The points of the soul

The Ben Shen chapter (本神) of the Lingshu opens with a warning about method: “凡刺之法，先必本於神”—every needling must start from the spirit. It then defines the faculties one by one: “兩精相搏謂之神”, when the two essences meet, the shen arises; “隨神往來者，謂之魂”, what accompanies the shen in its comings and goings is the hun; “並精而出入者，謂之魄”, what enters and leaves along with the essence is the po; “心有所憶，謂之意”, what the heart retains is the yi; “意之所存，謂之志”, that in which the intention persists is the zhi.

The same chapter gives them a home. Each organ stores a substance, and that substance houses a faculty: the Liver stores the Blood, and the Blood houses the hun (“肝藏血，血舍魂”); the Spleen stores the ying, which houses the yi; the Heart stores the vessels, which house the shen (“心藏脈，脈舍神”); the Lung stores the Qi, which houses the po; the Kidney stores the Essence, which houses the zhi. The Nanjing (Classic of Difficulties), in Difficulty 34, sums it up in one sentence: “臟者，人之神氣所捨藏也”, the yin organs are the dwelling of the spirit's Qi.

The cleanest expression of that doctrine is on the second line of the Bladder channel, three cun from the spine. There, beside the Shu point of each organ, is a point named for its faculty: BL42, Pohu, beside the Lung Shu; BL44, Shentang, beside the Heart Shu; BL47, Hunmen, beside the Liver Shu; BL49, Yishe, beside the Spleen Shu; and BL52, Zhishi, beside the Kidney Shu.

The five names are parts of a house: 戶, the single-leaf door; 堂, the main hall; 門, the gate; 舍, the lodging; 室, the inner room. This is the vocabulary of the Ben Shen, which says that the substances “house” (舍) the faculties, and in Yishe the verb of the classical text has passed unchanged into the name of the point. The sources do not say who composed the series, but it is one of the most coherent sets in the entire nomenclature.

The shen is that of the Heart, and the Heart is the sovereign. The Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing (Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion), explaining why the Heart channel has no Shu points of its own, says so in courtly language: “心者，五臟六腑之大主也，為帝王，精神之舍也”. The Heart is the great lord of the organs, the emperor, the dwelling of the spirit. Its organ is so firm that it does not admit evil, and if it does admit it, the spirit departs and death follows; for that reason, the evils that reach the Heart stay in its envelope, the Pericardium.

HT7, Shenmen, the gate of the spirit, at the wrist; GV11, Shendao, the path of the spirit, on the spine, at the level of the Heart Shu; and BL44, the hall of the spirit, at that same level, take their names from the spirit of the Heart. GV10, Lingtai, the terrace of the spirit, inherits a word from philosophy: in the Zhuangzi, 靈臺 is the heart as the seat of the mind, and the Gengsang Chu chapter warns that there are things that “不可內於靈臺”, must not be allowed into it.

At the top of the head there is another small constellation of the spirit. GV24, Shenting, the courtyard of the spirit, lies at the hairline, and the Jiayi Jing surrounded it with caution: “禁不可刺，令人癲疾，目失精”—it is not to be needled, because it causes madness and dims the vision. Next to it, GB13, Benshen, bears exactly the title of the Lingshu chapter that defines the faculties, 本神, the root of the spirit. No ancient text says that the name comes from the chapter, but the match is complete.

Higher up, at the vertex, GV20, Baihui, received the name 泥丸宮 in the Song dynasty, the palace of the niwan, which comes from Taoist internal alchemy and designates the seat of the spirit in the head. That story is told on the page about the gate of life and the cinnabar field.

As it rises through the chest, the Kidney channel passes beside the Heart with three consecutive names from the same field: KI23, Shenfeng, the seal of the spirit; KI24, Lingxu, the ruins of the spirit; and KI25, Shencang, the storehouse of the spirit. Their glosses are modern, but their position is not: they lie at the level of the chest court of the Ren Mai, where CV19 is the Purple Palace.

There is one last place, the most unexpected. The Qianjin Yaofang, in chapter 15, after recommending moxa at ST25, Tianshu, beside the navel, warns: “魂魄之舍不可針”—the dwelling of the hun and the po is not to be needled. The Zhenjiu Dacheng (Great Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) copies the phrase into the point's entry, and so the pivot between the half of heaven and the half of earth also came to be, in the tradition, a house of the soul.