Was recalling the other day that when grandson Patrick was in the Cincinnati Waldorf School, they taught the four humours, a medieval medical belief, which Rudolf Steiner, father of Waldorf, had also used. Then I could only remember three of them. Instead of hitting wiki as per usual, I just googled and came up with a website that talked about the humours, and gave their seasonal and Meyers-Briggs correspondences.
I’m an ENTJ in the Meyers-Briggs, and this all hit me just about right. Here are the humours:
Winter – Phlegmatic – calm. unemotional – NT
Spring – Sanguine – courageous, hopeful, amorous – SP
Summer – Choleric – bad temper, anger – NF
Fall – Melancholic – depressed, sad – SJ
If you were a melancholic, you were a melancholic all the time – but winter is the season most corresponding to that temperment. I find all these systems, old and new, esoteric and scientific, to be useful ways to consider ideas. And I see pretty much the same value in astrology as in Meyers-Briggs. It all helps us know ourselves and each other better.
The humours also correspond to waters in the body (blood, bile) and to particular organs. The known Western world believed totally in this for hundreds of years. And certainly, one day, our inheritors will likely find our beliefs also barbaric and uninformed. But thinking in new (old) ways about any topic can be useful. Now you have a new set of ideas to consider.