Treatment of the Five-Phase Host Positions and the Temporal Sequence of the Three Yin and Three Yang Host Qi
After analyzing the more variable guest qi, victorious qi, and restorative qi, we must return to the “host at home” that continuously holds the larger annual pattern: the host of the Five-Phase positions (the five host movements) and the host qi of the Three Yin and Three Yang. Teacher Jiang notes that treatment during host-time phases is unusually clean and simple. The verbs explicitly given in the ancient text are “supplement” and “drain,” and the core structure directly applies the temporal-model formulas of the ten Heavenly Stems. At the same time, host-qi treatment introduces a highly dynamic temporal principle: drain first, supplement afterward.
For imbalance of the host of a Five-Phase position—the host movements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—the treatment prescribed in the original text uses the standard supplementing and draining flavors of the temporal model completely and strictly, without admixture, and is presented as highly self-consistent.
When the text shifts to imbalance of the Three Yin and Three Yang host qi, the ancestors leave an especially refined mnemonic: “Jueyin … sour first, then pungent”; “Shaoyin … salty first, then sweet.” Teacher Jiang interprets this as follows: sour is the temporal draining position of Wood, while pungent is the temporal supplementing position of Wood; salty is the temporal draining position of Fire, while sweet is the temporal supplementing position of Fire. These phrases are therefore not arbitrary lists of medicinal flavors, but temporal instructions for a microscopic tactic of first using the draining position to attack the pathogenic excess, then using the supplementing position to preserve the upright. The article presents this as evidence of the high precision of spacetime classical formulas.