Pingdan (平旦) and Zhengyue (正月)
平旦 is the hour of the day for the lung: 3-5am. 平 is a picture of a kind of balance, while旦 is a picture of the sun coming up over the horizon. The lung is the organ of balance and judgement and the arrival of the sun each morning speaks to the health of nature.
正月 is the first lunar month (February) of the year. The character, 正, shows a foot with a line above it (which was originally a box in the oracle bone characters). It’s almost as if the foot is crossing over the horizon in the same way that 旦 shows the sun rising above it. 正 has a lot to do with the cyclical nature of the year, otherwise it would have been quite easy to use the term, “ 一月 ,” with the simple meaning of “first month.”
The seasons play out through the year as the energy rises and swells and then descends and contracts. At the time of the Zhengyue, the foot of Nature begins to take a step into the new year, and it is once again crossing the line that restarts the circular walk around the seasonal mandala.
As the lung is the starter of the new cycle, it is very concerned with time. Those with lung-type consitutions will be sticklers for time and for the righteousness that goes with following it.
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