9 Taoist Books on the Elixir

Golden Elixir Press has started the Occasional Papers series. This series will contain short articles, translations, reference works, or similar publications, distributed either for free or at a very low price. The Occasional Papers will be available only in PDF format.

The first publication in the series is:

Fabrizio Pregadio
9 Taoist Books on the Elixir: A Short Bibliography
23 pp., Golden Elixir Press, 2011
Web page

Please visit the Web page to download the bibliography for free.

This bibliography contains the main data on nine important original texts of Taoist alchemy. It includes two texts on Waidan (External Alchemy) and seven texts on Neidan (Internal Alchemy). In addition to their importance and renown, the selections concern texts for which at least one translation in a Western language is available.

Each entry contains: Title in Chinese, and translation; Information on author and date; A synthetic description; References to print editions of the Chinese text; Links to online versions of the Chinese text; Translations into Western languages (with links to relevant Web pages, if available); Main reference materials, both in print and online.

Most entries also include short translations, to provide at least a glimpse of the content of each text.

An appendix contains the titles of nine selected Western-language works on Taoist alchemy, with short notes on their content.