022 Tracking the Rhythms of Earth With The Ba Zi • Tracy Stewart

Medicine and Bazi belong to the 5 Arts of Chinese metaphysics. All 5 Arts use the basic principles of Taoist philosophy.The Bazi belongs to the Life Arts and is called The Pillars of Destiny. The 4 pillars are, the year, the month, the day and the hour.The upper half of the chart is the 10 Heavenly Stems. The 5 Elements doubled as yin and yang, much like the organ pairs in Medicine but more the elements in Nature.The lower half of the chart is the 12 Earthly Branches. The extra two characters come from one of the Elements being doubled. But this is where there’s a difference between the Bazi and Medicine.With medicine, we are looking at the meridians and here you’ll notice the Fire is doubled with Imperial and Ministerial Fire. Here the focus is the Shen of heaven in its earthly manifestation.With the Bazi, the focus is on the Solar/Lunar calendar that starts around February 4. It’s an extremely accurate calendar that tracks time, place, cycles of the seasons and rhythms of the Earth. Which is placed in the center and allows us to track not just the seasons, but how qi comes back to the Earth in between each season.This is a much more sophisticated and detailed calendar than the common Gregorian Solar calendar. Which helps you to understand why sometimes in what’s considered Summer, it might feel like Fall. Learn more about Tracy’s offerings at qibalance.net. Where you can sign up for her Mentorship Program starting on August 5, 2023. Or order your dietary analysis, or send your patients for one.