The Music Controversy in ancient China and the use of sounds in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Tones and sounds were used by medical doctors in ancient and medieval China. There are lessons that we can learn from them on how to create Sound and Color protocols for the benefit of common folks today.
Our journey in Chinese medical history begins with the I Ching, considered to be like the Holy Bible in the west, it was written by four most honored sages in history – Fu Xi, King Wen, The Duke of Zhou, and Confucius. Originally the I Ching was a handbook for divination. After Confucius and his students had written the commentaries, it became known as a book of ancient wisdom (Huang, p. XVIII, 1998).
The I Ching is the product of the primal Eight Tones forming musical chord ratios with each other. The I Ching is considered by one modern music scholar to be a masterpiece of overtones, with infinite possible meaningful combinations. Because in its underlying pentatonic Five Phase scale.” (Berendt, 1988, p. 164)
We have record of King Wen, dated to -1125, the year when he was released from Shang prison, where he had lived for six years. In the Shiji (Book of Records) it is recorded that he invented the sixty-four hexagrams during his time in prison (F. Assandri, p. 178. 2021). We also have written record that the I Ching is the product of the primal Eight Tones forming musical chord ratios with each arrangement of triagrams. It is the expanding-contracting tonal interaction of these eight triagrams with the converted Dragon Chart that produces the sixty-four hexagrams-tones. The musical importance of the I Ching is illustrated by an early Emperor having casted sixty-four bronze bells, one for each hexagram, tuned to the pentatonic scale. On each bell, there are nine dots, perhaps a salute to the cosmic Number diagrams (Winn, p. 26, 2003).
The Warring States music controversy
What were they doing with 64 bronze bells? A good question to ask.
We have now to plunge in Chinese Philosophy. Six hundred years later, around -300, we have record of a huge controversy about the use of musical tones during the Warring States period among five competing school of thought serving as advisors in competing warring states.
Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi), the second patriarch of the Taoist School replies to one of his disciples and is recorded in -312 (Watson. Page XVIII, 2013):
” Well then, here are four schools of the Confucians, Mo, Yang and Bing and with our own that makes five. Now which of you is, in fact right?….I will show you my Way! Thereupon he tuned two lutes, placed one in the hall, and the other in an inner room. When he struck the gong (Do, C Note) on one lute, the gong on the other lute sounded; when he struck the jue (Re, D Note) note, the other jue sounded – the pitch of the two instruments was in perfect accord. Then he changed the tuning of one string so that it no longer corresponded to any of the five notes. When he plucked this string, it set all the twenty five strings of the other instrument to jangling. But he was still using sounds to produce his effect; in this case it just happened to be the note that governs the others notes. Now is this the way (it is) in your case? (Watson, 2013 , p. 204-205).
Hsün Tzu, a leading Confucian, of the times wrote on the subject: “Music embodies an unchanging harmony, while rites represent unalterable reason. Music unites which is the same; rites distinguish that what is different; and through a combination of rites and music the human heart is governed. Hence music is the most effective means to govern men. And yet Mo Tzu criticizes it! (Watson, 2013 p. 117).
In fact Mo Tzu, leader of one of the five competing schools, was known to condemn music because it implied the imposition of taxes on the population to pay for the instruments and for lavish ceremonies: “There are three things that people worry about: that when they are hungry…, cold and when they have no rest. These are the three great worries of the people. Now let us try surrounding the great bells, striking the rolling drums, strumming zithers, blowing pipes, and waving the shields and axes in the war dance? Does this do anything to provide food and clothing for the people? I hardly think so.” (Watson, 2013, p. 111.)
Of the five competing schools, three had Music Masters: the Taoist, the Confucians and the Yin Yang Schools. All three specialized in stimulating specific types of Resonance (Gan Ying) by playing bells with arithmetically calculated tones and ceremonies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganying
感應
A look on Wiki for the word Gan-Ying or Resonance shows about 1500 years of written commentaries on Resonance later incorporated in Chinese Buddhist thought and continued in Neo-Confucianism during the Song Dynasty (960-1276) permeating eventually all aspects of Chinese folk religion.
This is “the picture of the Taoist Genii printed on the cover of Joseph Needham Science and Civilisation in China Volume 6.
“The cover is part of a painted temple scroll, recent but traditional from Sichuan province (1946). Concerning these four divinities, of respectable rank in the Taoist bureaucracy. The title of the first of the four signifies ‘Heavenly Prince’, that of the other three ‘Mysterious Commander’. At the top, on the left, is Liu Tien Chün, Comptroller-General of Crops and Weather. Before his deification he was a rain-making magician and weather forecaster named Liu Chün, born in the Chin dynasty about +340. Among his attributes may be seen the sun and moon, and a measuring-rod or carpenter’s square. The two great luminaries imply the making of the calendar, so important for a primarily agricultural society, the efforts, ever renewed, to reconcile celestial periodicities. The carpenter’s square is no ordinary tool, but the gnomon for measuring the lengths of the sun’s solstitial shadows. The Comptroller-General also carries a bell because in ancient and medieval times there was thought to be a close connection between calendrical calculations and the arithmetical acoustics of bells and pitch-pipes.”
The above should give us a context surrounding the use of 64 bells and pitch-pipes by Music Masters of old in China.
Resonance in Chinese Medical History
How was Resonance used in the Chinese medical tradition? Let us start by translating the ideogram Resonance (Gan-Ying). My interpretation is based on the etymology of the two ideograms that form it. I translate Gan Ying as “vibrate with intent and you shall receive”.
The concept of Resonance and the use of sounds was first recorded in medical Chinese history by Tao Hong Jing (c. +456-c, 536) a Taoist bibliographer, medical doctor, alchemist and pharmacologist. He wrote about the Six Sounds Qi Gong (Yuan, lecture at Xin Shu Academy, 2021). Each sound was associated with one of the Seven Emotions, a color, and an organ. This sounds are still used today in TCM.
Intrigued by the Six Sounds Qi Gong and the Six Solfeggio Frequencies, I tried to match them. My on-going research shows this so far:
Sound Pentatonic Note Note Frequency/Hz Organ Color 7 Emotions
He 宮 gong UT/DO/C 396 Heart Red Joy
Chui 商 shang RE/D 417 Kidneys Blue Fear
Xi 宮 gong + 徵 zhi DO+SOL/ C+G 432** Lungs/heart Silver/Gold Sadness
Hu 角 jue MI/E 528 Spleen Yellow Brooding
Xü 徵 zhi FA/F 639 Liver Green Anger
Ah* 宮 gong + 羽 yu LA+UT 741** Lungs/heart Silver/Gold Sorrow
Ss 羽 yu LA/F 852 Lungs White Grief
* Ming addition of 7th sound at the 15th century Ming Medical Imperial Academy (Yuan 2020)
** When using multiple frequencies simultaneously apply color Silver/Gold. Source: M. Assandri 2022
Medical heptatonic pentatonic scale usage. “Six heavenly influences (Qi) which descend and produce the five tastes, go forth in the five colors, and are verified in the five notes, but when they are in excess they produce the six diseases. (Legge 1994: 580)
Around the year +1400 another controversy emerged regarding the use of the Six Qi Gong tones. The medical community added a 7th tone Ah to address sorrow (Yuan Lecture 2020) resembling much contemporary discussions regarding adding a 7th tuning fork in the Solfeggio for the Crown (Hulse Lecture 2022).
The 12 musical notes and the 12 primary body meridians
According to Noriaki Kodama an historical relationship between the concept of yin/yang, a philosophy that was widely prevalent throughout China and was part of the common knowledge of its people of the times, and the sanfen sunyi-fa the method for calculation of the chromatic gamut by means of alternate subtraction and addition of one-third to the length of a vibrating string or pipe to create 12 notes, lies at the basis of early Chinese music theory.
The 12 notes were matched with each of the 12 Primary Meridians. Each note, like each organ being either Yin or Yang. At intersection points such as the Sanyinjiao (SP-6) between Liver, Spleen and Kidney meridians, the three notes corresponding to each organ would be played in unison to tonify Qi in these channels. Most important, both the Pythagorian Six Solfeggio frequencies and the Six Sounds Qi Gong use the pentatonic scale and therefore match specific meridians or points in the body.
We know that as of year +500 circa, doctors gave their patients one or two of the Six Sounds to balance organs or meridians as if the body was a musical instrument. The use of the Six Sounds was also used as a medical diagnostic tool. Most often was used to change ones personality by concentrating on the lower Dantian (KG 6) with that sound. Thus we can become that sound (Yuan, class lecture, 2021). This is how we can use sounds to change our personality” according to Taoist Medical Doctor Jeffrey Yuan.
Astronomy, Music, and Number Diagrams in Prehistory
According to Winn, “It stretches the credulity of modern people to consider that the Numbers of the Chinese ancients may be connected to planetary tones or sub-audible musical frequencies that accurately reflect the synodic (orbital) periods of the physical planets in their revolution about the sun. The common practice, well documented in the Yin Yang school of Zou Yan by -350, linking Numbers to musical tones to directions and colors and planets, in effect relies on an ancient theory of chronobiology. This theory in China linked human biological circadian rhythms with planetary rhythms in the guise of Five Phase theory and yin/yang theory (Winn, p.13, 2013). We find an entire branch of Taoist Chinese Medicine elaborating sound and color medical protocols based on the “Meander Diagram” found in many different Ice Age European and Siberian paleolithic cultures, carbon-dated as early as -33,000.
Musician-scholar Bart Jordan claims such complex geometrical figures required mathematical abilities to construct. He posits five colors (red-green-blue-orange or white-yellow for five planets) and eight numbers in pairs that add to 9 were maps of planetary-musical relationships (center and right). These diagrams may have been the first human calendars. (Diagrams: Jordan, 1978).
A prolific school of Taoist Medicine developed protocols based on the five colors and the five sounds which continues to this very day. Fabien Maman has been researching with remarkable results the applications of sound healing and acupuncture along this path for the past 35 years.