From the COVID-19 Pandemic that is threatening humans’ life around the world, the limitations of modern medicine are highlighted, while the traditional medicines with their vitality rooted in ancient civilizations, including ancient Greek medicine, ancient Chinese medicine and other traditional medicine, can provide more help to modern world. From my volunteer work in Wuhan, China in the fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic, I found that Chinese medicine has a great effect on patients’ physical and psychological treatment, and it is very important to open the “four gates” for their emotional anxiety and low self-healing condition. They are actually two Yuan-source acupoints of the Large Intestine Meridian (LI4) and the Liver Meridian (LR3). The four acupoints, two on the left and two on the right, located symmetrically in human body, just like four gates.
This combination is called “opening four gates” in Chinese medicine. Among them, the liver meridian is the blue dragon (symbolizing spring), and the large intestine meridian is the white tiger (symbolizing autumn) according to the system of “sixiang” (four mythical images). The blue dragon is liver which can govern ascending and dredging, as well as blood-controlling. The white tiger is large intestine as the exterior “fu” of lung which can govern purification and descending, as well as qi-controlling. When the ascending and descending reaches balance, the movement of qi and blood can be coordinated, and the human body returns to balance. Not only corresponding to the human body, these “four gates” can also be found as the four constellations in the sky and ‘fengshui’ on the ground.
In fact, this corresponding of “sixiang” (four mythical images) originated from ancient astronomy. This lecture will also introduce the archaeological discovery of Tomb No.45 at Xishuipo, Puyang city, Henan Province (120.3°E 32°N), which is 6500 years ago, with the tomb-owner as the center and the earliest figure of “sixiang” around. The achievements of ancient Chinese astronomy not only guided the formulation of calendar and farming, but also formed the ancient cosmology, from which emerged the basic concepts of Chinese medicine such as Yin and Yang, “sixiang”, five elements, ten Celestial Stem, twelve Terrestrial Branch, twenty-four solar terms and 365 acupoints etc..
The combination of astronomy and Chinese medicine has produced also system of “wu yun liu qi ” medicine and many kinds of kungfu. In this model, heaven, earth and human body are strongly connected, and the ancient and the present are one, as Hippocrates said: “There is no beginning, no end.”
