The Earth Element: Feng Shui Shapes & Colors, Part 3

In my series of articles about Feng Shui’s Five Elements we’ve looked at the Feng Shui benefits of the Wood, Fire, Metal and Water elements.

Let’s look now at the stable, nurturing qualities of Earth.

The Earth element creates a “home base” in your life.  Its unique mothering quality makes you feel balanced and secure, giving you an inner place that supports your efforts to care for yourself while caring for those around you, too.

• Earth’s symbolic shape is a square, the most stable and grounded of shapes. Anything square or rectangular evokes the Earth element in your space.
• Flat surfaces and horizontal lines also symbolize the endless visual expanses of Earth.
• Its color is yellow, along with other earth tones such as light brown and sandy colors.
• Earth-y materials like ceramics, pottery and brick create a tactile sense of Earth’s comforts in your home.
• The Earth element is very much a tangible, visible, physical element: your physical health and that the physical state of your home are both associated with Earth.  Clutter and weight-gain can be addressed by bringing the Earth element into balance.
• Earth represents the “in-between” seasons like late fall’s Indian Summer and “mud season” in early spring.
• Earth helps you create boundaries, just as earthworks like a dam or the banks of a stream control and steer the flow of water.
• The archetype of the Earth element is the Peacemaker. Earth is the “go-between” of the Five Elements; if this is your “type” you may find that you sometimes have a hard time saying No. Clear boundaries help Earth stay in balance and do the most good in the world.

On the Feng Shui Bagua Map, Earth is represented in three different areas: Relationship (upper right), Knowledge & Self-Cultivation (lower left), and Health (in the center).

Follow the links above to find out more about each of these three sectore, and how to use the Earth element to enhance them.

Now you can look around and start to notice which objects, furniture, and pieces of art may represent Earth in your space.

Now, let’s look at Earth in the Cycle of the Elements:

• Earth is nourished by Fire in the Creative Cycle.
• Earth in turn nourishes the Metal element, as it condenses and solidifies into gems and precious metals.
• Earth is controlled by Wood in the Controlling Cycle, just as the roots of a tree break up the earth as they grow and expand.

Important note: When you are considering which element might be represented by a particular object, Shape takes precedence.

For example an object that is square (like a square wall tile, perhaps), mainly represents the Earth element. Depending on its color and other aspects, other elements may also be present, but Earth predominates in that particular object.

Be sure to check out the Feng Shui details about the other elements in my Five Elements series: Wood, Fire, Metal and Water.

(photo by David McSpadden on Flickr)