Are you Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic, or Phlegmatic? A structured questionnaire grounded in Hippocratic medicine and Galenic humoral theory, mapped onto the traditional astrological elements.
From Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BCE) through Galen (129–210 CE) and into the late medieval and Renaissance period, Western medicine was built on the doctrine of the four humors — yellow bile, blood, black bile and phlegm. Each humor was associated with two of the four primary qualities (hot/cold and wet/dry), and these qualities mapped onto the four elements (fire, air, earth, water) and the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Your temperament is the dominant humor in your constitution — the quality that shapes how you experience your body, mind, and the world. Choleric is hot and dry (fire), sanguine is hot and wet (air), melancholic is cold and dry (earth), and phlegmatic is cold and wet (water). Most people are a mix of two; pure types are rare.
This test asks you a series of questions about your physical constitution, energy patterns, sleep, digestion, emotional defaults and decision-making style. The answers are weighted across the four humors to identify your dominant and secondary types. The result includes traditional medical correspondences (foods, daily rhythms, seasons) drawn from Galen's De Temperamentis, Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, and William Salmon's Synopsis Medicinae.
Driven, decisive, quick-tempered. Aries, Leo, Sagittarius rising. Mars and the Sun strong.
Cheerful, sociable, optimistic. Gemini, Libra, Aquarius rising. Jupiter and Venus strong.
Reflective, careful, persistent. Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn rising. Saturn strong, Mercury cold.
Calm, receptive, patient. Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces rising. Moon and Venus strong.
This is a study tool. The temperament test is not medical diagnosis. For clinical questions please consult a qualified physician. For deep astrological constitutional analysis, see the related natal chart consultation.
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About the four temperaments and astrological humoural analysis
The four temperaments - choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic - are the astrological and medical expression of the four classical elements (fire, earth, air and water) and the four humours (yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm) of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. Choleric is hot and dry (fire), melancholic is cold and dry (earth), sanguine is hot and moist (air), and phlegmatic is cold and moist (water). The doctrine entered astrology through Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and was elaborated by the Persian and medieval Arabic authors, becoming a core tool of natal interpretation in the Renaissance and used by William Lilly and his contemporaries to read constitutional health alongside character.
The classical procedure weighs several chart factors that each contribute one or more "votes" to the four qualities of hot, cold, dry and moist: the season of birth, the Ascendant sign, the Ascendant ruler, the position of the Moon, the planet of the lunation phase nearest birth and aspects to the angles. Each factor is assigned a temperamental quality, and the totals indicate whether the native is predominantly choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic or some specific mixture. The contemporary system most widely used in the traditional revival was developed by Dorian Greenbaum in her 2005 monograph Temperament: Astrology's Forgotten Key, building on the methods of Lilly, Saunders and Culpeper.
Dorian Greenbaum is a Hellenistic and traditional astrology scholar whose 2005 book Temperament: Astrology's Forgotten Key reconstructed the classical temperament-from-chart procedure from primary sources and synthesized them into a usable modern method. Her system, sometimes called the Greenbaum method, weighs the season, ascendant, ascendant ruler, Moon and Moon-phase factors with carefully calibrated point values to produce a final temperamental balance. Greenbaum's work has become a standard reference in the contemporary traditional astrology revival and has reintroduced humoural temperament analysis to several generations of modern astrologers.
In the medical astrology of Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna and the medieval European tradition, each temperament was associated with specific patterns of health, susceptibility to illness, dietary needs and recommended therapies. A choleric constitution tended toward inflammatory and febrile illnesses and benefited from cooling and moistening regimens; a melancholic constitution tended toward chronic and depressive conditions and benefited from warming and moistening foods; a sanguine constitution was generally robust but susceptible to plethoric conditions; and a phlegmatic constitution tended toward sluggish, mucous and digestive complaints. Even after the Galenic medical paradigm was superseded by modern biomedicine, temperament theory has survived as a useful constitutional framework in Unani, Ayurvedic and several integrative medicine traditions.
Temperament in the classical sense refers to the basic constitutional balance of hot, cold, dry and moist qualities in the body and psyche, providing the underlying physiological substrate from which personality develops. Personality in the modern psychological sense refers to the patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that emerge over a lifetime through the interaction of temperament with upbringing, culture and personal choice. Temperament is therefore broadly stable across life, while personality is more changeable; classical natal interpretation read both layers together, with temperament as the constitutional background and the rest of the chart - planets, houses and aspects - filling in the personal narrative.