Making Gold and Silver (Baopuzi, Inner Chapter 16)

1 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: The Immortals' Scripture has twenty-five volumes of formulas for yellow and white substances, with over a thousand recipes. “Yellow” means gold and “white” means silver. The ancients guarded their methods carefully and did not want to name them openly; that is why they used these hidden terms. Some chapters are titled “Geng and Xin,” which also means gold. But most of the recipes are difficult and obscure. Only a few can be understood clearly. Most people think this subject is a fabrication, just as they refuse to believe in immortals. Long ago I received the Scriptures of the Nine Elixirs and of the Liquid of Gold and Silver from Master Zheng. I then asked him to teach me the five volumes of the Central Scripture of Yellow and White. Master Zheng said he and Master Zuo had tested the methods in Copper Mountain in Lujiang, and all had worked. Yet the hard work of ritual fasting, purification, and observing prohibitions is no different from that required for the gold elixir and the medicines of immortality. Ordinary people often mock my interest in unusual teachings. They say I insist on finding a way through what cannot be made to work. Why would I do that? If I wanted to show off my writing to future generations with such stories, the more than two hundred volumes of my Outer Chapters and other writings would be enough to convey my thoughts. I would not need this. Besides, these Inner Chapters speak plainly, without decorative writing. I also know that when I discuss these subjects, everyone calls them far-fetched and unimportant. Talking instead about immediate concerns of ordinary life would appeal to more people. But I cannot leave this subject alone. Though I know people will not listen, I still write about it because I have truly seen it work, and the teachers who passed it on to me did not speak falsely. I am poor and lack the money; I have also lived through troubled times, faced hardships without end, and found the roads blocked and the ingredients unavailable. In the end I have had no opportunity to make them together. When I tell people now that I know how to make gold and silver while I myself go hungry and cold, it is like a person unable to walk selling a cure for lameness and expecting people to believe him. Clearly they will not. But things do not always go as one wishes, and one cannot judge every case by one rule. I keep setting this down in writing so that future readers who value unusual things and recognize what is genuine may read my book and fully understand what I mean about the Way.What can the arts of transformation not do? A human body is naturally visible, yet there is a method to make it invisible. Spirits are naturally invisible, yet there is a method to make them visible. Many people can perform these arts. Water and fire are in the heavens, yet we obtain them using the appropriate fire and water mirrors. Lead is white by nature, but one can turn it red to make cinnabar. Cinnabar is red by nature, but one can turn it white to make lead. Clouds, rain, frost, and snow are all forms of the energy of heaven and earth; medicines can produce them so that they do not differ from the real things. Birds, beasts, and crawling creatures all receive their forms from nature, and those forms seem fixed. Yet there are countless cases in which they suddenly change their old bodies and become other things. Human beings have the most remarkable nature among living things; there are also many cases of men and women changing form, becoming cranes or stones, tigers or apes, sand or turtles. Even high mountains turning into deep pools and deep valleys into hills are transformations of large things. Change is natural to heaven and earth. Why doubt that gold and silver can be made from other substances? Is the fire obtained with a sun mirror different from ordinary fire, or the water obtained with a moon mirror from ordinary water? A snake turning into a dragon, or minced thatch turning into fat, is no different from things born that way. But the causes behind all these things arise through the responses of nature. One who has not investigated principles and nature thoroughly cannot understand where they lead. One who has not traced the beginning and seen the end cannot grasp what happens. People with a narrow view and little knowledge, confined to their own small world, judge unfathomable mysteries by guesswork and call divine transformations fabrications. Because Confucius and the Duke of Zhou did not discuss them and the ancient books do not record them, they declare them all impossible. How limited that is! Ordinary people also say that because Liu Xiang failed to make gold, the method certainly does not exist anywhere. That is like seeing a farmer lose a crop to flood or drought and saying that grain cannot be grown from seed. Wu Dawen, the administrator of Chengdu, was a learned man with wide knowledge. He himself said that he once served the Daoist Li Gen and saw him heat lead and tin. Li Gen dropped a little medicine the size of a soybean into the vessel, stirred it with an iron spoon, and, once it cooled, the mixture had become silver. Dawen received the secret recipe, but he wanted to perform it himself and needed to purify himself for a hundred days first. He remained tied to official duties and never managed it. He would often sigh and say that the human world was no place to stay.Huan Junshan also says that Cheng Wei, an attendant at the gate of the Han palace, liked the arts of making gold and silver and married a woman from a family that knew the formulas. Once, when Wei had to accompany the emperor but had no suitable clothes, he was very worried. His wife said, “Let me get two lengths of silk.” Without any apparent cause, the silk appeared in front of them. Wei had tried to make gold according to the Precious Secrets in the Pillow, but had failed. His wife went to see him as he was fanning the charcoal under a tube holding mercury. She said, “I want to try something and show you.” She took medicine from her bag and added it a little at a time. After the time it takes to eat a meal, she opened the tube: it had already become silver. Greatly startled, Wei said, “The method was right here with you. Why did you not tell me sooner?” She answered, “To receive it, one must be destined for it.” Wei then spent day and night trying to persuade her. He sold his fields and house to provide her with good food and clothes, but she still refused to tell him. He plotted with his companions to beat and force her to submit. She always knew about his plans and told him, “The Way must be passed on to the right person. If I meet such a person on the road, I will teach that person at once. But someone who says yes while thinking no is not the right person. Even if you cut me to pieces, I will not reveal the Way.” Wei did not stop pressuring her. She then went mad, ran naked, covered herself with mud, and died.More recently, Hua Lingsi, formerly governor of Lujiang, was a talented, educated, and widely informed man, yet he disbelieved many things that seemed to depart from normal experience. A Daoist later told him a recipe for making gold and silver, and he had the man try it. The Daoist said to melt lead in an iron vessel and add powdered medicine to turn it into silver. Then he melted that silver and added another medicine to make gold. Lingsi also learned from him the method of seeing through things. Before he had practiced it a hundred days, when he lay down at night he could clearly see the stars and his four neighbors, without noticing the house or fences in between. He also saw the form of his dead concubine Yaohua and spoke with her as when she was alive. When he made offerings at a shrine, he heard its god answer his bow, and his couch seemed to move and make a sound. Lingsi sighed and said, “There really is nothing that does not exist in the world. Even if the Five Classics do not record something, one cannot simply decide against it on one's own opinion.” But if someone unfamiliar with such arts hears of them suddenly, how can that person not be astonished? Like preparing a divine elixir, the arts of making gold and silver require over a hundred days of purification and fasting. They also require someone who understands the recipe books and agrees with their meaning. They cannot be carried out by someone impure or dull, or someone with only a passing acquaintance with technical arts. Where oral instructions are required, they must be received from a teacher. One should also enter deep mountains and a clean place, and not let foolish ordinary people learn of the work. But Liu Xiang worked in the palace, using palace servants to provide what he needed. They could not have been ritually pure, nor could he have stopped people from coming and going. How could he have succeeded under those conditions?Huan Tan says in New Discussions: Shi Zixin was appointed a clerk to the chancellor. An official building was put up, and clerks, soldiers, and government slaves were assigned to assist him; still he did not make gold. The chancellor thought that his own power was not enough and reported the matter to Empress Dowager Fu. The empress dowager was not especially interested in gold, but when she heard that finished gold could be used to make a life-extending medicine, she too became eager. She appointed him a court attendant, lodged him in the North Palace, and had envoys attend to him. Could this divine method really be carried out in a palace with ordinary people mixed in and working on it together? Even when common people dye silk, they do not want strangers watching: if someone watches, it is spoiled. How much more is that true of changing substances into gold and silver? Every task, large or small, has a proper method. Without it, an attempt to make even wine, soybean paste, vinegar, soup, or meat stew will fail. How much more so with this great undertaking?I once asked Master Zheng: “The Old Master says, ‘Do not value goods that are hard to get.’ In an age of perfect government, people throw gold into the mountains and discard jade in the valleys. Why did the ancients prize gold and silver and pass down the methods of making them?” Master Zheng answered me: “The Old Master meant people who sift sand and break stones, overturn mountains and drain deep waters, travel ten thousand li without fear of being crushed or drowned, and seek precious ornaments at the cost of the people's time, never content, simply to decorate what has no use. He also meant those who want to follow the Way and seek long life yet also trade as merchants, fail to practice trust and restraint, cross deep waters and dangers, gamble their lives in pursuit of profit, care nothing for their bodies, and do not learn to desire less. But when a perfected person makes gold, it is to eat it and become immortal, not to become rich. Thus the scripture says, ‘Gold can be made, and one can pass beyond the world. Silver too can be eaten, but it is not as effective as gold.’” I objected: “Why not eat gold and silver found in the world instead of changing other substances into them? What is made is not genuine; what is not genuine is counterfeit.” Master Zheng answered: “Gold and silver found in the world are good, but Daoists are usually poor. Thus the proverb says, ‘There are no fat immortals or wealthy Daoists.’ A teacher may have five or ten disciples. Where would they get the gold and silver to provide for all of them? They also cannot travel far to gather it, so they should make it. Moreover, gold made by transformation is the essence of many medicines and is better than what occurs naturally. The Immortals' Scripture says, ‘The essence of the elixir produces gold.’ This means making gold from the elixir. Where there is cinnabar in a mountain, there is often gold beneath it. And gold that has been made is a real substance, the same inside and out. It does not diminish after a hundred meltings. Thus the recipe says it can be made into nails, showing its hardness and strength. It follows the natural way. If someone can make it, why call it a fraud? Fraud is coating iron with azurite so that it looks red like copper, or treating silver with egg white so that it looks yellow like gold: in both cases the outside changes, but the inside does not. Mushrooms of immortality grow naturally, yet the Immortals' Scripture also describes planting them using five minerals and five kinds of wood. Once grown and gathered for consumption, these are no different from naturally grown mushrooms and likewise give long life. Making gold is similar. A pheasant becoming a giant clam, or a sparrow becoming a small clam, is no different from a clam born naturally. Thus the Immortals' Scripture says, ‘After nine cycles of flowing pearls, a father will not tell his son. They change into yellow and white; each naturally acts on the other.’ It also says, ‘The highest people turn cinnabar into gold, eat it, and rise to immortality. Those in the middle eat mushrooms, practice guiding exercises, swallow breath, and live long. Those at the bottom eat plants and live less than a thousand years.’ It also says, ‘Gold and silver can be made by oneself: this is their natural property. Long life can be learned and attained.’ The Record of the Jade Tablets says, ‘Everyone throughout the world can live long. But they hesitate, and so they fail.’ Mercury can be condensed into gold that can be made into nails. The Scripture of the Copper Pillar says, ‘Cinnabar can become gold; the River Cart can make silver. It can be done at once, and once made it is genuine. If you gain its method, you can make your body immortal.’ Master Huangshan says, ‘There is gold in heaven and earth; I can make it. Two yellow parts and one red part make it at once without fail.’ The Writing on the Tortoise Shell says, ‘My life depends on me, not on heaven. Refined elixir becomes gold for hundreds of millions of years.’ Would the ancients have deceived us? The trouble is simply that those who know this method are often poor, and some ingredients, though very cheap where they grow, come from faraway places and cannot be obtained during disorder. Rong salt and briny salt are both cheap things, worth virtually nothing in peaceful times. Now one cannot buy them at any price. Though one might offer ten million for one jin of Qiang-region copper sulfate, one cannot get it. Knowing the recipe is then no different from not knowing it. This is cause for a long sigh. Those with the formula may be too hungry and cold to prepare it, while wealthy people do not know it. Even if they did, not one would believe it. And even if they believed it somewhat, they already have plenty of gold and silver. Why would they spend the money in hand to buy ingredients, risking the regret of letting go of what they have to chase what flies away? So no one will do it. Even though the value of what they could make would greatly exceed the cost of the ingredients, the additional hardship of fasting and abstinence keeps them from doing it. Besides, it is truly unwise to try without oral instructions from an informed teacher.”The medicines used by doctors are much more straightforward, yet doctors still hide their routinely effective recipes. Some recipes call for “palace wandering girl,” “glue from the secluded side,” “sealed lord's mud pellet,” “wood ghost seed,” “metal merchant mushroom,” “flying lord root,” “crouching dragon liver,” “white horse sweat,” “floating cloud dregs,” “dragon child's red coat,” “night-shining bone,” “hundred-flower sweet liquor,” and “winter Zou fast.” These are all ordinary things, yet without oral instruction one cannot even identify them. How much more is this true of the arts of making gold and silver? Those who can make them keep them secret not just because gold and silver are valuable. Once this method succeeds, one can live long. Long life is the highest attainment of the Way, so the ancients valued the method. In recipe books, the names of some ingredients resemble the names of ordinary things but actually refer to something different: the “maiden by the river” is not a woman; Lingyang Ziming is not a man; “Yu's leftover grain” is not rice; and “Yao's broth” is not water. Ordinary people see “dragon gall” and “tiger paw,” “chicken head” and “duck foot,” “horse hoof” and “dog blood,” “rat tail” and “ox knee” in a recipe, and think they all come from animals. When they see “broken basin” and “overturned basin,” “pot and scraper,” “great halberd,” “ghost arrow,” and “heaven's hook,” they think these are iron implements and clay pots. When they see “envoy of the barbarian king,” “aunt leaning,” “new bride,” “old man of the wilds,” “keeper of the fields,” “Dai Wenyu,” and “Xu Changqing,” they think these are people's names. Some do not even know familiar nearby plants. Who could understand every obscure and secret recipe? Liu Xiang's failure to make gold is no surprise. Once one has the key instructions, though, one need not be a sage or a person of great talent to make it: an ordinary person can do it. Liu Xiang was no fool. He simply lacked the oral instructions. I will now record concise recipes that work, to pass them on to those who share my interests in the future.First obtain realgar from Wudu. It should be the color of a rooster's comb, bright and free of bits of stone. Use as much as you like, but no less than five jin. Pound it into powder, mix it with ox gall, and cook it dry. Take a red-clay pot holding one dou. First line it with powdered Rong salt and copper sulfate, to a depth of three fen. Then add a layer of powdered realgar five fen thick, and another layer of Rong salt on top. Repeat the layers in this way until it is all used up. Add crushed charcoal, with pieces the size of date pits, in a layer two cun thick. Mix earth from earthworms and mole crickets with Rong salt to make mud and plaster the outside of the pot. Cover it with another pot, and plaster both with mud three cun thick, without leaving any leaks. Dry it in the shade for a month. Then heat it gently over a fire of horse dung for three days and three nights. Let it cool and open it. Blow the bellows beneath the copper so it runs, as in smelting copper or iron. Cast this copper into a tube, and put cinnabar liquid in the tube. Heat it gently over a horse-dung fire. After thirty days open the furnace and work the bellows to obtain gold. Make it into a tube and fill this too with cinnabar liquid. Heat it gently over a horse-dung fire for another thirty days, then open it, take it out, and pound and prepare it. Take two parts of it and one part of raw cinnabar, together with mercury—mercury is also called liquid silver. It will immediately set into gold. It is bright and beautifully colored and can be made into nails.

2 Method for making cinnabar liquid: Prepare one jin of cinnabar and put it inside a fresh bamboo tube. Add two liang each of copper sulfate and saltpeter, layering them above and below the cinnabar. Stop up the mouth of the tube and seal it with a ball of lacquer and bone. Wait for it to dry, then put it in strong vinegar and bury it three chi deep in the ground. After thirty days it becomes a liquid, red in color and bitter in taste.

3 The method of making gold that Master Jinlou received from Qinglinzi: First hammer tin into a sheet six cun square and one cun and two fen thick. Mix red salt with lye made from ashes into a paste, and coat the tin all over to a thickness of one fen. Stack the sheets in a red-clay pot. For every ten jin of tin use four jin of red salt. Join the pots and seal their edges firmly. Heat them gently over a fire of horse dung for thirty days, then open them and look. The tin will all have turned to an ash-like substance. Within it will be little clustered pieces like beans: these are gold. Put everything together in a clay bowl and heat it with a charcoal fire and bellows. Refine it ten times, and all will become gold. Ten jin of tin yields twenty liang of gold. Only earthenware pots made in Changsha, Guiyang, Yuzhang, or Nanhai will work. People in those regions make plenty of clay pots to cook their food.

4 Method for preparing red salt: Take one jin of cold salt, one jin of cold-water stone, one jin of cold yunie, and one jin of white alum. Put them together in an iron vessel and heat them with charcoal until they all melt and become red. Then take the mixture out for use.

5 The method for changing substances into gold that Master Jiaoli received from Jiqiuzi: First put two parts of alum-water stone in an iron vessel and heat it over charcoal until it boils. Add as much mercury as you wish, and stir to mix them well. Let it boil six or seven times, then pour it on the ground to form silver. Take one part each of cinnabar liquid and azurite liquid, and two parts of realgar liquid. Put them in a metal vessel over low heat and bring them to a boil, stirring them repeatedly to mix them well. Put the vessel back over the charcoal fire and bring it to a boil. Add as much of this silver as you wish. Let it boil six or seven times and pour it on the ground. When it sets, it will become high-quality gold with a purple sheen.

6 Method for making realgar liquid: Prepare one jin of realgar and put it inside a fresh bamboo tube. Add two liang of saltpeter each time. Layer the ingredients above and below, seal with a ball of lacquer and bone, and place it in strong vinegar. Bury it three chi deep. In twenty days it will turn to liquid. Make azurite liquid and alum-stone liquid the same way, but use separate tubes for each.

7 The Young Master's method for making gold: Make a large iron tube measuring one chi and two cun across the inside and one chi and two cun high. Make a small iron tube measuring six cun across the inside and polish it smooth. Take one jin each of red clay, saltpeter, mica, red ocher, and cold-water stone; half a jin of sulfur; and four liang of azurite. Pound them all together, sift them finely, mix with vinegar, and coat the inside of the small tube to a thickness of two fen. Take one jin of mercury, half a jin of cinnabar, and half a jin of liangfei.

8 To make liangfei, place ten jin of lead in an iron pot on a furnace and heat it over an open flame. When the lead melts, add three liang of mercury. Skim off with an iron spoon what rises first: that is called liangfei. Stir the ingredients until well mixed; wait until the mercury can no longer be seen. Put it in the small tube, cover it with mica, and weigh down an iron lid over it. Set the large tube on the furnace and melt lead, pouring it into the large tube to surround the small tube up to half a cun below its top. Keep the lead molten while you cook it over a strong fire for three days and three nights. What results is called purple powder. Melt ten jin of lead in an iron vessel for around twenty days, then transfer it to a copper vessel. Once the lead has melted, add seven fangcun-spoonfuls of purple powder and stir. It will immediately become gold. To make silver, put mercury in an iron vessel, add purple powder measuring three cun or more, and heat until they combine. Pour it into water, and it will become silver.

9 The method of Wuchengzi: Make an iron tube nine cun long and five cun in diameter. Pound three jin of realgar with equal parts of earth from earthworms and mole crickets, mix them into mud, and coat and wrap the tube until its diameter is three cun, leaving a receptacle with a mouth four cun wide. Add two he of cinnabar liquid. Put it over a horse-dung fire until completely dry. Place it in a copper tube, stop it with a copper lid, and close it tightly. Pack yellow sand over it, then cover it with a thick layer of earthworm soil and mud, leaving no opening at the top. Put it among the furnace coals with three cun of charcoal around it. When the mouth of the tube turns red, let it cool and open it. All the realgar will have entered and adhered to the copper tube. Take it out and put it back in as before. When the refined material from all three jin of realgar has gone down into the tube, lift it out and mix it with an equal quantity of yellow sand to make a furnace, whatever size you wish. When you want to use it, put the furnace among the coals. Once it is red, add mercury. When the mercury moves, add lead. A yellow color will rise from the sides and meet in the middle. Pour it onto the ground, and it will become gold. After producing a total of fifteen hundred jin, the furnace's power is spent. Soak this gold in wine made from red millet and chaste tree for a hundred days, and it will become soft and easy to blend. Take one pill the size of a small bean three times a day. When you have taken a total of one jin, the three worms and the hidden corpse in your body will be subdued, and every illness will leave you. The blind will see, the deaf will hear, and the old will return to the age of thirty. Fire will not burn you. No evil influences or poisons, cold winds, heat, or damp can harm you. Once you have taken three jin, you can walk on water, all the spirits of mountains and rivers will come to serve and guard you, and your life will last as long as heaven and earth.Boil one pill with oak sap and vermilion grass, and rub it on the corners of your eyes. You will see ghosts and things underground, and you will be able to write at night. Smear one pill with white sheep's blood and throw it in water: fish and dragons will appear at once and you can catch them. Smear one pill with the blood of a black sheep and a red rooster and hang it above the city gate: there will be no epidemic within one li. Smear it on the foreheads of cattle, sheep, and all six kinds of livestock: they too will be free of disease, and tigers and leopards will not attack them. Smear one pill with tiger gall and snake fat. Starting from the direction indicated by the month's cyclical sign, throw it toward an enemy army. The army will immediately fall into disorder for no reason, wound and kill its own men, and flee. Smear one pill with ox blood and throw it in a well: the water in the well will boil. Throw it in a flowing stream and the water will flow backward for a hundred paces. Smear one pill with white dog's blood and throw it into a shrine of the earth god: its spirits will become visible and can be put to work. Smear one pill with rabbit's blood and place it in a location of the six yin: heavenly women who provide meals will come at once, and can serve sixty or seventy people. Smear one pill with carp gall and carry it into the water: the water will open to a width of one zhang, and you can breathe and walk underwater; your clothes will not get wet even in the rain. Boil one pill with purple amaranth and hold it in your mouth, swallowing its juice: you can go a hundred days without hunger. Boil one pill with lodestone and put it in your hair knot. When fighting robbers, neither naked blades nor flying arrows will hit you. If anyone shoots at you, all the arrows will turn back toward the shooter. Combine earth from sites associated with the six Ding and the six Ren with one pill and use it to shield yourself among people: you will become invisible. Hold a pill in your mouth and face north as you spit at a fire: the fire will go out. On a Geng or Xin day, at the Shen or You hour, face west and throw a pill at a tree: the tree will wither that very day. Throw a pill at tigers, wolves, snakes, or vipers while doing Yu's ritual steps: they will all die at once. Grind a pill and use it to write on stone: the writing will enter the stone. Write on metal or wood, and it will enter metal or wood. Whatever you write will penetrate the material itself and cannot be removed by scraping or smoothing it. If someone has just died and the night has not yet passed, put one pill in water drawn in the direction indicated by the month's cyclical sign, make it enter the person's throat, and take some of the water in your mouth and spray it on the dead person's face. The person will come back to life. Smear one pill with fox blood and crane blood, put it under a fingernail, and point at anything. It will seem to change according to what you say: mountains seem to move and trees to walk, and everyone sees it, though in fact nothing has moved. Whenever you make gold or silver, set out seats for Taiyi, the Mysterious Woman, and Laozi, and make offerings to them, as prescribed for making the Nine Elixirs. Keep the five kinds of incense burning without interruption. When the gold is complete, first throw three jin into deep water and one jin into the market. Only then may you use the rest as you wish.