Heaven in the body

The underlying idea is written in the canon itself. In the Xie Ke chapter (邪客) of the Lingshu (Spiritual Pivot), Bo Gao answers the question of how the limbs correspond to heaven and earth with a long enumeration that begins: “天圓地方，人頭圓足方以應之。天有日月，人有兩目”. Heaven is round and earth is square, and the human being answers with a round head and square feet; heaven has the sun and moon, and the human being has two eyes. The list continues with the nine regions and the nine orifices, the twelve rivers and the twelve channels, and reaches the calendar: “歲有三百六十五日，人有三百六十節”, the year has three hundred sixty-five days, and the human being has three hundred sixty joints.

This is where the ideal number of points comes from. In the Qi Xue Lun chapter (氣穴論) of the Suwen (Basic Questions), the Yellow Emperor opens the conversation with a sentence that the Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing (Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) repeats at the start of its book of point locations: “氣穴三百六十五，以應一歲”, three hundred sixty-five places of Qi, one for each day of the year. It is a cosmological number, not an inventory. No ancient catalog reaches it exactly, and today's standard list, the one this Atlas follows, comprises 361 points on the fourteen channels.

The needles share the same architecture. The Jiu Zhen Lun chapter (九鍼論) of the Lingshu, which the Jiayi Jing copies in its fifth book, states that “九鍼者，天地之大數也”: the nine needles are the great number of heaven and earth, and each one imitates an order of the world, from heaven, the first, to the nine regions, the ninth. The seventh, the filiform needle, the one used today, corresponds to the stars: “七者星也，星者人之七竅”, seven is the stars, and the stars of the human being are the seven orifices.

The center of the Chinese sky is the celestial north pole, and its lord is Taiyi (太一 or 太乙), the Great One. The treatise on the celestial offices in Sima Qian's Shiji places him in the brightest star of the central palace: “中宮天極星，其一明者，太一常居也”. The Huainanzi, in its treatise on astronomy, names his dwellings: “太微者，太一之庭也。紫宮者，太一之居也”. The Enclosure of Great Subtlety is his courtyard; the Purple Palace, his residence.

Both names are in the body. ST23, Taiyi, is on the abdomen, two cun above the navel, on the Stomach channel; CV19, Zigong, the Purple Palace, is on the sternum. No ancient medical text explains why those places were chosen, and it is best not to invent a reason. What can be read is the coherence of the whole: the Huainanzi adds that “紫宮執斗而左旋”, the Purple Palace holds the Dipper and turns to the left, and on the chest, two points above Zigong, is precisely the Dipper.

璇璣 is the name of the four stars that form the bowl of the Big Dipper. The astronomy treatise of the Jinshu spells it out: “魁四星爲旋璣，杓三星爲玉衡”, the four of the bowl are Xuanji; the three of the handle, Yuheng. The same word designated the rotating instrument used to observe the sky. On the Ren Mai, CV21, Xuanji, lies just below the throat, and the series descending from it, with CV20, the canopy, CV19, the palace, and CV18, the jade hall, draws a courtly sky on the sternum, which is told on the page about the court of the chest.

ST25, Tianshu, the “celestial pivot,” shares its name with the first star of the Dipper, 天樞. But the medical source says something else. The Suwen, in the Zhi Zhen Yao Da Lun chapter (至真要大論), divides the body into one half governed by the Qi of heaven and another by that of earth, and calls the line that separates them tianshu: “半，所謂天樞也”. The point, at the level of the navel, sits on that hinge. The coincidence with the star is real; the link between the two is a modern reading.

Two names in the Atlas come from the vocabulary of the storm. 列缺, Lieque, was lightning in classical Chinese, and 豐隆, Fenglong, the lord of clouds and rain. The proof is in a single poem. Sima Xiangru, in the Poem of the Great Man preserved in the Hanshu, flies through the sky and writes: “貫列缺之倒景兮，涉豐隆之滂濞”. The ancient commentators clarify both words: for Fu Qian, “列缺，天閃也”, it is lightning; for Ying Shao, “豐隆，雲師也”, the master of the clouds.

LU7, Lieque, is at the wrist, and ST40, Fenglong, is on the leg. Both are Luo-Connecting points, the ones that link a channel with its paired channel. No medical commentary connects the two names, but they come from the same image, and the Huainanzi confirms that Fenglong was a living figure of the celestial calendar: “季春三月，豐隆乃出，以將其雨”, in the third month of spring Fenglong comes out and brings the rain.

SP3, Taibai, bears the name of Venus, the morning star. The Huainanzi places it in the scheme of the world: “西方，金也…其神為太白”, the west is Metal, and its spirit is Taibai. The point belongs to the Spleen, an Earth organ, and the explanation linking it to Metal is a gloss with no classical citation. What can be verified is that the Yuan-Source points of the Yin organs almost all carry 太 or 大 in their names, and Taibai is one of them.

BL60, Kunlun, takes its name from the mountain of the west, the axis of the world in Chinese mythology, the one the poet of the Li Sao crosses on his journey through the sky: “邅吾道夫崑崙兮”, I turn my road toward Kunlun. In the body, the mountain is the lateral malleolus, and the point lies behind it.

The character 天, heaven, appears in sixteen names in the Atlas, and the key to reading it is, once again, in the Suwen. If the upper half of the body is the part of heaven and its Qi governs it (“身半以上，其氣三矣，天之分也，天氣主之”), 天 marks the upper regions: the chest, neck, shoulder, and head. All of these points are at the level of the navel or above. The Lung is, moreover, the organ of heaven. “天氣通於肺”, says the Yin Yang Ying Xiang Da Lun chapter, the Qi of heaven communicates with the Lung, and the needle that imitates heaven treats the Lung because “肺者五臟六腑之蓋也”, it is the canopy of all the Zang-Fu organs. LU3, Tianfu, the celestial palace of the arm, is read from there.

Some form small groups. On the scapula, SI11, Tianzong, the temple of heaven, is surrounded by SI12, the one that holds the wind, and SI13, the curved wall; 垣 was also the name of the enclosures into which Chinese astronomy divided the sky, although no ancient source links it with the point. In the axilla, PC1, the pool of heaven, feeds PC2, the spring of heaven. On the neck follow LI17, SI16, SI17, TE16, and BL10, five 天 points within a hand's breadth.

It helps to close with what the sources don't say. The classical texts do not link the points to specific fixed stars or to Western constellations, and the tables circulating with those equivalences are modern. Nor is there any ancient source for reading BL61, Pucan, as the lunar mansion Shen (參), a hypothesis that keeps being repeated without a citation. The sky of the points is the sky of Chinese astronomy, and their names are better understood through their texts than through a map of the zodiac.