Chinese characters are the symbols of recording the language of traditional Chinese medicine（TCM） and is an important way to understand the basic concepts and propositions of TCM. This paper studies the TCM theory from the perspective of Chinese philology. According to the cognitive model of form

matter

meaning and sound in BAN Gu′s Six Scrips（《六书》）

the cognitive sources of metaphor experience are divided into four types

i.e. pictographic metaphor

matter metaphor

meaning metaphor and sound metaphor. According to the previous research results of TCM metaphor

this paper

based on the connotation and characteristics of form

matter

meaning and sound

respectively

explains the meaning of four imagery

analyzes the origin

mapping process and uniqueness of cognitive methods of four imagery

and reveals the dynamic relationship among four imagery metaphor according to the internal logical relationship and cognitive rules

to explore a metaphor interpretation method suitable for the basic concepts and propositions of TCM.