Tianfu, Suihui, and Host–Guest Conformity Are Not Footnotes: How the Ancients Used Secondary Rules to Refine Yunqi Interpretation
If seven energy fields can already describe a person’s qi-transformation background, why does the Neijing devote so much space to Tianfu, Suihui, Taiyi Tianfu, host–guest victory and defeat, whether host and guest are mutually favorable, and the first through sixth steps under the six Sitian administrations?
The reason is simple: the seven fields tell us which forces are present; secondary rules tell us how those forces act when they meet.
In this round of research, we therefore did not “learn” new rules from the forty thousand medical cases. Instead, we wrote into the model the rules that the Suwen had already taught.
For example, when the central movement corresponds with Sitian or the year branch, structures such as Tianfu, Suihui, and Taiyi Tianfu arise. When host qi and guest qi meet, there are relations of mutual favor or non-favor, as well as the rule that “host victory is contrary, guest victory is compliant.” Host movement and guest movement also form Five-Phase relations when they encounter one another. In the Great Treatise on the Correct Administration of the Six Origins, the six Sitian administrations are further divided into six steps, and the text directly records the “common illnesses of the people” that are more likely at each step.
These rules must not be mixed together. Tianfu and Suihui mainly act as amplifiers and modifiers of disease momentum. Encountering Taiyi Tianfu does not justify inventing an extra symptom for a patient. Host–guest qi and host–guest movement primarily modify relations such as compliance, contrariety, and mutual favor. Only when the Six Origins text explicitly records a step-specific “common illness” do we allow that rule to add a new symptom explanation.
The results are revealing.
Using only first-level resonance among the seven fields, 4,493 cases already reached High Fit. Among them, 1,476 cases required no secondary rule at all: the seven fields themselves were sufficient to form a clear pathomechanism picture.
After adding the classical secondary rules, another 1,837 cases that had not previously reached High Fit were promoted into that category. In other words, the number of High Fit cases increased from 4,493 to 6,330.
If we instead examine symptom coverage, the six Sitian × six-step disease patterns in the Six Origins raised the proportion of symptoms explained by the first-level seven-field model from about 8.4% to 11.2%—an increase of nearly one third.
This result closely matches the way the Neijing is written. The ancients never stopped after arranging a table of years. They repeatedly asked: Who is superimposed on whom? Who overcomes whom? Are they of the same qi? Are they in the proper position? Which step has now been reached?
The Five Movements and Six Qi therefore should not be read merely by “looking up a table.” They operate in two layers:
First, look at the fields. Second, look at the interactions among the fields.
Equally important, many of the forty thousand cases still do not become highly explainable after these additions. That is a healthy result. It reminds us that Yunqi theory describes a bias imposed by Heaven’s qi on the human system; it never claimed that every disease under Heaven is caused by climatic qi alone.
Research Data Download
Section titled “Research Data Download”The case fields and case narratives inside the Excel file remain in Chinese so the research data can be inspected directly.