Hardware guide

Classical medicine describes a body with two pairs of opposite qualities: hot and cold, wet and dry. Each temperament is one of hot or cold combined with one of wet or dry.

Choleric is hot and dry (yellow bile). Sanguine is hot and wet (blood). Phlegmatic is cold and wet (phlegm). Melancholic is cold and dry (black bile).

Rodrigo Garcia Platas (RGP) places the four on a compass: choleric on top, phlegmatic at the bottom, sanguine on the right and melancholic on the left.

Position tells you who your neighbors are. Choleric touches sanguine and melancholic. Sanguine touches choleric and phlegmatic. Phlegmatic touches sanguine and melancholic. Melancholic touches choleric and phlegmatic.

A person has one primary temperament and, at most, one secondary. The secondary must be a neighbor, which means it shares exactly one quality with the primary. A sanguine can lean choleric or phlegmatic, never melancholic.

Opposites share no quality, so they are never paired. That gives 8 valid blends. In the 4 by 4 grid of primary by secondary, 4 cells are pure, 8 are neighbor blends and 4 are blocked.

RGP also describes a case called Fire-Water, a choleric in a phlegmatic body, which breaks the rule. HOS shows it as an exception, not as a type.

RGP groups the wet temperaments (sanguine and phlegmatic) as social: life runs through other people. The dry ones (choleric and melancholic) are individual: life runs through projects and the inner world.

It is a useful lens, and also the weakest part to measure. In a 2024 validation study of a mizaj questionnaire, the wet-dry scale was clearly less reliable than the hot-cold scale.

RGP uses these words for how well a person has accepted their biology. Integrated means you use your temperament's strengths on purpose. Disintegrated means you fight it or hide it, and its shadow runs the show.

Two people with the same temperament can look very different for this reason.

Biology is how you are built. Personality is how you act, for example a DISC style. When they match, you act as you are built. When they differ, RGP reads the gap as a clue to an early adaptation. Treat it as a question to explore, not a diagnosis.

The 16-cell grid in this app counts primary by secondary. A second idea, pairing 4 biologies with 4 personality styles, would also give 16 cells. We have not confirmed which one RGP means, so we show the first and keep the second as a note.

RGP reads the body first (proportions, skin, jaw, hands, where fat is stored) and then confirms with medical history. A questionnaire cannot replace that.

Start with the compass, pick the profile that fits best, notice how people who know you react to it, and hold it lightly. You can change your pick at any time.

The four temperaments go back to Hippocrates and Galen. Later models like Eysenck's and Keirsey's, and the DISC styles, echo the same four-way split, but they are different instruments and do not prove each other.

Classical Unani medicine describes nine mizaj, not four. No published validation of RGP's method was found. For this reason the health layer labels every claim by how strong its source is.