The Twelve Elements: Cosmographical Roots of Traditional Chinese Medicine

By William Wadsworth

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664159907

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Copyright © 2022 by William Wadsworth.

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Rev. date: 06/14/2022

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Solar System Three Structures and Three cycles of light

Chapter 2 An Early Chinese Differentiation of Heaven from Earth

I.    The Ten Celestial Stems

II.  The Twelve Terrestrial Branches

Chapter 3 An East West Qualitative Comparison

I.   Basic Hybrid Standards

II.  Planetary Mass, Influence and Bias

III. Documented Astrological to TCM Connections

Chapter 4 One The One-to-One Relation between Humans and the World

I.   The Number One

II.  The Cosmographic Structure

III. Theory

IV. Traditional Astrological Standards

V.  Traditional Acupuncture Practice

Chapter 5 The Number Two: The Source of Oppositions and Dualistic Philosophy

I.   The Number Two

II.  The Cosmographic Structure

III. Astrological Theory

IV. Medical Practice—Theory

V.  Medical Practice—Treatment

Chapter 6 The Number Three— Heaven, Earth, and Humankind

I.   The Number Three

II.  Cosmographic Structures

III. Astrological Theory

IV. Medical Practice—Theory and Practice

Chapter 7 The Number Four The Number Four, Cardinal Points, and the Earth

I.   The Number Four

II.  Cosmographic Structures

III. Astrological Theory

IV. Medical Theory and Practice

Chapter 8 The Number Five: The Five Agents and Their Origin, Correspondences, and Meaning

I.   The Number Five

II.  Esoteric Aspects of Chinese Cosmology Related to Numbers and Agents

III. The Standard Associations Between Five Elements and the World

IV. Sheng, Ko, and Counteractive Cycles in Five Elements, and Why the Fire Element Is Given Special Emphasis

I. The Sheng cycle

II. The Ko-Cycle

III. The Counteractive Cycle

VIII.  Cosmographic Structures

IX. Astrology and The Five Planets

X. Medical Practice—Theory and Five-Element Treatments

Chapter 9 The Number Six: The Three Yins and Three Yangs

I.   The Number Six

II.  Cosmographic Structures

III. Three Yin and Three Yang Theory as Applied to the Body

IV. The Evolution of the Proposed Three-Yin and Three-Yang Concept

V.  Comparing Uses of Terrestrial Branches in Cardinal-Point and Six-Division Models

VI. Differentiating Levels of Function

VII. Three Orbs Conceived in Three Dimensions

VIII. Circuit Phases and Levels

IX.  Additional Rationale for the Proposed Six Configurations Model

X.   Astrological Theory

XI.  Medical Implications of the Six Configurations

Chapter 10 The Number Seven Lunation and Time

I.   The Number Seven

II.  Cosmographic Structure

III. Evolutionary Patterns in the Lunation Cycle

IV. Intuitive Insights into Structure and Meaning

V.  The Moon Phases as Process

VI. Astrology

VII. Medical Implications of the Number Seven

Chapter 11 The Number Eight—A Third Dimension of Depth

I.   The Number Eight

II.  Cosmographic Structure

III. Medical Practice—Theory

IV. Astrological Theory

V.  The Eight Extra Meridians and the Eight Divisions

VI. Medical Practice—Treatment

Chapter 12 The Completed Body in Three Dimensions

I.   The Number Nine

II.  Cosmographic Structure

III. Astrology

IV. Medical Practice—Theory and Treatment

Chapter 13 The Number 10: Wholeness and Completion

I.   The Number Ten

II.  Cosmographic Structure

III. Astrology

Chapter 14 The Number 12: Heaven to Earth—Introduction to Twelve Terrestrial Branches and Their Basic Cyclic Correlations

Chapter 15 A Revision of the Traditional Cosmic Clock

I.   Cosmographical Structure

Conclusion

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Endnotes

Bibliography

Dedication

With profound gratitude and respect to the saints of Beas, Maharaj Charan Singh Ji and Baba Ji Gurinder Singh who live what they teach and who act as all others might act in a sacred world. Their word is the unwritten word, the intelligence that is awake in the void behind all appearances, the source of number, and the root of human language and meaning. Everything of merit in this book derives from their example.

Acknowledgments

This project has taken many years to reach publication and only through the support of those close to me has it reached the light of day. With love and appreciation to Jane Clarke Wadsworth for unfailing support in this endeavor.

Danni and Anna Gold contributed directly and gave brilliant insights along with unfailing supporting for the endeavor financial and other.

Lonny Jarrett has helped immeasurably by reading early drafts. He has inspired this effort with his published genius and clinical mastery. He made it clear that we need both scholarship and holistic thinking to treat effectively with acupuncture. He included myth, psychology, geography, and cosmology in Nourishing Destiny. My work is merely a footnote to his important contributions.

Duncan Laurie has shown the limits even of cosmology and the need for broad energetic understanding of medicine. I appreciate his patient commiseration, reading of dim copy, and support.

With gratitude to Brad who was living proof that some of the wisest men embrace solitude, study nature, and live outside the academic system.

With appreciation to my brilliant students at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, NY who inspired this version of the book.

To Sr. Anne O’Donnell of Catholic University for patience and training.

With love and appreciation to the others who gave love and sustained me in dark times.

Preface

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A Life-long fascination with traditional cosmologies east and west led to this summation of their wisdom. Though strange and conflicted in their varieties, ancient images and theories offer something tangible and useful when compared to a virtual world. As a young man these older myths of creation and cosmic order were the first to described the world as I experienced it. Powers were named and clothed in recognizable symbols. Terminology came from nature and every narrative, however fantastical, recorded meaningful cultural associations. The world was real, not a probability. Heaven and earth were treated respectfully, as superiors and parents, and sources of unlimited knowledge and wisdom. Morality and science spoke to each other. Even human creativity and art deliberately followed nature and a moral order. In an interconnected cosmos human life made sense, gained proportionality, and shed emptiness. Our upright divine form was assumed to be strong, purposeful, and good, where in a techno-mechanical universe the whole vastness with its exploding suns and black holes seemed overwhelming and meaningless. This narrative recovers for the modern era a vision of ancestral faith—that nature comprises a sacred order and an ever renewing, unlimited source of vitality, harmony, and human purpose.

At the very least traditional naturalistic medicine, astrology, and cosmology assumed that humans and the earth were part of a geometrical order. The human form was thought to be a sophisticated microcosm of the whole both in fact and metaphor. The code is exposed. Numbers explain the excitement geometry and trigonometry generated, along with its utility. Every philosopher and scientist before 1750 studied and mastered these ideas and used variously allied disciplines of astronomy, astrology, geometry, chorography, and geography to understand nature, medicine, and human character. In the long course of my graduate and professional study of traditional sciences, I discovered somewhat to my surprise that the systems also worked analytically and medically.

Although the ancient assumptions behind medicine and astrology may be difficult to understand, the systems were filled with familiar plants, anecdotes, analogies, catalogues, and cultural wisdom. Our ancestors confidently assumed that dedicated study might resolve all the fundamental mysteries of life. Introspective knowledge offered a path out of the labyrinth of nature with its vast structures, riot of forms, and seeming chaos. Although modern science and society have moved beyond naturalistic medicine and its ethos, by doing so, they have lost almost as much as they have gained.

My liberal Puritan ancestors in 17th century Hartford, Connecticut, too, planted by the moon, followed planetary motions through the zodiac, and used nature’s pharmacopeia. They were shepherds, blacksmiths, and farmers. It is their world view that this book aims to recapture. This helped me to reconnect to their collective attempt to live and embody the Renaissance idea of dignity of man (humankind), and to relearn some essential truths overlooked by progress and technology. Each generation has to rediscover the idea that human beings are children of heaven and earth and designed perfectly for the world. Nothing is wrong. Every person is a miracle and possessed of everything needed to live a meaningful life.

Out of this pristine and perhaps simplistic first glimpse of the order of the world, I discovered a credible basis for traditional systems of philosophy and medicine. Nearly the whole of pre-modern science and what now are considered arcane disciplines of astrology and acupuncture derive from this ancient geometrical order. Even today the sum of the benefits of clinical acupuncture may derive its results from the natural and parallel structural symmetries of the body and their phased responses buried in the human brain and cellular physiology.

The twelve elements simply are the values and qualities that imaginatively associate with the first twelve whole numbers as twelve prismatic cosmographical glasses through which a wise person might view the world. These produce geometric forms that, when reapplied to the cycle of the day, month, or year, result in conceptually important spatial divisions of heaven. These, in turn, result in definite diurnal and seasonal phases of time that were first perceived in the apparent regular motions of the stars, planets, sun, and moon.

The basic premise of Twelve Elements is that every window on the world is a window on the same world. This means that each of the geometrically driven models behind numbered systems like five elements, eight principles, twelve zodiac constellations or meridians, and 28 lunar constellations/mansions must display congruent associations and meanings for overlapping periods of time or in relation to symbolic structures such as the eastern horizon or mid-heaven. This obvious point only needs to be emphasized in a book like this because it has been neglected historically. In modern astrology and clinically defined acupuncture practice the generative meaning of the whole numbers has been forgotten. By discarding these windows, history has made it hard to see the world as it is actually experienced. Mangled with systematic skepticism, what was once perceived as a superb harmony between parts and the whole has disintegrated into theoretical fragments like atoms and sub atomic particles.

Writing as a generalist, I may here and there tread roughly on tradition and specialization, but sometimes, a fresh look will yield unforeseen benefits. I’m not asserting a grand common system below all cultures, a moiety, but I’m taking some intellectual risks by rethinking origins, number, geometry, and cosmology. Paul Unschuld, Elizabeth Rochat, Dan Bensky, Stephen Birch, and other great scholars are doing the other essential job of textual and cultural conservancy.

Numbers were an important code for philosophic constructs, and they formed the basis for the mnemonic systems in traditional medicine and astronomy, but they offered more than that. Basic things have been devalued in most modern practices, like the importance of the new, waxing, full, and waning phases of the moon. These determined what was visible or invisible, and determine the zones of the body below or above the waist that should be treated during those phases. Only through whole numbers can students unlock the riddle of phase dynamics and bring the practitioner and the patient closer to their birthright as happy and legitimate co-participants with the supreme intelligence that designed the world.

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b.

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Figure 2. a.The Geometrical Aspects from Firmicus Maternus, a Roman Astrologer; b. The Principal Astrological Aspects with Waxing and Waning Cycle Phases

Each successive whole number and its divisions of the geometrical circle have a natural, living cosmographical connection to each person, and that connection was hinted at in historically interlocked traditions. Numbers explained the four seven day weeks and the twenty-eight lunar constellations, the five-element and five visible planet system, the three yins and the three yang of heaven and earth with the aligned six external and internal causes of disease, the eight principle system of acupuncture, the nine divisions of China and the body, and the different versions of the eight, ten or twelve houses or divisions of Zodiac man.

Much of tradition has been destroyed by periodic purges or lost with oral tradition, legend, and maxim. Lao Tzu considered the Tao to be dim to human understanding. In the oldest tradition therefore, I bow to the creator confident that he may transmit to the reader his own primordial wisdom and to mother earth who shapes all sapience and tradition, and to the great sages of the past whose conceptions inform these pages.

It only remains for me to apologize for nailing down each chapter about the meaning of whole numbered divisions of the light cycles with technical language, comparative qualities, and even arcane symbols from Chinese medicine and astrology. I intrude these discomforts because potentially their re-framing may revolutionize those inherited disciplines and open new vistas for diagnosis and treatment. These practices need a legitimate demonstration and explanation of the consequence of accepting their own basic premises. Either the human body and humanistic medicine are connected to, and integral to, the cosmos (at every level of mathematics and physics) or they are not. To favor geometry over calculus and empiricism is unusual, and it required obsessive analysis to justify. However, I hope that any reader who is not a professional astrologer or acupuncturist will overlook this, especially in chapters about the whole numbers six and twelve, and will be able to appreciate how simple whole numbers generate and describe reality usefully and with ever increasing complexity, symmetry, beauty, and sophistication.

Introduction

I have devised this mirrour, or cosmograhical glass, in which men will behold not one or two persons, but the heavens with her planets and starres, the earth with her beautiful Regions and the seas with her merveilous increases.

—William Cunningham, The Cosmographical Glasse (1598⁴)

Thinkers from every country and generation have considered the relations between humans and their environment. The terms of their explanations have changed, but the degree of intelligence has not. While the advance of mathematics and science has increased the sum of specialized knowledge, important traditional vistas have been termed esoteric and neglected. A historical perspective shows a bias in early modern science created by a cultural distrust of the senses and a philosophical rejection of qualitative standards from traditional philosophy and medicine.⁵ The qualities could never be materially or mechanically isolated for quantitative study, and statistical mathematics were as yet undeveloped. Scale and structure continue to dominate modern science despite the blending of disciplines and the recognition of certain limitations in the scientific model. Expanding complexity is bounded by what is and what is not nonpolynomial—complete or NP-complete for short or what allows analysis: There is no known algorithm that totally solves certain problems, that yields a mathematically provable minimum solution, other than just running through all these cases.⁶ Despite the advantages of computers, problems involving demographics, higher levels of complexity, intelligence, and consciousness itself are difficult to solve definitively. Even future AI will disappoint for want of soul. That is where rational qualitative standards remain useful as means for consolidating complex trends using standard terms for observable conditions that bridge all disciplines. Studies of cosmic cycles as esoteric causes, as defined below, are viewed respectfully as the origins of the history of rationality. Humankind was the measure. Traditionally, the models of human physiology and cyclic phases were intertwined; and as such, neither the senses nor empirical conditions were excluded from consideration. Moreover, they continue to generate valid models for a cosmos that generates regular meteorological conditions with obvious physiological, cultural, and subjective parallels.

Anthropologists and historians postulate that in ancient societies, humans did not differentiate themselves from the cosmos. This unity is tallied today in studies of primitive societies in anthropology—the Large Hadron Collider of the origins of culture as analyzed by many and reflected upon by figures like Levi-Strauss and Julian Jaynes.⁷ Eastern traditions of contemplation always have reduced human consciousness to a point of awareness in a vast continuum, and concepts of emptiness or void have allowed contemplation in every period to induce a perspective in which objective conditions supersede personal bias, projection, or delusion.⁸ From that perspective, particularly in the case where knowledge of pre-birth and post-death contexts inform knowledge of terrestrial conditions, the question of being advanced or primitive is moot.

Thus, the argument that the body was a microcosm or miniature of the larger macrocosm—the epitome of everything visible in the outer creation—now with quantum mathematics and computer modelling achieves renewed vitality. Part of the argument of this book is that there is a one-to-one mapping between individual and cosmos. This is both a matter of consciousness and fact. Studies of cause as defined below are viewed as the origins of the history of rationality not because in ancient societies people did not differentiate themselves from the cosmos, but because they retained knowledge of their connection. Nature provided a language for various stages of personal or social complexity.⁹ The language of numbers and qualities in ancient geometry and cosmographical systems allowed the person to remain in the formulation in a way similar to the semiology of Charles Pierce.¹⁰ The advantage of the qualities (hot, cold, moisture, dryness, etc.), when treated as signs, was that they were not merely theoretical stances or images, but participants in the continuum of human experience.¹¹

To learn any traditional science, particularly Chinese acupuncture, as an English-speaking American is to struggle through a sea of strange terminology. Every specialization requires such language, but the cultural context in which terms like Shao Yang, terrestrial branches, ghost points, Shen and Hun developed, mostly is a mystery. When my training cracked the code the situation was worse because I had definitions that didn’t add up to a coherent system. You could learn it, but you couldn’t fully believe it, or do it. Clearly, these selective points and meridians represented a shorthand or code for a larger system, and the shorthand was compressed to fit into a number-driven conception. But what system? Original naturalistic medicine clearly emerged from a larger concept different from most modern day trained systems. Let’s attempt to demystify the past.

The human body is part of the world. For a world that craves simplicity, this is a simple statement that, if taken at face value, has important ramifications. If people are spatially part of the world and belong in it, and have sprung from it, then the body is logically an outcome of laws that govern the whole. The symmetry in our body must also be the symmetry of the world; the functions of our body must also be functions of nature. If there are implications for form and space, there also are implications for time. Human behaviors can and must conform to laws of nature, or they die. People who jump off a cliff or walk unclothed into a blizzard, will face predictable outcomes; similarly, with regard to food, exercise, and behavior. Culturally, if a civilization abuses nature by overplanting, mining, rerouting water, poisoning soil, or burning organic resources, it destroys an essential, fragile equilibrium. In so doing people endanger themselves. If the human body developed in this world and is of this world, then the greater equilibrium is in us as well. Even futurists can affirm, as the ancient seers did, that there is a one-to-one relationship between the human body and the world. Contemporary over-analysis, materialism, nihilism, pop culture, and loss of faith obscure this fundamental truth.

If the body is a microcosm containing all the substances, functions, and qualities observable in nature and if consciousness permeates the whole, then form implies both order and consciousness. More than any other single factor, whole numbers offer a rational standard with which to evaluate the body and the world. When numbers are applied to the body and the world, they define bodies in distinctive ways. The number two, for instance, makes gross distinctions like left and right or up and down, and making these distinctions is useful both to anatomy and topography. The lens of different numbers may bring into focus specific characteristics even though the object under observation is the same. The perspective offered by each number is different. Each whole number shows the human figure in a particular ideal geometrical orientation, and the accumulated numbers will show how humans accumulate complex dimensionality that allows them to evolve and to adapt freely while learning from various layers of meaning built into structures of the body and nature.

Let’s begin with Sebastian Munster’s 1607 graphic representation of the cosmos at the beginning of the preface. He displays a circular world circumscribed by heaven above and hell below. The whole orb is organized by the sun and moon whose cycles of light nourish all life on earth. Here we glimpse a sacred order, an image of Eden, in which nature imposes its own hierarchical plan. The opposition of the four Aristotelean elements show each element in their natural place. Fire above associated with the sun, water below ruled by the moon as evident in the tides. These extremes are mediated by air and earth precisely as we see them when they meet at the horizon. And owing to this harmonious arrangement of elements and qualities all living forms and creatures move and do what they were designed to do, including humankind. This was the natural order as understood in Europe in 1605. Munster and his old school scholastic colleagues lived in a vastly expanded and newly discovered round world that thrived during the age of discovery. Yet, exploration and colonization stretched the limits of geometry, not only to describe the world’s scale and to explain the movement of heavenly bodies—but also to understand its unlimited diversity in climate, geography and cultural life.

Geometry before and during the 17th century was the basis for other sciences in University medical curriculum. It was geometry that united interlocking disciplines of medicine, which were geography, astronomy, anatomy/physical sciences/astrology. All time related factors in medicine including diagnosis, prognosis, observation of symptoms and crasis, including temperament [sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic], character (rational, animal, vegetable), habits, and environmental factors (dampness, cold, heat, dryness where people live), and chorography (the study of how different cultures emerge from different local environments as analyzed through the lens of the four or five elements). The zones of the body and range of functions were governed by vegetable (automatic, digestion and excretion), animal (reproduction, basic socialization and instinctive decision making), and rational (discrimination, logical though including analysis and synthesis, and systematic science) spirits. These tripartite whole principles were shared by Sebastian Munster and Robert Burton.¹⁴ They were generalists. The modern academic understanding of cosmography is well summarized by E. Patricia Vicari: Geography, known in the sixteenth century as ‘cosmography,’ was treated as a subdivision of mathematics or an aid in understanding history.¹⁵Thomas Blundeville, author of Cosmographia (1608), summarizes authoritatively the view held in this book that cosmography is a subdivision of mathematics and geometry with the following parts:

• Astronomy is a science, which considereth and describeth the magnitudes and motions of the celestiall or superior bodies.

• Astrologie is a Science, which by considering the motions, aspects, and influences of the stares, doth foresee and prognosticate things to come.

• Geographie is a knowledge teaching to describe the whole earth, and all the places contained therein, whereby universall Maps and Cardes of the earth and sea are made.

• Chorographie is the description of some particular place, as Region, Ile. Citie, or such like portion of the earth severed by it selfe from the rest.¹⁶

Chorography describes an early form of epidemiology. Astrology was used in medicine to show the balance of elements and humors in a patient and, at the time of treatment, in order to aid with diagnosis and prognosis. This book simply submits that the light cycles and the conclusions of historical physicians should be studied before being rejected.

In the traditional model, sages recognized that human sensitivities are such that they can track the ways that physiology adapts continuously to the three great light cycles: the annual seasonal progression, the monthly lunation, and the cycle of day and night. These three cycles, their phases, and numbers, simply put, are the foundation of Chinese medicine and most other naturalistic systems. The orbit, spin, and orientation of the earth and moon to the sun dictate the phases of these light cycles and their numerical descriptions. This concept is introduced in Chapter 1.

From the widest possible vantage point when viewed from space, people can visualize the earth and all its people, creatures, and forms as a single whole. This visualized unity is comparatively more accessible, whole, and complete than the theistic God proved by Descartes’ pure natural reasoning, precisely because it contained all the associative and qualitative values linked to the three light cycles of nature. These values were neither rationally abstracted nor imprisoned by and contingent to any prepossessing imaginary absolute. This one, this whole, collectively has a sum of intelligence; it operates according to mathematical and physical laws, and in its cumulative motions contains life. An individual is a small and derivative part of that whole; and as such, he or she participates in all the same processes and constraints of the whole. A person like the world can be designated by the number one; and to the innocent observer, that one, taken out of context and placed against the vacuum of space, may be seen as a miraculous summation of the larger whole, containing all its molecules, functions, and even intelligence. Humans are composed of fluids (water), of substance and form (earth), of growth and decline (wood), of breath and gases (air), of independent equilibrium between heat and cold (fire). However, many elements, functions, or component are identified; the whole is in a way an epitome, a unique something that is partially a process in time and partially a form located in space. A human being dwells at the point of intersection between the universals and particulars, infinity and time. Every rational system is inconclusive and incomplete; every thought bound by culture, language, and number, every attempt to understand the vast tidal determinism a failure—a rough approximation, a mere reflection of the rhythm of life.

Even early Megalithic societies understood the rhythms of the day, month, and year and the need to work with nature. They used geometry to link body and agricultural life to the cycles of heaven.

The builders of Castle Rigg found a site with a convenient horizon for measuring the exact sun-setting axis on Midsummer Day. This is the key axis of the year for it marks the turning point of the light of the sun. The winter solstice is of equal cosmic importance, but at the summer solstice the Sun is at the height of its power, clearing the skies for uninterrupted measurement.²⁰

Hesiod an early Greek poet beautifully expresses the unity of man and nature through personification of deities.

When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin your harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set. Forty nights and days they are hidden and appear again as the year moves round, when first you sharpen your sickle. This is the law of the plains . . . strip to sow and strip to plough and strip to reap, if you wish to get in all Demeter’s fruits in due season.²¹

When the piercing power and sultry heat of the sun abate, and almighty Zeus sends the autumn rains, and man’s flesh comes to feel far easier—for then the star Sirius passes over the heads of men, who are born to misery, only a little while by day and takes greater share of night—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm.²²

For Hesiod, the actions of heaven and the god’s accompany the phases of agricultural necessity and detail. The rising and setting of stars identify agricultural periods. Zeus embodies heaven, and the masculine and Demeter earth and the feminine). They interact dynamically throughout the growth cycle. Human life was distinguished only by tools, by work, and circumstances driven by natural law and patterns of growth and decline. Later Plato was to explain the fundamental role of heavenly cycles in nature and human affairs more philosophically.

The sight of day and night, the months and the returning years, the equinoxes and solstices, has caused the invention of number, given us the notion of time, and made us enquire into the nature of the universe; thence we have derived philosophy . . . We should see the revolutions of intelligence in the heavens and use their untroubled courses to guide the troubled revolutions in our own understanding, which is akin to them . . . all audible musical sound is given us for the sake of harmony, which has motion akin to the orbits in our soul and which, as anyone who makes intelligent use of the arts knows, is not to be used, as is commonly thought, to give irrational pleasure, but as a heaven sent ally, in reducing to order and harmony and disharmony in the revolutions within us.²³

Body topography dictated how human beings evaluated their place in the cosmos. The body can be divided roughly in half at the level of the waist. Were the waist visualized as a mathematical plane, it compares to the plane of the horizon. Similarly, a line passing through the center of the body from top to bottom will point toward a unique spot in heaven in one direction and the center of the earth in the other, thus, creating a zenith and nadir, which in turn can become the basis for two more defining great circles, one that divides front from back similar to the prime vertical and another one side from the other similar to the prime meridian.

The four topographic quadrants of the body, thus created with the basic division between up and down, orient the body in the world. The back is hard, boney and protective (yang) and the motor functions dominate; the front is softer and more vulnerable and contains major cavities that hold internal organs (yin). These divisions have empirical value because they identify important zones of bodily function and influence that align with nature. For instance, both urine and feces (liquids and solids) evacuate below the waist and below the horizon. The breath and warmth from circulation (air and fire) are seated above the waist and horizon. Bodily organization and function match those of the world.

By arbitrarily selecting a standard position of reference, as in the Orient, standing facing south with hands above the body," or as in the west standing with the hands palm forward and below at their sides, the result is a basic way of identifying everything in the bodily landscape. standard positions implicitly are a way to identify conditions in the outer world that have reference to bodily experience: cold winds blow from the north, tightening shoulder muscles; warmth comes from heaven in the south, striking the chest and warming the heart; or sunsets like autumn decline towards darkness and death. Even without a deep knowledge of the heavens, early human societies would select an important feature of the landscape, a mountain or mound, prominent in their area to define an objective special center with which they could align their personal directional sense. Alternatively, they would create a mound or pyramid at some sacred site to act simultaneously as tomb and residence for ancestors as well as a symbolic repository for cultural memory and ceremonial connection to heaven and its life-giving cycles and the underworld with its mysteries.

The mountain would refer to that part of the body above the horizon and waist; the heaven and below the mountain would be caves of initiation; the lower parts of the body, the roots and legs, the underworld; while the four directions imposed on the mountain (six when up and down is included, eight when transitions between seasons are involved, ten when the solar year and concept of infinite cyclic repetitions in time are explained, and twelve will be the transformations of the moon and nature and the variations of space and form) define the other quadrants of the cosmos. The quadrants in turn house all the meteorological, vegetative, mythical, and celestial content of tribal activity. Thus, the mountain, or tree, at the center of any cultural world was simply a way of linking the individual to the landscape. Cultural memory then becomes personal memory and experience. These practical measures quickly developed metaphorical and moral implications. If the enemy always came from the north and if the south was always arid, these symbols and maxims outlined a sensible way to live in a habitat and became the basis for transmitting useful knowledge from one generation to the next. The macrocosm was remembered and reified in the microcosm.

When the annual seasonal cycle is divided in four by solstices and equinoxes, the ancients identified the four cardinal points of the year, and to each they assigned a meteorological prime quality—hot, cold, moisture, or dryness. Winter is cold, summer is hot, and their interaction defined the seasons. When this pair interacted, moisture or dryness resulted. When the equilibrium of moisture and dryness changed they recorded that inevitably, temperature changed. When four qualities were paired as hot-moist, hot-dry, cold-moist, and cold-dry a division of eight resulted, and these combinations further identified a complex equilibrium of traits each with a behavioral direction. The humors became the basis of Western medicine for 1,500 years and the spatial division of eight, similarly, became the basis for analysis of character and health in traditional Chinese medicine. Traditional acupuncture defined four front and four back quadrants.

It is within this framework of cosmos that each generation, by adapting to new conditions, invariably lost some cultural memory, but necessity in turn drives each to recover those truths that remain useful and undiminished by trends and fads. Much of the aim in traditional astrology was to act as a repository for cultural meaning. This is evident in references to gods with their physical descriptions and stories rendered in great detail.¹⁷ Realism and the validity of feelings and sense experience were not questioned; they were investigated.

The imagination is harnessed to real conditions, conditions that persist. Few writers before the seventeenth century disputed the idea that humans are an integral part of a living world, whose meteorological conditions and seasonal transformations provide mirrors for the ebb and flow of the human spirit. They all assumed that human affairs, like those evident in nature, were cyclic rather than progressive and positivist. Pre-17th century cultures were less linear thinking. If a man was active and aggressive, his counterpart in nature might be seen in storms and thunder. The shared conditions helped to project the images of gods and goddesses that expressed qualities shared with Plato internalizes the experience of number and cosmology to an unusual degree by turning the contemplation of heaven into magical self-determination; but Plato works from the foundation cyclic thinking, prime qualities, and traditional elements that pervades Greek thought. What he reveals is the esoteric side of numbers perhaps originating in the Elysian mysteries; but humankind’s introspective experience of nature is part of all traditional cultures, where people were perceived as an integral part of the cosmos. The equilibrium and harmony so evident in nature, was something that people could emulate and internalize as an ideal.

By the Roman era the personal implications of the sun, moon, and planets had become established culturally. The sun and moon, when configured with any one of the planets, also co-operate: the sun adds a greater nobleness to the figure, and increases the healthiness of the constitution; and the moon, especially when holding or delaying her separation, generally contributes better proportion and greater delicacy of figure, and greater moisture of temperament; but, at the same time, her influence in this latter particular is adapted to the proper ratio of her illumination; as referred to in the modes of temperament mentioned in the beginning of this treatise.²⁴ Indeed, more commonly than not man became the measure and standard by which nature was knowable. The divisions of the body were also the divisions of heaven, and through number and projection of the human form the unknowable ten thousand things became comprehensible. For a person to become great, he had to live and act according to the mandates and character he was born with, whether as a warrior or healer. Every hero or character would have his time, only to be defeated in the cycle of life by his counterpart. Contexts and language change, but the offspring cosmologies of earlier systems resonate with people today because they conform to obvious facts of human experience.

The links are particularly specific and apparent in the syncretistic writings of early Chinese medicine, notably the Ling Shu or Divine Pivot:

The Yellow Emperor inquired of Bogao, I would like to hear how the limbs and joints of the body correspond to sky and earth.

Bogao replied, The sky is round, the earth rectangular, the heads of human beings are round, and their feet rectangular to correspond. In the sky, there are the sun and moon; human beings have two eyes. On earth, there are the nine provinces; human being shave nine orifices. In the sky, there are wind and rain; human beings shave their joy and anger. In the sky, there are thunder and lightning; human beings have their sounds and speech. In the sky, there are Five Sounds; human beings have their five-yin visceral systems. In the sky, there are the Six Pitches; human beings have their six-yang visceral systems . . . In the sky, there are the ten-day weeks; human beings have ten fingers on their hands.¹⁸

The body and the world specifically are linked through number and geometry, and the enumeration of parts begs for systematic analysis as to how geometry helped give treatment insights to early practitioners of stone acupuncture four thousand years ago. Each whole numbered division of the body and the cycles visible in nature created geometrical patterns, which to a discerning mind had obvious meaning.

However, the early cosmologies also suggest that individual differentiation was equally essential, that a human being, usually a monarch, might be the symbol for a country or the measure of divine right, owing to the divisions of human bodily topography that in turn generated number theory.

Human traits have directionality and attributes in common with the forward flow of time and nature. Information follows experience. It is a collective resource. The solar wave operating on the rotating and orbiting earth have much to do with this.

The three great cycles of light have operated all through the course of human evolution; and they define the typical periods of activity and rest, the agricultural cycles, and even periods of physiological processes that are tied to quantity and quality of light and associated subtle energy. They certainly are the roots of philosophy, and philosophers continue today to affirm the likelihood of subtle intelligent connections between humans and the cosmos like those of Teilhard de Chardin, Chilton Pierce, Jeremy Narlay, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, and others.¹²

That this relationship between humans and the cosmos may function in every cell and in our DNA is not far-fetched. Not only the dual-stranded structure of DNA that reflects the perpetual dualism of human thought and perception of material conditions and the evolutionary content in chain sequences, but also the living shape, the movements, and the electrical frequency responses suggest communication and adaptation with other cells and perhaps with environmental conditions. Today, the study of DNA entails not only what it is, but what it does—which, of course, implies a mechanism by which behavioral evolution is recorded on the molecular level. Does in the sense of being part of a feedback loop in which natural cycles and social influences affect our genetic make-up and genetic changes affect our behavior.

The position advanced in Twelve Elements is that the organization of the cosmic cycles determines the frequencies and electrical periods that organize the receptivity and limits for assimilation of information. The waxing and waning moon, the increase and decrease of seasonal light, day and night, provide a typical rhythm of activity and rest—of catabolism and anabolism—that optimize conditions for evolutionary learning. From one perspective, these patterns symbolize how people acquire and transmit information. Leon Hammer and Jarrett have emphasized after Drs. Shen and Manaka that acupuncture is effective because it uses the body’s information system.¹³ Extended departures from these rhythms create a crisis in the biological information system that leads eventually to negative thinking, destructive emotions, disease, physical excesses or deficiencies, and, eventually, to death. When people stop developing, transforming, and learning, poor health follows soon after. Those frequencies that are beneficial to life have direct relation to the frequencies and conditions generated by the bodies and cyclic periods of the solar system and perhaps the galaxy.

The aim in Twelve Elements is to draw from certain recurring ideas in traditional cosmologies, those that remain useful to mastering real conditions. After a preliminary look at the solar system and traditional terminology, each of twelve chapters treat one of twelve whole numbers. Integrated ideas are invariably ecologically sound and socially moral because their logic derives from the human perception of symmetry and regularity in nature. Science has developed technology that probes beyond symmetry, and the aim of this book is not to dispute or diminish the value of resulting discoveries. My focus is not new science, but recovering a coherent wide view of an age old possibility derived directly from geometry and the great cycles of light more than inherited systems. The study of cycles must be resurrected from dead associations and placed on a secure footing of human experience. More advanced analytical, statistical, and experimental methods may be applied to the resulting model in the future. In this book, I recover and celebrate the orderly cyclic processes of nature and the information available directly to the senses that yield in any observant person concordant, cohesive sense of belonging, rational purpose, and social value.

Chapter 1

The Solar System

Three Structures and Three cycles of light

The core of all observable regularity in heaven as seen from earth by the naked eye lies in the three great cycles of light— annual, monthly, and daily. The astronomical structures behind these three cycles help to explain their nature. This chapter establishes that three hypothetical planes—the ecliptic, the equator, and the horizon—each form the base for a different three-dimensional system and, therefore, can be considered the basis for explaining seasonal, monthly, and daily cycles and their derivative meanings.

These cycles in their turn became the basis for the differentiation of heaven, earth, with horizon and their association, respectively, with the sun, moon, and horizon. Many important agricultural and cultural associations followed. This meant that when sages refer to heaven, earth, horizon, or the number three, it was code for understanding these three cycles that portray the whole celestial sphere from a particular vantage point and time frame. Every subsequent whole number, then implicitly contained these intellectual discoveries and qualitative assumptions.

The diurnal cycle, lunar phases, and annual cycles of light and darkness were the root standards for traditional astrological and medical meaning. Megalithic calendar stones were placed in circles, if only because their major landmarks were repetitive. They described a clockwise movement in heaven and a counterclockwise shadow on earth that matched the apparent movement of the moon from quarter to half-moon and full moon in relation to equinoxes and solstices. These landmarks then led to the discrimination of numbers, the four seasons, twelve lunar months, and approximately 365 days; and these numbers when rounded to 12, 28, 30, or 360 were the basis of establishing geometrical understandings that allowed for prediction and gave seemingly causative explanations for clusters of events that occur predictably within phases.

These numbers became arbitrary landmarks in an infinite progression and were perceived as such. The whole megalithic structure was a basis for recognizing three independent and interdependent rational spheres, each having a comprehensive set of standards for locating an individual or event in space and time. These spheres were (1) the local or individual sphere based on the horizon and heavenly vertex directly above any spot, (2) the mundane sphere delineated by equatorial system and the poles with the prime meridian, and (3) the celestial sphere delineated by ecliptic and the prime vertical. These are delineated in figures 1a, 1b, 1c and figure 2.

Fig.%2013-1a%20ecliptic-1.tifFig.%2013-1b%20Equator-1.tifFig.%2013-1c%20Horizon.tif

Figure 1: The Three Astronomical Spheres and Three locational Frameworks Implied in the Composition of the Natal Chart: A, Celestial Sphere; B, Mundane Sphere; C, Individual or Horizon Sphere

Each sphere provides a clear set of independent demarcations that overlap with one another. In the natal chart, all references to the mundane and individual sphere are visually folded down to two-dimensional positions on the ecliptic or celestial sphere. Nevertheless, all three systems are symbolically present and active, offering for interpretation three different perspectives on life. The three spheres and their perspectives describe visually and structurally the dynamic relations among the three cycles of light.

The celestial sphere defines the conditions that cause the seasonal cycle. The seasons have a special relation to the sun as they are determined by the orbit of the earth around the sun in relation to the equator, which, from the perspective of the ecliptic, is the slant of the earth’s rotation. The celestial sphere (fig. 1a) has the sun-earth axis as the primary plane of reference. This solar bias conditions all the experiences and qualitative effects traditionally attributed to constellations visible along it. The earth’s orbit around the sun comprises a year, and this great circle is the annual cycle. The daily cycle can also be roughly identified as one degree of arc in the annual cycle, and the lunation also can be identified approximately as one of the twelve nearly thirty-degree and, therefore, thirty-day phases. The diurnal and solar periods are derivative and convenient but not essential to the system. Owing to the twenty-three-degree angle of the ecliptic to the plane of the equator, the system results in the variations in the duration of daylight in different parts of the world that account directly or indirectly for most seasonal changes. The prime vertical is a great circle that divides the celestial sphere in half, east and west, and the prime vertical lies east and west of that ninety degrees, differentiating back to front in the cosmic human.

The mundane sphere defines the parameters of the geographical, topographical, biological, and chorographical characteristics of life (fig. 1b). Because of the moon’s proximity and