Temporal Governance of the Six Qi and Annual Climatic Segmentation

The Six Qi are Wind, Cold, Summerheat, Dampness, Dryness, and Fire. In the regular yearly sequence, the first qi is governed by Jueyin Wind-Wood; the second by Shaoyin Sovereign-Fire; the third by Shaoyang Ministerial-Fire; the fourth by Taiyin Dampness-Earth; the fifth by Yangming Dryness-Metal; and the sixth by Taiyang Cold-Water.

This is the relatively constant regularity within the temporal circulation of the qi of Heaven.

As discussed in the Spacetime section, the ancients did not treat the real world as mechanically identical from year to year. A model therefore needs both constant and changing components in order to fit complexity. Within the Six-Qi model, guest qi provides this changing component.

Combining six host qi with six guest qi yields 6 × 6 = 36 possible overlays, described in detail in the Suwen: Liu Yuan Zheng Ji Da Lun. In clinical literature, these host–guest combinations may be reflected in otherwise difficult labels found in the Guilin ancient text, such as Taiyang Wind-strike, Taiyang Cold-strike, Shaoyang Wind-strike, Proper-Yang Yangming, or Shaoyang Yangming.

Perhaps future research will be able to test whether the constant rotation of Heaven’s host qi could have left stable structural “imprints” in living organisms that the classical tradition describes as channels. Within a bilateral organism with hands and feet, such a framework is then represented through the twenty-four regular left/right channel pathways.

This article should also be read together with “Signs of Water and Fire and the Upper–Lower, Left–Right Pathways.” There we used the image of a Ferris wheel between Heaven and Earth, with the Six Qi rotating through positions. But the changing conditions of Heaven and Earth mean that the qi currently “on duty” may not remain stably in its expected position; abnormal movement of the Six Qi can then arise.

This leads to the Six Qi × seven abnormal qi-transformation patterns and their treatment methods discussed in the Suwen: Zhi Zhen Yao Da Lun (see the Formula section). In this research interpretation, the decoction-formula tradition derives possible classical prescriptions from such abnormal patterns rather than treating the formulas as products of trial-and-error alone.

The Six-Qi framework ultimately developed into a rich collection of subdomains, including population disease patterns, preparing substances according to the governing year, treatment methods, and the Nineteen Pathomechanisms.