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Description
This is a design I put together for a friend's RP on the sluggy boards. Perhaps a video game I someday hope to work on.

He worked out this elemental system using five basic elements split up into the categories of passive, active, and balanced, and I thought, well, does that sound like the basic premise of a lot of Chinese philosophy or what? I love this elements of magic stuff and thinking up how things are categorized and what kind of artwork comes from them (that's actually the basis of the character I'm running in said game). So I thought, passive, active, balanced, I'll decide on colors for each element and put up a yin-yang design for them, and here we are.
The Balanced elements are Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Purity.
The Active, or yang elements are Flame, Lightning, Flow, Plant, and Light.
The Passive, or yin elements are Smoke, Wind, Ice, Stone, and Darkness.
And then there's the ultimate null element, but I figured that wouldn't be part of the design. So, the right side of each circle represents the passive, or yin element, and the left side is the active, or yang element. Then the colored field behind each circle represents the balanced element that the yin and yang are different sides of.

I It took a while for me to decide where to place each circle. In a lot of Chinese philosophy, the Heavens are the classic example of yang, and Earth is obedient to it, exemplifying yin, however both of them seem to exhibit passive and active forces quite a bit. I put water to the right, next to the darkness element, because it is the most yin of the elements, and fire respectively, is the most yang of the element. I figured then that wind
Alternatively, I was wondering if I should put them in the order of their seasons, which also correspond to the cardinal directions and times of day. The yinyang symbol is derived from a way the Ancient Chinese mapped the motion of the sun throughout the year. The top of the circle and the black dot represent the summer solstice, when yang begins to give way to yin and days grow shorter. The bottom of the circle and the white dot are the winter solstice, when yin gives way to yang. Winter is Water and summer is fire, so they then would go on the top and bottom. Of course, if you go for cardinal directions instead, they are reversed because South is warmer (warmer climate and where the sun shines from in the winter) and north is colder. Of course, I could then just flip the central symbol around, I suppose. And then if I'm going to do that, air and earth become a problem because the Chinese system doesn't have Air, it has wood and metal. Metal is late Summer. I can't remember if Spring is earth or if Fall is Earth, and then the other would be wood. It seems to me, though, that spring is better suited for Earth (the western elements encapsulating plant life into earth), and fall for air. And then those two would correspond symbolically to east and west, sunrise and sunest.

Sorry for ranting there. Sometimes I could go on forever about this kind of stuff.

Description
This is a design I put together for a friend's RP on the sluggy boards. Perhaps a video game I someday hope to work on.

He worked out this elemental system using five basic elements split up into the categories of passive, active, and balanced, and I thought, well, does that sound like the basic premise of a lot of Chinese philosophy or what? I love this elements of magic stuff and thinking up how things are categorized and what kind of artwork comes from them (that's actually the basis of the character I'm running in said game). So I thought, passive, active, balanced, I'll decide on colors for each element and put up a yin-yang design for them, and here we are.
The Balanced elements are Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Purity.
The Active, or yang elements are Flame, Lightning, Flow, Plant, and Light.
The Passive, or yin elements are Smoke, Wind, Ice, Stone, and Darkness.
And then there's the ultimate null element, but I figured that wouldn't be part of the design. So, the right side of each circle represents the passive, or yin element, and the left side is the active, or yang element. Then the colored field behind each circle represents the balanced element that the yin and yang are different sides of.

I It took a while for me to decide where to place each circle. In a lot of Chinese philosophy, the Heavens are the classic example of yang, and Earth is obedient to it, exemplifying yin, however both of them seem to exhibit passive and active forces quite a bit. I put water to the right, next to the darkness element, because it is the most yin of the elements, and fire respectively, is the most yang of the element. I figured then that wind
Alternatively, I was wondering if I should put them in the order of their seasons, which also correspond to the cardinal directions and times of day. The yinyang symbol is derived from a way the Ancient Chinese mapped the motion of the sun throughout the year. The top of the circle and the black dot represent the summer solstice, when yang begins to give way to yin and days grow shorter. The bottom of the circle and the white dot are the winter solstice, when yin gives way to yang. Winter is Water and summer is fire, so they then would go on the top and bottom. Of course, if you go for cardinal directions instead, they are reversed because South is warmer (warmer climate and where the sun shines from in the winter) and north is colder. Of course, I could then just flip the central symbol around, I suppose. And then if I'm going to do that, air and earth become a problem because the Chinese system doesn't have Air, it has wood and metal. Metal is late Summer. I can't remember if Spring is earth or if Fall is Earth, and then the other would be wood. It seems to me, though, that spring is better suited for Earth (the western elements encapsulating plant life into earth), and fall for air. And then those two would correspond symbolically to east and west, sunrise and sunest.

Sorry for ranting there. Sometimes I could go on forever about this kind of stuff.