The Golden Elixir (Baopuzi, Inner Chapter 4)

1 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: I have examined books on nurturing life and gathered methods for long life; the scrolls I have studied number in the thousands, and all hold the Reverted Elixir and Liquid Gold to be of chief importance. These two are the summit of the immortal way. If one takes them without becoming immortal, then no one since antiquity has ever become immortal. When the northern realm fell into disorder, people fled in every direction. I traveled through the provinces of Xu, Yu, Jing, Xiang, Jiang, and Guang, and met hundreds of wandering, displaced Daoists. Some had names I had long heard, exalted beyond the clouds and sun. Yet they were much alike: what they knew or did not know, whether deep or shallow, gave none the advantage over the others. Each had dozens of scrolls, but none could fully explain them; they had merely copied and stored them away. At times they knew methods of circulating breath, abstaining from grain, or taking herbal medicines. Their prescription books were substantially the same, and every one possessed the Scripture of the Mechanism of the Way, treating it as the highest secret and claiming that Yin Xi had written it. I told them, “This was written by Wang Tu, a military superintendent in the Wei era, not by an ancient sage.” Tu knew nothing of the great medicine; he merely wanted to seek immortality through breath circulation and secluded retreat. He wrote this Mechanism of the Way in the belief that the Way ended there: a particularly grievous way of misleading people. When I asked these Daoists about the divine elixir and liquid gold, and about the method in the Inner Texts of the Three Sovereigns for summoning heavenly gods and earthly spirits, not one knew anything of them. Nearly half boasted extravagantly, deceived others with claims of great longevity, or said they had traveled with immortals; those with whom one could discuss the subtlest things were exceedingly few. Some had heard a little of the golden elixir but did not believe anyone could still obtain it: they said only immortals who had ascended in high antiquity knew it. Others possessed extraneous accounts, but not the genuine scripture; others found scattered elixir recipes and assumed that was the whole art.Long ago Zuo Yuanfang contemplated deeply on Mount Tianzhu, and a divine being gave him the immortal scripture of the golden elixir. The disorder at the end of the Han left him no time to compound it; he crossed south of the Yangtze to escape the turmoil, intending to enter a celebrated mountain to practice the art. My granduncle, the Immortal Lord, learned it from Yuanfang. He received three scrolls of the Scripture of the Elixir of Great Purity, one of the Nine Tripod Elixir, and one of the Liquid Gold Elixir. My teacher, Master Zheng, was my granduncle’s disciple and likewise received them from him, but his family was too poor to buy the ingredients. I served him personally and swept his floors for a long time, until he erected an altar on Mount Maji and gave them to me under oath, together with oral instructions never written down. These texts had not existed east of the Yangtze before Zuo Yuanfang brought them. Yuanfang gave them to my granduncle, my granduncle to Master Zheng, and Master Zheng to me: that is why the other Daoists knew nothing of them. More than twenty years have passed since I received them; with no more than a pittance to my name, I cannot make the medicines, and can only sigh. Others have chests full of gold and mountains of coins, yet do not know the method for escaping death. Even if they heard of it, not one in ten thousand would believe it. Why? Taste a drink of jade nectar and you recognize how thin the flavor of common gruel; behold Kunlun and you see how low a little mound is. Once one has seen the way of the golden elixir, one no longer wants to look at petty prescription books. But the great medicine is not easily made at once; one must sustain oneself for the time being with lesser protections. Even ten thousand measures of other medicines may do some small good, but they can never give a person lasting life. Thus the secret saying of Laozi declares: “If you cannot obtain the Reverted Elixir and Liquid Gold, you torment yourself in vain.” The five grains can keep people alive: with them one lives, without them one dies. How much more must the divine medicines of the highest grade benefit people—ten thousand times more than grain! The longer a golden elixir is fired, the more wondrous its transformations. Gold survives a hundred firings without melting away; buried in the ground, it remains incorrupt until heaven itself ends. Taking these two substances refines the body, enabling one to escape age and death. One borrows an external substance to fortify oneself: just as fat sustains an unquenchable flame, or verdigris smeared on the feet keeps flesh from rotting in water, borrowing copper’s strength to protect it. The golden elixir enters the body and suffuses the vital and protective currents; it is more than verdigris applied externally.Most people in this world disbelieve the highest Way: the heedless multitude are all alike. Even when, once in ten thousand cases, a person with a genuine interest appears, if he never sees the method or meets an enlightened teacher, he cannot hear that such marvels exist. I now copy out an outline of the golden elixir for kindred spirits who come after me and love it. Let them seek it diligently, not cling to shallow, commonplace recipes and imagine these sufficient to transcend the world. If they still cannot encounter it, they must abandon their boundless hopes. Once they have glimpsed its teaching, they will know they have left a muddy puddle to float upon the vast sea, turned from a firefly’s flicker toward sun and moon, heard thunder and recognized the feebleness of a cloth drum, seen a giant whale and understood the smallness of a tiny shellfish. Those chattering people who have learned nothing first and hope unfailingly to soar upward on worthless drugs—how do they differ from riders urging a lame donkey to overtake a swift wind, or rowing a little boat across a great river? There are many recipes for lesser edible elixirs, but their preparation varies in depth and so their powers differ. The superior and inferior cannot approach each other, any more than wine fermented once can compare with the richness of wine fermented nine times. Yet even the lowest lesser elixir far excels the finest herb. Ordinary plants burn to ash, while cinnabar fired becomes mercury and, through successive transformations, becomes cinnabar again. How far it stands above ordinary herbs! Thus it can give long life. Only divine immortals have seen this principle: how immeasurably far beyond common people they are! People know little and find much strange. Some do not know that mercury comes from cinnabar; tell them, and they refuse to believe it: “Cinnabar is red; how can it yield something white? Cinnabar is stone, and all other stones we fire turn to ash. Why should cinnabar alone behave otherwise?” If they cannot grasp this close and simple matter, is it surprising that they hear of the immortal way and laugh aloud? The perfected beings of antiquity, moved by compassion for those yet to come who could be taught, formulated their methods, taking pains to free them from death. Their words are the utmost truth. Yet ordinary people refuse belief and call them empty writings. If they were empty, how could the nine cycles and nine transformations each be completed in precisely the number of days prescribed? How the perfected beings discovered this cannot truly be fathomed by commonplace thought.From youth I loved the arts of the formulae; I carried my pack on foot to ask questions and did not shrink from dangerous distances. Each unfamiliar teaching I heard was a delight; even when ridiculed, I did not grieve. Who knows whether those yet to come will not be like me? So I write this for people of understanding. Would I merely prize marvels and adorn empty words to spread a book through the world and gain the credence of the vulgar? The brightest sun cannot make dead wood flourish; the wisest person cannot change the lowest fool. A book is passed down for those who understand; a thing is prized by those who recognize it. A farmer given a vermilion bow uses it to scare birds; a southerner given a ceremonial robe carries firewood in it. How can the ignorant be compelled? People of the world eat their fill all day, yet cannot even necessarily devote themselves to Confucian and Mohist learning or the cultivation of virtue. They wander about idly to exhaust their years. All they pursue is honor or profit. Some fly falcons and race hounds over the plains; some linger over wine cups and steaming stews; some lose themselves among beautiful women and strings and flutes; some are consumed by luxurious silks; some wear out their sinews drawing bows; some waste their labor gambling and playing games. When they hear the highest Way they seem drunk; when they see a discourse on the Way, they sleep in broad daylight. Having a body, they will not cultivate it, but set it on the path to death. They will not ask how to nourish life, but seem bent on cutting, scorching, withering, and draining themselves. Those who possess the Way treasure their knowledge in secrecy and seek nothing from others: why should they force their teachings on them? The common saying goes: “If long life could be gained, the rich and noble of old would have gained it. None did; therefore there is no such Way.” They do not realize that the rich and noble of old were just like those of today. Both refused to believe or seek, and treated immediate desires as urgent; how could they have gained it? Even if one cannot decide to believe that life can be prolonged or immortality attained, why begrudge an experiment? If a modest success brought only two or three hundred years, would that not surpass the brief, early deaths of ordinary people? The affairs of the world are myriad, and the arts of the Way are harder to understand than any other. How can a mind of middling ability decide that the world holds no way to long life? If the disbelief of most people proves there is no such way, how extraordinarily wise must most people be! And if someone understands the purpose of the Way and still practices and seeks it, must that person be the very height of stupidity, inferior to everyone else? Or perhaps people fear that if they seek long life but fail, others will laugh at their delusion. But if their own judgment should be wrong, even once in ten thousand times, and a way to escape death truly exists, would not those who gained it laugh at them in turn? Even sun and moon cannot shine everywhere: how can one trust the human mind alone?

2 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: According to the Scripture of the Yellow Emperor’s Divine Elixirs of the Nine Tripods, the Yellow Emperor took them and ascended to immortality. It also says: “Breathing exercises, guided movements, and herbal medicines may prolong one’s years but cannot avert death. Taking the divine elixir grants life without end, enduring as long as heaven and earth; one rides clouds and drives dragons up and down through Great Purity.” The Yellow Emperor transmitted it to Master Xuan, warning him: “This way is supremely important: give it only to the worthy. If someone is not worthy, even if he piles up jade as high as a mountain, do not tell him about it.” The recipient throws gold figurines and gold fish into a stream flowing east as a pledge, and makes a blood oath. Nor can someone without the bones of an immortal even behold this way. Compound the elixir in a famous mountain, far from people, with no more than three companions. First fast a hundred days, bathe in five fragrances, and maintain the utmost purity. Keep away from filth and intercourse with common people; do not let anyone uninitiated in the Way know about it. If they slander the divine medicine, it will fail. Once it succeeds, the whole family, not just one person, can become immortal. People do not compound the divine elixir but put their faith in herbs. Herbs rot when buried, turn to mush when boiled, and char when burned. They cannot keep themselves alive: how could they give life to people?

3 The nine elixirs are the key to long life, not something ordinary people should see or hear. Countless multitudes blindly know nothing but the pursuit of wealth and status: are they not walking corpses? When compounding the elixirs one must also offer sacrifice; the diagrams and procedures for the sacrifice occupy a scroll of their own.

4 The first elixir is called Elixir Flower. First prepare Mysterious Yellow, using dozens of pounds each of realgar water, alum water, Rong salt, brine salt, arsenolite, oyster shell, red clay, talc, and white lead to make Six-One Mud. Fire it for thirty-six days until it is ready; take it and become immortal on the seventh day. Alternatively, roll this elixir into pellets with Mysterious Paste and place them over a fierce fire: in a moment they become gold. Or combine two hundred and forty zhu of it with a hundred pounds of mercury and fire it; that too becomes gold. When the gold succeeds, the medicine has succeeded. If the gold does not form, seal the medicine again and fire it for the same number of days; it cannot fail.

5 The second elixir is called Divine Elixir, or Divine Talisman. Take it and become immortal in a hundred days. To cross water and fire, smear this elixir beneath the feet and walk upon the water. Take three knifepoints of it, and the three corpses and nine worms immediately dissolve; every illness is cured.

6 The third elixir is called Divine Elixir. Take one knifepoint and become immortal in a hundred days. Give it to any of the six domestic animals to swallow and it too will never die. It also wards off the five weapons. After a hundred days’ use, immortals, jade maidens, and spirits of mountains and rivers come to attend you, appearing in human form.

7 The fourth elixir is called Reverted Elixir. Take one knifepoint and become immortal in a hundred days. Vermilion birds and phoenixes circle overhead, and jade maidens come to your side. Combine one knifepoint of it with a pound of mercury and fire it: gold forms at once. Smear this elixir on money or goods you spend, and they all return the same day. Write with it above an ordinary person’s eyes, and a hundred ghosts flee.

8 The fifth elixir is called Edible Elixir. Take it and become immortal in thirty days. Spirits come to serve, and jade maidens appear before you.

9 The sixth elixir is called Refined Elixir. Take it and become immortal in ten days. Fire it together with mercury, and it too becomes gold.

10 The seventh elixir is called Supple Elixir. Take one knifepoint and become immortal in a hundred days. Mixed with the juice of quepen and taken, it enables even a ninety-year-old man to father children. Fire it together with Gold Lord, and gold forms at once.

11 The eighth elixir is called Subdued Elixir. Take it and become immortal that very day. Carry a date-pit-sized piece and a hundred ghosts will avoid you. Write with it on your doors and gates: the myriad malign forces and hosts of spirits dare not approach. It also repels robbers, tigers, and wolves.

12 The ninth elixir is called Cold Elixir. Take one knifepoint and become immortal in a hundred days. Immortal youths and maidens come to serve you; you fly aloft without needing wings.

13 Of these nine elixirs, obtaining any one makes one immortal: one need not make them all. Choose whichever you prefer to make. Anyone taking a nine-tripod elixir may ascend to heaven if they wish, or stay for the time being among humankind if they wish. All can pass freely in and out of any place; none can be harmed.

14 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: There is also the Divine Elixir of Great Purity, whose method comes from the Primordial Lady, Laozi’s teacher. The Scripture of Contemplating Heaven in Great Purity has nine chapters. It says the upper three must not be taught, and no one in the world is fit to receive the middle three, which must remain submerged beneath the Three Springs. The lower three are precisely the upper, middle, and lower scrolls of the Elixir Scripture. The Primordial Lady is a great immortal, able to harmonize yin and yang, command ghosts, spirits, wind, and rain, and drive nine dragons and twelve white tigers in harness. All the immortals under heaven are her subjects; yet she herself says her powers arose from learning the Way and taking the elixir, not from nature. How much more is this true for ordinary people? Her scripture says: “The highest adepts gain the Way and rise to become celestial officials; the middle adepts gain it and settle on Kunlun; the lowest adepts gain it and live long in this world.” Foolish people disbelieve and call this empty talk. From morning till night they do nothing but bring death upon themselves and make no effort to seek life. How could heaven force them to live? Ordinary people know only fine food and clothing, music and beauty, wealth and rank. Those who indulge every desire and suddenly perish must never be told of the divine elixir, lest they mock the Way and malign the truth. Transmit the elixir scripture to the wrong person, and disaster will surely befall you. If someone believes sincerely, you may share a completed medicine, but do not lightly transmit its recipe. Why would someone who knows this Way need to be a prince or lord? Once the divine elixir is made, it grants not only longevity but also the power to make gold. When gold has been made, take a hundred pounds of it and first perform the great sacrifice. This sacrifice has its own scroll of procedures and differs from the Nine Tripods sacrifice. Label and set apart the gold allotted to each offering.

15 For Heaven, twenty pounds; for sun and moon, five; for the Northern Dipper, eight; for Great One, eight; for the well, five; for the stove, five; for the River Lord, twelve; for the earth altar, five; and for the gate, doors, neighborhood ghosts and spirits, and Pure Lord, five apiece: eighty-eight pounds in all. Place the remaining twelve pounds in a good leather bag and, on an auspicious day when the city market is busiest, silently leave it among the crowd and go directly away without looking back. Only what exceeds that hundred pounds may you use as you wish. Failing to sacrifice the gold to the gods first will certainly bring calamity. The scripture also says: “The way to long life does not lie in sacrifices or service to ghosts and gods, nor in guided movements and bending and stretching. The key to ascending to immortality lies in the divine elixir. Knowing it is not easy; making it is truly hard. If you can make it, you can live forever.” In recent times, at the end of the Han, Lord Yin of Xinye compounded this Great Purity Elixir and attained immortality. Originally a Confucian scholar, he had literary gifts and wrote poems, praise of the elixir scripture, and a preface recounting in detail how he began studying the Way with his teacher. He listed more than forty people he knew who had attained immortality. This Great Purity Elixir is somewhat harder to compound than the Nine Tripod elixirs, but is a supreme method for ascending to heaven in daylight. To compound it, one must first prepare Flower Pool, Red Salt, Gen Snow, Mysterious White, Flying Talisman, and Three-Five Divine Water; only then can the fire be lit.

16 Take an elixir of one cycle and attain immortality in three years; one of two cycles, in two years; one of three cycles, in one year; one of four cycles, in half a year; one of five cycles, in a hundred days; one of six cycles, in forty days; one of seven cycles, in thirty days; one of eight cycles, in ten days; one of nine cycles, in three days. Take the Nine-Cycle Elixir and place it in the divine tripod. After the summer solstice, heat it intensely until the vessel is hot, and place a pound of Vermilion Child beneath the lid. Keep watch until the essence of the sun shines on it. Suddenly the contents rise together, blazing and radiant with five-colored divine light, and become Reverted Elixir. Take one knifepoint and ascend to heaven in broad daylight. Alternatively, seal Nine-Cycle Elixir in an earthen pot and fire it over chaff, gently at first and then fiercely. Each of its nine cycles takes its own number of days, longer or shorter, by which the cycle can be identified. With fewer cycles the medicine has less power, so one must take it for more days and attains immortality slowly; with more cycles its power is greater, so one takes it for fewer days and attains immortality sooner.

17 There is also the Nine-Radiance Elixir, different in method from the Nine-Cycle Elixir but generally similar. To make it, combine various ingredients and fire them to cycle the five stones: cinnabar, realgar, white arsenolite, azurite, and magnetite. Cycle each stone five times to produce five colors, twenty-five colors from the five stones; keep an ounce of each color in a separate vessel. To revive someone dead less than three days, mix a knifepoint of blue elixir with water and bathe the body. Open the mouth and put another knifepoint inside: the dead person immediately revives. To summon an invisible kitchen, mix black elixir with water and smear it on your left hand: whatever you request aloud arrives of its own accord; you can summon all things under heaven. For invisibility, foreknowledge of events yet to come, and freedom from aging, take a knifepoint of yellow elixir: you will live long and never grow old. While seated, you will see a thousand miles away and know good and ill as though before your eyes. You will know each person’s fate from birth, flourishing or decline, long or short life, wealth or poverty, high or low rank. All these methods are in the middle scroll of the Great Purity Scripture.

18 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: Next is the one-scroll Scripture of the Five-Spirit Elixir, with five methods. It uses cinnabar, realgar, orpiment, mineral sulfur, azurite, alum, magnetite, Rong salt, and Great One’s Surplus Grain. It is compounded with Six-One Mud and a sacrificial rite in a divine chamber; it is ready in thirty-six days. The talismans of the Five Emperors, written in five colors, also keep a person from dying, but cannot rival the medicines of Great Purity and the Nine Tripods.

19 There is also the Mount Min elixir method, obtained by the Daoist Zhang Gaita while contemplating deeply in a stone chamber on that mountain. Smelt yellow copper and make a moon mirror to collect water from the moon; coat it with mercury, draw the sun’s essence and fire into it, and take it continually to escape death. Alternatively, place this elixir in a realgar-and-copper fire mirror, cover it with mercury, expose it to sunlight, and after twenty days open it and process the medicine. Take a small-bean-sized dose with water freshly drawn from a well: in a hundred days the blind can see, all illnesses heal themselves, white hair turns black again, and lost teeth regrow.

20 Master Wucheng’s elixir method: place Ba sand and mercury in an eight-inch copper pan, fill an earthen furnace with charcoal, and support the pan on three corners over a trench. Pour sulfur water over it and keep it the consistency of mud. Take it for a hundred days and you will never die.

21 Master Xianmen’s elixir method: blend a pound of elixir with three sheng of wine and expose it to the sun for forty days. Take it for one day and the three worms and a hundred illnesses immediately leave the body. Take it for three years and the immortal way is accomplished; two jade maidens will surely come to serve you, and can be ordered to bring a traveling kitchen. This elixir can suppress a hundred ghosts and the baleful influences of the dead from every direction that harm a house, as well as harm caused by breaking ground. Hang it facing them and no trouble will ensue.

22 There is also the Instantly Completed Elixir, with nine chapters like the Nine Tripods, though inferior to it. Another essential text says: take the copper that settles from firing orpiment and realgar, cast it into a vessel, and steep it in pure sour wine three years old. After a hundred days red milk several tenths of an inch long, or five-colored carnelian, grows on the vessel. Collect and prepare it for consumption, and it too gives long life. It can also be combined with dodder: dodder here means the root newly sprouted, shaped like a rabbit. Dig it up, cut it for its blood, and mix it with this elixir. Take it and you are instantly transformed, free to do whatever you wish. Mixed instead with Vermilion Herb, a single dose enables flight through empty space. Vermilion Herb resembles a small jujube tree, growing three or four feet tall; its branches and leaves are all red, and its stem like coral. It favors rocks beneath famous mountains; cut it and its juice runs like blood. Throw jade or any of the eight stones, gold, or silver into the juice: immediately they can be rolled like mud into pellets; with time they turn to liquid. When gold is immersed it is called gold nectar; when jade is immersed, jade wine. Taking either gives long life.

23 Another method for collecting Subdued Elixir says: wherever waters bear the name “cinnabar,” as with Cinnabar River in Nanyang, there are cinnabar fish. Watch the water at night ten days before the summer solstice. The fish will rise near the surface, casting a brilliant red glow like fire. Catch them in a net, but however many you catch, do not take them all. Draw their blood and smear it on the soles of your feet: you can walk on water and dwell long in the depths.

24 Master Red Pine’s elixir method: steep the elixir in juices of thousand-year-old lei vines and alum peach, put it in a vessel that does not leak, seal its mouth with refined honey, and bury it three feet underground. After a hundred days, squeeze the red fruit of the ning tree, mix in the juice and take it: face, eyes, temples, and hair all turn red, and one lives long. Was this not what the red-bearded immortal of Central Yellow took long ago?

25 Master Shi’s elixir method: take unfledged young crows, feed them beef mixed with genuine cinnabar, and when they mature and all their feathers are red, kill them. Dry them in the shade for a hundred days, pound them together with their feathers, and take one knifepoint. After a hundred days you will gain a life of five hundred years.

26 Master Kangfeng’s elixir method: use sheep, crow and crane eggs, sparrow blood, and juice of tianxiong from Mount Shaoshi to mix the elixir. Put it inside a swan’s egg, lacquer it, and immerse it in mica water. After a hundred days it turns into red liquid. A dose of one he adds a hundred years to life; one sheng adds a thousand.

27 Master Cui Wen’s elixir method: place the elixir in a duck’s belly and steam it. Taken, it lengthens life; taken continually, it prevents death.

28 Liu Yuan’s elixir method: immerse cinnabar in Mysterious Water liquid for a hundred days until it is purple and can be held without staining the hand. Mix it with mica water, place it in a tube, seal it with lacquer, and lower it into a well. In a hundred days it turns into red liquid. One he gives a hundred years; continual use gives long life.

29 Master Le Zichang’s elixir method: combine azurite and red lead with mercury and cinnabar, place in a copper tube, seal it with dry tile and white talc, and steam it in white sand for eighty days. Take a small-bean-sized portion; in three years you will become immortal.

30 Master Li Wen’s elixir method: wrap the elixir in plain white silk and boil it in bamboo juice, called Red Spring; then steam it over boiling water. Combine it with Mysterious Water. Take one he and become immortal in a year.

31 Master Yin’s elixir method: blend the elixir with mica water, seal it tightly, and set it in the Golden Flower Pool. Take it out after a year; take a knifepoint at a time until one pound is consumed, and gain five hundred years of life.

32 Great One’s Elixir for Recalling the Souls uses five stones and a seal of Six-One Mud, much like the Nine Elixirs. Its strength lies in reviving people who died suddenly no more than three days before: break open their teeth, insert a pellet of this elixir and a sulfur pellet, and wash both down with water. As soon as they enter the throat, the person revives; all say they saw an envoy carrying a staff of authority sent to summon them.

33 The Gleaning Maiden’s elixir method: mix the elixir with rabbit blood and honey and steam it for a hundred days. Take a pellet the size of a parasol-tree seed three times a day. After a hundred days two divine maidens come to attend you and may be given commands.

34 Master Jiqiu’s elixir method: blend it with clear wine, sesame oil, Hundred-Flower Wine, and Dragon Paste. Seal it with Six-One Mud and warm it over chaff fire. It is ready in ten days. Take a small-bean-sized pellet until the entire batch is consumed, and gain five hundred years of life.

35 Mozi’s elixir method: place mercury and the liquid of the five stones in a copper vessel, simmer over fire and stir with an iron spoon. After ten days it reverts to elixir. Take a knifepoint: myriad illnesses leave the body. Continual use averts death.

36 Master Zhang Zihe’s elixir method: blend and seal lead, mercury, and azurite water; steam it among red millet for eighty days. Mix it with jujube paste to make pellets. Take a soybean-sized pellet; after a hundred days you will have a life of five hundred years.

37 The Qili elixir method: first sublime the five stones to obtain jade dust. Mix it with cinnabar and mercury and boil it in a large copper vessel for a hundred days; it becomes five-colored. Take it and never die. Fire a hundred pounds of lead with a hundred knifepoints of the medicine and it becomes silver; mix it with realgar water and fire it for a hundred days to make gold. If the gold is too hard, boil it with pig fat; if too soft, with white plums.

38 The Jade Pillar elixir method: mix the elixir with Flower Pool, cover and line it with powdered azurite and sulfur, put it inside a tube in sand, and steam for fifty days. Take it for a hundred days; jade maidens and the divine maidens of the Six Jia and Six Ding come to serve you. They can be commanded, and you will know all that happens under heaven.

39 The Behind-the-Elbow elixir method: blend the elixir with Golden Flower, seal it with dry tile, and steam for eighty days. Take a small-bean-sized piece, place it in a dish facing the sun, and mix it; its radiance joins the sun’s above. Take a small-bean-sized portion and live long. Throw it into Danyang copper and fire it to make gold.

40 Lord Li’s elixir method: use one sheng each of genuine cinnabar and water of the five stones, blend to the consistency of mud, and fire it in a cauldron. Remove it after thirty-six days, mix with liquid mineral sulfur, and take it for ten years to endure as long as heaven and earth.

41 Liu Sheng’s elixir method: blend the elixir with juice of white chrysanthemum, ground paper-mulberry, and tree-of-heaven; steam it for thirty days, grind and blend, then take it. In a year you gain five hundred years of life. An old man who takes it grows so young he cannot be recognized; a young person who takes it never ages.

42 Lord Wang’s elixir method: put Ba sand and mercury in a chicken’s egg, seal it with lacquer, and let a hen brood three such eggs. Take them on a day of waxing power: they arrest the years and prevent aging. Children must not take it or they will never grow. Given to newborn chickens and dogs, it likewise keeps them from growing larger; the same is true of birds and wild beasts, as trials confirm.

43 Chen Sheng’s elixir method: blend the elixir with white honey, seal it in a copper vessel, and submerge it in a well for one full year. Taking it for a year removes hunger; consume a pound in all and live a hundred years.

44 Han Zhong’s elixir method: simmer elixir mixed with lacquer and honey. Taken, it prolongs life, and one casts no shadow while standing in the sun. Beyond these there are dozens more methods, too many to relate in full.

45 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: Liquid Gold is what Great One took to become immortal. It is no less powerful than the Nine Elixirs. To compound it, use one pound of gold by the ancient scale, together with Mysterious Brightness Dragon Paste, Great One’s Ten-Day First Stone, Ice Stone, Purple Wandering Maiden, Mysterious Water liquid, Gold-Transforming Stone, and cinnabar. Seal them and they become liquid. Its scripture says: “When Liquid Gold enters the mouth, the whole body turns golden.” Laozi received it from the Primordial Lady, who said: “This way is supremely important and emerges once in a hundred generations. Hide it in a stone chamber. To compound it, fast and keep the precepts for a hundred days; do not associate with ordinary people. Beside a famous mountain, above a stream flowing east, build a separate pure dwelling. In a hundred days it is ready: take one ounce and become immortal. If you do not yet wish to leave this world, but would become an earthly or aquatic immortal, merely fast and keep the precepts a hundred days. Those seeking ascent to heaven must first abstain from grain for a year before taking it. Take half an ounce and you will live long without dying; myriad dangers and a hundred poisons cannot harm you. You may keep a wife and children, hold official rank, and do whatever you wish without restriction. If later you wish to ascend to heaven, fast again and take another ounce: you will become a flying immortal.”

46 To prepare Liquid Gold by the Weixi and Mighty Victory method, take Liquid Gold and mercury together and boil for thirty days. Remove them, put them in a yellow-clay bowl, seal it with Six-One Mud, and fire it fiercely for sixty hours. All turns to elixir. Take a small-bean-sized dose and become immortal. One knifepoint of this elixir, powdered and mixed with a pound of mercury, immediately makes silver. Set a pound of the elixir above a fire and fan it: it melts into flowing red gold, called Elixir Gold. Coat knives and swords with it to ward off weapons for ten thousand miles. Make plates and bowls of Elixir Gold, and eating and drinking from them brings long life. Set them beneath sun and moon to collect liquid, as a moon mirror collects water; drink it and escape death. Mix Liquid Gold with yellow earth, put it in a bowl of Six-One Mud, and fire it fiercely: it all becomes usable gold. Fire it again and it all turns to elixir; take a small-bean-sized dose and you may enter famous mountains and great rivers as an earthly immortal. One knifepoint of this elixir, powdered with mercury, immediately makes silver; mix an ounce of that silver with a pound of lead and the whole becomes silver. The Liquid Gold Scripture says: “Throw an eight-ounce gold figurine into a stream flowing east, and drink blood to seal the oath; only then disclose the oral instructions. If you steal the recipe and make it contrary to the original procedure, it will never succeed.” Give the medicine to an ordinary person of utmost faith if you wish, but do not lightly transmit its text: both giver and recipient will incur calamity. Heavenly gods observe people very closely, though people do not know it.

47 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: The Nine Elixirs are indeed the finest of immortal medicines, but compounding them requires many additional ingredients. If the four quarters are open and at peace, one can buy all that is needed. If the nine regions are divided, the materials cannot be obtained. One must also keep the fire burning for dozens of days and nights, watching its intensity to keep it exactly right: the labor is extraordinarily difficult. Thus it cannot match the ease of making Liquid Gold. For Liquid Gold, only the gold is hard to obtain. One ancient-scale pound of gold equals two pounds today, costing generally no more than some three hundred thousand coins; the other ingredients are somewhat easier to gather. No fire need be lit: simply set them in Flower Pool, and after the requisite days the medicine is ready. In all, some four hundred thousand coins will make a batch enough for eight people to become immortal. If one compounds a smaller amount, however, its vital force will not suffice for mutual transformation, just as a few sheng of rice cannot be brewed into wine.

48 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: Next is a method of eating gold. Though inferior to Liquid Gold, it is far beyond other medicines. Some refine it with pig-back fat and wine; some treat it with bark of the tree-of-heaven; some dissolve it with thorn-bush wine and magnetite. In some methods it can be drawn out into a cloth; in others it is immediately made liquid to drink. Some involve taboos, and none match Liquid Gold. Sometimes it is eaten combined with realgar and orpiment, and can be stretched and spread like leather: these are all methods for earthly immortality. Silver and large pearls from mussels can also be dissolved into liquid and drunk. But all must be taken continually without interruption, and so none equal Liquid Gold.

49 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: Compounding Liquid Gold and the Nine Elixirs requires money and seclusion in a famous mountain, far from human affairs; hence few can make them, and perhaps only one person in ten million ever obtains their scriptures. For this reason those who write books on the Way almost never discuss the golden elixir. The foremost prohibition is not to allow ordinary people unversed in the Way to scoff at or condemn it: if they do, the medicine will certainly fail. Master Zheng explained why. When compounding these great medicines one must offer sacrifice, and Great One, the Primordial Lady, Lord Lao, and the Mysterious Maiden all come to inspect. If the maker fails to hide in a remote place, allowing idle fools to pass by and hear or see, the gods reproach the maker for disobeying the scripture’s injunctions and exposing the work to wicked people’s slander. They cease their protection and aid; malign energies enter, and the medicine fails. One must enter a famous mountain, fast and keep the precepts for a hundred days, eat no five pungent vegetables or raw fish, and meet no ordinary people; only then can one make the great medicine. The fast must continue until the medicine is complete, not merely when its preparation begins. Master Zheng said that Lord Zuo told him lesser mountains were never suitable for making Liquid Gold or the divine elixir. Lesser mountains have no rightful gods presiding over them; they mostly harbor spirits of trees and stones, thousand-year-old creatures, and ghosts that feed on blood. These beings are malign energies, concerned not with doing good for people but with causing calamity and trying Daoists. A Daoist must guard himself and his disciples with arts of protection, yet they can still spoil the medicine. Even physicians today, when mixing fine medicines and salves, do not want chickens, dogs, children, or women to see them. If these disturb the preparation, it has no effect when used. Dyers likewise dislike being watched by someone with an evil eye: all the beautiful color is lost. How much more must this matter for the great medicines of divine immortality! This is why ancient Daoists always went into famous mountains, not ordinary hills, to compound divine medicine. According to the immortal scriptures, the mountains where one may contemplate intensely and compound immortal medicine are Mount Hua, Mount Tai, Mount Huo, Mount Heng, Mount Song, Mount Shaoshi, Mount Chang, Mount Taibai, Mount Zhongnan, Mount Nüji, Mount Difei, Mount Wangwu, Mount Baodu, Mount Anqiu, Mount Qian, Mount Qingcheng, Mount Emei, Mount Rui, Mount Yuntai, Mount Luofu, Mount Yangjia, Mount Huangjin, Mount Biezu, Greater and Lesser Mount Tiantai, Mount Siwang, Mount Gaizhu, and Mount Kuocang. Rightful gods reside in all these mountains, and some shelter earthly immortals. All grow numinous mushrooms and offer refuge from great warfare and calamity, as well as places to compound medicine. When a practitioner of the Way ascends one of them, its mountain god will surely aid and bless him, and the medicine will surely succeed. If one cannot ascend these mountains, large islands in the sea are also suitable for compounding medicine. Among these are Wengzhou, Danzhou, and Zhuyu east of Kuaiji, and Xinju Island, Taiguang Island, and Yu Island near Xuzhou; these rank next. Today the famous mountains of the central lands cannot be reached. Among the famous mountains east of the Yangtze where one can live are Mount Huo in Jin’an; Mount Chang and Mount Taibai in Dongyang; and Mount Siwang, Greater and Lesser Mount Tiantai, Mount Gaizhu, and Mount Kuocang, all in Kuaiji.

50 The Master Who Embraces Simplicity says: I am unworthily the descendant of a high minister. Though I have not the talent to govern the realm and order its affairs, many of my peers, devoted to advancement in their careers and hardly more knowledgeable than I, have spread their wings in the Milky Way and shone in the high heavens. Yet I have abandoned the celebrations and condolences of my neighbors, and rejected the honors of this age, because I mean to climb far into famous mountains and finish the books I am writing, and then compound the divine medicine in pursuit of long life. Everyone finds it strange that I have left my ancestral home, turned my back on the clear road to office, and taken to farming in woods and marshes until my hands and feet are calloused. They think me afflicted with madness and delusion. But the Way and worldly affairs cannot flourish together. Unless I abandon human business, how could I pursue such an aim? When one sees it clearly and holds fast to it, why fear blame or praise, or be swayed by encouragement and discouragement? I write down my heart’s desire to show kindred spirits yet to come. Among those whose resolve is as strong as metal, some will renounce the same things I have.

51 Recipe for the Lesser Divine Elixir: Mix three pounds of genuine cinnabar with six pounds of white honey. Expose to the sun and simmer until the mixture can be rolled into pellets. Each morning take ten pellets the size of hemp seeds. Before a year has passed, white hair turns black, lost teeth regrow, and the body becomes lustrous. Taken continually, it turns an old man young and grants long life without death.

52 Lesser Elixir method: pound and sift one pound of cinnabar, add three sheng of pure sour wine and two sheng of lacquer. Blend these three ingredients thoroughly and simmer over a low fire until they can be rolled into pellets. Take three hemp-seed-sized pellets twice a day. After thirty days, all illnesses in the belly heal and the three corpses depart; after a hundred days, flesh and bones grow strong; after a thousand days, the Arbiter of Fate erases your name from the register of the dead. You endure as long as heaven and earth and face the sun and moon; your form and features change, you transform without limit, and in sunlight you cast no shadow but give off a light of your own.

53 Lesser method for eating gold: Refine gold by repeatedly plunging it into clear wine, about two hundred times, so that it boils whenever the gold enters or leaves. When squeezed, it should ooze between the fingers like mud. If the wine does not boil or the gold does not ooze between the fingers, pare off the gold and plunge it back into clear wine any number of times. Once ready, take one pellet the size of a slingshot ball, or divide a single ball into smaller pellets. Take it for thirty days and you will suffer neither cold nor heat; divine beings and jade maidens will attend you. Silver too can be eaten by the same method as gold. If someone taking these two substances can live in a stone chamber on a famous mountain, within a year they will rise lightly into the air. Even taking them while remaining in the human world makes one an earthly immortal. Do not transmit this recklessly.

54 The Two Principles Master’s method of eating gold: Take three pounds of fat from a pig’s back, one sheng of pure sour wine, and five ounces of gold. Place them in a vessel and simmer over an earthen furnace, immersing the gold in the fat and removing it a hundred times; do the same with the sour wine. Eat one pound and your lifespan will encompass that of heaven and earth; eat half a pound and live two thousand years; eat five ounces and live twelve hundred years. Whatever the quantity, it may be eaten. Prepare it on a day of waxing power; taken then, it works divinely well. Do not transmit it to the unworthy: showing it to the unworthy causes the medicine to fail and lose its divine power. If you wish to eat a medicine that expels the corpses, take cinnabar.