Chinese Organ Networks: Gallbladder

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t know exactly where the gallbladder is, or what it does.  That’s the little-G gallbladder we’re talking about, as opposed to the big-G esoteric Chinese organ system.  But bear with me on this atypical anatomical aside.  The gallbladder happens to be a dark green sac tucked under the liver, where it stores and concentrates bile.  Bile is what our bodies use to emulsify fat.  This means breaking big globules of fat into tiny little droplets.  Bile works like soap: it ‘cuts’ grease, through a bit of chemical magic making it essentially water-soluble.  Because let's face it: our bodies wouldn't work very well or look very nice if we couldn't get oil and water to mix.  Thanks to the gallbladder and its bile, it becomes possible to absorb said fats via the villi of the intestines and put them to work everywhere from our cell membranes to our brains to our sex hormones.  Yes, fat is sadly underrated.  

So much for the gallbladder; unless you’re unusually interested in medicine, you’ll probably forget the little tidbit you just learned about this organ and be none the worse for it.  And yet you may know more than you think you do about the Gallbladder, big-G.  The Chinese functional, cosmological, symbolical organ network.  Dubious?  Well, chances are you’re familiar with the saying that someone “has a lot of gall.”  Maybe you’re apt to say it yourself when the someone pisses you off, does something cheeky, bold, possibly transgressive.  (Granted, you might just as often hear that s/he has balls, or a lot of nerve, but gall is really the most accurate.) The saying indicates that, even if as a cultural we’ve forgotten, we used to think in embodied terms.  Like other traditional cultures, our ancestors recognized that emotional and physiological realities aren’t distinct and separate realms.  It is possible to eat your heart out, or, even worse, to screw your brains out.  (That's jing, essence, you're squandering!  Or so the Daoist sages tell us.)   

As the saying about “a lot of gall” indicates, the Gallbladder is for courage.  It is the commander of the battle, leading the troops by example, charging out first into the fray.  As such, it must be able to act decisively and intuitively.  Gallbladder types have no trouble deciding and acting, even if it sometimes seems they act and then decide. 

The Gallbladder holds a very special position in the macrocosmic organ clock.  In the last position we had the Triple Warmer, stationed at the most yin time of year, roughly early December.  Light--yang qi--was at its weakest then; the days were about to be as short as they get.  With the Gallbladder, we take the first step back towards the light.  This is the position of midnight, of winter solstice.  In some sense this is the yinnest time; in another, it is the most yang.  It is here in the dead of night, in the depths of winter, that we witness the rebirth of the light.  Christmas, after all, was originally a pagan festival, and it is no coincidence that it falls around the solstice and involves lots of candles and lights.  December 23rd may not seem to contain much more daylight than the 22nd, but the decisive first step has been taken.  The long climb back towards June 22nd and the summer solstice, and the Gallbladder’s clock partner the Heart, has begun.  

Of course, unless you’re truly observant and unusually sensitive, you won’t notice that the days are getting longer for some time.  You certainly won’t feel any increase in warmth, not for months yet; at bottom, this is because matter follows energy with a lag of 90 degrees (1/2 pi radians, a quarter turn of a circle).  The upward movement is already present on the day after the shortest day of the year; the shift has occurred, but it will take a while to manifest physically.  The energy of yang returning is subtle but powerful.  In the Gallbladder time, even if we don’t notice it, this decisive shift occurs.  In the hexagram corresponding to this organ position, one yang line shoves up beneath five yin lines.  The yang is back, it has been reborn, but it is small, and as yet hidden beneath the ground, like an unfurling plant that has not yet broken through the surface.  

This image of a plant shooting upwards is actually an ideal symbol for the Gallbladder; this is the first organ of the Wood phase element.  In 5 Element theory, Wood is the springtime, the force of upward and outward growth, exuberant new life, that comes after the dormancy of Water (winter).  The motion of wood is strongly upward, counter to gravity.  And, fittingly, the Gallbladder is responsible for uprightness.  A military commander stands up straight and expects the same of his troops.  There is strength in this kind of perpendicular straightness.  A flood of symbols come to mind: a flagpole, a skyscraper...perhaps an erect phallus.  The Gallbladder is an overwhelmingly masculine archetype.  Returning for a moment to anatomy and physiology of the corresponding bodily organ, it is the fat that the gallbladder helps break down that nourishes our endocrine and reproductive systems.  If we can’t digest fats, our courage and our libidos both start to break down.  

A bit of food for thought for the herbalists out there: could Spikenard, Aralia racemosa (and A. californica), be considered a Gallbladder remedy?  It is, after all, an herb that aids in the digestion and metabolism of fat, nourishing them endocrine system, and has been  said to lend courage and confidence that we can handle what comes.  Ah, beautiful Spikenard!

We’ve already alluded a couple of times to a theme that quickly emerges with the Gallbladder: taking the first step.  Initiating action.  A good image for the Gallbladder is a spark plug, a device that provides the initial impetus to get a powerful cycle moving again.  And like a combustion engine’s, this organ network’s energy can be explosive.  The Gallbladder can express a lot of anger; this is healthy, but if it comes out suddenly and violently, it is pathological.  The transition back into the light half of the year should be barely noticeable; it is happening underground, after all.  

The Gallbladder channel runs down the sides of the body.  Actually it doesn’t so much run as it does zig-zag its way down just lateral to the eyes to the little toe.  It has a back-and-forth energy to it.  Gallbladder pathologies often have something of this back-and-forth, "half-in, half-out" nature.  The Gallbladder swings open and shut, acting like a door hinge.  Pathologies that affect the Gallbladder's Shao Yang layer are neither here nor there: Malaria is the archetypal example.  Its characteristic fever is the "intermittent" fever that comes and goes every few days, coursing through predictable cycles.  Alternating chills and fever are a hallmark of Shaoyang (Gallbladder-Triple Warmer) disorders, and the herbs that treat them tend to be exceedingly bitter.  In the Chinese system, there's Chai Hu, Bupleurum; in the New World herbal tradition, we have boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum.  Not coincidentally, bitter is the flavor that stimulates bile flow, in effect opening the hinge and letting whatever is out.  


The Gallbladder animal totem is the humble mouse, or more properly the rat.  In Chinese mythology, the rat rides on the ox (the symbol for the liver, as the next post will discuss) across the river and hops off first upon reaching the other side.  Thus the rat wins the race; the Gallbladder is always first.  Rats are courageous, often disgustingly so; and interestingly, rats are one of the few mammals not to have a gallbladder.  That's probably a good enough head-scratcher to end on...

As usual with these organ posts, all credit due to Heiner Fruehauf and his Cosmology lectures.