The Golden Elixir Blog

The stage of "refining Breath to transmute it into Spirit" constitutes an advanced stage of the alchemical work, in which one's practice progresses from "doing" to "non-doing." The Great Medicine is called Embryo of Sainthood ( shengtai ) or Infant ( ying'er ). Both terms are actually metaphors for Spirit and Breath coagulating and coalescing with one another. Wu Shouyang explains the meaning of these terms saying: "Metaphorically it is called 'embryo,' as if there is truly an embryo. In fact, however, there is no embryo. Why is it so? Because according to the principle of giving birth, one generates the embryo of a child in the womb; and according to the principle of cultivating immortality, one generates an embryo of Spirit in the Heart. The worldly people hear the word 'embryo' and say that within the womb there is truly an embryo, which then leaves and becomes 'a body outside the body' ( shen wai shen ). This i...

▶ Quoted from  The Seal of the Unity of the Three: A Study and Translation of the Cantong qi, the Source of the Taoist Way of the Golden Elixir , by Fabrizio Pregadio, pages 78-79—  Read more on and from this book Qian ☰ the firm and Kun ☷ the yielding join and embrace one another; Yang endows, Yin receives, the masculine and the feminine attend         one to the other. Attending, they create and transform, unfolding their Essence and Breath. Kan ☵ and Li ☲ are at the fore: their radiance and glow come down         and spread out. Mysterious and obscure, this can hardly         be fathomed and cannot be pictured or charted. The sages gauged its depth; one with it, they set forth its foundation. These four, in indistinction, are right within Empty Non-Being. Sixty hexagrams revolve around them, outspread like a chariot. Harnessing a dragon and a mare, the bright noble man holds the rein...

"Know the white, keep to the black," (*) and the Numinous Light will come of its own. White is the essence of Metal, Black the foundation of Water. Water is the axis of the Dao: its number is 1. At the beginning of Yin and Yang, Mystery holds the Yellow Sprout; it is the ruler of the five metals, the River Chariot of the northern direction. That is why lead is black on the outside but cherishes the Golden Flower within, like the man who "wears rough-hewn clothes but         cherishes a piece of jade in his bosom," (**) and outwardly behaves like a fool. (*) This sentence is quoted from the Daode jing, sec. 28 (**) This sentence is quoted from the Daode jing, sec. 70 ▶ Quoted from  The Seal of the Unity of the Three: A Study and Translation of the Cantong qi, the Source of the Taoist Way of the Golden Elixir , by Fabrizio Pregadio, pages 78-79—  Read more on and from this book Subscribe to the free  Golden Elixir Quote of the...

The precelestial Breath is the original and initial Ancestral Breath. This Ancestral Breath is in the real center of Heaven and Earth within the human body. [Placed between] the Secret Door and the Gate of Life, hanging in the middle, it is the Heart of Heaven. The self-cultivation of the divine Immortals only consists in collecting the precelestial One Breath and using it as the Mother of the Elixir. The postcelestial Breath is the Breath that circulates internally: one exhalation, one inhalation, once coming, once going. "Exhaling touches onto the root of Heaven, inhaling touches onto the root of Earth. On exhaling, 'the dragon howls and the clouds rise'; on inhaling, 'the tiger roars and the wind blows.'" When [the postcelestial Breath] is "unceasing and continuous," it returns to the Ancestral Breath. The internal and the external inchoately merge, and coalesce to form the Reverted Elixir ( huandan ). ▶ Quoted from  Commentary on the...

Continue to advance in your practice, passing from "doing" into "non-doing." Nourish [the Embryo] warmly for ten months, keeping it tightly closed [within the womb]. Lessen the excess of strong emotions, and augment the insufficiency of compliant nature. Using the celestial True Fire, and relying on the hexagrams Zhun ䷂ in the morning and Meng ䷃ at night, smelt away the postcelestial Yin breaths. Generate the immaterial from the material, passing from the subtle to the apparent. When Breath is complete and Spirit is whole, "with a peal of thunder the golden cicada sheds its shell," and you have a body outside your body. When the work is completed and your name is recorded, (*) you will have audience at the Northern Portal and will ride a soaring phoenix. You will fly and rise in the broad daylight, and will become a Celestial Immortal of Pure Yang, free from death. Wouldn’t that be pleasant? (*) That is, one's name is entered in the "regist...

Of old, those who excelled in doing the Dao were subtle, marvelous, mysterious, and penetrating: their depth cannot be understood. It is only because it cannot be understood that, if I am forced, I would describe them as — hesitant, like one fording a stream in winter; tentative, like one concerned by the four neighborhoods; respectful, like a guest; dispersed, like melting ice; genuine, like an uncarved block; vast, like a valley; murky, like muddy water. ( Daode jing , 25) In generating and feeding things generate but do not own, do but do not be dependent, let grow but to not manage. This is called Mysterious Virtue. ( Daode jing , 10, part.) Those who intend to take over the world and do something to it— I see that they will never succeed. The world is a divine vessel: you cannot do anything to it, you cannot hold it. If you do something to it, you damage it; if you hold it, you lose it. Thus the Saint does not do, ...

This passage of the Cantong qi is reproduced from Fabrizio Pregadio,  The Seal of the Unity of the Three: A Study and Translation of the Cantong qi , the Source of the Way of the Golden Elixir (Golden Elixir Press, 2011). The Golden Elixir website contains an extended collection of of free translations, essays, and other materials on the Cantong qi reproduced from this book.   Book 2, Section 68: The Lovely Maid and the Yellow Sprout 1-4 The Lovely Maid of the River is numinous and supremely divine: when she finds Fire she flies away, leaving behind not a speck of dust.   5-8 Like a demon she hides, like a dragon she conceals: nobody knows her whereabouts. If you want to control her, the Yellow Sprout is the root.   Notes The Lovely Maid of the River ( heshang chanü ) is True Mercury; she is the Yin line within Li , referred to as the "second daughter" in the terminology of the Book of Changes . Aroused by fire, she esca...

This passage from Li Daochun's most important work is quoted in Isabelle Robinet, The World Upside Down: Essays on Taoist Internal Alchemy (Golden Elixir Press, 2011) The image of the Dragon-Tiger undergoes a thousand transformations and ten thousand changes, and its transcendence ( liao ) is divine and unfathomable. This is why we use it to represent the ingredients, we establish it as Tripod and Furnace, and we move it with the Fire regime. By analogy, it is Kan and Li; by substitution ( jia ), it is Metal and Fire; by naming, it is the boy and the girl; by conjoining, it is the husband and the wife. All these different names constitute the wondrous function ( yong ) of the Dragon and the Tiger. By virtue of their divine animation ( ling gan ), we call them ingredients; because they bring things to achievement, we call them Tripod and Furnace; by virtue of their transformations, we call them Fire regime; because they cross each other and join to one another, we call them ...

This short passage is translated from the Zhonghe ji (Anthology of Central Harmony), a work containing writings by Li Daochun, who was active at the end of the 13th century. The passage is part of a conversation between Li Daochun and one his disciples. The scriptures on the Elixir say that the wonder of the practice essentially lies in the Mysterious Barrier ( xuanguan ). I don't know where exactly is the Mysterious Barrier. Li Daochun said: The Mysterious Barrier is an utterly mysterious and wondrous function. How could it have a fixed position? If it is situated in the body, this is not correct. If it is separated from this body and is searched outside of it, this too is not correct. Those who are mired in the body situate it in the physical shape; those who are mired in the outward situate it in the external things. In any case, the Mysterious Barrier is the place where the Four Elements and the Five Agents do not cling. (The Four Elements of Buddhism are Earth, Water, ...

The Elixir as Embryo The picture shown here is very well known. It was first made popular in the West, I believe, by Richard Wilhelm's translation of the Jinhua zongzhi , or Secret of the Golden Flower . (The picture itself comes, however, from another text, the Xingming guizhi , or Teachings on the Joint Cultivation of Nature and Life .) This picture gives a different representation of the Elixir compared to the one given by Liu Yiming (see the  previous post ). Here the Elixir is shown as an embryo. One of the interesting points about this and similar pictures concerns the "actuality" of the embryo. With regard to this, Wu Shouyang (1574-1644) says in his  Tianxian zhengli zhilun  (Straightforward Discourses on the Correct Principles of Celestial Immortality — I have italicized a few sentences): The Embryo is nothing but Spirit and Breath. It does not mean that there is truly an infant ; it does not mean that it is something provided with a form and an ima...

To begin, a quote on the Golden Elixir: Golden Elixir is another name for one's fundamental nature. . . . There is no other Golden Elixir outside one's fundamental nature. All human beings have this Golden Elixir complete in themselves: it is entirely realized in everybody. It is neither more in a sage, nor less in an ordinary person. It is the seed of the Immortals and the Buddhas, the root of the worthies and the sages. Liu Yiming (1734-1821)