending of intimate relationships and in this case it can be a major source of physical and psychological illness. The current trend of ‘serial monogamy’ can create a cycle of falling in and out of love that severely strains the Fire Element. ‘Falling in love’ is often accompanied by excess joy and excitation, as well as feelings of vulnerability. This is usually followed by intense pain as the relationship fails to live up to the unreal expectations placed upon it. Literature, pop songs, opera and much conversation is now dominated by this theme. It can also play a prominent part in the discussion between patients and practitioners. Exploring the emotional life of the patient is essential if the practitioner wishes to diagnose the health of any of the patient’s Elements.
The Fire Element is also easily imbalanced by shock (jing). Trauma, abuse and emotional upsets make it difficult for the Heart to remain settled. Shock predominantly attacks the Organs of the Fire Element, but also depletes the Kidneys. This is a common cause of a breakdown in relationship between the Water and Fire Elements.
The supporting Fire resonances
These resonances are considerably less important than the ‘key’ resonances given in Table 11.1. They can often be used to indicate that a person’s Fire Element is imbalanced but they do not necessarily point to it being the person’s CF (Table 11.3).
| Season | Summer |
| Power | Maturity |
| Climate | Heat |
| Sense Organ/Orifice | Tongue |
| Tissues and body parts | Blood vessels |
| Generates | Hair |
| Taste | Bitter |
The season of Fire is summer
The character for summer
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The character is xia (Weiger, 1965, lesson 160D). Xia indicates a countryman walking with his hands down and his work done. He is allowing his plants to grow by themselves.
Summer
Summer is the most yang and expansive time of year. Plants are at their most developed and animal life is generally at its most active. In temperate climates, summer typically brings people out of their dwellings. They wear fewer clothes and are ready to sunbathe, sit in cafes, chat with friends or go to the seaside. People talk more and have many opportunities for pleasure and joy. This time of year clearly connects with the Fire Element.
Because summer is normally warmer, questioning people about their preference for the seasons does not yield consistent and therefore useful information. It is hard to separate preference for a certain temperature from the preference for the energy of the season. Many Fire CFs, however, experience a craving for the warmth and light of summer more than other CFs.
In addition, it is said in Chinese medicine that the Heart hates heat. In practice, many Fire CFs have a dual experience of summer. Many of them crave the sun and love the heat. But as the heat increases, the blood vessels dilate to cool the body. This puts an extra burden on the Heart and depending on a person’s health it can cause difficulties. All people, including Fire CFs, can have issues with heat and therefore the summer.
The power of Fire is maturity
The character for maturity
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Cheng is the character for maturity, the power for Fire (Weiger, 1965, lessons 50H (cheng) and 75 (shu)).
Maturity
Maturity is at the peak of the cycle from birth to storage. While the countryman leaves his arms by his sides and allows the plants to grow, everything else in nature is also developing and reaching maturity. Fruits absorb the rays of the sun and become ripe. Compared to the cycle of a day, summer is equivalent to the moment that the sun reaches its zenith. As long as the moisture, the right soil, the minerals and especially the warmth are present a plant will evolve. No special effort is necessary – they do it all by themselves.
The climate of Fire is heat
The character for heat
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Re is the character for summer heat. The top of the character depicts the sun, while the lower part is a grammatical term meaning a document, phrase or speech (Weiger, 1965, lesson 79K).
Summer heat
Summertime is when the heat of the sun is strongest. Plants require this final application of heat in order to complete their growth. In a similar way to the countryman with his hands by his sides, there is nothing to do but let the warmth of the sun do its work. This can be compared to sunbathers on resort beaches who do nothing but soak up the sun’s rays and feel better for it.
Although the connection between the summer and heat is obvious, what Fire CFs make of heat is less obvious. Some love it and others hate it. Many Fire CFs crave summer and adore the heat. Others manifest the notion that ‘the Heart hates heat’ and avoid sitting in the sun, sun-soaked holidays and even central heating.
There are two notions of heat or warmth that Five Element practitioners consider. One is that which typically comes from the sun and can be measured by a thermometer. The other refers to the internal warmth that comes from human contact and communication. Practitioners of Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture will pay more attention to the latter form of warmth (see the discussion of the Fire Organs in Chapter 12, this volume).
The first notion of heat (actual temperature) affects people of all CFs. Fire is controlled by Water and our moisture diminishes slowly as we age. Thus older people, who at one time might have enjoyed lying in the sun, begin to prefer the shade.
The second notion of heat or warmth is more related to Fire CFs. This is described earlier in this chapter and is to do with Fire CFs’ ability to receive love and warmth from others. Often Fire CFs have more difficulty with this than people of other CFs. Unfortunately there is no easy measuring tool (like the thermometer) for this kind of warmth and practitioners have to rely on their own developed sensitivity to feel this aspect of the person. The practitioner needs to be warm to the patient and perceive the effect it has on the person’s Fire Element. Did it create intense change in the patient by meeting a deep need in them? Was the patient reluctant to let that moment go as it was so delightful? Did it meet a void in the patient’s shen, making it impossible to fully enjoy warmth from another? It is by these means rather than by asking questions about a patient’s response to temperature that the practitioner can determine the CF (for more on warming the body, see Chapter 12, this volume).
The sense organ/orifice for Fire
The sense organ for Fire is speech and the orifice is the tongue. Literally, in English, speech is not a sense organ and the tongue is not an orifice. Their resonance with Fire, however, is clear.
The character for tongue
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She is the character for tongue. It has an open mouth for the lower part and the upper part is an extended tongue (Weiger, 1965, lesson 102C).
Tongue and speech
A practitioner can appreciate two connections between the tongue and speech. The first connection is the ability to speak using the tongue. This connection is obvious. Speech means both the ability to express oneself in words and the physical ability to create words, which specifically involves the tongue.
The second connection is between the speech-tongue and the Heart. The Heart, which is the key Organ of the Fire Element, has a strong role in generating joy by reaching out to others to communicate and share love and warmth (compare with the description above of the character for joy, xi, with an open mouth in the centre). We can communicate through touch and looking, but speech is the most common way that people reveal their innermost world and thus merge with another at a deeper level. In this context, speech is a crucial tool for the Heart.
If the Fire Element is deficient, and as a result is less stable, then practitioners often observe irregularities of speech. For example, speech easily falters or the person becomes tongue-tied, babbles away, stutters, mixes up words (as in malapropisms) or frequently forgets words and names.
Our Western approach is to ask ‘what exactly is wrong here?’ The Chinese approach is to say that speech and the tongue resonate with the Fire Element (and the Heart specifically) and if there are other indications of a Fire imbalance, then this Element should be treated. By so doing, the speech problem will be regulated.
A practitioner may ask if all speech impediments are found in patients with Fire CFs. The answer is no, but they may indicate that a person has an imbalance in the Heart. Speech problems are only supportive evidence for a person being a Fire CF when colour, sound, emotion and odour, the key resonances, are present.
The tissues and body parts for Fire are blood and blood vessels
The resonating tissues and body parts for Fire are blood and blood vessels. There are various references for this resonance. In some cases, just the blood is mentioned and in others the blood and blood vessels, for example, Su WenChapters 10 and 44.
The character for blood vessels
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The overall character for blood vessels is made up of the character for Blood, xue (Weiger, 1965, lesson 157D; note that the modern pin yin spelling for blood is xue rather than hsueh) and the two characters for vessel, mai (Weiger, 1965, lessons 65A and 125E). The character for Blood is a picture of a vase full of a sacred red fluid. The character is similar to the Western symbol of the Holy Grail. The character for vessels is similar to that for water (see Chapter 20, this volume), but also has the flesh radical attached, indicating that it is a part of the body.
Blood and blood vessels
The Heart is said to govern the blood and the blood vessels, thus providing the link between the Organ, tissues and body parts. It is helpful to think of the Heart, blood and blood vessels as one system. The Heart pumps the blood through the blood vessels and this allows the flow of Heart qi to manifest as balanced joy. The Heart’s function of governing the blood also emphasises the Heart’s role in creating the blood and pumping blood to all the tissues in the body in order to nourish and moisten them. The shen is ‘housed’ in the Blood (Ling ShuChapter 32; Wu, 1993), easily becoming disturbed when the Blood is not healthy. Blood and blood vessels are an intimate part of the Fire Element.
Other Elements have important influences on both the blood and the blood vessels, so any specific pathology does not necessarily point to a person being a Fire CF. There is, however, an important conceptual link between the Heart, the blood and blood vessels as described above and problems with the blood and blood vessels may provide supportive evidence for a person being a Fire CF.
Fire generates hair
Hair, blood and Fire Hair is also described as the surplus of the blood (Wiseman, 1993, p. 76). The connection between hair and Fire is via the blood. Blood’s function is to nourish and moisten. Thus the quality of a person’s hair will reflect the quality of their blood. In turn, the blood reflects the Fire Element. Sometimes this connection will be short term and obvious. For example, a woman’s hair can become drier and of poorer quality as her menstrual blood gathers ready for the period to flow. Then, further into the cycle when her blood has been renewed, the quality of her hair improves. The connection is less obvious when a man’s Fire and Blood are deficient and where the dryness of the hair is constant and therefore assumed to be normal.
The taste for Fire is bitter
The character for bitter
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Ku is the character for bitter (Weiger, 1965, lessons 78B and 24F). The top part of the overall character means ‘plants’ and the lower part indicates ‘that which has passed through ten mouths, i.e. a tradition dating back ten generations’. The reference here is probably to old or processed plants that often have a bitter flavour.
Bitter
In Chinese herbal medicine, the bitter taste has two functions. It can drain or dry dampness or it can disperse or clear excess heat. Examples of ordinary foods with a bitter taste are coffee, burnt toast, pumpkin seeds, rhubarb and watercress. The clearest example is Angostura bitters. These are available in most bars and can be added to whisky. (Gentian, which is the main herbal ingredient of bitters, also appears in the Chinese herbal materia medica as long dan cao, a herb used to clear damp and heat generated by the Liver.) Beer is also bitter but the drink beloved of some Fire CFs is Campari, red in colour and very bitter in taste.
Some Fire CFs enjoy a bitter taste but others don’t. It is therefore not a reliable indicator of a person being a Fire CF but may be used as supportive evidence.
Summary
1. Along the sheng cycle, Fire is the mother of Earth and Earth is the mother of Metal. Across the ke cycle, Fire controls Metal and Water controls Fire.
2. A diagnosis of a Fire CF is made primarily by observation of a red or lack of red facial colour, a laughing or lack of laughing voice tone, a scorched odour and an imbalance in the emotion of joy.
3. Fire CFs tend to easily swing between being very joyful and being rather sad.
4. The Fire Element is easily imbalanced by excessive joy (xi), shock (jing) and sadness (bei).
5. Other resonances include the season of summer, heat, the power of maturity, the tongue, blood and blood vessels, hair and a bitter taste.
