Origin 1465 to 1620
The Wood Face Shape, or mu xing lian, is one of the five element, wu xing, face shapes of mian xiang, alongside fire, earth, metal and water. It is described as long and narrow, with a high forehead, prominent cheekbones and a face noticeably longer than it is wide, echoing wood's association with growth reaching upward. Practitioners read this shape as belonging to someone principled, driven and inclined toward leadership, matching wood's traditional qualities within the five phase system that also organises Chinese medicine and astrology. As with the rest of mian xiang, this is a traditional interpretive practice, not a finding of medical science.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodTraced by Livia Kohn to Chen Tuan, the tenth century Taoist credited as a founder of Chinese physiognomy and traditionally taught by the legendary Hemp Robed Master, with the five shape scheme reaching its classical statement well before the Ming dynasty compilations that fix the twelve palaces. 2 Attributed Author / CompilerThe five element classification of face shapes belongs to the same classical apparatus, traced by Livia Kohn to Chen Tuan, the tenth century Taoist credited as a founder of Chinese physiognomy and traditionally taught by the legendary Hemp Robed Master, whose name the tradition also carries as the title of an older manual, the Ma Yi Shen Xiang. The fullest surviving compendium of this whole apparatus, the Shenxiang quanbian, is dated to the Ming dynasty. 2 Origin of the NameXing lian pairs xing, phase or element, with lian, face, following the same wu xing five phase vocabulary used throughout Chinese correlative cosmology for organs, seasons, directions and now facial morphology. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 2 Learn More
A Shape Read Through the Five Phases
The five element face shapes, wu xing lian, apply to the whole face a classification system considerably older and broader than mian xiang itself, the five phase, wu xing, framework that also organizes traditional Chinese medicine, astrology and much else in Chinese cosmological thought. Wood, fire, earth, metal and water are not simply five convenient categories borrowed for physiognomy, they are a single interlocking system in which each phase is traditionally understood to generate the next, wood feeding fire, fire's ash becoming earth, earth bearing metal, metal enriching water, and water in turn nourishing wood, a cycle mian xiang's face shape reading draws on without needing to restate.
The Wood Face Shape itself, mu xing lian, is described as long and narrow, with a high forehead, prominent cheekbones and a face noticeably longer than it is wide, echoing wood's own traditional association with upward growth. Practitioners read this shape as belonging to someone principled, driven and inclined toward leadership, qualities the wider five phase system also assigns to wood as an element, so the personality reading is not invented for the face specifically but inherited directly from wood's established place within the broader cosmological framework the whole classification borrows from.
Connections
Associated With
Source Mirror of Auras: Chen Tuan on PhysiognomyLivia Kohn
Belongs to Tradition
One of the Five Element face shapes (wuxing), classifying overall face form by the Chinese five element correspondence system.
Source A Textbook of Physiognomy: The Tradition of the Shenxiang quanbianLivia Kohn
Sources
1. A Textbook of Physiognomy: The Tradition of the Shenxiang quanbian
Livia Kohn, Asian Folklore Studies, 1986the Ming dynasty dating of the Shenxiang quanbian, 1465 to 1620
2. Mirror of Auras: Chen Tuan on Physiognomy
Livia Kohn, Asian Folklore Studies, 1988Kohn 1988, p. 224, section 4, "The appearance of the wood-type"
A person who belongs to the phase "wood" is usually slim in body and fresh in complexion. Yet one cannot be sure of his or her inner qualities, since the person might resemble a rather coarse kind of tree or might be like a tree with a hollow stem.
- Associated With: Wood
View the Source Targeting the Readership for a Ming Publication: Comprehensiveness in the Compendium for the Expert Physiognomist
Mei Chun, Asia Major, 2016the compendium's construction and its attribution to Chen Tuan and the Hemp Robed MasterView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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