Qi Dynamics in Nature: The Seasons (時)

夫四時陰陽者，萬物之根本也。(Neijing Suwen 2)

The yin and yang of the four seasons are the foundation of all living things.

Movement patterns of the Seasons (口 + 十 = 田)

The earliest characters for the seasons, 時 shí, is the image of a sprout with the sun (Figure 1). As a symbol in ancient art and Chinese culture, the four seasons are represented by the space of the year, 口 kǒu, that rotates around four cardinal points, 十 shí, to form 田tián, the image of yin and yang interacting within a defined space, or a field. The addition of 口 represents a continuous cycle of time, and 十 represents a complete cycle (the number ten, 十, is associated with completion) divided into four equal parts. In ancient times, the year was divided into 360 days of thirty days each, as the number 10 was used ubiquitously, as it was easy to count and track on two hands. The relation of the seasons to time is seen in the character 宙 zhòu, which means the origin of all time. 宙contains the field of the four seasons with a stem rising up, 由 yóu, signifying the origin of something, with the roof 宀 indicating everything that exists under the “roof” of the heavens.

Figure 1: Image of 時 shí

The ancient people in the area that is now China, along with all indigenous cultures, used 十 to represent the four directions in space (north, east, south, and west), and the corresponding four seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, and autumn). Thus, the seasons represent a complete cycle (十口) of the earth’s rotation around the sun and the symbol of a circle with intersecting lines is used ubiquitously in most cultures to represent the seasons, and is also depicted as a four-petaled flower or a wheel, as in the as the wheel of time in ancient Indian culture (kālachakra; Tibetan: དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ།) or the medicine wheel of many indigenous cultures with various names.

Gnomons were likely the first tool used to track the patterns of the sun. According to the Book of Songs (Shījīng 詩經), King Wen of the Zhou dynasty used gnomon shadow lengths to determine the orientation of the suns movements around 1400 BCE, and the earliest gnomon was discovered in China in a tomb at the Tàosì 陶寺 archeological site dating between 2300 BCE and 1900 BCE (Li, 2014). A gnomon can be as simple as a stick in the ground that is tall enough to cast a shadow. Using the shadow cast, the points at sunrise and sunset are plotted and a line is then drawn to connect the two points. As the hours of sunlight in a day increase, the length of the line also increases and vice versa. Tracked over the course of the year, one will find that there are four important times of the year with respect to sunlight:

(1) When the hours of sunlight are greatest (longest line): Summer solstice

(2) When the hours of sunlight are least (shortest line): Winter solstice

(3 & 4) When the hours of sunlight and darkness are equal (median line): The two equinoxes at spring and fall

When drawn symbolically, these four points make up the image of the cross with the highest point corresponding to the most hours of sunlight, the lowest point corresponding to the least hours, and the intermediate line corresponding to the times when the hours of sunlight and darkness were roughly equal:

Figure 2: Gnomon line lengths at the solstices and equinoxes

The correlation of the yang energy of the sun and length can be seen in two vestiges of Chinese Medicine. A long, 長 cháng, pulse is associated with being palpable at the most yang times of the year (e.g. Nánjīng 難經 7th Difficult Issue). The “intestines,” 腸cháng, a homophone of 長 cháng, are the longest organs in the body. With the association of sunlight to long length based on gnomon shadows, a more apparent reason for why the character for intestines has the sunlight component, 昜 yáng, emerges.

The same cycle of yang and yin that proceeds throughout the year, also proceeds within the course of a single day, with the sunrise at dawn, peak at noon, sunset at dusk, and the absence of the sun at night. These four aspects of yin and yang that occur over the course of a day and similarly over the course of a single year were referred to as the four images (sìxiàng 四象) and are associated with the fundamental Yìjīng (易經) images, where yang is represented by a solid line and yin is represented by a broken line:

Figure 3: Yijing bigram correspondences

Each season is a distinctive expression that has similarities based on the predictable behaviors of the sun, which informs qi dynamics. It is these underlying energetic movement patterns that provide the unformed image, 象 xiàng for the manifestation, 形 xíng, of the formed things of the material world. Through the learned experience of watching these manifestations unfurl in the external environment, fundamental energetic movement patterns became associated with each season. Spring became associated with the movement of rising, based on the emergence of sprouts from the ground, summer with the movement of expansion with the spreading out of plant foliage and emergence of flowers, autumn with the movement of descending with the wilting of plants and falling of seeds and fruits, and winter with the movement of contraction inward, with the dying down and decomposition or movement of the plant’s resources into the roots until the following spring.

Next Article: Qi Dynamics in Medicine: The 5 Phases (五行) and 5 Zang "Organs" (五臟)

✨coming soon✨

References

Li, G. (2014). Gnomons in ancient China. In C. L. N. Ruggles (Ed.), Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy (pp. 2095–2204). Springer Reference.

The pictograph images of the older Chinese characters are from Richard Sears' work at Chinese Etymology. Please consider donating to help support his research.

Citation

Juniper, Evren. “Qi Dynamics in Nature: The Seasons (時).” Universal Qi, 2022, https://www.universalqi.org/post/observable-patterns-in-nature-the-seasons-時.

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