The Ancient Astronomical-Geometric Orbital Essence of the 'Jing' in Classical Formulas
What is a “classical formula” (jingfang)? Viewed from the older origins of the written character jing, predating the Spring and Autumn period, the word contains an exceptionally rigorous cosmological idea. The jing in jingfang fundamentally means the “constant Way.” Whenever the ancients titled a work a jing—such as the Yijing or the Inner Canon—it signified that the learning was built upon cosmic regularities that would not shift even across thousands of years.
The first principle at the center of this concept is the constancy of the spiral geometric trajectory generated by superimposed celestial circular motions (Celestial Orbital Matrix). The human system in which we live is completely enclosed within the enormous physical black box of the solar system. Within the solar system are three of the most basic periodic physical motions: Earth’s rotation, Earth’s revolution around the Sun, and the Moon’s revolution around Earth. When these three approximately circular motions are nonlinearly superimposed along the time axis, they trace a particular spiral-like regularity of celestial motion through the void. This trajectory is what the ancients called the jing.
The reason the ancients had the ambition to write “canonical works” and devise “classical formulas” was precisely that they perceived this: so long as the physical orbital trajectories (jing) of the Sun, Moon, and five planets continue their motion, the laws governing fluctuations of qi and blood in the bodies of mammals on Earth will not change. Classical formulas are the ultimate products obtained when the ancients perfectly matched and encoded these constant celestial geometric orbital regularities into the properties and flavors of medicinal substances. This explains why classical formulas can still be clinically precise and effective after two thousand years—because the “constant Way” of celestial motion has never changed.