*TRIPLE WARMER*

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December 18-23, 2026

The Triple Warmer/Triple Burner/”San Jiao” is the most mysterious of the meridians in Classical Chinese Medicine. While Chinese medicine is the anatomical equivalent to Western medicine, there is no Western equivalent to the Triple Warmer, perhaps referring to the recently discovered interstitium or the “waterways” of the body, or adrenals. It is the empty space in the body. As the Hexagram 2 Position (pictured below), which is female, (one of the 64 hexagrams in the Book of Change), the Triple Warmer is the time in the corner. As a power Hexagram, it creates all of the other 62 (Hexagram 1 is inside Hexagram 2) and produces centrality alongside the spleen. In the oldest version of the I-Jing, when Chinese culture was matriarchal, the Triple Warmer was Hexagram 1. Unlike the other organ systems of the body, it is not paired to another organ. Although solo, as the connector of all things, it is never alone. The Triple Warmer is the source- the Empty Source. As the most mysterious and immaterial meridian, it was considered to be the most important by ancient people. It is the source and it is empty. Spokes make a wheel; it is the hole in the center. Empty space makes a door. A black hole makes the universe. We conceptualize the most powerful source of energy to be the Sun, emanating yang qi, our dantian (located below the navel, where we store our energy) which faces the Sun. Our back, and our mingmen point (opposite of dantian, the point on the back opposite the navel), points toward the moon, the North, the direction of the visible core of our universe. The Galactic Center is Empty. In 2,000 BC, houses were oriented facing South, their back to the North. Sinologist Dr. David W. Pankenier describes: “Di” for God or Heavenly, the Spirit living in the sky. Di is a meaning device to determine: Where is the galactic, energetic center of the universe? As I write this, it is stationed above us.

The Triple Warmer is the Empty Source. It is the emptiness at the source of the universe, the intelligent spiraling energy emerging from the empty source. We witness both inaction and infinite power. The animal symbolically associated with the Triple Warmer is the Pig (specifically the Sow, die Sau, a matrilineal animal) and its month is Winter, the death time of the year. With this animal and this time of year, we witness something characterized as inactive, wallowing in mud, seemingly empty, when actually all energy is concentrated in one spot. The minute you move, kinesis, you disperse the energy. The postnatal world is a swirling mixture of energy dispersal, eternal difference, which is birthed from the awe and horror of prenatal indistinction, a “Oneness” that is Nothing, that is Empty. All intelligent energy comes from there, the prerequisite for consciousness.

The sow wallows in the soil, the ground of Metaphysics that Heidegger is searching for. The roots of Metaphysics lose themselves, forget themselves, in the dark soil; the tree of Philosophy grows from these roots, nourished by the earth. What is the soil? It is the Empty Source. It is nothing; it is indistinction. We go down into the Black Heart, the Black Hole, Dark Star, the uncanny womb of being. The Nothing that we are, that dasein is stretching out into. “Lass die Sau raus”: the conservation of energy that can then explode into chaotic action. Party Hard. Heavy Metal, Heavy Mädel.

During our own transitional age, this in-between time, we must learn to work with Nothing. This is a feminine principle- How to create from a place of destruction. The destruction and re-creation of the altar of life.

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