Sì Qì (四氣) — Four Thermal Natures
Sì Qì (四氣) — Four Thermal Natures is a Chinese / Herbal — sì qì thermal natures body system as transmitted through the lineage Chinese materia medica describes substances through thermal nature, classically including cold, cool, warm, hot, and in many later lists a neutral category. This visual system condenses the four named poles into broad body-system zones; it does not claim a canonical body-topography for thermal action.. This page lists every point in the system with sourced placements and links to cross-tradition correspondences curated for The Body Spiritual.
Open in interactive explorerPrimary sources
- Shennong Bencao Jing (神農本草經) (Reconstructed Han materia medica; trans. Yang Shouzhong, 1998) — The materia-medica corpus classifies substances by nature, function, and therapeutic destination; it is a classical source for tropism reasoning but does not present a modern twelve-meridian diagram.
- Bensky, Clavey & Stöger, Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica (3rd ed., Eastland Press 2004) — The reference defines cold, cool, neutral, warm, and hot medicinal natures in contemporary materia-medica practice; this system renders four named thermal poles and notes the omitted neutral category.
Known lineage variants
- Classical and later materia medica often include a neutral (píng) nature alongside the four thermal poles; it is omitted here to keep the requested four-zone comparison legible.
- The zones are TARGET-ORGAN/system projections of a substance classification, not an anatomical or local body-temperature map.
Related systems
No other systems share this tradition label.