What Is Metal?!

💎 This week Ben asks Gabriella 'What Is Metal?!' They hammer away to get to the core of the subject. They explore the last of the Five Elements, Metal, highlighting its nature and use in the context of Five Element Acupuncture.

Transcript

Pt.1

Ben: So Gabriella, what is Metal?!

Gabriella: And so we come to Metal, the last (but not least) of the five elements. Remember that there is no beginning and no end, it just happens to be the place we chose, starting at Water, going through Wood, Fire and Earth. Metal is the next element in the cycle, following on from Earth, preceding water, and the season of Metal is Autumn. Maybe appropriate that we end our initial exploration of the elements with this season and this element, as Autumn does give us a kind of ending - although of course it’s an ending within a never-ending cycle!

Ben: Right. I think I can just about get my head around that.

Gabriella: Autumn is the time when nature must let go of all that is not necessary, making room for the new, ensuring that there is no waste of energy expenditure over those harsh months of winter. There is no other time of year when we’re so reminded of the inevitable season changes. It’s the season of surrender, time to let go of all that’s unnecessary, to lighten our burden. Not only do the trees conserve their energy by letting go of what is not needed, the dead leaves themselves release nutrients as they decay, and over time enrich the soil which in turn nourishes new growth. Nature understands the wisdom of recycling. It also understands the wisdom of paring back: The power of Metal is Balance. Growth cannot be limitless. Nature wisely tips the balance of spring’s upward growth and summer’s expansion, first by yielding a Harvest in Late Summer, and then by letting go and stripping back in Autumn, thus completing the annual cycle of life and death.

Ben: At the Autumn equinox days and nights become more equal in length.

Gabriella: That’s right, as the earth’s axis and orbit line up, we have roughly the same amount of day as we have night. Balance is a word I’ve mentioned a lot in this podcast, nature’s balance. Balance brings a guiding, restraining authority which is the connection to our heavenly father or divine presence, whatever we call it, the source of inspiration and connection to something that is greater than ourselves. The season of Autumn, (or the Fall for our American listeners), this time of balance, is a perfect time for us to be re-evaluating our lives. What is of purpose and what’s not? That connection to an energy greater than ourselves gives our lives a sense of purpose, a spiritual connection. We cannot transform and let go of what we no longer need without this constant re-evaluation. Spring, summer, late summer - they give great gifts, but nature knows that it cannot sustain: change and transformation is inevitable and essential.

Ben: I suppose there has to be death in order for there to be rebirth.

Gabriella: Death is the one thing that’s inevitable for every living thing. If we only had birth and growth, where would we be? Death makes way for birth, for new life. To quote Albert Einstein, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.” Which I find an awe-inspiring thought. That the sum total of energy in the universe has always been the same and will always remain so. We can neither add to it nor subtract from it. So - remembering that what happens outside of us also happens inside - the microcosm of the macrocosm - does it not mean that death itself is merely transformation of energy from one form into another?

Ben: Just like the leaf that has fallen from a tree?

Gabriella: Exactly Ben. That’s a great example. While growing on the tree, the leaf had received light energy from the sun and transformed it into chemical energy, and when it fell to the ground it released its energy in the form of nutrients to enrich the earth. Thus nature transforms the energy stored in that leaf from one thing to another. We can see that easily, but what happens after our death is not tangible and belief about that is very personal to each human being. The profound thing is, not a single one of us knows - so the absolute truth is what we don’t know - remember Lao Tzu? “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” And going back to Einstein, if our form IS entirely energy, (which I believe it is, the vital energy of all five elements) then death isn’t an ending but a transformation of that energy that we call Gabriella, or Ben, or Lao Tzu or Einstein, or name any other living thing, the transformation of that particular form of energy (in other words, that life) into ‘something else’.

Ben: And every culture on the planet has developed its own beliefs about what that ‘something else’ is - where we came from and where we go on to.

Gabriella: As well as its own perception of the divine. Ok, many of us, particularly in the Western world, don’t follow traditional beliefs about ‘the divine’ nowadays: many maintain that ‘god’ doesn’t exist, and of course on the other hand many hold a strong belief that god DOES exist - but no one can definitively prove one way or the other. My dad didn’t believe in god, but he used to say that music was the closest he felt to godliness: playing and singing music was his own form of spiritual experience, his way of connecting to the divine. And I believe that that connection, to the divine, is a fundamental need in every human: and each one of us perceives the divine in our own way.

Ben: Ooh, we’re in the realm of the metaphysical now Gabriella

Gabriella: Yes, I could easily ponder all this for hours or even more, however let’s move on. But just before we do, if any of you are familiar with the death card from the Tarot, it depicts a white skeleton with a metal scythe - this indicates change and evolution - it’s not “oh no, it’s the death card, only bad things are to come.” It’s indicating change and evolution, and not necessarily a physical death.

Ben: Autumn isn’t really a physical death either, is it? The leaves may die but the trees carry on living, don’t they?

Gabriella: Very well said Ben. It’s the shedding of what is no longer needed, making way for the new. Some patients tell me they find Autumn depressing. It brings up loss, signifies the end of happier, lighter, more carefree days. Stark, dark winter just around the corner. As Autumn heads towards winter, the days are getting shorter and colder, the nights longer and the return of light and warmth seems a long way ahead.

Ben: Autumn’s such a colourful time of year though!

Gabriella: Oh yes, so much to love about it. All those rich, vibrant colours. The season of Autumn is majestic and uplifting. It brings a deeper, more internal joy. Consider this incredible quality that unveils before us, it’s a beautiful internal experience. A bright, sunny Autumn day, the sun shining through leaves that haven’t yet fallen, they’re more transparent due to the withdrawal of fresh nutrients and the greens are changing to different shades of yellows, reds and browns… Looking up at the bright light coming through, illuminating the skeletal leaves is a glorious sight that makes me feel connected to the divine, the heavens and that which is beyond us.

Ben: What’s the colour of Metal then? Yellow? Red? Brown?

Gabriella: None of those, Ben. It’s white!

Ben: White? With all that colour around?

Gabriella: The Chinese talk about the mists of Autumn. Mist is a dense, heavy white in the air. And in the East, white is the colour associated with death. There’s a whiteness about a dead body, a bloodless lack of warmth and vitality, no matter what the person’s colour of skin. I had an elderly friend in Nepal who used to love asking me about my culture. We had the following conversation a number of times, he being both dumbfounded and amused by it.

“Tell me about weddings in your country” he’d ask.

“Well, they only last a few hours” I’d reply.

“What? Weddings here last at least two or three days! And the bride, what does she wear?” He’d go on to ask.

“The bride wears a white dress!”

“White? But that’s the colour widows wear! And when my mother and father died, I had to wear nothing but white for a whole year! Even my flip flops had to be white.”

In most parts of the East, brides wear red, the colour of joy and happiness.- which makes sense when we think back to the associations of Fire - red, joy, laughter, appropriate for a joyful occasion like a wedding. In the West, brides traditionally wear white, symbolising purity, which incidentally is also a quality of Metal, whereas in the East, white is seen as the colour of grief.

Ben: Ah, I see! So can I reasonably deduce that grief is the emotion associated with Metal?

Gabriella: Indeed it is. Which I think is the reason a lot of people say they feel depressed in this season. It’s not that grief is depression, it’s not at all the same thing, but grief is a sense of loss, nostalgia for times past, a kind of turning inwards that can lead to us describing how we’re feeling as low. Grief is such an intense emotion. I felt not just emotional pain, but also physical pain when my dad died, the loss seemed so huge. The thought that time would only ever take me further away from the last time I saw him alive was so painful. The world was a different place and initially I felt not only loss but also lost, guideless. Like I had to recalibrate who I was in this world. Grief is a natural process, and we recover. I no longer feel that pain. Sad of course that my dad died so young, however the pain subsided long ago - life goes on after all. But imagine if you’re stuck in the emotion of grief, never truly in the present because you’re longing for times past. Grief isn’t only about death. There’s a wonderful and evocative song, Autumn Leaves, sung by many, though the one I love best is Edith Piaf’s version. The falling leaves of autumn remind the singer of a lost love. It’s a poignant, heartbreaking memory of something beautiful that has come to an end. We can grieve for what was never meant to be and we can grieve for loss of connection to something greater than us.

Ben: Can you explain more about that?

Gabriella: When we talked about Earth, we talked about ‘Mother Earth’ and thought about the nourishment and support we receive from ‘her’ in body, mind and spirit. The Chinese saw Metal as the element naturally associated with the Father, or the Heavenly Father. They didn’t mean an ethereal being with a long grey beard sitting up there in the clouds. Heaven symbolises vastness and sacredness, a source of inspiration, the Yang to Earth’s Yin. Mankind stands upon Earth, head touching the Heavens. So when connection to the heavenly part of us, the divine spark that animates our essence, when that is lost we can experience grief, a longing or a need to search for something beyond.

Ben: One step beyond

Gabriella: Wow that’s a blast from the past! I used to dance to that - that’s Madness! I was probably around 15 when that song was a hit - now that could make me quite nostalgic but probably won’t mean much to most of our listeners. Moving on…

Ben: So we’ve looked at the emotion and the colour of Metal. How about the sound?

Gabriella: Maybe no surprise that it’s weeping.

Ben: It had to be really. It sounds like it would be obvious, but what does a weeping voice sound like?

Gabriella: Well, yes it can sound almost like the person is crying. Or the voice kind of fades with each sentence and you feel a longing or a yearning in it. Sometimes it can sound breathy, or like there’s not enough breath to sustain it. One of the organs of the Metal element is the Lung, so there’s an obvious connection there.

The other organ is the Colon. Both these organs are concerned with taking in, and also eliminating toxins and waste products, easy to make the connection to Autumn when nature eliminates what it no longer needs.

Ben: What a load of rubbish!

Gabriella: Ha ha - It’s not all rubbish Ben! What is the action of the lung? Inspiration and expiration - and our ability to be inspired comes directly from the lung. Expiration expels that which is not needed. And going back to rubbish, the odour of Metal is Rotten, the smell of rotting matter. The sense organ of the Metal element is the Nose - which of course plays a huge part in the process of inhalation and exhalation as well as giving us the ability to smell - the rubbish as well as the more fragrant kinds of smells that on the whole we tend to prefer. Metal’s odour can be like dead leaves, or rotting flesh. Let’s think about rubbish for a moment. How important is the role of the dustbin man? If our rubbish wasn’t removed, we’d be living in a stinking pile of filthy, rotten matter. I remember the bin men striking back in 1978 in what’s known as the Winter of Discontent - mountains of black bin bags piled up on every street, the stench of it pervaded.

We’ll come back to the Colon - and the Lung - when we cover the Officials in more detail in a later series, but it’s vital we remember how essential waste removal is for us all.

Ben: And on that note, let’s remove ourselves for a quick break!

Gabriella: That’s a rubbish joke…

Ben: Opportunity wasted.

Pt 2

Ben: So, can you describe some other qualities of Metal Gabriella?

Gabriella: Metal Gabriella is exactly like me but made entirely of silver and gold… Quality is a good word, because Metal gives us quality. In Autumn, the fallen leaves rot and compost, returning essential nutrients to the soil. Just imagine how those qualities that are being returned to the earth enrich it, keeping it fertile. How essential this process is for future growth. The old not only making way for the new, but nourishing it, adding quality and richness.

Metal is of great value to us. We use it for tools, appliances, vehicles, adornments, currency.

Ben: And needles!

Gabriella: Absolutely! Good point Ben! Perhaps not as decorative as jewellery, but nonetheless an excellent use for metal. When I had my jewellery workshop in Kathmandu, each jeweller had a piece of leather hung underneath his bench, so when he was sawing, filing or cutting the silver, tiny fragments of precious silver dust would fall into the leather along with bits of files, saws and other paraphernalia. We collected everything, and took this pile of ‘rubbish’ to the refiners, where they performed an alchemical process that removed all the low grade metal and other bits of crud, and like a miracle, a beautiful shining lump of silver would emerge that we could take back and use for the next batch of jewellery. Just like how the fallen leaves compost to make rich soil full of nutrients.

Jewellery isn’t of course the only use for metal, although of course it’s a very good one! We use metal knives or scissors to cut things with: so there’s a sharpness that Metal gives us. And mentally, it cuts to the truth, or to the core.

Ben: Putting the pedal to the metal?

Gabriella: Well yes in a way, Metal’s incisiveness means it can quickly cut to the chase, bypassing the unnecessary.

Ben: It ‘irons’ out the kinks with steely determination

Gabriella: I can’t copper-ny more

Ben: The gold ones are the best

Gabriella: Actually I rather like platinum…

Ben: You would

Gabriella: No, it’s Metal we’re talking about today Ben. Actually talking about wood, and coming back to the sharp, cutting edge of Metal, it’s an interesting fact that trees don’t passively ‘let go’ of their leaves. They actively push the leaves off the branches, it’s an active process. They cut the leaves off with an enzyme that’s produced when the daylight cycles change. The enzyme seals off the membrane where the leaf is attached so it’s actually cutting off nutrition. But before it cuts it off, it stops providing valuable nutrients to the leaf, the withdrawal of which is what causes all those beautiful Autumn colours.

Another special thing about Metal is that it manifests above and below. Above we have the air, and of course the heavens. While below we have the minerals and gems within the earth.

Ben: Cool

Gabriella: Cold even! Of all the elements, Metal is the coldest and most unreceptive, and the only thing that can change it is heat. We have to heat it at great temperatures in order for us to be able to mould and shape it into whatever form we have planned for it.

Ben: What about Metal in us?

Gabriella: On a physical level, our bodies depend on trace amounts of minerals, vital components that come from our food. These perform a huge range of functions, such as building materials for our bones, influencing muscle and nerve function and regulating the body’s water balance. They’re also components of hormones, enzymes and other biologically active compounds. A good example is iron. Iron is essential for growth and development. The body uses iron to make haemoglobin, which is a protein in blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to all parts of the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles. Iron is also used in the production of some hormones.

The external physical manifestation of Metal is the skin. It’s said to be our third lung - and while it doesn’t actually inhale and exhale like the Lungs, it does absorb oxygen. And it’s an organ of excretion - it eliminates toxins, including heavy metals.

Ben: What, like Black Sabbath?

Gabriella: And on a mental level, it allows us to receive inspiration, its ability to refine gives us quality, value, self worth and purity. It allows us to eliminate waste - ideas, concepts and thoughts that are of no value that we no longer need.

Ben: I can see the value of that

Gabriella: And I can see the direction - which is West. The direction of West. The sun sets in the West, the end of a day…

Ben: Or the end of an episode even

Conclusion

Ben: So Gabriella, what’s the point?! What does the element of Metal have to do with sticking thin needles into a human?

Gabriella: Well Ben, what’s the point of you asking all these questions if you can’t tell me what you’ve learnt! Why don't you tell me what you have learned about Metal through our exploration?

Ben: I've come to understand that Metal represents so much more than just its physical properties. It's about balance, quality, and the cycle of life. It's about the sharpness of truth and the ability to cut through the unnecessary. It’s gives us our ability to rbe inspired AND allows the body to let go of what is no longer needed, much like the shedding of leaves in Autumn.

Gabriella: Exactly, Ben.

Ben: It's been an inspiring journey exploring the element of Metal and it’s role in Five Element Acupuncture. Thanks for guiding us through it.

Gabriella: My pleasure, Ben. Next time we’ll be looking at the relationship of the elements - an important step in the process of understanding all that we’ve learned about the elements and how we can use this information to affect the flow of energy therefore restoring balance and the potential of health.

Ben: And to our lis teners, remember to stay curious and keep seeking balance in your lives. Until next time!

Gabriella: Bye for now!