What holds the five phases together is not the list but the two orders in which they are said to succeed one another. In the generating order, wood feeds fire, fire leaves ash and so makes earth, earth yields metal, metal gathers water, and water nourishes wood. In the overcoming order, wood breaks earth, earth dams water, water quenches fire, fire melts metal, and metal cuts wood.
Each cycle is a closed loop of five, and every phase therefore stands in a fixed relation to every other: it generates one, is generated by one, overcomes one and is overcome by one. That gives the scheme its analytical power. A situation described in terms of the five phases is not merely classified, it is placed in a set of relations that says what will strengthen it and what will check it, and both cycles are needed for that. A scheme of generation alone would run away with itself.
The word usually rendered element in English is xing, which means going, moving or conduct rather than substance. Water in this system is not the liquid but the phase of gathering, sinking and cold that the liquid exemplifies. Joseph Needham argued that translating xing as element imported a Greek assumption about matter that the Chinese scheme does not make, and preferred phase for exactly that reason. The atlas follows the same usage.