Qi · 氣 · the breath

The vital breath — the animating flow that moves through all things, condensing into the solid and dispersing back into the void, the medium in which yin and yang do their work. Its written character shows vapor rising over rice: breath and nourishment as one. The rhyme is old and deep: the Hebrew ruach is likewise breath-and-spirit-and-wind at once, the ruach Elohim that hovers over the waters at the first line of Genesis, the breath Abulafia rides on his wheel of letters. Both traditions found the same clue — that the invisible thing keeping us alive, the breath, is the closest handle a body has on the spirit that keeps the cosmos alive.