Making Gold and Silver (Baopuzi, Inner Chapter 16)

1 Baopuzi says: The Classics of the Immortals contain twenty-five scrolls of formulas for the yellow and the white, more than a thousand recipes. The yellow is gold; the white is silver. The ancients kept the art secret and precious, unwilling to name it outright, and so concealed it under these names. Some chapters are titled Geng and Xin: these, too, mean gold. Most of the formulas, however, are subtle and hard to understand; few are clearly intelligible. Many people doubt the whole affair as a fantasy, just as they disbelieve in immortals. In former days I received from Master Zheng the Classics of the Nine Elixirs and the Liquids of Gold and Silver; afterward I sought and received the five scrolls of the Central Classic of the Yellow and the White. Master Zheng said he and Master Zuo had tried making them in the Copper Mountains of Lujiang, and all their attempts succeeded. Yet the labor of purification, fasting, and observance of taboos was no different from that required for the golden elixir and the drugs of immortality. Ordinary people often mock my devotion to unorthodox pursuits, saying that I insist on making sense of things under heaven that cannot be understood. Why would I do that? If I wanted to display my literary powers to posterity with such matters, the more than two hundred scrolls of my Outer Chapters and miscellaneous writings would suffice to convey my thoughts to later generations; I would have no need of this. Besides, these Inner Chapters speak plainly, without ornament. I know, too, that whenever I discuss such matters everyone calls them far-fetched and irrelevant; it would be easier to win popular favor by treating the pressing concerns of common life. Yet I cannot leave the subject alone, and write about it though I know people will not listen, because I have truly witnessed its results, and the teachers who transmitted it to me did not speak falsely. But I am poor and lack the means; I have also lived through an age of many troubles, with hardships that would not end. Roads were blocked, ingredients unobtainable, and in the end I had no opportunity to compound them myself. If I tell people now that I know how to make gold and silver, though I myself suffer hunger and cold, how is that different from a man who cannot walk selling medicine for lameness and asking to be believed? Of course no one would believe him. Yet matters do not always turn out as one wishes, and they cannot all be judged alike. I have been so diligent in committing these things to writing because I want those who delight in wonders and prize truth in generations to come to read my book and fully understand what I mean by the Way.What cannot the art of transformation accomplish? The human body is naturally visible, yet there is a method of making it invisible. Spirits and gods are naturally invisible, yet there is a means of making them appear; many people can do this. Water and fire exist in heaven, yet we draw them down with the water-mirror and the burning mirror. Lead is white by nature, yet we redden it into red lead; red lead is red by nature, yet we whiten it into lead. Clouds, rain, frost, and snow are all the breath of heaven and earth, yet drugs can produce them, indistinguishable from the real thing. Even creatures that fly and run, and all that creep and crawl, have received their shapes from creation and seem fixed in form; yet countless kinds suddenly shed their former bodies and turn into other creatures, more than one can recount. Humans are the most exalted and intelligent of beings, yet there are many instances of men and women changing form, becoming cranes or stones, tigers or apes, sand or great turtles. Lofty mountains become deep pools, and deep valleys become hills: these, too, are transformations of vast things. Transformation is nature's own work in heaven and earth. Why suppose that gold and silver cannot be made from other substances? Consider the fire drawn by a burning mirror and the water drawn by a water-mirror: are they any different from ordinary fire and water? A snake becoming a dragon, or chopped thatch becoming fat, is likewise no different from a thing born naturally. Yet the underlying causes of these things all arise from natural responses. Unless one fathoms principle and fully understands nature, one cannot grasp their meaning; unless one traces the beginning and sees the end, one cannot know their true condition. To take a narrow view from a cramped mind, shackled to one's own burrow, to call unfathomable mysteries empty guesses and divine transformations fantasies simply because Zhou and Confucius did not discuss them and the ancient books do not record them—is that not a pitiful limitation?Again, ordinary people say that because Liu Xiang failed to make gold, the art must not exist anywhere under heaven. That is like seeing a farmer lose his harvest to flood or drought and declaring that grain cannot be sown and grown. Wu Dawen, administrator of Chengdu, was a widely learned and knowledgeable man. He himself said that he once served the Daoist Li Gen and saw him heat lead and tin. Li tossed into the cauldron a little drug, about the size of a soybean, stirred it with an iron spoon, and, when it cooled, it became silver. Dawen received the secret formula, but wanted to make it himself and first had to purify himself by fasting for a hundred days. Detained in office, he never managed to do so, and constantly sighed that the world of men was no fit place to dwell.Master Huan Junshan also says that Cheng Wei, a gentleman attendant of the Yellow Gate under the Han, loved the art of the yellow and the white, and married a woman from a family that knew the formulas. Once, as Wei was about to accompany the imperial carriage, he had no proper clothes to wear and was deeply troubled. His wife said, “Let me bring you two lengths of fine silk.” At once the silk appeared before him from nowhere. Wei followed the instructions in the Precious Secrets Kept in a Pillow to make gold, but failed. His wife then went to see him as he fanned charcoal beneath a heated vessel holding mercury. “I want to try something before your eyes,” she said. She took a drug from her pouch, threw in a little, and after the time it takes to eat a meal, opened the vessel: its contents had become silver. Astonished, Wei said, “The Way was close at hand with you! Why did you not tell me sooner?” She answered, “To receive it, one must be destined for it.” Wei then coaxed and pleaded with her night and day, selling fields and house to supply her with fine food and clothing, but still she would not tell him. Wei conspired with an accomplice to beat and torture her into yielding. She learned of it and told him, “The Way must be passed to the right person. If one meets the right person on the road, one teaches it at once; but if it is the wrong person, whose mouth says yes while his heart says no, then even if I were cut inch by inch and dismembered, the Way would not come out.” Wei would not cease pressuring her. She went mad, ran naked, smeared herself with mud, and died.More recently, Hua Lingsi, formerly governor of Lujiang, a man of great talent and broad learning, disbelieved many things outside ordinary experience. Later a Daoist told him a formula for the yellow and the white, and he had the man try it: the Daoist melted lead in an iron vessel and cast in a powdered drug; it became silver. Then he melted this silver and cast in another drug, and it became gold. Hua also learned from him the method of seeing through things. Before he had practiced it for a hundred days, lying in bed at night he could clearly see the stars and his four neighbors, unaware of any houses or fences intervening. He also saw the form of his dead concubine Yaohua, and spoke with her as he had while she lived. While sacrificing at a temple, he heard the temple god respond to his bow, and his couch seemed to move and make a sound. Lingsi sighed: “So there really is nothing that does not exist in the world! Even if the Five Classics do not record it, one cannot simply judge it by one's own ideas.” And yet, if someone unfamiliar with these arts suddenly heard of them, how could he fail to be amazed?The art of the yellow and the white is also like compounding the divine elixirs. Both require more than a hundred days of fasting and purification. One must also find someone who understands the formula books and shares one's purpose before undertaking it; it is not something that the impure, the unintelligent, or those with only a passing acquaintance with the occult arts can accomplish. Where oral instructions are necessary, they must all be received from a teacher. One must also go deep into the mountains, to a clean place, and keep the undertaking from the knowledge of ignorant common people. But Liu Xiang made his attempt in a palace, attended by palace servants who surely had not purified themselves; nor could he sever all human dealings and prevent people from coming and going. How could he have succeeded under such conditions? Huan Tan's New Discourses says: Shi Zixin was appointed a clerk to the chancellor. He built a structure in an official compound and requisitioned clerks, soldiers, and the government's male and female slaves to assist him, but failed to make gold. The chancellor, thinking his own resources insufficient, petitioned Empress Dowager Fu. She no longer cared to acquire gold, but on hearing that gold once made could become a drug to prolong life, she too became eager. She appointed Shi a gentleman, lodged him in the Northern Palace, and sent an envoy to attend to him. Could anyone truly practice this divine formula in a palace amid a crowd of ordinary people working together? Even those dyeing silk and bleaching cloth in the common world dislike letting outsiders watch: if someone watches, the work is spoiled. How much more so the transformation of the yellow and the white! Every task, great or small, requires mastery of its essential method. Without the right method, even careless attempts to make wine, soy paste, vinegar, soup, or meat stew fail. How much more so a great undertaking?I once asked Master Zheng: “The Old Master says, ‘Do not prize goods that are hard to obtain.’ In the age of perfect rule, everyone cast gold into the mountains and threw jade into the valleys. Why, then, did the ancients value gold and silver and hand down their formulas?” Master Zheng answered me: “What the Old Master meant was those who sift sand and split rocks, strip mountains and dredge pools, travel ten thousand miles without fearing that they might be crushed or drowned, all to seek rare ornaments; who disrupt the people's farming seasons, know no moderation, and adorn themselves with useless things. He also meant those who profess to seek the Way and aspire to long life yet engage in trade as well, without cultivating trust and generosity, crossing deep waters and dangerous places, risking their lives to chase profit, and never cultivating freedom from desire. But perfected adepts who make gold intend to consume it and become immortals, not to grow rich. Thus the classic says, ‘Gold can be made, and the world can be transcended. Silver, too, can be consumed, though it is not as good as gold.’” I objected: “Why not consume the gold and silver already in the world instead of making them by transformation? If made, they are not genuine; if not genuine, they are counterfeit.” Master Zheng replied: “The gold and silver found in the world are entirely good, but Daoists are generally poor. Hence the saying, ‘There are no fat immortals or rich Daoists.’ A teacher and disciples may number ten or five: where could they find enough gold and silver for them all? Nor can they travel far to gather it; therefore they should make it. Moreover, gold made through transformation is the distilled essence of many drugs, superior to natural gold. The Classics of the Immortals say, ‘The essence of cinnabar engenders gold.’ This refers to making gold from cinnabar. Thus where there is cinnabar in the mountains, gold is often found beneath it. And when gold has been made, it is a genuine substance, the same inside and out, undiminished by a hundred refinings. Hence the formula says, ‘It can be made into nails,’ demonstrating its strength and hardness. This accords with nature's Way. If one can make it, why call it counterfeit? Counterfeiting means coating iron with azurite so that it looks red like copper, or treating silver with egg white so that it looks yellow like gold: these change on the outside, not within. Mushrooms of immortality grow naturally, yet the Classics of the Immortals prescribe planting them from five minerals and five kinds of wood. The mushrooms that grow can be gathered and eaten, and are no different from naturally growing ones: both give long life. This is another instance like making gold. When a pheasant becomes a great clam, or a sparrow a small clam, it is exactly like one born naturally. Thus the Classics of the Immortals say, ‘The flowing pearl turns nine times; a father does not tell his son. Transformed into yellow and white, they naturally act upon each other.’ They also say, ‘The highest adepts turn cinnabar into gold and consume it to ascend as immortals; the middling adepts eat mushrooms, practice exercises, and swallow breath to live long; the lower adepts eat plants and trees and live no more than a thousand years.’ And again: ‘Gold and silver can be made by oneself: that is in their nature. Long life can be learned and won.’ The Record of the Jade Tablets says: ‘All the people under heaven can live long; it is hesitation that prevents them from succeeding.’ Mercury condensed into gold can be made into nails. The Classic of the Copper Pillar says: ‘Cinnabar can become gold, and the river chariot can become silver. Once set to work, it can be completed; once completed, it is genuine. If you obtain this Way, you can make your body immortal.’ Master Huangshan says: ‘Heaven and earth have gold, and I can make it: two yellow and one red, and it is made at once, without doubt.’ The Turtle-Shell Text says: ‘My life rests with me, not with heaven; the reverted elixir becomes gold for a hundred million years.’ How could the ancients have deceived us? The trouble is that many who know this Way are poor, while some ingredients, though exceedingly cheap, grow in distant regions and cannot be obtained in troubled times. Rong salt and saline alkali are both humble substances, worth practically nothing in peaceful times; now, however high a price one offers, one cannot buy them. One could offer millions for a pound of Qiangli's chalcanthite and still fail to get it. Merely knowing the formula is just the same as not knowing it, and this is cause for a long sigh. Those with the method may lack food, clothing, and the means to compound it, while the rich and powerful do not know it. Even if they knew it, not one would believe it. Suppose one of them did half believe: already possessing abundant gold and silver, why spend the wealth in hand to buy the ingredients, for fear of losing a tethered bird in pursuit of one in flight? Thus no one is willing to try. And though the price of the ingredients, measured against the product obtained, would leave an extraordinary profit, the work also demands painful fasting and abstinence; thus no one can bring it off. Moreover, without a discerning teacher's oral instructions one truly cannot attempt it lightly.”Even physicians' drugs are exceedingly familiar, yet physicians keep their regularly effective formulas secret. Thus formulas call for such things as the wandering girl of the rear palace, glue from a secluded corner, a lord's mud pellet, wood-ghost seed, metal-merchant mushroom, flying lord's root, crouching dragon's liver, white horse's sweat, drifting cloud dregs, dragon child's cinnabar robe, night-shining bone, hundred-flower sweet wine, and winter Zou fasting. These are all things close at hand, yet without oral instructions one cannot even tell what they are. How much more so the art of the yellow and the white! Those now capable of practicing it keep it secret not merely because of the high price of its products. Once mastered, this Way can bring long life; the Way of long life is the highest Way, and that is why the ancients prized it. Moreover, the names of ingredients in formula books may be the same as ordinary terms yet refer to quite different things: the Maiden of the Riverbank is not a woman; Lingyang Ziming is not a man; Yu's Surplus Grain is not rice; Yao's Broth is not water. Yet when ordinary people see formulas calling for dragon gall and tiger paw, chicken head and duck foot, horse hoof and dog blood, mouse tail and ox knee, they assume these are parts of warm-blooded creatures. When they see broken basin and overturned basin, cauldron scraper and great halberd, ghost arrow and heavenly hook, they assume they are ironware or tiles. When they see the King of Hu's Envoy, the Leaning Aunt and the New Bride, the Wild Old Man, the Field Guardian, Dai Wenyu, and Xu Changqing, they assume these are people's names. If even common, accessible herbs can go unrecognized, who can understand every mysterious and secret formula? There is nothing surprising in Liu Xiang's failure to make gold. Once the essentials are grasped, it takes no great sage or prodigious talent to do it; anyone can. Liu Xiang was no fool: he simply lacked the oral instructions. I shall now record a concise, effective method to pass on to kindred spirits of the future.First take Wudu realgar, cinnabar-red like a rooster's comb, lustrous and free of stony impurities. Take as much as you wish, but not less than five pounds. Pulverize it, mix it with ox gall, and boil it until dry. Take a red-clay pot holding one dou. First line it with ground Rong salt and chalcanthite to a thickness of three fen. Put in ground realgar to a thickness of five fen, then add another layer of Rong salt. Repeat these layers until the ingredients are exhausted. Add broken charcoal, in pieces the size of jujube pits, to a depth of two inches. Make a clay from mole-cricket earth and Rong salt; coat the outside of the pot with it, cover it with another pot, and seal everything with clay three inches thick, leaving no leaks. Let it dry in the shade for one month, then keep it warm over a fire of horse dung for three days and three nights. Let it cool, open it, and blow the bellows to melt out the copper; the copper runs as it does when copper and iron are smelted. Cast this copper into a vessel, and when it is ready fill it with cinnabar water. Again keep it warm over horse-dung fire. After thirty days open the furnace and blow the bellows to obtain its gold; make this, too, into a vessel and fill it with cinnabar water. Again warm it over horse-dung fire for thirty days, open it, take out the contents, and pulverize them. Take two parts of this and one part raw cinnabar, together with mercury—mercury is quicksilver—and at once it congeals into gold, lustrous and beautiful in color, capable of taking a nail.

2 Method for Making Cinnabar WaterPrepare one pound of cinnabar and put it in a fresh bamboo tube. Add two ounces each of chalcanthite and saltpeter, layering them above and below. Seal the mouth of the tube with lacquer-and-bone paste and wait until it dries. Place it in strong vinegar, bury it three feet deep in the ground, and after thirty days it becomes a liquid, red in color and bitter in taste.

3 Method for Making Gold, Received by Master Jinlou from QinglinziFirst forge tin into a plate six inches square and one inch and two fen thick. Mix red salt with ash lye to the consistency of clay and spread it over the tin to an even thickness of one fen. Stack the plates in a red-clay pot. For every ten pounds of tin use four pounds of red salt; join and seal the edges firmly. Keep it warm over a horse-dung fire for thirty days. Open the furnace and inspect it: the tin will all resemble ashes, with clusters like beans within it; these are gold. Collect them, refine them in an earthen bowl, and blow the charcoal fire over them; after ten refinings, they all become gold. Ten pounds of tin yield twenty ounces of gold. Only earthen pots from Changsha, Guiyang, Yuzhang, or Nanhai will do. The local people there commonly make such pots to cook their food.

4 Method for Preparing Red SaltTake one pound of cold salt, one pound of cold-water stone, one pound of cold black alum, and one pound of white alum. Put them together in an iron vessel and heat it with charcoal until everything melts and turns red. Then take it out for use.

5 Method for Transforming Gold, Received by Master Jiaoli from JiqiuziFirst place two parts alum-water stone in an iron vessel. Heat it with charcoal until it boils, then add as much mercury as you wish and stir until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. After six or seven boils, pour it onto the ground, and it becomes silver. Then take one part each of cinnabar water and azurite water and two parts realgar water, and heat them gently in a cauldron until they boil. Stir repeatedly to combine them, then put the cauldron over a charcoal fire and bring it to a boil again. Add as much of the silver as you wish, let it boil six or seven times, and pour it onto the ground to solidify: it becomes fine purple gold.

6 Method for Preparing Realgar WaterPrepare one pound of realgar and put it in a fresh bamboo tube. Each time add two ounces of saltpeter, layering it above and below. Seal it with lacquer-and-bone paste, place it in strong vinegar, and bury it three feet deep. After twenty days it will have turned to water. The formulas for azurite water and alum-stone water follow the same method, but each is prepared in its own tube.

7 The Child's Method for Making GoldMake a large iron cylinder, twelve inches in inner diameter and twelve inches high. Make a small iron cylinder, six inches in inner diameter, and polish it bright. Take one pound of red halloysite, one pound of saltpeter, one pound of mica, one pound of red ocher, half a pound of sulfur, four ounces of hollow azurite, and one pound of gypsum. Pound all these together and sieve them fine; mix them with vinegar and coat the inside of the small cylinder to a thickness of two fen. Take one pound of mercury, half a pound of cinnabar, and half a pound of liangfei.

8 To obtain liangfei, place ten pounds of lead in an iron pot over a furnace and heat it uncovered. When the lead melts, add three ounces of mercury. Skim off with an iron spoon what rises first: this is called liangfei. Stir the ingredients together until the mercury can no longer be seen, then place them in the small cylinder. Cover them with mica and weigh it down with an iron lid. Set the large cylinder over the furnace, melt lead and pour it into the large cylinder until it stands half an inch below the top of the small one. Watch for the lead to melt, then heat fiercely for three days and nights. The product is called purple powder. Melt ten pounds of lead in an iron vessel; continue heating it for about twenty days, then transfer it to a copper vessel. Once the lead melts, add seven square-inch spoonfuls of purple powder and stir: it becomes gold at once. To make silver, put mercury in an iron vessel, add three inches or more of purple powder, heat until they mingle, and pour into water: it becomes silver.

9 Wuchengzi's MethodMake an iron cylinder nine inches long and five inches across. Pound three pounds of realgar with an equal amount of mole-cricket earth. Mix into a clay and coat it around the cylinder until it is three inches across, leaving its mouth four inches wide. Add two ge of cinnabar water. Set it over a horse-dung fire until thoroughly dry, then place it inside a copper cylinder, close it firmly with a fitted copper lid, pack yellow sand over the top, and coat it thickly with mole-cricket earth, leaving no opening at the top. Put it in a charcoal furnace with three inches of charcoal. When the cylinder's mouth grows red, let it cool and open it. All the realgar will have gone into and adhered to the copper cylinder. Take it out and put it back in by the same procedure. When all the essence of the three pounds of realgar has gone down into the cylinder, lift it out and mix it with an equal amount of yellow sand to make a furnace of whatever size you wish. To use it, set the furnace among burning charcoal. When it glows red, put in mercury; when the mercury moves, put lead into it. Yellow will rise at the sides and meet in the center. Pour it onto the ground, and it becomes gold. Once fifteen hundred pounds have been made, the furnace's power is spent.Steep this gold in chaste-tree and red-millet wine for a hundred days; it will then be soft enough to work. Take a pill the size of a small bean three times a day. When you have taken one pound, the three worms and the hidden corpse will depart, and all diseases will be gone; the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the old will regain the years of a thirty-year-old. Fire will not burn you; the hundred evils and every poison, cold wind, heat, and damp cannot enter your body. When you have taken three pounds, you will walk on water; the hundred gods of mountains and rivers will come to attend and protect you; your life will end only with heaven and earth.Boil one pill with oak-tree blood and vermilion grass, then rub your eye-corners with it: you will see ghosts and things underground, and be able to write at night. Smear one pill with the blood of a white sheep and throw it into water: fish and dragons will immediately emerge for the taking. Smear one pill with the blood of a black sheep and a red rooster, and hang it over a city gate: for a mile around there will be no epidemic. Smear it on the foreheads of cattle, sheep, and the other domestic animals, and none will fall ill or be attacked by tigers or leopards. Smear one pill with tiger gall and snake fat and throw it toward an enemy army from the direction of the month's cyclical sign: the army will at once, for no apparent reason, fall into disorder, wound and kill one another, and flee. Smear one pill with ox blood and throw it into a well: the water in the well will immediately boil. Throw it into a flowing stream, and the water will run backward for a hundred paces. Smear one pill with the blood of a white dog and throw it into a shrine of the earth god: its spirits will appear and can be commanded. Smear one pill with rabbit blood and set it in a place of sixfold yin: the Jade Maidens of the traveling kitchen will arrive at once and can serve sixty or seventy people. Smear one pill with carp gall and carry it into water: the water will part for ten feet, and you will be able to breathe as you walk beneath it; even in the rain your clothes will not get wet. Boil one pill with purple amaranth, hold it in your mouth, and swallow its juice: you can go a hundred days without hunger. Boil one pill with lodestone and put it in your hair knot. When you strike at bandits, neither naked blades nor flying arrows will strike you; if anyone shoots at you, his arrows will turn back on him. Combine one pill with earth taken under the Six Ding and Six Ren signs and use it to conceal yourself among people: you will become invisible. Hold one pill in your mouth, face north, and spray toward a fire: the fire will go out. On a geng or xin day, at the shen or you hour, face west and throw one pill at a tree: it will wither that very day. Take another pill, perform Yu's steps, and throw it at a tiger, wolf, snake, or viper: each will die at once. Grind one pill and write with it on stone, and the writing enters the stone; write on metal, and it enters the metal; write on wood, and it enters the wood. Everything written penetrates its substance, and cutting or scraping cannot remove it. If someone has just died and a night has not passed, take water from the direction of the month's cyclical sign, put a pill in it, let it enter the dead person's throat, and spray some of the water onto the face: the person will revive. Smear one pill with fox blood and crane blood and place it in a fingernail. Point at anything and speak the desired transformation: mountains will seem to move and trees to walk. Everyone will see this, though nothing has really moved.In making either the yellow or the white, always set up seats for Taiyi, the Mysterious Woman, and Laozi and make offerings to them, as in the method for making the Nine Elixirs. Burn the five incenses constantly, without letting the fragrance cease. And when the gold is finished, first throw three pounds into deep water and one pound into the marketplace; only then may you use the rest as you please.