Abstract
The ＂Five Phases＂ is one of the core concepts in Chinese history. First, it played an important role in the classics, and particularly the ＂Hong fan＂ chapter of Shang shu, where the Five Phases reestablished the confused world with a humanistic order. Second, it built the framework of a kind of philosophy of history, that is, the various cycling of the Five Phases. The cycle model adumbrated the inevitable rise and fall of dynasties. Third, it was taken to be a cognitive model shaping the framework of Chinese epistemology, as reflected in Xiao Ji's The Greater Significance of the Five Phases (Wuxing dayi). This article uses the theory of hierophany (the manifestation of the luminous). Hierophany and kratophany are the key terms in the philosophy of Mircea Eliade. According to Eliade's theories, the primitive Five Phases penetrated by the Power of the Sacred are full of the elements of the sacred, combining the almighty and an existential atmosphere. In essence, the Primitive Five Phases transform empirical nature into meaningful nature. This article further applies the concepts of material imagination of Gaston Bachelard and the archetype of C. G. Jung to the hypothesis of Five Phases. All elements of the Five Phases exist in the outer world, as well as in the process of the expression of inner ideas. The Five Phases as archetypical images combine and transform the physical images with spiritual feeling. Many images of water, tree, fire, earth, and metal appeared frequently in the canons of Daoist philosophers and of Confucian scholars. Five Phases notation is not the consequence of confused thinking, but a reasonable expression of the human psyche.