{"schema_version":1,"access":"public","rights":"Public-domain or compatibly licensed source editions; provenance is retained per record.","work":{"slug":"baopuzi-drugs-of-immortals","title":"Drugs of the Immortals (Baopuzi, Inner Chapter 11)","author":"Ge Hong","tradition":"alchemy","language":"lzh","genre":"alchemical treatise","period":"Eastern Jin, c. 320 CE","source_url":"https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/抱朴子/卷11","original":{"text":"### The Grades of Drugs, the Five Zhi Fungi, and Stone Zhi\n\n1.抱朴子曰：神農四經曰，上藥令人身安命延，昇為天神，遨遊上下，使役萬靈，體生毛羽，行廚立至。又曰，五芝及餌丹砂、玉劄、曾青、雄黃、雌黃、雲母、太乙禹餘糧，各可單服之，皆令人飛行長生。又曰，中藥養性，下藥除病，能令毒蟲不加，猛獸不犯，惡氣不行，眾妖並辟。又孝經援神契曰，椒薑禦濕，菖蒲益聰，巨勝延年，威喜辟兵。皆上聖之至言，方術之實錄也，明文炳然，而世人終於不信，可歎息者也。仙藥之上者丹砂，次則黃金，次則白銀，次則諸芝，次則五玉，次則雲母，次則明珠，次則雄黃，次則太乙禹餘糧，次則石中黃子，次則石桂，次則石英，次則石腦，次則石硫黃，次則石𥹋，次則曾青，次則松柏脂、茯苓、地黃、麥門冬、木巨勝、重樓、黃連、石韋、楮實、象柴，一名托盧是也。或云仙人杖，或云西王母杖，或名天精，或名卻老，或名地骨，或名苟杞也。天門冬，或名地門冬，或名莚門冬，或名顛棘，或名淫羊食，或名管松，其生高地，根短而味甜，氣香者善。其生水側下地者，葉細似蘊而微黃，根長而味多苦，氣臭者下，亦可服食。然喜令人下氣，為益尤遲也。服之百日，皆丁壯倍駛於術及黃精也，入山便可蒸，若煮啖之，取足可以斷穀。若有力可餌之，亦可作散，並及絞其汁作酒，以服散尤佳。楚人呼天門冬為百部，然自有百部草，其根俱有百許，相似如一也，而其苗小異也。真百部苗似拔揳，唯中以治欬及殺虱耳，不中服食，不可誤也。如黃精一名白及，而實非中以作糊之白及也。按本草藥之與他草同名者甚多，唯精博者能分別之，不可不詳也。黃精一名兔竹，一名救窮，一名垂珠。服其花勝其實，服其實勝其根，但花難多得。得其生花十斛，乾之才可得五六斗耳，而服之日可三合，非大有役力者不能辨也。服黃精僅十年，乃可大得其益耳。俱以斷穀不及術，術餌令人肥健，可以負重涉險，但不及黃精甘美易食，凶年可以與老小休糧，人不能別之，謂為米脯也。\n\n2.五芝者，有石芝，有木芝，有草芝，有肉芝，有菌芝，各有百許種也。\n\n3.石芝者，石象芝生於海隅名山，及島嶼之涯有積石者，其狀如肉象有頭尾四足者，良似生物也，附於大石，喜在高岫險峻之地，或卻著仰綴也。赤者如珊瑚，白者如截肪，黑者如澤漆，青者如翠羽，黃者如紫金，而皆光明洞徹如堅冰也。晦夜去之三百步，便望見其光矣。大者十餘斤，小者三四斤，非久齋至精，及佩老子入山靈寶五符，亦不能得見此輩也。凡見諸芝，且先以開山卻害符置其上，則不得復隱蔽化去矣。徐徐擇王相之日，設醮祭以酒脯，祈而取之，皆從日下禹步閉氣而往也。又若得石象芝，搗之三萬六千杵，服方寸匕，日三，盡一斤，則得千歲；十斤，則萬歲。亦可分人服也。又玉脂芝，生於有玉之山，常居懸危之處，玉膏流出，萬年已上，則凝而成芝，有似鳥獸之形，色無常彩，率多似山玄水蒼玉也。亦鮮明如水精，得而末之，以無心草汁和之，須臾成水，服一升，得一千歲也。七明九光芝，皆石也，生臨水之高山石崖之間，狀如盤碗，不過徑尺以還，有莖蒂連綴之，起三四寸，有七孔者，名七明，九孔者名九光，光皆如星，百餘步內，夜皆望見其光，其光自別，可散不可合也。常以秋分伺之得之，搗服方寸匕，入口則翕然身熱，五味甘美，盡一斤則得千歲，令人身有光，所居暗地如月，可以夜視也。石蜜芝，生少室石戶中，戶中便有深谷，不可得過，以石投穀中，半日猶聞其聲也。去戶外十餘丈有石柱，柱上有偃蓋石，高度徑可一丈許，望見蜜芝從石戶上墮入偃蓋中，良久，輒有一滴，有似雨後屋之餘漏，時時一落耳。然蜜芝墮不息，而偃蓋亦終不溢也。戶上刻石為科斗字，曰得服石蜜芝一鬥者壽萬歲。諸道士共思惟其處，不可得往，唯當以碗器著勁竹木端以承取之，然竟未有能為之者。按此石戶上刻題如此，前世必已有得之者也。石桂芝，生名山石穴中，似桂樹而實石也。高尺許，大如徑尺，光明而味辛，有枝條，搗服之一斤得千歲也。石中黃子，所在有之，沁水山為尤多。其在大石中，則其石常潤濕不燥，打其石有數十重，乃得之。在大石中，赤黃溶溶，如雞子之在其殼中也。即當飲之，不飲則堅凝成石，不復中服也。法正當及未堅時飲之，既凝則應末服也。破一石中，多者有一升，少者有數合，可頓服也。雖不得多，相繼服之，共計前後所服，合成三升，壽則千歲。但欲多服，唯患難得耳。石腦芝，生滑石中，亦如石中黃子狀，但不皆有耳。打破大滑石千許，乃可得一枚。初破之，其在石中，五色光明而自動，服一升得千歲矣。石硫黃芝，五嶽皆有，而箕山為多。其方言許由就此服之而長生，故不復以富貴累意，不受堯禪也。石硫丹者，石之赤精，蓋石硫黃之類也。皆浸溢於崖岸之間，其濡濕者可丸服，其已堅者可散服，如此有百二十，皆石芝也，事在太乙玉策及昌宇內記，不可具稱也。\n\n### Wood, Herb, Flesh and Mushroom Zhi\n\n4.及夫木芝者，松柏脂淪入地千歲，化為茯苓，茯苓萬歲，其上生小木，狀似蓮花，名曰木威喜芝。夜視有光，持之甚滑，燒之不然，帶之辟兵，以帶雞而雜以他雞十二頭其籠之，去之十二步，射十二箭，他雞皆傷，帶威喜芝者終不傷也。從生門上采之，於六甲陰乾之，百日，末服方寸匕，日三，盡一枚，則三千歲也。千歲之栝木，其下根如坐人，長七寸，刻之有血，以其血塗足下，可以步行水上不沒；以塗人鼻以入水，水為之開，可以止住淵底也；以塗身則隱形，欲見則拭之。又可以治病，病在腹內，刮服一刀圭，其腫痛在外者，隨其所在刮一刀圭，即其腫痛所在以摩之，皆手下即愈，假令左足有疾，則刮塗人之左足也。又刮以雜巨勝為燭，夜遍照地下，有金玉寶藏，則光變青而下垂，以鍤掘之可得也。末之，服盡十斤則千歲也。又松樹枝三千歲者，其皮中有聚脂，狀如龍形，名曰飛節芝，大者重十斤，末服之，盡十斤，得五百歲也。又有樊桃芝，其木如昇龍，其花葉如丹羅，其實如翠鳥，高不過五尺，生於名山之陰，東流泉水之土，以立夏之候伺之，得而末服之，盡一株得五千歲也。參成芝，赤色有光，扣之枝葉，如金石之音，折而續之，即復如故。木渠芝，寄生大木上，如蓮花，九莖一叢，其味甘而辛。建木芝實生於都廣，其皮如纓蛇，其實如鸞鳥。此三芝得服之，白日昇天也。黃盧子、尋木華、玄液華，此三芝生於泰山要鄉及奉高，有得而服之，皆令人壽千歲。黃蘗檀桓芝者，千歲黃蘗，木下根有如三斛器，去本株一二丈，以細根相連狀如縷，得末而服之，盡一枚則成地仙不死也。此輩復百二十種，自有圖也。\n\n5.草芝有獨搖芝，無風自動，其莖大如手指，赤如丹，素葉似莧，其根有大魁如鬥，有細者如雞子十二枚，周繞大根之四方，如十二辰也，相去丈許，皆有細根，如白髮以相連，生高山深谷之上，其所生左右無草。得其大魁末服之，盡則得千歲，服其細者一枚百歲，可以分他人也。懷其大根即隱形，欲見則左轉而出之。牛角芝，生虎壽山及吳阪上，狀似蔥，特生如牛角，長三四尺，青色，末服方寸匕，日三，至百日，則得千歲矣。龍仙芝，狀如昇龍之相負也，以葉為鱗，其根則如蟠龍，服一枚則得千歲矣。麻母芝，似麻而莖赤色，花紫色。紫珠芝，其花黃，其葉赤，其實如李而紫色，二十四枝輒相連，而垂如貫珠也。白符芝，高四五尺，似梅，常以大雪而花，季冬而實。朱草芝，九曲，曲有三葉，葉有三實也。五德芝，狀似樓殿，莖方，其葉五色各具而不雜，上如偃蓋，中常有甘露，紫氣起數尺矣。龍銜芝，常以仲春對生，三節十二枝，下根如坐人。凡此草芝，又有百二十種，皆陰乾服之，則令人與天地相畢，或得千歲二千歲。\n\n6.肉芝者，謂萬歲蟾蜍，頭上有角，頷下有丹書八字再重，以五月五日日中時取之，陰乾百日，以其左足畫地，即為流水，帶其左手於身，辟五兵，若敵人射己者，弓弩矢皆反還自向也。千歲蝙蝠，色白如雪，集則倒縣，腦重故也。此二物得而陰乾末服之，令人壽四萬歲。千歲靈龜，五色具焉，其雄額上兩骨起似角，以羊血浴之，乃剔取其甲，火炙搗服方寸匕，日三，盡一具，壽千歲。行山中，見小人乘車馬，長七八寸者，肉芝也，捉取服之即仙矣。風生獸似貂，青色，大如狸，生於南海大林中，張網取之，積薪數車以燒之，薪盡而此獸在灰中不然，其毛不焦，斫刺不入，打之如皮囊，以鐵鎚鍛其頭數十下乃死，死而張其口以向風，須臾便活而起走，以石上菖蒲塞其鼻即死。取其腦以和菊花服之，盡十斤，得五百歲也。又千歲燕，其窠戶北向，其色多白而尾掘，取陰乾，末服一頭五百歲。凡此又百二十種，此皆肉芝也。\n\n7.菌芝，或生深山之中，或生大木之下，或生泉之側，其狀或如宮室，或如車馬，或如龍虎，或如人形，或如飛鳥，五色無常，亦百二十種，自有圖也。皆當禹步往採取之，刻以骨刀，陰乾末服方寸匕，令人昇仙，中者數千歲，下者千歲也。欲求芝草，入名山，必以三月九月，此山開出神藥之月也，勿以山佷日，必以天輔時，三奇會尤佳。出三奇吉門到山，須六陰之日，明堂之時，帶靈寶符，牽白犬，抱白雞，以白鹽一斗，及開山符檄，著大石上，執吳唐草一把以入山，山神喜，必得芝也。又采芝及服芝，欲得王相專和之日，支幹上下相生為佳。此諸芝名山多有之，但凡庸道士，心不專精，行穢德薄，又不曉入山之術，雖得其圖，不知其狀，亦終不能得也。山無大小，皆有鬼神，其鬼神不以芝與人，人則雖踐之，不可見也。\n\n### Mica, Realgar, Jade, Silver, Pearl and the Common Herbs\n\n8.又雲母有五種，而人多不能分別也，法當舉以向日，看其色，詳占視之，乃可知耳。正爾於陰地視之，不見其雜色也。五色並具而多青者名雲英，宜以春服之。五色並具而多赤者名雲珠，宜以夏服之。五色並具而多白者名雲液，宜以秋服之。五色並具而多黑者名雲母，宜以冬服之。但有青黃二色者名雲沙，宜以季夏服之。皛皛純白名磷石，可以四時長服之也。服五雲之法，或以桂蔥水玉化之以為水，或以露於鐵器中，以玄水熬之為水，或以硝石合於筒中埋之為水，或以蜜搜為酪，或以秋露漬之百日，韋囊挻以為粉，或以無巔草樗血合餌之，服之一年，則百病除，三年久服，老公反成童子，五年不闕，可役使鬼神，入火不燒，入水不濡，踐棘而不傷膚，與仙人相見。又他物埋之即朽，著火即焦，而五雲以納猛火中，經時終不然，埋之永不腐敗，故能令人長生也。又云，服之十年，雲氣常覆其上，服其母以致其子，理自然也。又向日看之，晻晻純黑色起者，不中服，令人病淋發瘡。雖水餌之，皆當先以茅屋霤水，若東流水露水，漬之百日，淘汰去其土石，乃可用耳。中山衛叔卿服之，積久能乘雲而行，以其方封之玉匣之中，仙去之後，其子名世，及漢使者梁伯，得而按方合服，皆得仙去。\n\n9.又雄黃當得武都山所出者，純而無雜，其赤如雞冠，光明曄曄者，乃可用耳。其但純黃似雄黃色，無赤光者，不任以作仙藥，可以合理病藥耳。餌服之法，或以蒸煮之，或以酒餌，或先以硝石化為水乃凝之，或以玄胴腸裹蒸之於赤土下，或以松脂和之，或以三物煉之，引之如布，白如冰，服之皆令人長生，百病除，三屍下，瘢痕滅，白髮黑，墮齒生，千日則玉女來侍，可得役使，以致行廚。又玉女常以黃玉為志，大如黍米，在鼻上，是真玉女也，無此志者，鬼試人耳。\n\n10.玉亦仙藥，但難得耳。玉經曰：服金者壽如金，服玉者壽如玉也。又曰：服玄真者，其命不極。玄真者，玉之別名也。令人身飛輕舉，不但地仙而已。然其道遲成，服一二百斤，乃可知耳。玉可以烏米酒及地榆酒化之為水，亦可以蔥漿消之為𥹋，亦可餌以為丸，亦可燒以為粉，服之一年已上，入水不霑，入火不灼，刃之不傷，百毒不犯也。不可用已成之器，傷人無益，當得璞玉，乃可用也，得于闐國白玉尤善。其次有南陽徐善亭部界中玉及日南盧容水中玉亦佳。赤松子以玄蟲血漬玉為水而服之，故能乘煙上下也。玉屑服之與水餌之，俱令人不死。所以為不及金者，令人數數發熱，似寒食散狀也。若服玉屑者，宜十日輒一服雄黃丹砂各一刀圭，散發洗沐寒水，迎風而行，則不發熱也。董君異嘗以玉醴與盲人服之，目旬日而愈。有吳延稚者，志欲服玉，得玉經方不具，了不知其節度禁忌，乃招合得珪璋環璧，及校劍所用甚多，欲餌治服之，後餘為說此不中用，乃歎息曰：事不可不精，不但無益，乃幾作禍也。\n\n11.又銀但不及金玉耳，可以地仙也。服之法，以麥漿化之，亦可以朱草酒餌之，亦可以龍膏煉之，然三服，輒大如彈丸者，又非清貧道士所能得也。\n\n12.又真珠徑一寸以上可服，服之可以長久，酪漿漬之皆化如水銀，亦可以浮石水蜂窠化，包彤蛇黃合之，可引長三四尺，丸服之，絕穀服之，則不死而長生也。淳漆不沾者，服之令人通神長生，餌之法，或以大無腸公子，或云大蟹，十枚投其中，或以雲母水，或以玉水合服之，九蟲悉下，惡血從鼻去，一年六甲行廚至也。\n\n13.桂可以蔥涕合蒸作水，可以竹瀝合餌之，亦可以先知君腦，或云龜，和服之，七年，能步行水上，長生不死也。\n\n14.巨勝一名胡麻，餌服之不老，耐風濕，補衰老也。桃膠以桑灰汁漬，服之百病癒，久服之身輕有光明，在晦夜之地如月出也，多服之則可以斷穀。\n\n15.檸木實之赤者，餌之一年，老者還少，令人徹視見鬼。昔道士梁須年七十乃服之，轉更少，至年百四十歲，能夜書，行及奔馬，後入青龍山去。槐子以新甕合泥封之，二十餘日，其表皮皆爛，乃洗之如大豆，日服之，此物主補腦，久服之，令人發不白而長生。玄中蔓方，楚飛廉、澤瀉、地黃、黃連之屬，凡三百餘種，皆能延年，可單服也。靈飛散、未夬丸、制命丸、羊血丸，皆令人駐年卻老也。\n\n### Sweet-Valley Water, Long-Lived Families, and Tales of Those Who Ate Herbs\n\n16.南陽酈縣山中有甘谷水，谷水所以甘者，穀上左右皆生甘菊，菊花墮其中，曆世彌久，故水味為變。其臨此谷中居民，皆不穿井，悉食甘谷水，食者無不老壽，高者百四五十歲，下者不失八九十，無夭年人，得此菊力也。故司空王暢太尉劉寬太傅袁隗，皆為南陽太守，每到官，常使酈縣月送甘谷水四十斛以為飲食。此諸公多患風痺及眩冒，皆得愈，但不能大得其益，如甘谷上居民，生小便飲食此水者耳。又菊花與薏花相似，直以甘苦別之耳，菊甘而薏苦，諺言所謂苦如薏者也。今所在有真菊，但為少耳，率多生於水側，緱氏山與酈縣最多，仙方所謂日精更生，周盈皆一菊，而根莖花實異名，其說甚美，而近來服之者略無效，正由不得真菊也。夫甘谷水得菊之氣味，亦何足言。而其上居民，皆以延年，況將復好藥，安得無益乎？\n\n17.余亡祖鴻臚少卿曾為臨沅令，云此縣有廖氏家，世世壽考，或出百歲，或八九十，後徙去，子孫轉多夭折。他人居其故宅，復如舊，後累世壽考。由此乃覺是宅之所為，而不知其何故，疑其井水殊赤，乃試掘井左右，得古人埋丹砂數十斛，去井數尺，此丹砂汁因泉漸入井，是以飲其水而得壽，況乃餌煉丹砂而服之乎？\n\n18.余又聞上党有趙瞿者，病癩歷年，眾治之不愈，垂死。或云不及活，流棄之，後子孫轉相注易，其家乃齎糧將之，送置山穴中。瞿在穴中，自怨不幸，晝夜悲歎，涕泣經月。有仙人行經過穴，見而哀之，具問訊之。瞿知其異人，乃叩頭自陳乞哀，於是仙人以一囊藥賜之，教其服法。瞿服之百許日，瘡都愈，顏色豐悅，肌膚玉澤。仙人又過視之，瞿謝受更生活之恩，乞丐其方。仙人告之曰，此是松脂耳，此山中更多此物，汝煉之服，可以長生不死。瞿乃歸家，家人初謂之鬼也，甚驚愕。瞿遂長服松脂，身體轉輕，氣力百倍，登危越險，終日不極，年百七十歲，齒不墮，發不白。夜臥，忽見屋間有光大如鏡者，以問左右，皆云不見，久而漸大，一室盡明如晝日。又夜見面上有采女二人，長二三寸，面體皆具，但為小耳，遊戲其口鼻之間，如是且一年，此女漸長大，出在其側。又常聞琴瑟之音，欣然獨笑，在人間三百許年，色如小童，乃入抱犢山去，必地仙也。于時聞瞿服松脂如此，於是競服。其多役力者，乃車運驢負，積之盈室，服之遠者，不過一月，未覺大有益輒止，有志者難得如是也。\n\n19.又漢成帝時，獵者於終南山中，見一人無衣服，身生黑毛，獵人見之，欲逐取之，而其人逾坑越谷，有如飛騰，不可逮及。於是乃密伺候其所在，合圍得之，定是婦人。問之，言我本是秦之宮人也，聞關東賊至，秦王出降，宮室燒燔，驚走入山，饑無所食，垂餓死，有一老翁教我食松葉松實，當時苦澀，後稍便之，遂使不饑不渴，冬不寒，夏不熱。計此女定是秦王子嬰宮人，至成帝之世，二百許歲，乃將歸，以穀食之，初聞穀臭嘔吐，累日乃安。如是二年許，身毛乃脫落，轉老而死。向使不為人所得，便成仙人矣。\n\n20.南陽文氏，說其先祖，漢末大亂，逃去山中，饑困欲死。有一人教之食術，遂不能饑，數十年乃來還鄉里，顏色更少，氣力勝故。自說在山中時，身輕欲跳，登高履險，曆日不極，行冰雪中，了不知寒。常見一高岩上，有數人對坐博戲者，有讀書者，俛而視文氏，因聞其相問，言此子中呼上否。其一人答言未可也。術一名山粦，一名山精。故神藥經曰：必欲長生，常服山精。\n\n21.昔仙人八公，各服一物，以得陸仙，各數百年，乃合神丹金液，而昇太清耳。人若合八物，煉而服之，不得其力，是其藥力有轉相勝畏故也。韓終服菖蒲十三年，身生毛，日視書萬言，皆誦之，冬袒不寒。又菖蒲生須得石上，一寸九節已上，紫花者尤善也。趙他子服桂二十年，足下生毛，日行五百里，力舉千斤。移門子服五味子十六年，色如玉女，入水不沾，入火不灼也。楚文子服地黃八年，夜視有光，手上車弩也。林子明服術十一年，耳長五寸，身輕如飛，能超逾淵谷二丈許。杜子微服天門冬，禦八十妾，有子百三十人，日行三百里。任子季服茯苓十八年，仙人玉女往從之，能隱能彰，不復食穀，灸瘢皆滅，面體玉光。陵陽子仲服遠志二十年，有子三十七人，開書所視不忘，坐在立亡。仙經曰：雖服草木之葉，已得數百歲，忽怠於神丹，終不能仙。以此論之，草木延年而已，非長生之藥可知也。未得作丹，且可服之，以自支持耳。\n\n### Timing and Taboos of Taking Drugs, the Pace of Yu, and Short Recipes\n\n22.或問：“服食藥物，有前後之宜乎？”抱朴子答曰：“按中黃子服食節度云，服治病之藥，以食前服之；養性之藥，以食後服之。吾以諮鄭君，何以如此。鄭君言，此易知耳，欲以藥攻病，既宜及未食，內虛，令藥力勢易行，若以食後服之，則藥但攻穀而力盡矣；若欲養性，而以食前服藥，則力未行，而被穀驅之下去不得止，無益也。”\n\n23.或問曰：“人服藥以養性，云有所宜，有諸乎？”抱朴子答曰：“按玉策記及開明經，皆以五音六屬，知人年命之所在。子午屬庚，卯酉屬己，寅申屬戊，醜未屬辛，辰戌屬丙，巳亥屬丁。一言得之者，宮與土也。三言得之者，徵與火也。五言得之者，羽與水也。七言得之者，商與金也。九言得之者，角與木也。若本命屬土，不宜服青色藥；屬金，不宜服赤色藥；屬木，不宜服白色藥；屬水，不宜服黃色藥；屬火，不宜服黑色藥。以五行之義，木克土，土克水，水克火，火克金，金剋木故也。若金丹大藥，不復論宜與不宜也。\n\n24.一言宮。庚子庚午，辛未辛丑，丙辰丙戌，丁亥丁巳，戊寅戊申，己卯己酉。\n\n25.三言徵。甲辰甲戌，乙亥乙巳，丙寅丙申，丁酉丁卯，戊午戊子，己未己丑。\n\n26.五言羽。甲寅甲申，乙卯乙酉，丙子丙午，丁未丁丑，壬辰壬戌，癸巳癸亥。\n\n27.七言商。甲子甲午，乙丑乙未，庚辰庚戌，辛巳辛亥，壬申壬寅，癸卯癸酉。\n\n28.九言角。戊辰戊戌，己巳己亥，庚寅庚申，辛卯辛酉，壬午壬子，癸丑癸未。\n\n29.禹步法：前舉左，右過左，左就右。次舉右，左過右，右就左。次舉右，右過左，左就右。\n\n30.如此三步，當滿二丈一尺，後有九跡。\n\n31.小神方，用真丹三斤，白蜜一斤，合和日曝煎之，令可丸。旦服如麻子十丸，未一年，發白更黑，齒墮更生，身體潤澤，長服之，老翁還成少年，常服長生不死也。\n\n32.小餌黃金方，火銷金納清酒中，二百出，二百入，即沸矣。握之出指間，令如泥，若不沸及握之不出指間，即復銷之內酒中無數也。成服如彈丸一枚，亦可汁一丸分為小丸，服三十日，無寒溫，神人玉女下之。又銀亦可餌，與金同法。服此二物，可居名山石室中，一年即輕舉矣。人間服之，名地仙，勿妄傳也。\n\n33.兩儀子餌銷黃金法，豬負革肪三斤，醇苦酒一斗，取黃金五兩，置器中煎之，出爐，以金置肪中，百入百出，苦酒亦爾，飡一斤金，壽弊天地，食半斤金，壽二千歲；五兩，千二百歲，無多少，便可餌之。當以王相之日，作之神良，勿傳人，傳人，藥不成不神也。欲食去屍藥，當服丹砂。\n\n34.餌丹砂法，丹砂一斤，搗簁，下醇苦酒三升，淳漆二升，凡三物合，令相得，微火上煎之，令可丸，服如麻子三丸，日再。四十日，腹中百病癒，三屍去；服之百日，肌骨堅強；服之千日，司命削死籍，與天地相保，日月相望，改形易容，變化無常，日中無影，乃別有光矣。","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/baopuzi-drugs-of-immortals/original.txt"},"translations":[{"id":"trn_baopuzi_drugs_of_immortals_mouseia","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"curated","note":"Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the Chinese Wikisource transcription of Baopuzi neipian juan 11 (Xianyao, revision 2401957), cross-checked against the Kanripo KR5f0019 Daozang copy, covering all of Inner Chapter 11, 34 paragraphs, 6,675 characters, for fidelity, clarity, imagery and cadence.","text":"### The Grades of Drugs, the Five Zhi Fungi, and Stone Zhi\n\n1. The Master Who Embraces Simplicity said: “The Four Classics of Shennong say: ‘Superior drugs bring peace to the body and prolong life. One ascends to become a heavenly spirit, wanders above and below, commands the myriad spirits, grows feathers on the body, and finds a traveling kitchen immediately at hand.’ They also say: ‘The five zhi, and preparations of cinnabar, jade tablets, azurite, realgar, orpiment, mica, and Great Unity’s Yu’s Surplus Grain, may each be taken alone; all enable one to fly and live long.’ They also say: ‘Middle-grade drugs nurture the nature; lower-grade drugs remove disease. They can keep poisonous insects from attacking, fierce beasts from assaulting, harmful vapors from circulating, and all demons at bay.’ And the Supporting Divine Writ of the Classic of Filial Piety says: ‘Pepper and ginger ward off dampness; sweet flag sharpens hearing; sesame prolongs life; weixi protects against weapons.’ These are the supreme words of the highest sages, truthful records of the arts. Their plain testimony shines forth, and yet people of the world refuse to believe: a cause for lament. Foremost among immortality drugs is cinnabar; next gold, then silver, the various zhi, the five jades, mica, bright pearls, realgar, Great Unity’s Yu’s Surplus Grain, yellow essence in stone, stone cassia, quartz, stone brain, stone sulfur, stone paste, azurite, and then pine and cypress resin, poria, rehmannia, dwarf lilyturf, tree sesame, chonglou, goldthread, rock fern, paper mulberry fruit, and xiangchai, also called tuolu. It is also called the immortal’s staff, the Queen Mother of the West’s staff, heavenly essence, banisher of age, earth bone, or goji. Asparagus root is also called earth asparagus, mat asparagus, thorny spike, sheep’s delicacy, or tube pine. That growing on high ground has short roots, a sweet flavor, and a fragrant scent, and is best. That growing by water in low ground has fine, faintly yellow leaves resembling pondweed and long roots, often bitter and foul-smelling; it is inferior, though it too may be eaten. But it tends to make the breath sink, and its benefits come especially slowly. After taking it for a hundred days, all become robust and vigorous twice as swiftly as with atractylodes or Solomon’s seal. On entering the mountains, one can steam it at once, or boil and eat enough to do without grain. Those with the means can take it as a preparation, or make it into powder, and squeeze its juice to make wine; it is especially good for taking the powder. The people of Chu call asparagus root baibu, though there is a separate baibu herb: both have some hundred roots of nearly identical appearance, but their shoots differ slightly. True baibu has shoots like smilax, and is suitable only for curing coughs and killing lice, not for eating; do not confuse them. Likewise Solomon’s seal is also called baiji, but is not the baiji used to make paste. According to the Materia Medica, many medicines share names with other plants. Only someone deeply learned can distinguish them; one must be careful. Solomon’s seal is also called rabbit bamboo, relief of poverty, and hanging pearls. Its flowers are better taken than its fruit, its fruit better than its roots; but many flowers are hard to obtain. Ten bushels of fresh flowers, once dried, yield only five or six pecks, while one may consume three gills a day: only someone with abundant labor at hand can manage it. One must take Solomon’s seal for nearly ten years before truly gaining its benefits. For abstaining from grain, neither equals atractylodes, which fattens and strengthens a person for carrying burdens and crossing dangerous ground. Yet atractylodes is not as sweet and pleasant to eat as Solomon’s seal, which in famine can feed old and young without grain. People cannot distinguish it, and call it ‘rice jerky.’”\n\n2. There are five kinds of zhi: stone, wood, herb, flesh, and mushroom zhi, each with about a hundred varieties.\n\n3. Among stone zhi is the stone-elephant zhi, which grows on mountains of renown beside the sea and on the rocky shores of islands. In form it resembles a fleshy elephant, with head, tail, and four feet, remarkably like a living thing. It clings to great boulders, favoring high, precipitous crags, sometimes attached backward and hanging upward. Red specimens look like coral, white like cut fat, black like glossy spurge, blue-green like kingfisher feathers, yellow like reddish gold; all shine clear through like solid ice. On a dark night its light can be seen from three hundred paces away. Large specimens weigh more than ten jin, small ones three or four. Unless one has fasted for a long time with perfect purity and wears Laozi’s Five Lingbao Talismans for Entering Mountains, one cannot even see them. Whenever one sights a zhi, first place the Talisman for Opening Mountains and Repelling Harm upon it; then it cannot conceal itself or transform and disappear. Slowly choose a day of ascendance and prosperity, offer wine and dried meat in sacrifice, pray, and gather it, proceeding from beneath the sun with Yu’s pace and held breath. If one obtains the stone-elephant zhi, pound it with thirty-six thousand blows and take one square-inch spoonful three times a day. Finishing one jin grants a thousand years; ten jin, ten thousand years. It may also be divided among several people. The jade-fat zhi grows on mountains containing jade, always in perilously overhanging places. When jade cream has flowed out for over ten thousand years, it congeals into a zhi shaped like a bird or beast, of no fixed color, though most often like dark mountain jade or blue-green water jade. It too gleams like crystal. Obtain it, grind it, and mix with the juice of heartless grass; in a moment it becomes liquid. Drink one sheng to gain a thousand years. Seven-Brilliance and Nine-Light zhi are both stone. They grow amid rocky cliffs on high mountains above water. Shaped like bowls or dishes, they measure no more than a foot across; a stalk and base attach them, rising three or four inches. Those with seven holes are called Seven-Brilliance, those with nine, Nine-Light. Each hole shines like a star, its light visible at night from over a hundred paces; the lights are distinct, and may scatter but cannot join. Watch for them at the autumn equinox. Pound and take a square-inch spoonful: at once the body grows warm and the five flavors taste exquisitely sweet. Finishing a jin grants a thousand years and makes the body luminous; one’s dark dwelling shines as if by moonlight, and one can see by night. The stone-honey zhi grows within a stone gate on Mount Shaoshi. Inside the gate lies a deep ravine impossible to cross: cast in a stone and its sound is still heard half a day later. Over ten zhang outside the gate stands a stone pillar topped by an overhanging canopy of stone, about a zhang high and wide. One can see honey zhi falling from the stone gate into this canopy: after a long interval a drop falls, like the last drips from a roof after rain. Yet the honey zhi never stops falling, and the canopy never overflows. Tadpole-script characters engraved above the gate say: ‘Whoever consumes one dou of stone-honey zhi will live ten thousand years.’ Daoist adepts have all pondered how to reach the place, but cannot go there. One would have to fix a bowl to the end of a sturdy bamboo or wooden pole to catch it, yet no one has managed this. From the engraved inscription on the gate, earlier generations must have obtained some. Stone-cassia zhi grows in stone caves on famous mountains. It resembles a cassia tree but is stone, around a foot high and a foot in diameter, shining and pungent, with branches. Pound and consume one jin to gain a thousand years. Yellow essence in stone is found everywhere, but most abundantly on the mountains of Qinshui. When it lies within a great rock, the rock is always damp, never dry. Break through dozens of layers of stone to reach it; within, it is reddish yellow and fluid, like an egg inside its shell. Drink it at once: otherwise it hardens into stone and can no longer be taken as a liquid. The proper method is to drink before it sets; after it sets, grind it and take it. A stone yields as much as one sheng, or as little as several ge, to take in a single dose. Even if one obtains little at a time, successive doses totaling three sheng bring a thousand years of life. The only obstacle to taking more is how hard it is to find. Stone-brain zhi grows within talc, shaped like yellow essence in stone, but not every stone contains it. Only after breaking open about a thousand great talc stones might one find a piece. When first exposed within the stone it gleams in five colors and moves of itself; drink one sheng to gain a thousand years. Stone-sulfur zhi is found on all Five Peaks, particularly Mount Ji. A prescription says Xu You took it there and lived long; thus wealth and rank ceased to trouble his mind and he refused Yao’s abdication. Stone-sulfur cinnabar is the red essence of stone, apparently a kind of stone sulfur. They seep out between cliffs and banks; the moist can be made into pills, the hardened taken as powder. Of these stone zhi there are a hundred and twenty kinds, recorded in the Jade Tablets of Great Unity and the Inner Record of Changyu; they cannot all be named here.\n\n### Wood, Herb, Flesh and Mushroom Zhi\n\n4. As for wood zhi, pine or cypress resin that sinks beneath the earth turns into poria after a thousand years. When poria is ten thousand years old, a little tree grows above it, shaped like a lotus flower: this is wood weixi zhi. It shines at night, feels exceedingly slippery in the hand, and will not burn in fire. Wearing it protects against weapons: place it on a chicken among twelve others in a cage, stand twelve paces away and shoot twelve arrows; all the other chickens will be wounded, but the one wearing weixi zhi will remain unharmed. Gather it from the side facing the Gate of Life, dry it in the shade on a liujia day for a hundred days, then grind and take a square-inch spoonful three times a day. Finish one specimen and live three thousand years. Beneath a thousand-year-old gua tree grows a root shaped like a seated person, seven inches tall. Cut it and it bleeds. Smear its blood under the feet and one can walk on water without sinking; smear it on the nose and enter the water, which will part to let one remain at the bottom of a deep pool; smear it on the body and become invisible, wiping it off when one wishes to be seen. It can also cure illness: for a disease inside the belly, scrape off a knife-tip measure and take it; for swelling or pain outside, scrape off a knife-tip measure and rub it on the afflicted place. Under the hand it heals immediately. If, for instance, the left foot is afflicted, scrape some off and apply it to that foot. Or scrape some off and mix it with sesame to make a candle. Shine it by night over the ground; where gold, jade, or treasure is buried, the flame turns blue-green and hangs downward. Dig with a spade and the treasure can be found. Grind the root and consume ten jin to gain a thousand years. The branch of a three-thousand-year-old pine holds an accumulation of resin within its bark, shaped like a dragon: it is called flying-joint zhi. A large piece weighs ten jin. Grind and consume ten jin to gain five hundred years. There is also the fantao zhi, whose trunk resembles a rising dragon, whose flowers and leaves resemble red gauze, and whose fruit resembles a kingfisher. It stands no higher than five feet and grows on the shady side of famous mountains in soil watered by east-flowing springs. Watch for it at the beginning of summer, obtain it, grind it, and consume a whole plant to gain five thousand years. The cancheng zhi is red and radiant; tap its branches and leaves and they ring like metal or stone. Break one and join it back, and it returns at once to its former state. The muqu zhi grows parasitically on great trees, like a lotus flower, with nine stalks to a clump; it tastes sweet and pungent. The fruit of the Jianmu zhi grows at Duguang; its bark is like a tasseled serpent, its fruit like a luan bird. Taking any of these three zhi makes one ascend to heaven in broad daylight. Huangluzi, flowers of the Xun tree, and Xuanye flowers: these three zhi grow in Yaoxiang and Fenggao on Mount Tai. Whoever obtains and takes them lives a thousand years. As for the yellow-cork tanhuan zhi: beneath a thousand-year-old yellow-cork tree stands a root like a vessel holding three dou, one or two zhang from the trunk and linked to it by fine threadlike roots. Obtain it, grind and consume the whole piece, and become an undying earthly immortal. There are a further hundred and twenty kinds of these, with illustrations of their own.\n\n5. Among herb zhi is the self-swaying zhi, which moves without wind. Its stalk is as thick as a finger and red as cinnabar; its pale leaves resemble amaranth. Its root has a large tuber the size of a dou measure, with twelve smaller ones, each the size of an egg, surrounding it on all four sides like the twelve earthly branches. About a zhang separates them, and thin white-hair roots link them all. It grows above deep valleys in high mountains, with no other grass nearby. Obtain the great tuber, grind and consume it all to gain a thousand years. Each small tuber grants a hundred years and can be given to someone else. Carry the great root and one becomes invisible; to appear again, turn left and bring it out. Ox-horn zhi grows on Mount Hushou and the slopes of Wu. Shaped like a scallion, it rises alone like an ox horn, three or four feet tall and blue-green. Grind and take a square-inch spoonful three times a day; after a hundred days, one gains a thousand years. Dragon-immortal zhi resembles ascending dragons bearing one another, its leaves forming scales and its root a coiled dragon. Consume one piece and gain a thousand years. Hemp-mother zhi resembles hemp, but has a red stem and purple flowers. Purple-pearl zhi has yellow flowers, red leaves, and plumlike purple fruit; twenty-four branches join together and hang like strings of pearls. White-talisman zhi grows four or five feet high and resembles a plum; it flowers in heavy snow and bears fruit in the final month of winter. Vermilion-herb zhi has nine bends, three leaves at each bend, and three fruits on each leaf. Five-Virtues zhi looks like a towered palace, with a square stalk and leaves each of the five colors, distinct and unmixed. Its top is like a spreading canopy, sweet dew always gathers within, and purple vapor rises several feet above it. Dragon-bearing zhi grows in paired shoots in mid-spring, with three joints and twelve branches, and a lower root shaped like a seated person. There are another hundred and twenty varieties of these herb zhi. Dry them all in the shade and take them, and one will last as long as heaven and earth, or gain a thousand or two thousand years.\n\n6. Flesh zhi include the ten-thousand-year-old toad, with horns on its head and a doubled eight-character inscription in cinnabar beneath its chin. Catch it at noon on the fifth day of the fifth month and dry it in the shade for a hundred days. Draw on the earth with its left foot and running water appears; wear its left forefoot on the body and it wards off the five kinds of weapons. If an enemy shoots at you, bows, crossbows, and arrows all turn back against their owner. The thousand-year-old bat is white as snow and hangs upside down when roosting because its brain is heavy. Obtain either creature, dry it in the shade, grind and take it to live forty thousand years. The thousand-year-old numinous tortoise possesses all five colors; the male has two hornlike bones rising from its forehead. Bathe it in sheep’s blood, then remove its shell, roast it over fire, pound it, and take a square-inch spoonful three times a day. Finish a whole shell to live a thousand years. If, while traveling in the mountains, one sees little people seven or eight inches tall riding in carriages or on horses, they are flesh zhi. Capture and eat them, and become immortal immediately. The wind-born beast resembles a marten, is blue-green and about the size of a wildcat, and lives in the great forests of the South Sea. Catch it in a net and burn it with several cartloads of firewood: when the wood is spent, it remains unburned in the ashes, its fur unsinged. Blades and spears cannot pierce it, and a blow sounds like striking a leather bag. Only dozens of blows to its head with an iron hammer kill it. Even then, hold its open mouth toward the wind and it revives and runs off in a moment. Plug its nostrils with sweet flag growing on stone and it dies. Take its brain mixed with chrysanthemum flowers; consume ten jin to gain five hundred years. The thousand-year-old swallow nests with the entrance facing north, is mostly white, and has a short, stumpy tail. Capture it, dry it in the shade, grind and consume one bird to gain five hundred years. There are a further hundred and twenty such kinds: all are flesh zhi.\n\n7. Mushroom zhi may grow deep in the mountains, beneath great trees, or beside springs. Some look like palaces and houses, others like chariots and horses, dragons and tigers, human figures or flying birds; their five colors vary. Here too there are a hundred and twenty varieties, with their own illustrations. Approach to gather them using Yu’s pace, cut them with a bone knife, dry them in the shade, grind them, and take a square-inch spoonful. They make one ascend to immortality: middle-grade varieties grant several thousand years, lower-grade a thousand. To seek zhi, enter famous mountains in the third or ninth month, when the mountains open and bring forth divine medicines. Avoid a day when the mountain is hostile; choose an hour of Heavenly Assistance, best of all when the Three Wonders converge. Go out through the auspicious gate of the Three Wonders to the mountain, on a day of the Six Yin and at the hour of the Bright Hall. Wear a Lingbao talisman, lead a white dog, carry a white chicken in your arms, and place a dou of white salt together with a mountain-opening talisman and writ on a great stone. Enter the mountain holding a handful of Wutang grass; the mountain spirit will be pleased, and you will surely find zhi. When gathering and taking zhi, choose a day of ascendance, prosperity, single-mindedness, and harmony; it is best when the heavenly stems and earthly branches above and below give rise to each other. Famous mountains abound in these zhi, but ordinary Daoist adepts are neither single-minded nor pure; their conduct is filthy and their virtue thin, and they do not understand the art of entering mountains. Even with illustrations, they cannot recognize the plants and will never obtain them. Every mountain, great or small, has its ghosts and spirits. If they will not give the zhi to someone, that person cannot see it even while treading upon it.\n\n### Mica, Realgar, Jade, Silver, Pearl and the Common Herbs\n\n8. Mica comes in five varieties, though most people cannot tell them apart. The way to identify one is to hold it against the sun and examine its colors closely; in the shade its mixed colors cannot be seen. Mica containing all five colors but mostly blue-green is called Cloud Blossom and should be taken in spring. If mostly red, it is Cloud Pearl, for summer; if mostly white, Cloud Liquid, for autumn; if mostly black, Cloud Mother, for winter. Mica of only blue-green and yellow is Cloud Sand, for the last month of summer. Pure, gleaming white is called Phosphorescent Stone and may be taken throughout all four seasons. To prepare the five clouds, one may dissolve them into liquid with cassia, scallions, and water jade; expose them in an iron vessel and boil them with dark water into a liquid; seal them in a tube with saltpeter and bury them until they turn liquid; mix them with honey into a curd; soak them in autumn dew for a hundred days, then knead them in a leather bag into powder; or combine them with wudian grass and blood of the tree of heaven. After a year of taking them all illnesses vanish; after three years, an old man becomes a child again; after five years without interruption, one can command ghosts and spirits, enter fire without burning, enter water without getting wet, walk on thorns without injuring the skin, and meet immortals. Other substances rot when buried and char when placed in fire; the five clouds do not burn even after a long time in a fierce fire, nor ever decay underground. Thus they can bring long life. It is also said that after ten years of taking them, cloud vapor constantly covers one’s head: taking the mother draws forth her children, as is natural. If, held toward the sun, they give off a dim, pure black color, they are unfit to take, for they cause painful urination and sores. Even when taking them as a liquid, one must first soak them for a hundred days in runoff from a thatched roof, east-flowing water, or dew, washing away the earth and stones before use. Wei Shuqing of Zhongshan took them for so long that he could ride clouds. He sealed his recipe in a jade casket; after he departed as an immortal, his son Shi and the Han envoy Liang Bo obtained it, followed its instructions in preparing and taking them, and both attained immortality.\n\n9. Realgar must come from Mount Wudu: only a pure, unmixed specimen, red as a rooster’s comb and splendidly luminous, may be used. That which is merely yellow like realgar, without a red glow, is unsuitable as a drug of immortality, though it may be compounded into medicine for illness. To take it, one may steam or boil it, consume it with wine, first liquefy it with saltpeter and then let it congeal, wrap it in dark intestines and steam it beneath red earth, blend it with pine resin, or refine it with three ingredients and draw it out like cloth, white as ice. Taken in these ways, it gives long life, dispels all illnesses, expels the Three Corpses, removes scars, blackens white hair, and restores fallen teeth. After a thousand days jade maidens come to attend; one may command them to summon a traveling kitchen. A true jade maiden always bears a yellow-jade mark the size of a millet grain upon her nose. One without this mark is a ghost testing people.\n\n10. Jade too is a drug of immortality, but hard to obtain. The Classic of Jade says: “Whoever takes gold lives as long as gold; whoever takes jade lives as long as jade.” It also says: “Whoever takes Dark Perfection has a life without end.” Dark Perfection is another name for jade. It makes the body fly and rise weightlessly, not merely become an earthly immortal. Its effects, however, come slowly: only after taking one or two hundred jin does one know them. Jade can be dissolved into liquid with black-rice wine or burnet wine; it can be melted into paste with scallion juice; it can be taken as pills or fired into powder. Take it for more than a year and water will not wet you, fire will not burn you, blades will not wound you, and none of the hundred poisons will harm you. Do not use finished jade implements: they injure a person and do no good. Obtain unworked jade; white jade from the kingdom of Khotan is especially good. Next comes jade from the Xushanting district of Nanyang, and jade from the Lu Rong River in Rinan is good too. Chi Songzi steeped jade in the blood of dark insects until it became liquid, then drank it; thus he could ride smoke up and down. Jade powder, whether taken dry or in liquid, makes one deathless. It is inferior to gold because it repeatedly causes fever, like the effects of Cold Food Powder. Those who take jade powder should take a knife-tip measure each of realgar and cinnabar every ten days, let down their hair, bathe in cold water, and walk facing the wind; then they will not grow feverish. Dong Junyi once gave jade nectar to a blind man, whose eyes recovered within ten days. Wu Yanzhi wished to take jade, but acquired an incomplete recipe from the Classic of Jade and understood nothing of its quantities or prohibitions. He assembled jade tablets, ritual scepters, rings and disks, and many jade sword fittings, intending to prepare and take them. Later I explained to him that these were unsuitable. He sighed: “One must master a practice thoroughly. Not only would they have done no good, but they might have brought disaster.”\n\n11. Silver falls short only of gold and jade; it can make one an earthly immortal. To take it, dissolve it with wheat liquor, or take it with wine of vermilion herb, or refine it with dragon unguent. But each of the three doses requires a piece as large as a pellet, and that is beyond the means of a poor Daoist adept.\n\n12. True pearls an inch or more across can be taken, bringing long life. Soaked in curd or fermented liquid they dissolve like mercury. They can also be dissolved with pumice water and honeycomb, enclosed with red snake yellow and blended until they stretch three or four feet long; form them into pills and take them while abstaining from grain, and one will live long without dying. Undiluted lacquer to which nothing sticks grants communion with the spirits and long life when taken. To prepare it, one may cast into it ten great ‘gutless gentlemen,’ also called great crabs; or take it mixed with mica liquid or jade liquid. All nine worms descend, foul blood flows from the nose, and after a year the traveling kitchen of the Six Jia arrives.\n\n13. Cassia can be steamed with scallion sap until it turns liquid, or taken mixed with bamboo juice, or combined with the brain of the Lord of Foresight—some say a tortoise—and taken. After seven years one can walk upon water and live long without dying.\n\n14. Jusheng, also called sesame, when taken as a preparation wards off old age, resists wind and dampness, and restores the aged and infirm. Soak peach gum in an infusion of mulberry ash and take it: every illness is cured. Taken for a long time, it makes the body light and luminous, like a rising moon in the dark of night. Taken in quantity, it allows one to forgo grain.\n\n15. Take the red fruit of the ning tree for one year: the aged become young again and can see clearly through things and behold ghosts. In former times the Daoist Liang Xu began taking it at seventy and grew younger. At a hundred and forty he could write at night and run as fast as a galloping horse; later he entered Mount Qinglong and departed. Seal scholar-tree seeds in a new earthenware jar plastered with clay. After twenty days or more their outer skins will all decay; wash them until they are like soybeans and take them daily. They nourish the brain and, taken for a long time, keep hair from turning white and bring long life. The Dark-Center Vine recipe, Chu feilian, water plantain, rehmannia, goldthread, and some three hundred other substances can all prolong life and may be taken singly. Numinous-Flight Powder, Weijue Pills, Life-Governing Pills, and Sheep’s-Blood Pills all preserve youth and drive away old age.\n\n### Sweet-Valley Water, Long-Lived Families, and Tales of Those Who Ate Herbs\n\n16. In the mountains of Li County in Nanyang flows the Sweet Valley water. It is sweet because sweet chrysanthemums grow on both sides of the valley above, and their flowers fall into the stream; after many generations its flavor has changed. The inhabitants along the valley dig no wells but all drink its water. All who do live to old age: some to a hundred and forty or fifty, even the least to eighty or ninety. None dies young, through the power of these chrysanthemums. Thus Wang Chang, Minister of Works; Liu Kuan, Grand Commandant; and Yuan Wei, Grand Tutor, each when serving as governor of Nanyang regularly had Li County send forty hu of Sweet Valley water each month for their food and drink. All these gentlemen suffered from wind paralysis and dizziness, and all recovered; but they could not gain its full benefit as did those who lived above the Sweet Valley, drinking and eating its water from infancy. Chrysanthemum flowers resemble those of the yi plant and can be distinguished only by taste: chrysanthemums are sweet and yi bitter, as in the proverb ‘bitter as yi.’ True chrysanthemums exist everywhere today, though scarce, and grow mostly beside water; Mount Goushi and Li County have the most. What immortal recipes call Sun Essence, Renewal, and Fullness of the Cycle are all the same chrysanthemum, its roots, stalks, flowers, and fruit bearing different names. Their account is delightful, but those who take it nowadays get virtually no result, simply because they cannot find true chrysanthemums. And what worth mentioning is water that has acquired merely the scent and flavor of chrysanthemums? Yet all the people who live beside it enjoy longer lives. How could the good medicine itself fail to benefit one?\n\n17. My late grandfather, a vice director of the Grand Herald’s office, once served as magistrate of Linyuan. He said that a Liao family of the county lived to a great age for generation after generation, some past a hundred, others to eighty or ninety. After they moved away, more and more of their descendants died young. Others occupied their old house and, just as before, lived to great age for generations. People then realized the house was responsible, but did not know why. Suspecting its well water, which was unusually red, they dug around the well and found dozens of hu of cinnabar buried there by people long ago, only a few feet away. The essence of the cinnabar had gradually entered the well through the spring water; thus those who drank from it lived long. What, then, of taking refined cinnabar itself?\n\n18. I have also heard of Zhao Qu of Shangdang, who suffered from leprosy for years. Every treatment failed and he lay close to death. Some said he could not survive and he was abandoned, lest his descendants infect one another in turn. His family brought provisions and carried him to a cave in the mountains. There Zhao lamented his ill fortune, sighing and weeping day and night for a month. An immortal passing the cave saw him and took pity, asking him fully about his condition. Recognizing this extraordinary visitor, Zhao bowed his head to the ground, told his plight, and begged mercy. The immortal gave him a bag of medicine and taught him how to take it. After some hundred days, all Zhao’s sores healed, his complexion grew full and radiant, and his skin gleamed like jade. The immortal passed by again to see him; Zhao thanked him for the gift of a new life and begged for the recipe. The immortal told him: “It is only pine resin. There is much more here in these mountains. Refine and take it, and you can live forever without dying.” Zhao went home, where his family at first thought him a ghost and were astonished. He kept taking pine resin; his body grew lighter, his strength increased a hundredfold, and he scaled precipices and crossed perilous ground all day without exhaustion. At a hundred and seventy his teeth had not fallen and his hair had not whitened. One night as he lay down he suddenly saw a light in the room as large as a mirror. He asked those beside him, but they all said they could not see it. In time it grew until the whole room shone like day. Another night he saw two brightly adorned maidens upon his face, two or three inches tall, complete in face and body, only very small. They played about his mouth and nose for nearly a year, growing larger until they stood beside him. He often heard the music of zithers and smiled with delight to himself. He remained among people for some three hundred years, looking like a little boy, before entering Mount Baodu and departing: surely he was an earthly immortal. When people heard that Zhao had taken pine resin with such results, they vied to take it themselves. Those with abundant labor even transported it by cart and donkey until rooms were filled. But after taking it for at most a month and feeling no great benefit, they invariably stopped. Determination like his is hard to find.\n\n19. In the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han, hunters in the Zhongnan Mountains saw a person without clothes whose body was covered in black hair. They tried to chase and capture her, but she crossed pits and valleys as though flying, beyond their reach. They secretly watched her haunts, surrounded her, and captured her: she proved to be a woman. Asked about herself, she said: “I was a woman of the Qin palace. When I heard the rebels from east of the passes were coming, the Qin king came out to surrender and the palace buildings were burned. In terror I fled into the mountains, and with nothing to eat I nearly starved. An old man taught me to eat pine leaves and pine nuts. At first they were bitter and astringent, but gradually I grew accustomed to them. Thereafter I felt neither hunger nor thirst, neither winter’s cold nor summer’s heat.” This woman must have belonged to the palace of Ziying, king of Qin, and by Emperor Cheng’s reign was about two hundred years old. They took her back and fed her grain; at first its smell made her vomit, though she recovered after several days. After some two years her body hair fell out, she grew old, and she died. Had no one captured her, she would have become an immortal.\n\n20. The Wen family of Nanyang say that an ancestor of theirs fled into the mountains during the great troubles at the end of Han, where hunger brought him close to death. Someone taught him to eat atractylodes, and he no longer felt hunger. Only after several decades did he return home, younger in appearance and stronger than before. He said that in the mountains his body felt so light he wanted to leap; he climbed heights and traversed dangers all day without tiring, and walked through ice and snow without feeling cold. Once he saw several people on a high cliff, some seated opposite each other playing a board game, others reading books. Looking down at Wen, one asked the others: “Can this young man be called up here yet?” One of them answered: “Not yet.” Atractylodes is also called mountain lin and mountain essence. Thus the Classic of Divine Medicines says: “If you truly wish to live long, take mountain essence regularly.”\n\n21. In former days each of the Eight Lords took a single substance and became an immortal on earth. Only after several hundred years did they compound divine cinnabar and liquid gold and ascend to the Great Clarity. If one combines and refines their eight substances and takes them without gaining their powers, it is because the medicines overcome or inhibit one another. Han Zhong took sweet flag for thirteen years: hair grew on his body, he could read ten thousand words a day and recite them all, and he could bare his chest in winter without feeling cold. Sweet flag must come from upon stone, with at least nine joints to the inch; one with purple flowers is especially good. Zhao Tazi took cassia for twenty years: hair grew beneath his feet, he could walk five hundred li a day and lift a thousand jin. Yi Menzi took five-flavor berry for sixteen years: his complexion was like a jade maiden’s, water would not wet him, and fire would not burn him. Chu Wenzi took rehmannia for eight years: he could see light at night and lift a carriage-mounted crossbow with his hands. Lin Ziming took atractylodes for eleven years: his ears grew five inches long, his body grew light as if in flight, and he could leap across a ravine some two zhang wide. Du Ziwei took asparagus root, had intercourse with eighty concubines, fathered a hundred and thirty children, and could walk three hundred li a day. Ren Ziji took poria for eighteen years: immortals and jade maidens came to follow him, he could appear or vanish at will, no longer ate grain, and every moxibustion scar disappeared as his face and body took on the gleam of jade. Lingyang Zizhong took milkwort for twenty years: he had thirty-seven children, remembered everything he read upon opening a book, and could vanish while sitting there. The Classic of Immortals says: “Though taking the leaves of plants and trees has brought you several hundred years, if you then neglect divine cinnabar, you can never become an immortal.” This shows that plants and trees merely prolong life: they are not drugs of eternal life. Until one can make cinnabar, one may take them to sustain oneself.\n\n### Timing and Taboos of Taking Drugs, the Pace of Yu, and Short Recipes\n\n22. Someone asked: “When taking medicinal substances, is there a proper order of before and after?” The Master Who Embraces Simplicity replied: “According to the rules for taking medicines in the Book of Zhonghuangzi, drugs for curing disease should be taken before meals, while drugs for nurturing the nature should be taken after meals. I asked Master Zheng why this should be so. He said: ‘It is easy to understand. If you wish to attack illness with a drug, you should take it before eating, while the inside is empty, so the drug’s power can circulate readily. Taken after a meal, the drug will spend its strength attacking the grain instead. But if you seek to nurture your nature and take the drug before eating, its power has yet to work when the grain drives it down and out, without allowing it to remain; it does no good.’”\n\n23. Someone asked: “It is said that there are suitable and unsuitable medicines for people taking drugs to nurture their nature. Is this true?” The Master Who Embraces Simplicity replied: “According to the Record of the Jade Tablets and the Classic of Illumination, the five notes and six classes reveal where a person’s allotted life belongs. Zi and wu belong to geng; mao and you to ji; yin and shen to wu; chou and wei to xin; chen and xu to bing; si and hai to ding. Those obtained by the first designation belong to gong and earth; by the third, to zhi and fire; by the fifth, to yu and water; by the seventh, to shang and metal; by the ninth, to jue and wood. If your natal allotment belongs to earth, you should not take blue-green drugs; if to metal, not red drugs; if to wood, not white drugs; if to water, not yellow drugs; if to fire, not black drugs. In the five phases, wood overcomes earth, earth overcomes water, water overcomes fire, fire overcomes metal, and metal overcomes wood. But for the great medicine of the golden elixir there is no longer any question of suitability.”\n\n24. First designation, gong: gengzi, gengwu; xinwei, xinchou; bingchen, bingxu; dinghai, dingsi; wuyin, wushen; jimao, jiyou.\n\n25. Third designation, zhi: jiachen, jiaxu; yihai, yisi; bingyin, bingshen; dingyou, dingmao; wuwu, wuzi; jiwei, jichou.\n\n26. Fifth designation, yu: jiayin, jiashen; yimao, yiyou; bingzi, bingwu; dingwei, dingchou; renchen, renxu; guisi, guihai.\n\n27. Seventh designation, shang: jiazi, jiawu; yichou, yiwei; gengchen, gengxu; xinsi, xinhai; renshen, renyin; guimao, guiyou.\n\n28. Ninth designation, jue: wuchen, wuxu; jisi, jihai; gengyin, gengshen; xinmao, xinyou; renwu, renzi; guichou, guiwei.\n\n29. The method of Yu’s pace: first lift the left foot, pass the right beyond the left, bring the left up beside the right. Next lift the right, pass the left beyond the right, bring the right up beside the left. Next lift the right, pass the right beyond the left, bring the left up beside the right.\n\n30. These three steps should cover a full two zhang and one foot, leaving nine footprints behind.\n\n31. A minor divine recipe: combine three jin of genuine cinnabar with one jin of white honey, expose them to the sun and simmer until the mixture can be made into pills. Take ten pills the size of hemp seeds at dawn. Before a year is out, white hair turns black again, fallen teeth grow back, and the body becomes lustrous. Taken over the long term, it makes an old man young again; taken continually, it grants long life without death.\n\n32. A minor recipe for taking gold: melt gold over fire and plunge it into clear wine, withdrawing it two hundred times and immersing it two hundred times; it will then boil. Squeeze it in your fist until it comes out between your fingers like mud. If it neither boils nor comes out between your fingers, melt it again and put it into wine as many times as needed. Once prepared, take one pill the size of a pellet; one may also make a pill from the liquid and divide it into smaller pills. Take it for thirty days: one feels neither cold nor heat, and divine beings and jade maidens descend. Silver too can be taken, prepared in the same way as gold. Take either substance while living in a stone chamber on a famous mountain and after a year you will rise weightlessly. Those who take it among ordinary people are called earthly immortals. Do not pass this on indiscriminately.\n\n33. Liangyizi’s method of taking dissolved gold: take three jin of fat from beneath the skin of a pig’s back, one dou of strong sour wine, and five liang of gold. Put the gold into a vessel and heat it, remove it from the furnace, and immerse it in the fat a hundred times, withdrawing it a hundred times; do likewise with the sour wine. Eat one jin of gold and live until heaven and earth wear out; eat half a jin and live two thousand years; five liang brings one thousand two hundred years. However much or little there is, one may take it. Prepare it on a day of ascendance and prosperity and it will be miraculously effective. Do not transmit the recipe to others: if you do, the medicine will neither come to completion nor work wonders. If you wish to take a medicine to expel the corpses, take cinnabar.\n\n34. A method of taking cinnabar: pound and sift one jin of cinnabar, then add three sheng of strong sour wine and two sheng of pure lacquer. Mix these three thoroughly and simmer over a low fire until the mixture can be made into pills. Take three pills the size of hemp seeds twice a day. After forty days, all illnesses in the belly heal and the Three Corpses depart; after a hundred days the flesh and bones grow strong; after a thousand days the Controller of Fates erases your name from the register of the dead. You endure with heaven and earth, face the sun and moon, change your form and appearance, transform without limit, cast no shadow in the sun, and instead shine with a light of your own.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/baopuzi-drugs-of-immortals/translations/trn_baopuzi_drugs_of_immortals_mouseia.txt"},{"id":"trn_baopuzi_drugs_of_immortals_plain","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"plain","note":"Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same original, covering all of Inner Chapter 11, 34 paragraphs, 6,675 characters.","text":"### The Grades of Drugs, the Five Zhi Fungi, and Stone Zhi\n\n1. Baopuzi says: The Four Classics of Shennong say, “The highest-grade drugs give the body peace and prolong life. A person rises to become a heavenly spirit, travels up and down, commands all kinds of spirits, grows feathers on the body, and finds a traveling kitchen appearing at once.” They also say, “The five kinds of zhi, as well as cinnabar, jade tablets, azurite, realgar, orpiment, mica, Taiyi's surplus grain of Yu, can each be taken on their own. All let people fly and live long.” They also say, “Middle-grade drugs nurture one's nature; lower-grade drugs remove illness. They keep poisonous insects from hurting you, fierce beasts from attacking you, harmful vapors from spreading, and all monsters away.” The Aid to the Divine Contract of the Classic of Filial Piety also says, “Pepper and ginger ward off dampness; sweet flag improves hearing; sesame prolongs life; weixi wards off weapons.” These are the greatest teachings of the highest sages and true records of medicinal methods. The written evidence is clear, yet people still do not believe it. How regrettable! The best immortality drug is cinnabar. Next come gold, silver, the various zhi, the five kinds of jade, mica, pearls, realgar, Taiyi's surplus grain of Yu, yellow substance inside stone, stone cinnamon, quartz, stone brain, stone sulfur, stone paste, azurite, pine and cypress resin, poria, rehmannia, dwarf lilyturf, tree sesame, Paris herb, goldthread, rock fern, paper mulberry fruit, and xiangchai, also called tuolu. Some call it an immortal's staff or the Queen Mother of the West's staff; other names are heavenly essence, repeller of old age, and earth bone, or goji. Asparagus root is also called earth asparagus, mat asparagus, thorny bramble, food of lustful goats, and tube pine. The kind grown on high ground has short, sweet roots and a good fragrance; that is the best. The kind grown low beside water has thin, slightly yellow leaves like waterweed, long roots that are mostly bitter, and a bad smell; this is inferior, but it too can be eaten. It tends, however, to make people pass gas, and its benefits come especially slowly. After taking it for a hundred days, one becomes more than twice as strong and vigorous as with atractylodes or Solomon's seal. In the mountains you can steam it at once, or boil and eat enough to do without grain. If you have the means, you can take it as food, make it into powder, or press out the juice and make wine. Taking the powder with that wine is especially good. People of Chu call asparagus root baibu, but there is also a separate baibu plant. Both have about a hundred roots, alike in appearance, but their shoots differ a little. True baibu has shoots like smilax; it is good only for treating coughs and killing lice, not for eating. Do not confuse them. Similarly, Solomon's seal is also called baiji, but is not the baiji used to make paste. According to the Materia Medica, many drugs share names with other plants. Only someone with deep and wide knowledge can tell them apart; care is essential. Solomon's seal is also called rabbit bamboo, aid to the poor, and hanging pearls. Its flowers are better to take than its fruit, and its fruit better than its root, but many flowers are hard to get. Ten hu of fresh flowers yield just five or six dou when dried, and the daily dose is three ge. Only someone with considerable labor at their disposal can manage it. One must take Solomon's seal for almost ten years to gain its great benefits. For giving up grain, neither it nor asparagus root matches atractylodes. Eating atractylodes makes people plump and strong, able to bear loads and cross dangerous ground. But it is not as sweet and easy to eat as Solomon's seal. In a famine, Solomon's seal can feed the old and the young in place of grain. People unable to distinguish it call it dried rice cakes.\n\n2. There are five kinds of zhi: stone zhi, wood zhi, herb zhi, flesh zhi, and mushroom zhi. Each has about a hundred varieties.\n\n3. Among stone zhi is stone-elephant zhi. It grows on piles of rock along the coasts of famous mountains and on the edges of islands. It looks like a fleshy elephant, with head, tail, and four feet, much like a living creature. It clings to large rocks, especially high up on steep cliffs; sometimes it is attached backward, hanging upside down. The red ones resemble coral; white ones, cut fat; black ones, glossy lacquer; blue-green ones, kingfisher feathers; yellow ones, reddish gold. All shine and are transparent like solid ice. On a dark night you can see their light from three hundred paces away. Large ones weigh over ten jin; small ones, three or four. Without a long and thoroughly observed fast and Laozi's Five Lingbao Talismans for Entering Mountains, you cannot even see them. Whenever you find any zhi, first put a talisman for opening the mountain and repelling harm on it, so it cannot hide or transform and disappear again. Then choose an auspicious day, slowly, set out wine and dried meat as offerings, pray and collect it. Approach from the direction of the sun while performing Yu's steps and holding your breath. If you get stone-elephant zhi, pound it with 36,000 blows and take a square-inch spoonful three times daily. Finish one jin and you will live a thousand years; finish ten jin and you will live ten thousand. You can also share it with others. Jade-fat zhi grows in mountains containing jade, usually on dangerous overhangs. Jade paste seeps out and, after more than ten thousand years, solidifies into zhi shaped something like a bird or animal. Its color varies, but usually resembles dark mountain jade or blue-green water jade. It also shines brightly like crystal. Grind it and mix it with juice of heartless grass; in a moment it turns to liquid. Drink one sheng and gain a thousand years of life. Seven-Lights zhi and Nine-Rays zhi are both stone. They grow among rocky cliffs on high mountains by water. They look like dishes or bowls, with a diameter no greater than one chi. A stem or stalk attaches them and rises three or four cun. Those with seven openings are called Seven-Lights, and those with nine openings Nine-Rays. Their lights are like stars, visible at night from over a hundred paces. Each light is distinct: they can be counted separately but do not merge. Watch for them at the autumn equinox. Once obtained, pound and take a square-inch spoonful. As soon as it enters the mouth, the body suddenly grows hot and the five flavors taste sweet and delicious. Finish one jin to gain a thousand years. It makes the body shine, lighting a dark place where one stays as if by moonlight, and lets one see at night. Stone-honey zhi grows inside a stone doorway on Mount Shaoshi. Inside the doorway is a deep chasm that cannot be crossed: throw a stone down and you can still hear it falling half a day later. More than ten zhang outside the doorway is a stone pillar, topped by a flat, overhanging stone perhaps one zhang across and high. You can see honey zhi fall from above the stone doorway into this overhang. A long time passes between drops, like the occasional last drip from a roof after rain. Yet the honey zhi keeps dropping and the overhang never overflows. Tadpole-script characters cut into the stone above the doorway say that anyone who consumes one dou of stone-honey zhi will live ten thousand years. Daoists have all thought about how to reach it but have found no way. One would have to attach a bowl to the end of a strong bamboo or wooden pole to catch it, but no one has succeeded yet. Given the inscription above the doorway, someone in earlier times must have obtained some. Stone-cinnamon zhi grows in stone caves in famous mountains. It resembles a cinnamon tree but is really stone. It stands about one chi high and is about one chi thick, shines, tastes pungent, and has branches. Pound and take one jin to gain a thousand years. Yellow substance inside stone is found in various places but is most common in the mountains of Qinshui. The large stone containing it is always damp, never dry. Break through several dozen layers of that stone to reach it. Inside, it is reddish yellow and liquid, like an egg inside its shell. Drink it immediately; otherwise it hardens into stone and can no longer be consumed. The proper method is to drink it before it hardens; once solid, you should grind it and take the powder. Breaking a single stone yields up to one sheng or as little as a few ge; it can all be taken at once. Even if you cannot get much at a time, keep taking it until all your doses together total three sheng, and you will live a thousand years. The only problem with taking more is that it is hard to find. Stone-brain zhi grows in talc and resembles yellow substance inside stone, but not every talc stone contains it. You must break about a thousand large talc stones to obtain one piece. When first exposed inside its stone, it shines in five colors and moves by itself. Take one sheng to gain a thousand years. Stone-sulfur zhi is found on all Five Great Mountains, but most abundantly on Mount Ji. Its recipe says Xu You consumed it here and gained long life; that is why he no longer cared for wealth and rank and refused to accept Yao's abdication. Stone-sulfur cinnabar is the red essence of stone, apparently a kind of stone sulfur. Both seep from cliffs and ledges. The moist kind can be made into pills and taken; the hardened kind can be taken as powder. There are 120 such kinds in all, all stone zhi. They are described in Taiyi's Jade Documents and the Record of What Lies Within the Vast Cosmos; I cannot list them all.\n\n### Wood, Herb, Flesh and Mushroom Zhi\n\n4. As for wood zhi: pine and cypress resin sinks underground and after a thousand years becomes poria. After ten thousand years of poria, a little tree grows above it, shaped like a lotus flower, called wood-weixi zhi. It glows at night, feels very slippery to hold, and does not burn when set alight. Wearing it protects against weapons. Tie one to a chicken, put it in a cage with twelve other chickens, stand twelve paces away, and shoot twelve arrows. Every other chicken will be wounded, but the one wearing weixi zhi will remain unharmed. Gather it from above the life gate and dry it in the shade on a day of the six jia. After a hundred days, grind it and take a square-inch spoonful three times daily. Finish a whole piece and you will live three thousand years. Beneath a thousand-year-old gua tree, its root looks like a seated person and is seven cun long. Cut it and it bleeds. Smear its blood on your soles to walk on water without sinking. Smear it on your nose before going underwater and the water will open for you; you can stay at the bottom of a deep pool. Smear it on your body to become invisible, and wipe it off when you want to be seen. It also treats illness. For illness inside the belly, scrape off and take one knife-tip measure. For an external swelling or pain, scrape off one knife-tip measure and rub it where the problem is; it heals at once under your hand. If the left foot is afflicted, scrape it off and rub it on the left foot. Also scrape some off and mix it with sesame to make a candle. At night it will shine all over the ground below; where gold, jade, or other treasure is buried, its light changes to blue-green and points downward. Dig with a spade to find the treasure. Grind it and consume ten jin in all to live a thousand years. In a pine branch three thousand years old, resin gathers inside the bark in the shape of a dragon. This is called flying-joint zhi. Large pieces weigh ten jin; grind and take ten jin to gain five hundred years. There is also fantao zhi, whose wood looks like a rising dragon, its flowers and leaves like red silk, and its fruit like a kingfisher. It grows no higher than five chi, on the shaded side of a famous mountain in soil by an east-flowing spring. Watch for it around the start of summer. Obtain and grind it, and consume one whole plant to gain five thousand years. Sancheng zhi is red and glowing; when you tap its branches and leaves they sound like metal or stone. Break it and join it together, and it returns to its old state. Muqu zhi grows as a parasite on large trees. It resembles a lotus, with nine stems to a cluster, and tastes sweet and pungent. Jianmu zhi fruit grows in Duguang. Its bark resembles a tasseled snake and its fruit a luan bird. Taking any of these three zhi lets one rise to heaven in broad daylight. Huangluzi, flowers of the xun tree, and flowers of dark liquid: these three zhi grow around Yaoxiang and Fenggao on Mount Tai. Anyone who gets and takes them lives a thousand years. Huangbo tanhuan zhi is a growth from a thousand-year-old cork tree. Under the tree is a root like a vessel holding three hu, one or two zhang from the trunk and joined to it by threadlike small roots. Grind and take the entire root and you become an earthly immortal who never dies. There are another 120 varieties of this sort, with their own illustrations.\n\n5. Among herb zhi is solitary-swaying zhi, which moves on its own without wind. Its stem is as thick as a finger and as red as cinnabar, and its plain-colored leaves resemble amaranth. Its root has a large swelling like a dou measure, with twelve smaller ones like eggs, arranged around the large root on all sides like the twelve earthly branches. About one zhang apart, they are connected by fine roots like white hairs. It grows high in the deep valleys of mountains, with no grass anywhere near it. Grind and take the large swelling; finish it and gain a thousand years. Each small one gives a hundred years, and can be shared with someone else. Carry the large root to become invisible; turn left and bring it out if you want to be seen. Ox-horn zhi grows on Mount Hushou and Wuban. It resembles a scallion, grows alone like an ox horn, reaches three or four chi in length, and is blue-green. Grind and take a square-inch spoonful three times a day. After a hundred days you gain a thousand years. Dragon-immortal zhi looks like rising dragons carrying each other, with leaves for scales and a root like a coiled dragon. Take one piece to gain a thousand years. Hemp-mother zhi resembles hemp but has a red stem and purple flowers. Purple-pearl zhi has yellow flowers, red leaves, and purple fruits like plums; twenty-four branches connect and hang down like strung pearls. White-talisman zhi stands four or five chi high and resembles a plum tree. It flowers during heavy snow and bears fruit in the last month of winter. Vermilion-grass zhi has nine bends, with three leaves on each bend and three fruits on each leaf. Five-virtues zhi looks like a multistory hall, with a square stem and leaves each of five distinct, unmixed colors. Its top looks like a flat canopy. Sweet dew is always inside it, and purple vapor rises several chi above it. Dragon-holding zhi grows in pairs in the second month of spring. It has three joints, twelve branches, and a lower root like a seated person. There are another 120 kinds of these herb zhi. Dry them all in the shade and take them to live as long as heaven and earth, or in some cases to gain one or two thousand years.\n\n6. Flesh zhi include a ten-thousand-year-old toad with horns on its head and eight red characters written twice under its jaw. Capture it at noon on the fifth day of the fifth month and dry it in the shade for a hundred days. Draw on the ground with its left foot and flowing water appears. Wear its left foreleg on your body to ward off the five kinds of weapons. If an enemy shoots at you, his bows, crossbows, and arrows all turn back against him. A thousand-year-old bat is as white as snow and hangs upside down when it rests because its brain is heavy. Obtain either of these two creatures, dry it in the shade, grind and take it, and you will live forty thousand years. A thousand-year-old sacred turtle has all five colors. The male has two hornlike bones rising from its forehead. Bathe it in sheep's blood, then strip off its shell, roast it over a fire, pound it and take a square-inch spoonful three times a day. Finish the whole shell and live a thousand years. If you see a little person seven or eight cun tall riding in a carriage with horses in the mountains, that is flesh zhi. Catch and eat it to become immortal at once. The wind-born beast resembles a marten, is blue-green and as big as a wildcat. It lives in the great forests of the South Sea. Catch it in a net and burn several cartloads of firewood around it. When the wood is consumed, the beast remains unburned in the ashes, with not a hair singed. Axes and blades cannot penetrate it; beating it feels like beating a leather bag. Strike its head dozens of times with an iron hammer to kill it, but if you point its mouth toward the wind after it dies, it will soon come back to life and run away. Stop its nostrils with sweet flag grown on stone and it will die. Take its brain, mix it with chrysanthemum flowers, and consume ten jin to gain five hundred years. There is also a thousand-year-old swallow whose nest faces north. It is mostly white and has a short, blunt tail. Capture it, dry it in the shade, grind and take one whole bird to gain five hundred years. There are another 120 kinds of these creatures, all flesh zhi.\n\n7. Mushroom zhi grow deep in mountains, beneath large trees, or beside springs. Some look like palaces, some like carriages and horses, dragons and tigers, human figures, or flying birds. Their five colors vary. There are also 120 kinds, with their own illustrations. Approach all of them using Yu's steps, cut them with a bone knife, dry them in the shade, grind them and take a square-inch spoonful. The best make one rise to immortality; middle-grade kinds grant several thousand years, and lower-grade kinds a thousand. To seek zhi plants, enter famous mountains in the third or ninth month, when the mountains open and produce sacred drugs. Avoid a day on which the mountain is hostile; go at an hour favored by heaven, especially when the Three Wonders meet. Leave through the lucky gate of the Three Wonders and reach the mountain on a day of the six yin, at the hour of the Bright Hall. Wear a Lingbao talisman, lead a white dog, carry a white chicken, and bring one dou of white salt and an opening-the-mountain talisman and writ. Put these on a large stone. Take a handful of Wutang grass into the mountain. The mountain spirit will be pleased and you will surely obtain zhi. Collecting and taking zhi should also be done on a day when the favorable powers of growth and strength are united, preferably when the heavenly stems and earthly branches support one another. Famous mountains contain many of these zhi. But ordinary Daoists lack devoted minds, have impure behavior and little virtue, and do not understand how to enter mountains. Though they have the illustrations, they cannot recognize the plants and so never obtain them. All mountains, large and small, have spirits and ghosts. Unless those spirits give the zhi to someone, that person will not see it even when stepping on it.\n\n### Mica, Realgar, Jade, Silver, Pearl and the Common Herbs\n\n8. There are five types of mica, but most people cannot tell them apart. Hold a piece up toward the sun and look closely at its color; only then can you identify it. If you simply look at it in the shade, its mixed colors will not show. The kind with all five colors but mostly blue-green is called cloud-flower; take it in spring. The one with all five but mostly red is cloud-pearl; take it in summer. The one with all five but mostly white is cloud-liquid; take it in autumn. The one with all five but mostly black is cloud-mother; take it in winter. The one with only blue-green and yellow is cloud-sand; take it in late summer. Bright pure white mica is called phosphor stone; it can be taken regularly in all four seasons. To prepare the five micas, you can dissolve them into liquid with cinnamon, scallion, and water jade. Or expose them in an iron vessel, then boil them into liquid with dark water. Or seal them with saltpeter in a tube and bury them until they liquefy. Or knead them with honey into a creamy mixture. Or steep them in autumn dew for a hundred days, then work them in a leather bag to make powder. Or mix them with wudian grass and tree-of-heaven sap to eat. Take them for one year and every illness goes away. Take them regularly for three years and an old man becomes a boy again. Continue without interruption for five years and you can command ghosts and spirits, enter fire without burning, enter water without getting wet, step on thorns without hurting your skin, and meet immortals. Other things decay if buried and char if set on fire. But the five micas do not burn even after time in a fierce fire and never rot when buried. That is why they let people live long. It is also said that after ten years of taking them, clouds always cover the user from above: taking the mother brings her children, as the natural order requires. If, however, a piece held up to the sun shows a dull, solid black color, it is not fit to take. It causes painful urination and sores. Even if taking mica in liquid, first steep it for a hundred days in rainwater from the eaves of a thatched house, east-flowing water, or dew. Wash away the earth and stone before using it. Wei Shuqing of Zhongshan took it for so long that he could travel on clouds. He sealed his formula in a jade box. After he departed as an immortal, his son Shi and the Han envoy Liang Bo found it, followed the recipe, took the drug, and both became immortals and departed.\n\n9. Realgar should come from the mountains of Wudu, pure and unmixed, red as a rooster's comb and brightly shining. Only this kind can be used. The kind that is merely a plain yellow, with no red shine, is not suitable for an immortality drug, though it can be used to prepare medicine for illness. Ways of taking it include steaming or boiling it, taking it with wine, first dissolving it with saltpeter into liquid and then letting it solidify, wrapping it in dark dongchang and steaming it beneath red earth, combining it with pine resin, or refining it with three substances until it can be drawn out like cloth and is white as ice. Taking any of these preparations brings long life and cures all illnesses. The three corpse spirits leave the body, scars disappear, white hair turns black, and lost teeth grow back. After a thousand days jade maidens come to serve you; you can command them and obtain the traveling kitchen. A true jade maiden always has a yellow-jade mark as big as a millet seed on her nose. One without that mark is a ghost testing you.\n\n10. Jade too is an immortality drug, but hard to obtain. The Jade Classic says, “Take gold and your life will last as long as gold; take jade and your life will last as long as jade.” It also says, “Whoever takes dark perfection will have no end to life.” Dark perfection is another name for jade. Jade makes the body light enough to fly upward: it does more than make one an earthly immortal. But this method is slow. Only after consuming one or two hundred jin can you see its effect. You can dissolve jade into liquid with black-rice wine or burnet wine; dissolve it into a paste with scallion juice; take it as pills; or roast it into powder. After taking it for more than a year, you can enter water without getting wet, enter fire without burning, and face blades and every poison without harm. Do not use jade already made into an object: it harms rather than helps. You must get uncut jade. White jade from Khotan is best; next comes jade from the Xushanting district of Nanyang or from the Lu Rong River in Rinan. Chi Songzi soaked jade in dark-insect blood until it became liquid and drank it; that is why he could ride smoke up and down. Jade powder and jade taken in liquid both prevent death. But jade is inferior to gold because it repeatedly causes fever, like the effects of Cold Food Powder. Anyone taking jade powder should, every ten days, take a knife-tip measure each of realgar and cinnabar, loosen the hair, wash in cold water, and walk facing the wind. This prevents fever. Dong Junyi once gave jade elixir to a blind person, whose sight returned after ten days. A man named Wu Yanzhi wanted to take jade, but the Jade Classic formula he obtained was incomplete. He had no idea of the required measures and prohibitions, and collected many jade tablets, scepters, rings, disks, and sword fittings to prepare and take. When I later told him that these were unfit for use, he sighed, “You have to know exactly what you are doing. It would not just have been useless; it could almost have brought disaster.”\n\n11. Silver falls short of gold and jade, but it can make one an earthly immortal. To take it, dissolve it with wheat liquor; or take it with vermilion-grass wine; or refine it with dragon fat. Yet each of the three doses must be as big as a pellet. Even that is beyond the means of a poor Daoist.\n\n12. Pearls at least one cun across can be taken to extend life. Soak them in fermented milk or rice liquor and they turn into liquid like mercury. They can also be dissolved with pumice water and a beehive, combined with bao-tong snake yellow, and drawn out three or four chi long. Make them into pills and take them while abstaining from grain, and you will not die but live long. Pure lacquer that does not stick to things lets a person communicate with spirits and live long. To take it, either put ten large “gutless gentlemen,” also called large crabs, into it, or combine it with mica liquid or jade liquid. All nine worms will leave the body, bad blood will come out through the nose, and within a year the traveling kitchen of the six jia will arrive.\n\n13. Cinnamon can be steamed with scallion juice into liquid, combined with bamboo sap and taken, or taken mixed with the brain of the “foreknowing gentleman,” also said to mean a tortoise. After seven years, one can walk on water and live forever.\n\n14. Sesame is also called foreign hemp. Taking it as food prevents aging, gives resistance to wind and dampness, and restores the strength lost with age. Soak peach-tree resin in lye made from mulberry ash and take it: all illnesses heal. Taken over a long time, it makes the body light and luminous, like the moon rising in a dark place. Taking a great deal makes it possible to give up grain.\n\n15. Eat the red fruit of the ning tree for a year and an old person becomes young again, gains penetrating vision, and sees ghosts. Long ago, the Daoist Liang Xu began taking it at seventy and grew younger. At a hundred and forty, he could write at night and run alongside a galloping horse. He later entered Mount Qinglong and disappeared. Seal pagoda-tree seeds with mud in a new jar for more than twenty days. When their outer skins have rotted, wash them until they are like soybeans, then take them every day. This substance strengthens the brain. Taken long-term, it keeps hair from turning white and extends life. The formula for the dark-centered vine, Chu feilian, water plantain, rehmannia, goldthread, and more than three hundred other plants can all extend life, and each can be taken by itself. The Spirit-Flying Powder, Weijue Pills, Life-Control Pills, and Sheep's-Blood Pills all preserve youth and hold back aging.\n\n### Sweet-Valley Water, Long-Lived Families, and Tales of Those Who Ate Herbs\n\n16. In the mountains of Li County, Nanyang, is Sweet Valley water. Its water is sweet because sweet chrysanthemums grow on both sides above the valley. Their flowers fall into the stream, and over many generations they have changed its taste. Residents along the valley never dig wells; all drink its water. All who drink it live to old age. Some reach 140 or 150; even the least long-lived reach eighty or ninety. None die young, thanks to the chrysanthemums. Therefore Wang Chang, the Minister of Works; Liu Kuan, the Grand Commandant; and Yuan Wei, the Grand Tutor, each of whom served as governor of Nanyang, had Li County send forty hu of Sweet Valley water each month for drinking and cooking whenever they took office. These men often suffered from rheumatic paralysis and dizziness, and all recovered. But they could not gain as much from it as residents of Sweet Valley who had drunk the water for food and drink from infancy. Chrysanthemum flowers look like yi flowers; you can tell them apart only by taste. Chrysanthemums are sweet and yi is bitter, as the saying “bitter as yi” suggests. True chrysanthemums are found everywhere today, but are few in number. Most grow beside water; Mount Goushi and Li County have the most. In the immortals' formulas, “essence of the sun,” “renewed life,” and “full circuit” are all one chrysanthemum: its roots, stem, flowers, and fruit each have a different name. These accounts sound wonderful, yet people who have taken it recently have seen almost no effect. That is simply because they did not get true chrysanthemums. After all, what can one say of Sweet Valley water, which merely takes on the flavor of chrysanthemums? Yet all who live by it gain longer lives. How could the plant itself, prepared as a drug, fail to help?\n\n17. My late grandfather, an assistant to the Grand Herald, once served as magistrate of Linyuan. He said that a family there named Liao enjoyed long lives for generations. Some lived past a hundred, others into their eighties or nineties. When they moved away, increasingly many of their descendants died young. Others moved into their old house and likewise lived long lives for several generations. It became clear that the house was responsible, though no one knew why. Suspecting that the well water was unusually red, they dug around the well and found several dozen hu of cinnabar buried there by people long ago, a few chi from the well. Liquid from the cinnabar had gradually seeped with the springwater into the well. Drinking that water gave them long life. How much more effective must properly refined cinnabar be when taken directly?\n\n18. I have also heard of Zhao Qu of Shangdang. He had suffered from leprosy for years, and every treatment failed. He was close to death. Some said he would not live and should be abandoned elsewhere; afterward the disease passed in turn from one to another among his descendants. His family finally provided him with food and took him to a mountain cave. In the cave Qu regretted his misfortune, sighed and wept day and night for a month. An immortal passed by, saw him and took pity on him, asking about his situation in detail. Qu knew this was no ordinary person, bowed his head to the ground, explained himself, and begged for mercy. The immortal gave him a bag of medicine and taught him how to take it. After about a hundred days, Qu's sores had all healed, his face was full and happy, and his skin shone like jade. The immortal came by again to see him. Qu thanked him for restoring his life and asked for the formula. The immortal told him, “It is only pine resin. There is more of it in these mountains. Refine it and take it, and you can live forever.” Qu went home. At first his family took him for a ghost and was terrified. He continued taking pine resin and grew lighter, with a hundred times his former strength. He climbed steep places and crossed dangerous ground all day without tiring. At 170, his teeth had not fallen out and his hair was not white. One night as he lay in bed, he saw a light inside the house as big as a mirror. He asked those nearby, but none could see it. Gradually it grew until the whole room was as bright as day. Another night he saw two beautiful women on his face, two or three cun tall. They had complete faces and bodies, only small. They played around his mouth and nose. After about a year, they grew larger and came out to stand beside him. He also often heard the sound of zithers and smiled happily to himself. He stayed among people for some three hundred years, looking like a child, then went into Mount Baodu; he must have become an earthly immortal. When people heard what pine resin had done for Qu, they all rushed to take it. Those with many workers had it hauled by carts and donkeys until their rooms were full. But after taking it for at most a month and not noticing great benefits, they stopped. People with true determination are hard to find.\n\n19. In the time of Emperor Cheng of Han, hunters in the Zhongnan Mountains saw a person with no clothes and black hair covering the body. They tried to chase and catch this person, but the person leaped across pits and valleys as if flying, beyond their reach. They watched secretly to find out where the person went, surrounded and caught her. She was a woman. Asked about herself, she said, “I was once a woman of the Qin palace. When I heard that rebels from east of the passes had arrived, the Qin king went out to surrender and the palace buildings burned. In fear I fled into the mountains. I had no food and was about to starve. An old man taught me to eat pine needles and pine seeds. At first they were bitter and harsh, but gradually I got used to them. After that I felt neither hunger nor thirst, cold in winter nor heat in summer.” This woman must have been a palace attendant of Ziying, the Qin king, and was about two hundred years old by Emperor Cheng's time. The hunters brought her home and fed her grain. At first its smell made her vomit; after several days she adjusted. In about two years her body hair fell out, she grew old and died. Had no one caught her, she would have become an immortal.\n\n20. The Wen family of Nanyang say that an ancestor of theirs fled into the mountains during the great disorder at the end of the Han. He was starving and nearly dead when someone taught him to eat atractylodes. He no longer felt hungry. Decades later he came back to his home region, looking younger and stronger than before. He said that in the mountains his body had felt light and eager to leap. He climbed heights and walked over dangerous ground for days without tiring. Walking through ice and snow, he felt no cold at all. He often saw several people sitting opposite one another on a high cliff playing a board game, while others read books. They looked down at Wen, and he heard one ask another, “Should we call this fellow up to join us?” Another answered, “Not yet.” Atractylodes is also called mountain lin and mountain essence. The Classic of Divine Drugs says, “If you want to live long, take mountain essence regularly.”\n\n21. Long ago, each of the Eight Dukes took a single substance and thereby became an immortal on earth. Only after several hundred years did they combine the divine cinnabar elixir and liquid gold and rise to the Great Purity heaven. If someone combines and refines the eight substances and takes them, they will not work: the drugs counteract or overpower each other. Han Zhong took sweet flag for thirteen years. Hair grew on his body; each day he could read ten thousand words and recite them all, and he could uncover his chest in winter without feeling cold. Sweet flag should grow on rock, with at least nine joints to each cun; the purple-flowered kind is especially good. Zhao Tazi took cinnamon for twenty years. Hair grew on his soles, he could walk five hundred li a day and lift a thousand jin. Yi Menzi took five-flavor berries for sixteen years. His complexion became like a jade maiden's; he could enter water without getting wet or fire without burning. Chu Wenzi took rehmannia for eight years. He could see by night as if there were light and lift a carriage-mounted crossbow in his hands. Lin Ziming took atractylodes for eleven years. His ears grew five cun long, his body became as light as if flying, and he could leap over a deep valley about two zhang wide. Du Ziwei took asparagus root. He had relations with eighty concubines and fathered 130 children, and could walk three hundred li a day. Ren Ziji took poria for eighteen years. Immortals and jade maidens came to follow him. He could disappear and appear, no longer ate grain, lost all his cautery scars, and had a jade-like glow on his face and body. Lingyang Zizhong took milkwort for twenty years. He fathered thirty-seven children, never forgot anything he saw on opening a book, and could vanish while seated and appear standing. The Immortals' Classic says, “Even if taking the leaves of plants has brought someone several hundred years, if that person neglects the divine cinnabar elixir, they can never become immortal.” Thus plants only extend one's years; clearly they are not drugs for eternal life. Until one can make the elixir, one can take them to keep oneself going.\n\n### Timing and Taboos of Taking Drugs, the Pace of Yu, and Short Recipes\n\n22. Someone asked, “When taking medicines, does it matter whether they are taken before or after meals?” Baopuzi answered, “According to the instructions for taking drugs by Zhong Huangzi, medicine for treating illness should be taken before eating; medicine for nurturing one's nature should be taken after eating. I asked Master Zheng why. He said, ‘That is easy to understand. If you want a drug to attack disease, take it before eating, while the stomach is empty, so its force can travel easily. Taken after a meal, it will spend all its force attacking the grain instead. But if you want to nurture your nature and take the drug before eating, the food will drive it out downward before it can act or stay in place. Then it does no good.’”\n\n23. Someone asked, “It is said that when people take drugs to nurture their nature, some are suitable and others are not. Is that true?” Baopuzi answered, “According to the Record of the Jade Documents and the Classic of Opening Brightness, the five musical tones and six groups of correspondences reveal the location of a person's allotted life. Zi and wu belong to geng; mao and you to ji; yin and shen to wu; chou and wei to xin; chen and xu to bing; si and hai to ding. Those assigned the number one correspond to the gong tone and earth; the number three, to the zhi tone and fire; five, to the yu tone and water; seven, to the shang tone and metal; nine, to the jue tone and wood. If your birth element is earth, do not take blue-green drugs; if metal, do not take red drugs; if wood, do not take white drugs; if water, do not take yellow drugs; if fire, do not take black drugs. This follows the five-element principle: wood overcomes earth, earth overcomes water, water overcomes fire, fire overcomes metal, and metal overcomes wood. For the great drug of the golden elixir, there is no further question of whether it suits you.”\n\n24. Number one: gong tone. Gengzi, gengwu; xinwei, xinchou; bingchen, bingxu; dinghai, dingsi; wuyin, wushen; jimao, jiyou.\n\n25. Number three: zhi tone. Jiachen, jiaxu; yihai, yisi; bingyin, bingshen; dingyou, dingmao; wuwu, wuzi; jiwei, jichou.\n\n26. Number five: yu tone. Jiayin, jiashen; yimao, yiyou; bingzi, bingwu; dingwei, dingchou; renchen, renxu; guisi, guihai.\n\n27. Number seven: shang tone. Jiazi, jiawu; yichou, yiwei; gengchen, gengxu; xinsi, xinhai; renshen, renyin; guimao, guiyou.\n\n28. Number nine: jue tone. Wuchen, wuxu; jisi, jihai; gengyin, gengshen; xinmao, xinyou; renwu, renzi; guichou, guiwei.\n\n29. Method for Yu's steps: First lift the left foot; pass the right foot over the left, then bring the left beside the right. Next lift the right foot; pass the left over the right, then bring the right beside the left. Next lift the right foot; pass the right over the left, then bring the left beside the right.\n\n30. These three steps should cover two zhang and one chi and leave nine footprints behind.\n\n31. A short divine recipe: Mix three jin of genuine cinnabar with one jin of white honey. Set it in the sun and cook it until it can be made into pills. Each morning take ten pills the size of hemp seeds. Before a year is over, white hair turns black, lost teeth grow back, and the body becomes smooth and healthy. Taken for a long time, it turns an old man into a young one; taken regularly, it grants eternal life.\n\n32. A short recipe for taking gold: Melt gold over a fire and plunge it into clear wine, taking it out two hundred times and putting it in two hundred times, until it bubbles. Squeeze it so that it comes out between your fingers like mud. If it does not bubble or will not squeeze out between your fingers, melt it again and plunge it into the wine as many times as needed. When ready, take a pill the size of a pellet. You can also take one softened pill and divide it into smaller pills. Take it for thirty days; you will feel neither cold nor heat, and divine beings and jade maidens will descend to you. Silver too can be taken, by the same method as gold. If you take these two substances while living in a stone chamber in a famous mountain, you can rise lightly into the air after one year. Taking them while living among other people makes you an earthly immortal. Do not pass this on carelessly.\n\n33. Liangyi Zi's method for taking melted gold: Use three jin of fat from beneath a pig's hide and one dou of strong sour wine. Take five liang of gold and heat it in a vessel. Remove it from the furnace and put the gold into the fat a hundred times, taking it out a hundred times; do the same with the sour wine. Consume one jin of gold and your life will last as long as heaven and earth. Eat half a jin and live two thousand years; five liang gives 1,200 years. Whatever the amount, you can take it. Make it on a day when the favorable powers of growth and strength are present; then it works wonderfully. Do not pass the method on. If you pass it on, the drug will not form and will not work. If you want to take a drug that expels the corpse spirits, take cinnabar.\n\n34. Method for taking cinnabar: Pound and sift one jin of cinnabar. Add three sheng of strong sour wine and two sheng of pure lacquer. Mix these three ingredients well, cook them over low heat until they can be made into pills, and take three hemp-seed-sized pills twice daily. After forty days, all illnesses in the belly heal and the three corpse spirits leave. After a hundred days, flesh and bones become strong. After a thousand days, the Director of Fate removes your name from the death register; you last as long as heaven and earth and face the sun and moon. Your shape and appearance change in countless ways, and in the sunlight you cast no shadow but shine with a light of your own.","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/baopuzi-drugs-of-immortals/translations/trn_baopuzi_drugs_of_immortals_plain.txt"}],"retex_markdown_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/baopuzi-drugs-of-immortals/retex.md"}}