Help For the Daily Qi Calculator

The Qi Calculator has been designed to print out all the data needed for a single day.

It is broken into several pieces, many of which you may or may not need. It currently supports 7 different methods of chrono-acupuncture.

What Day Is It?

The oriental calendar uses a solar lunar calendar.  This section gives you the lunar day and month. But even more importantly for calculating which points are open it gives you the Celestial Stem (gan) and Terrestrial Branch (zhi).  So for the 28th, day of October 2004, the Celestial Stem for the day is 7 or Geng.  The Terrestrial Branch for the day is V or Chen.

What Points Are Open During This Chinese Hour?

This following table contains 6 of the 7 methods of chrono acupuncture that are currently supported. The Chinese hour takes two hours of our 24 hour clock.  Once more it is in alignment with the sun. In other words if I want to know when the Terrestrial Branch VII or Wu is I need only to stick a stick in the ground and figure out zenith (many of us don't have the time to do this each day). Another method is to use the Sunset Sunrise figures from your local newspaper (see Sanity Check below). Unless your office is near the newspapers office this may not be very accurate.  The final method is to provide an accurate Longitude.  This can be used by the Qi Calculator and will adjust all of the times in the "Starting Time" column to a solar or universal time.  

The Starting Time is the time when you look at your watch. When you pick your time zone on the Qi Calculator page, and specify daylight savings time as well as longitude then the Qi Calculator can correct for the specific position of the sun in relation to your location. The Starting Time is the time that that hour starts using your watch.  All you need is a watch set to you normal time and the resulting piece of paper... nothing else except a few needles or some thumbs or other methods of application.

The Yellow Row is based on a theoretical time of treatment.  I am going to treat a patient at 8:30 am on October 28th, 2004.  The Celestial Stem open for the hour is 7 Geng the Terrestrial Branch is V Chen. Note that these are in accordance with the stem and branch of the day as well this should be a potent treatment. I want to work with supplementing their ying qi so I am going to use the ZiWuLiuZhuFa or Midnight Midday rule of acupuncture.  I look down the Pink Column for  ZiWuLiuZhuFa and find the points Large Intestine 11 and Large Intestine 5 are open. These will help with both the supplementing of ying qi as well as it's circulation.  This patient is having problems waking up in the morning so I just happen to notice down the Green Column that the Yin Qiao Mai (YnQM) is open as well. So I can use the LingGuiBaFa or Sacred Tortoise Technique and open the Yin Qiao Mai (Yin Channels Carry Fire) with it's command point Kidney 6 and maybe add another supplemental point in like Bladder 1 to direct the Yin Qiao Mai.

Check back under the Theory section of ganzhi.com periodically as more information is added about each of these different methods.

What Points are Open at this Instant?

The Chinese also use a method of tracking the stars and Celestial energy using a clepsydra or water clock.  This clock divides the day into periods of 50. See the Theory section of this website for more information.

The Wei Qi calculator only works if your longitude is exact, please Find Your Longitude. Once again the Blue Column Titled Starts is a period of time when this Ke or cycle is open according to your watch. Note that this chart is four columns wide and that there are 100 transitions.

Once again in our example of the patient getting treated at 8:30, the Shaoyang is open. Now refer to the Root and Summit Chart at the bottom of the page for the associated points.

Root and Summit Point Chart for use with the Wei Qi Chart above.

The patient getting treated at 8:30 am is here during the Shao Yang period of time. So I look down the Wei Qi blue column and find that the San Jiao and Gall Bladder are open.  Now I look across the chart on the pink row to find the Root and Summit points. Note that the chart is two columns wide. The Root point for the San Jiao is San Jiao 2 and the summit point is San Jiao 23. The root point for Gall Bladder is Gall Bladder 44 and The summit point is Small Intestine 19. None of these points I want to use for this patient at this time.

Why is the time in 24 hours?

In the interest of size of the chart. I may change this in the future.

Why is CV 23 listed twice for Wei Qi for the Kidney and Spleen?

The Summit point for the Kidney is Conception Vessel 23. The Summit point for the Spleen is also CV 23.  You may wish to favor a certain system, that is why it is listed twice, all Root and Summit points are listed in their respective order so you may pick and choose.  Note that the Ling Shu Chapter 76 lists the summit point for the Kidney as Bladder 23 and the summit point for the Spleen as Bladder 20, which I would not needle and only use moxa on.  CV 23 is a further refinement of Tran VietDzung (see Theory section).

How do I get the chart to print on one page?

There are a few choices, one is to uncheck the chrono acupuncture methods you are not using. The other is to adjust the size of the font on your browser window prior to printing.  In Internet Explorer go to the "View" Menu Choose "Text Size" and select "Smallest". Eventually if there is enough interest this chart may be available in PDF and this will guarantee printing on one page.

Sanity Check

I don't recommend using this tool unless you understand the underlying concepts. As such it is important to have at least some idea as to how the calculations are arrived at.  Many people when they first use the qi calculator don't get the fields filled in correctly. The Western Longitude does not need to be put in a negative number... (82.1885681) is correct you don't need to put in (-82.1885681).  

Next please check your solar noon to make sure it is correct. One method of doing this is to check the local sunrise and sunset for your local paper. Then figure out the zenith as midway between these values.  Using this zenith check the chart and make sure these times are correct for your location. Zenith should coincide with 50 Ke on the Wei Qi Chart or 1 hour past the start of the VII Wu stem (Heart time).

Example: Information for nearby city to the West of my location for Oct 28, 2004 is Sunrise 7:49 AM and Sunset 6:39 PM.  I convert these times to the 24 hour clock for ease of calculation Sunrise 7:49  Sunset 18:39. Next I add these numbers together and divide by two to figure out the current zenith. 7:49 + 18:39 = 26:28.  26:28 divided by 2 = 13:14.  Next I look at the charts above the start time for 50 Ke Shaoyin Ki to He is  13:12:27. The time for the VII stem is 12:12:27 plus one hour I  also get 13:12:27 (remeber Zi or stem I starts at 11 am).  My times are earlier by about 2 minutes, that is good, because my location is east of the city that I got the sunrise sunset times for. Sanity Check passed, and my patients are glad that I am accurate in my methodology, because if I was using the newspaper method I would be outside of the 14 minute window 1 in every 7 times.

Still Confused

Please send an email to me eric@samepath.com and I will be glad to do my best to answer your question.  Your questions will benefit others and contribute to making this very subtle logic available to more and more people so please do not hesitate to send your inquiries.

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