Like Prometheus, he
brought the secret and use of ﬁre to humanity and had a
close association with the sky and thunder gods. These
were the white smiths. Among shamanistic tribes these
smiths were also descendants of a celestial smith who
came to earth to teach men the use of ﬁre and metals. Thesmiths’ sons married the daughters of earth and all smiths
are descende d from them. Smiths held a high position at
court, or were treated as royalty , on account of their divine
descent; they were the divine artisans and the smithy was
a centre of ritual and worship. Among Mongols  and in
Turkistan the smith was also a culture hero,  ‘a free
horseman.’ There is a tradition that Genghis Khan was a
smith before he rose to become ruler of the Mongols and a
world conqueror . There were also king-smiths in Africa. On
the other hand, also in A frica, among the Massai, the smith
was ‘an unclean one’ and it was dangerous to go near his
hut, while to sleep with a woman of the smith class could
cause a man to go mad or beget deformed oﬀspring. It was largely the pastoral, nomadic and hunting tribes,
with the exception of the Mongols, who looked down on
the smith and regarded him as an untouchable. But in all
cultures the smith was held in awe and feared as a Master
of Fire. He could reduce solid matter to liquid, something
without form , and then could turn the pliable liquid into
the solid again. Like all ‘creation’ craftsmen, and like the
alchemist, he was a transformer and a transmuter of
matter and dealt with the mysterious and magical ; like the
potter he turned the pliable into form; like the carpenter
he brought form out of the formless, the prima materia . In
his ambivalent position the smith could be creator or
destroyer; he made both the weapons of death, the sword
and the spear , and the tools of life and growth, the spade
and plough. As the blacksmith he handled iron, an almost
universally disliked and feared metal, though it was sacred
in some cases as an apotropaic. This association with iron
was also ambivalent; the metal is everywhere dreaded by
the spirit world, evil spirits, witches or fairies will not go
near it or cross an iron object: ‘Iron scares spirits.’ As an
evil metal it was not allowed to be used in the construction
of any sacred place; but since it repels evil spirits, theshaman loads himself and his ritual robes with iron
articles and iron is used for this purpose in amulets. The
blacksmith, as a master of ﬁre, is naturally associated with
the hearth and this puts him in touch with the powers of
the underwo rld; the hearth gives access to the forces of
the dark regions and the blacksmith originally learned his
craft from an underworld divinity . In the Hebrew tradition
the craft was brought down to earth by the fallen angel
Azazel. With this connection with the powers of the
underworld it was natural that smiths were credited with
other magical powers, such as prophecy and healing. Another reason for the fear of the smith was the practice
of blood sacriﬁce, both human and animal, in the smelting
of metal, although somet imes the sacriﬁce was voluntary . Also he was constantly surrounded by evil spirits,
menacing him and against which he had to take every
precaution and there had to be absolute silence
accompanying his movements, all of which made him
worth avoiding. Then, again, his tools, the hammer , anvil
and bellows have magic powers of transformation, while
the stove, cauldron and furnace all have the function of
dissolution and death. Smelting is a work of fusion, the
abolition of individual identity , the return to primordial
chaos. The ores, regarded as male and female, yang  and
yin, becam e one in union. This has a sex symbolism which
is further accentuated by the ‘heat’ involved; a symbolism
also present in the hamm er and anvil, the hammer being
the formative, masculine force in nature, with the anvil as
the passive feminine. The hammer is the weapon of the
Thunder Gods, the Divine Smiths, with the anvil as the
earth, matte r. The striking of the hammer on the anvil
bringing down ﬁre from heaven, represents divine justice
and power; this is why oaths were taken on the anvil, a
practice which continu ed until recent times whenmarriages over the anvil, at such places as Gretna Green,
perpetuated the smith's ancient religious functions. The power of ﬁre is also associated with the stove , oven
or athanor , in which transformation took place. In Chinese
alchemy the Deity of the Stove was frequently appealed to
for help in bringing about a successful transm utation,
especially when the recipe entailed roasting the mixture
for as many as ﬁve hundred times. The stove was one of
the ﬁve annu al objects of sacriﬁce. A Controller of Recipes
advised the Emperor W u:
You should worship the Stove and then you can make
spiritual beings present themselves; when spirit ual
beings have presented themselves, cinnabar powder
can be metamorphosized into gold; when the gold
has been made, it can be used for vessels for eating
and drinking  and will increase the length of your life,
when the length of your life has been increased, the
Immortals of P'englai in the midst of the ocean can
thereupon be given audience; when they have been
given audien ce, by making the sacriﬁces of feng and
shan  [ﬁre and earth] you will never die.The Kitchen God
Later the alchemical Deity of the Stove degenerated into
the ubiquitous God, or Goddess, of the Kitchen, seen in all
Chinese homes. This deity , though sometimes it is neither
the single god or goddess  but a married couple, looks after
the occupants of the home. As the ancient goddess she
was the ‘Old Wife,’ the ﬁrst cook, though sometimes she is
depicted as a beautiful woman dressed in red, the colourof ﬁre; she has her hair done up in a knot on top of her
head As God of the Kitchen the deity makes an annual
journey to heaven to report to the Jade Emperor on the
conduct of the family during the year. Both god and
goddess have obvious associations with alchemy in the
brewing of medicines and the roasting of ingredients. The Stove of Chinese Alchemy is the Athanor of the
West. It has many names: a kiln, sphere, vase, egg or
prison, or it can be the grave, again symbolic of death and
the rebirth from the womb as a place of warmth, growth
and transformation. The heart can also symbolize,
esoterically , the vessel in which transmutation takes place,
it is the ‘secret place,’ and the melting of the heart is
associated with the womb in the idea of return to
primordial unity—that is to say, the embryonic state of the
return to the origins. This, in Taoism, is the retur n of the
Void. There were some alchemical cults, outside the Taoist
tradition, which required blood sacriﬁce in the concoction
of medicines, rites of exorcism, or the casting of metals,
but these were condemned by true Taoists. Blood sacriﬁce,
being based on the idea of blood as the essence of life,
maintained that only life can give life. There is also the
universal theme in mythology and religion that the soul of
one life can be transferr ed to another; the god dying to
bring new life to the world. Stories of unsuccessful
castings of such items as swords or bells, both sacred
objects, tell of the deliberate sacriﬁce of a wife or
daughter throwing herself into the molten  metal,
whereupon the casting immediately took place, ‘life’
having been given to it. OceanofPDF .com– 9 –
A S T R O L O G Y
From its earliest stages Chinese alchemy was associated
with astrolog y and it is impossible to study the one without
the other. Having developed under popular Taoism,
astrology advanced to such a degree of importance that it
became part of the government of the country in the Han
dynasty and was used not only for prediction to avoid
unfortunate inﬂuences, or to take advantage of fortunate
times and seasons, but was also adopted by courtiers as a
powerful way of restraining the Emperor from doing
anything they found undesirable, since they were able to
persuade him that such actions were unpropitious. At court there was the oﬀice of Grand Astrologer , held at
one time by the famous historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien and his
father before him, unde r whom there were thirty-seven
‘expectant appointees.’ They were responsible for making
the calendar , divining by the tortoise-shell, divining by
yarrow-sticks from the I Ching , looking after all apotropaic
matters and watching the sun and the seasons. The Court
Astrologer was concerned with the state rather than with
personal portents and inﬂuences. The Emperor was the
Son of Heaven, its delegate on earth, and therefore under
its rule, with which he must be in total conformity; to
achieve this the Heavens must be consulted on all matters
of state and the Emperor himself must embody the
qualities of Heaven: any deviation from these rendered
him unﬁt to rule and he could then be replaced. The conduct of all court and state aﬀairs was monitored
by the astrologers, who read the portents and interpretedthe events. Comets, eclipses of the sun and earthquakes
were dire warnings that all was not well in the kingdom. Lunar eclips es, however , were regarded as being less
dangerous. All this gave the astrologers immense inﬂuence
at court; they were high in the oﬀicial hierarchy and it has
been suggested that they were sometimes, in the manner
of bureaucrats, not above manipulating their astrological
readings to suit their own interests at court and in the
state. In the interests of security (and often of the
astrologers' own!) astrological readings were kept secret,
since they aﬀected the policy of the state and foreign
relationships. For example: ‘When Mercury appears in
company with Venus to the East, and when they are both
red and shoot forth rays, then foreign kingdoms will be
vanquished and the soldiers of China will be victorious.’
Incidentally , as Professor Needham points out, the careful
and detailed records kept by this astrological bureaucracy
has been the source of much interesting and valuable
information in modern times. It is also of interest to note
that some of the lunar eclipses recorded were not visible
at the time and place of record. Just as Chinese alchemy diﬀered from that of the West in
searching for immortalit y rather than gold, so Chinese
astrology diﬀered in its emphasis on national rather than
personal forecasts. Both, though, had their  Court
Astrologers; in fact it was said that in the West in medieval
times even every great lord had his own astrologer . Early
Chinese astrology was more concerned with the destiny of
the state, with peace and war, the political situation and
the prospect of good or bad harvests. The casting of
individual horoscopes came later, probably introduced
under Indian inﬂuence in the T'ang dynasty with the
translation of Buddhist texts. Such horoscopes were
actually discouraged at ﬁrst, agreeing with the western
Hermann of Dalmatia that it was superstitious to ‘accountfor the entire life of man by astrological reasons . . . or to . . . try to explain conceptions and nativities, character ,
prosperity and adversity from the courses of the stars.’ But
when the casting of personal horoscopes became
established later it took so strong and popular a hold and
became so widespread that no important move could be
made without consultation and all marriages were based
on the compatibility of the individual horoscopes and
auspicious aspects, together with the yin-yang  balance. If
one were born at night, one's fate was yin; if during the
day, it was yang . The T welve T errestrial Branches and the T welve
Animals
Universally basic to both astrology and alchemy is the
belief in law and order in the universe. The stars  show a
ﬁxed order , clearly visibl e, controlling times and seasons
and inﬂuencing everything in the cosmos: climatic
changes, the time-keeping moon, the fertilizing sun and
rain, the coming of times of storms and ﬂoods or of fair
weather . In a cosmos that is one whole it is only natural
that all should react on and inﬂuence everything  else; so
the stars must inﬂuence the formation of metals  and areclosely associated with them and each planet has its own
metal. Both Chinese and Chaldean alchemy used
astrological symbols throughout. The sun was gold; the
moon, silver ; Saturn, lead; Mars, iron; Venus, copper;
Hermes/Mercury , tin; Jupiter , electron (an alloy of gold and
silver , later replaced by tin for Jupiter and quicksilver for
Mercury). As the sun was the brightest among the planets,
so was gold among the metals. The gods of Olympus were
also associated with these metals in alchemical thought. The theory of the eﬀect s of conjunctions of planets is
embedded in Chinese history . Ssu-ma Ch'ien notes the
results of Jupiter's conju nctions: with Saturn, the Earth-
planet, there  is famine, political chaos and defeat in battle;
with Mercury , the Water-planet, there is instability and a
time of chang e and alteration in public aﬀairs; with Venus,
the Metal-planet, there comes a period of mourning. Jupiter (T'ai-sui ) is also a powerful deity , the Planet of the
Year; it is also the Unicorn and is auspicious for all regions
and people under it and the deity can be invoked for
protection. As in the West, divinities were connected with
planets that exerted a profound inﬂuence over earthly
matters and the fates of individuals, but in China every
star had its corresponding god and metal, while every herb
used in medicine had its planetary aﬀiliations. The planets are also linked with the I Ching:
The eight kuas [trigrams] are distribute d among the
planets. They never fail to operate properly . The
mystical essence is exquisite but diﬀicult to obser ve. It can be guessed on the basis of the heavenly sign. The heavenly signs should be observed carefully so
as to ascerta in their proper expressions . . . orders
are to be issued accordin g to the proper seasons . . . look above and observe the signs of the Milky Way,look down and note the lay of the land, and look in
between to learn the human mind and heart.1
The stars held an archetypal position and the I Ching
calls them the heavenly images of earthly forms, their
movements controlling the whole of Nature. Stars could be either baleful or beneﬁcient according to
the deities or demons with which they were associated, so
their inﬂuen ces had to be either counteracted or
encouraged. Elaborate and endless rites were employed to
send oﬀ maleﬁc stars and their demons and to invoke the
aid of the auspicious star-deities. Comets were particularly
sinister portents of disaster . Nor was this belief conﬁned to
China; it was almost universal and frequently referred to
in literary symbolism. In the West, the Bayeux Tapestry
shows a comet presaging the death of Edward the
Confessor . As has been said, solar eclipses were also
highly inauspicious; in fact any change in the sun foretold
calamities, general misfortune or the death of an Emperor ,
and if an eclipse had been predicted and did not appear
the Emperor was congratulated on his good fortune; an
unpredicted eclipse meant certain disaster . This belief
carried over into modern times; I can remember , as a
child, the pandemonium that broke out when an eclipse
occurred: rockets, ﬁre-crackers, squibs soared and banged
all over the place with people shouting to frighten away
the mad dog that had taken a bite out of the sun. A general
air of fear prevailed. The stars, as living beings, were also portrayed as
people; for instance, the Pole Star was represented by a
Buddha-like ﬁgure seated on a lotus, with a whee l held in
his hands to symbolize the hub of the heavens, the star
remaining static while the universe revolved round it. The Dipper , called the Bushel in China, is particularly
revered as it points to and revolves round the Pole Starand acts as a celestial and seasonal clock -dial. It is said
that ‘when the handle of the northern Bushel points East
at nightfall it is Spring through the land; when it points
South it is Summer; when pointing West it is Autumn;
when North it is Winter.’ The Bushel is also the dwelling
place of the Fates responsible for everything concerned
with mankind. Like the Greek Moires and the
Scandinavian Norns, these Fates also controlled the life-
span of the individual. The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i says: ‘The
Bushel, being of importance in connection with the Tao,
has control of things . . . the ﬁve wei [planets] describe
their course according to the seasons. When the
ordinations are not properly followed, untoward
happenings occur .’
In western alchemy Fate is also associated with the
stars. Boethius, in his Consolation of Philosophy , says that
God governs the universe and though himself unmovable
yet decrees a perpetual reason and order , ‘sowing stars in
the sky and binding the elements by numbers yet revolving
the spheres and decreeing natural events in a ﬁxed series.’
Fate may be governed by spirits, angelic or demonic,
through the soul or ‘by the celestial motion of the stars . . . that series moves sky and stars, harmonizes the elements
with one another and transforms them from one to another
. . . it constrains human fortunes in an indissoluble chain
of causes which, since  it starts from the decree of
immovable Providence, must needs itself also be
immutable.’
At birth the soul enters the body through a particular
star, while at death the same star guides it out of the body. Ko Hung says: ‘On receiv ing birth and taking form in the
womb we all belong to a star or celestial asterism. ’ During
life the Bushel and the Planets inﬂuence fate, but here
alchemy comes in, for although karmic forces are in
operation they are not absolute since by spiritual alchemy ,transformation and transmutation, it is possibl e so to
purify and rarefy the body that spirit takes over and
karmic forces are negated; in other words, the True Man is
lifted out of and above the operations of the natural world. The idea of the soul developed in a unique way in China. The soul was made up of two essences, its positive and
negative aspects, the mind-nature and the body -nature,
the yang  and the yin. The yin was the p'o soul, heavier ,
earthly , which reverted to the earth at death, and the yang
was the hun or lighter , heavenly soul, rising to the
heavens, each returning to its natural element. Later these
souls multiplied in number, there being three hun and
seven p'o souls, symbolizing the diﬀerent attributes of the
human being. The hun contro lled the intelligen ce and the
p'o the emotions. Some of the souls can leave the body
during illness and should then be brought back again. In
pathological states the soul escapes from the body and a
priest, sham an or magician must be employed to bring it
back; it can be captured and ensnared with nets or knots
and then re-bound to the body. In the case of trance, the
shaman or medium delib erately dissociates the soul and
sends it out to gather information from afar or from the
spirit world. All souls leave the body at death, but if the
body is preserved the souls could remain together , hence
the preventi on of the decay of the body was of great
importance in attaining earthly immortality . Preservation
of the body took two forms, ﬁrstly , in this life, a self-
mummiﬁcation was sought in rendering the body decay-
resistant by a diet entailing total abstinence from meat,
ﬁsh or fowl, or cereals, living on nuts, pine resin, honey
and dates, and practising austerities, yoga and the elixir . Secondly , there was mummiﬁcation after death, preserving
the body by burying it in suits of jade, with jade in all the
oriﬁces; this preservatio n enabled the soul to continue
living with the body on earth and, as we have seen in thecase of the Lady of Tai, it was achieved with a success
beyond the knowledge of modern science. The three hun souls and the seven p'o souls of an
individual in plenary session. The Chinese concept of the soul diﬀers radically from
that of the West not only in its multiplicity but in that it
came under the cyclic, rather than the linear , view of time
and the cosmos. Maspero wrote that ‘The Chinese neverseparated Spirit and Matter , and for them the world was a
continuum passing from the Void at one end to the
grossest matter at the other, hence “soul” never  took up
this antitheti cal characte r in relation to matter . Moreover
there were too many souls for any one of them to
counterbalance, as it were, the body.’ In alchemy the soul
is expressed as a substance to be worked on, to be
transmuted, as are metals, into the noble and pure state of
gold. The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i  says:
Yin and yang  are the regulating forces of the dwelling
of hun and p'o. The hun of the sun is yang  and the p'o
of the moon is yin. The hun and p'o live in one
another . . . the active  male goes outwards, the
passive fema le takes things in for keeping. Whene ver
the male goes into excesses the female is there to
restore him. The p'o is there to control the hun,
checking it from excesses. Not too cold, nor too
warm, they go forward at the right time. They both
have their needs properly met. The two souls, although surviving bodily death , were
thought to fade away ultimately unless mystical union had
been attained. The hsien  and the Sage achieved this union. As Chuang Tzu wrote: ‘The masses value money; honest
men fame; virtuous men resolution; and the Sage the soul.’A street fortune-teller
The association between the fate of the soul in this
world and the stars unde r which it was born, and hence
the importance of the horoscope in later Chinese alchemy ,
is seen in the story of the alchemist Cheng Wei who
devoted his whole life to alchemy and obtained a servant
from a magician to help him in his work. His eﬀorts at
making gold from recipes contained in an ancient treatise,
‘The Great Treasure,’ were always unsuccessful. His wife
watched his futile attempts as he heated the retort which
contained the quicksilver and oﬀered to ‘show him
something,’ upon which she threw some of a drug into the
retort, with the result that when the drug was absorbed
the contents became silver . The amazed Cheng wanted to
know why she should have the secret and why she had not
told him sooner, to which she replied that ‘In order to getit it is necessary to have the proper fate;’ that is to say, a
favourable horoscope and a favourable time. This belief in the necessity for right times and seasons
was not conﬁned to Chinese alchemy but was tied to the
universal association between alchemy and astrology . Zosimus believed that experiments do not necessarily
produce results in themselves but must be undertaken at
the right astrological moment; the alchemist requires a
knowledge of the constellations. He also said: ‘It is
necessary that we determine what are the opportune times
. . . I have heard it said by certain ones that an operation
can be carried out under any circumstances, and I hesitate
to believe it.’ Albertus Magnus wrote that the alchemist
‘should observe the time in which the operation is
performed and the proper hours for sublimations,
solutions and distillations.’ Geber wrote of the inﬂuence of
the seven planets as the key to alchemy and maintained
that the adept can ﬁnd the mixture of the four elements in
animals, plants and minerals by astrology . Arabic astrology
says that the stars are ‘in accord with all mundane
creatures in all things . . . by secret institution of divinity
and by natural law.’ This obtained not only in alchemy
proper but also in its oﬀ-shoots, in such things as
talismans and magic. Roger Bacon maintained that charms
and images,  when made under the proper astrological
inﬂuences, became endowed with power and stored the
energies of the stars and the human spirit. Ko Hung wrote:
‘In divining the myste rious actions of heav en and
measuring the various motions of the sun, moon and ﬁve
planets, we discuss their trespasses in the realms of the
constellations in order to determine prosperity or decline
for the future. We look upwards for signs in the skies;’
‘Our kings established the oﬀice of Grand Astrologer . For
appointments, establishi ngs, worship in the ancestral
temples and sacriﬁces to heaven and earth they alwayschose the right times.’ And for the aspirant to hsien -hood:
‘To enter mountains one must secure a conjunctio n of the
best season and day, on a day and at an hour that heaven
holds in its grasp;’ ‘Wait carefully for the advent of the
proper days and hours and also observe the wax and wane
of nature. A slight departure from the right path will cause
immense regret;’ ‘Movement and rest should take place at
the proper time as prescribed. Act according to the four
seasons so as to suit the ch'i properly;’ in concocting the
elixir ‘the sun, moon and stars must seven times complete
their circuits and four seasons must nine times return.’
Astrology was linked with alchemy in the lives of the
hsien . One Taoist, T'ao Hung Ching, had a planetarium
constructed and a globe round which the heavens revolved
by a mechanical device. He also made an elixir from
ingredients given him by the Emperor , which both he and
the Emperor took to their mutual beneﬁt. When the
Emperor wanted him to live at court, Huang Ching drew a
picture of two oxen, one freely disporting itself in a
meadow and the other with a golden head-stall being
whipped to make it go. The Emperor got the message and
laughed. As to the Sage, Yang Hsiung was asked if the Sage  could
make divinations; he replied that he could and was asked
then what was the diﬀerence between the Sage and the
astrologer? He answered : ‘The astrologer forete lls what
the eﬀects of the heavenl y phenomena will be on man; the
Sage foretells what the eﬀects of man's actions will be on
the heavens.’ Or, as Tung Chung-shu puts it: ‘The actions
of a man, when he reaches the highest level of goodness or
evil will ﬂow into the universal course of heaven and earth,
and cause  responsive reverberations in their
manifestations.’
Astrology's chief message for humanity is that it is not
isolated, but a part of the whole cosmos. As RaymondHarrison says, it is as well to divest the mind of the idea
that it is ‘a separate entity functioning apart from  the rest
of the cosmos’ and to regard the heavenly bodies more as
elemental forces lying at the roots of its own character ,
‘since each atom of life is the universe in miniature.’
The chief manual of Chinese astrology is the Hung Fan,
the Grand Plan, a section of the great Shu Ching , the
Classical History . It expands the principle of the yin-yang
balance as active in the universe; the Sun is the Great
Yang and the Moon is the Great Yin; the planets are the
Lesser Yin and the ﬁxed  stars the Lesser Yang; these, in
turn, are associated with the Five Elements, the puriﬁed
essence of each rises upwards to the heavens to become
the ﬁve planets: Mercury , water; Venus, metal; Mars, ﬁre;
Jupiter , wood; Saturn, earth, while the ﬁxed stars contain
their various essences. Methods of fate calculation were
not entirely astrological since they also depended on the
Five Elements principle, the Twelve Terrestrial Branches
and the cyclic sixty-year periods; systems which were as
much numerical-mathematical as astrological-
astronomical. OceanofPDF .com– 10 –
THE FIVE ELEMENTS
In an early treatise, written about 135 B C, we read:
Earth has its place in the centre and is the rich soil of
Heaven. Earth is Heaven's thighs and arms, its virtue
so proliﬁc, so lovely to view, that it cannot be told at
one time of telling. In fact Earth is what brings these
Five Elements and Four Seasons all together . Metal,
wood, water  and ﬁre each have their oﬀices, yet if
they did not rely on Earth in the centre, they would
all collapse. In similar fashion there is a reliance of
sourness, saltiness, bitterness and sweetness. Without that basic tastiness the others could not
achieve ‘ﬂavour .’ The sweet [the edible] is the root of
the Five Elements, and its ch'i is their unifying
principle, just as the existence of sweetness among
the ﬁve tastes cannot but make them what they are. This shows clearly the diﬀerence between the doctrine
of the Elements in the East and West. The Earth, which is
only one of the four elem ents in western traditio n, is, in
China, the central and most important on which  all the
others depend and from which they derive their vital
energy (ch'i) . The western teaching, following Aristotle
and Empedocles, has four elements: earth, air, ﬁre and
water . For Aristotle, they proceed from the prima materia ,
a basic matter on which all forms can be imposed or
imprinted, though itself remaining changeless. Matter and
form interact to produce the four elements, which give rise
to all things by simply changing the proportions of theelements, so that any one substance can be changed into
another by varying the contents of the diﬀerent parts,
provided the right proportions are discovered. All things
are, therefor e, interchang eable: they are diﬀerent forms of
the same matter . This is the very essence of alchemical
belief and work: that transmutation from one state to
another is possible, that the principle of transmutation is
inherent in Nature, so that the lead of base metal can be
transformed into the purity of gold and the lead of the
human situation transmuted into the gold of divine
perfection. Or, as Marco Pallis phrases it: ‘It implies the
possibility of converting whatever is base and polluted into
something pure and noble.’ So, then, the Five Elements
were not only concerned with material and seasonal
changes but with the understanding of inner changes and
alchemical transmutation in the individual. There is, however , a suggestion of the ﬁfth element in
Aristotle's ether; while in the Hermetic and Rosicrucian
teachings the four elements are represented by the cross,
with the point of intersection, the centre, as the
quintessence. A. K. Coomaraswamy draws attentio n to the
idea of the four elemen ts as demonstrating one of the
many assoc iations between alchemy , masonry and
architecture. The four elements are symbolized by the four
cornerstones, or foundation stones of a building, ‘since it
is upon them that the whole corporeal world, represented
by the shape of the square, is constructed . . . in fact there
are not only the four basic elements, but also a ﬁfth
element or the “quintesse nce,” that is to say the ether , this
latter is not on the same level as the others, for it is not
simply as a base, as they are, but indeed the principle
itself of the world.’ Here we have the ﬁfth element taking
on much of the same importance as the Earth in Chinese
symbolism, except that in the latter the Earth is also a
base. In Buddhist archite cture the stupa takes the form ofthe ﬁve elements, the square at the base is the Earth,  the
union of the other four elements, with the circle as the
waters, the triangle as ﬁre, the crescent as air and ether
represented by the jewel at the top. The symbolism of the
stupa form of the elements, which marked sacred places
or tombs, was that the dead have been re-absorbed into
their original elements. The Five Elements in Stupa form
The Five Elem ents of Chinese tradition, ﬁrst propo unded
systematically by T sou Y en, about 350 B C, were believed to
be that from which all forms were derived. From this it
followed that the body and its organs also proceed from
those ﬁve forms, each associated with its particular
element. The Five Elements and their properties are:
WOOD . East. Spring. V itality . Production. The solid
but workable. Sour . Blue or green. Controls liver
and gall. The Dragon. Jupiter . FIRE. South. Summer . Brilliance. Heat. Bitter . Red. Controls heart and small intestines. The V ermilion
Bird (Phoenix). Mars.EARTH. Centre. End of Summer . The Nourishing. Sweet. Y ellow . Controls stomach and spleen. Ox or
buﬀalo . Saturn. METAL. W est. Autumn. Destruction and decline. The
solid but moulded. Acrid. White. Controls lungs
and larger intestine. The White Tiger . Venus. WATER. North. W inter. The Hidden. Cold. Fluid. Salt. Black. Controls kidneys and bladder . The Black
Tortoise. Mercury . An alternative arrangement is sometimes used in which
the order is: Water, Fire,  Wood, Gold or Metal, Earth. But
Earth in the central position is more traditional. The Elemen ts also have their yin-yang  aspects as
associated with plants, metals and planets:
WOOD . Yang. The Pine—Y in. The Bamboo . Jupiter . Tin. Air . Salt. FIRE. Y ang. Burning wood—Y in. Lamp ﬂame. Mars. Iron. Realgar . EARTH. Y ang. A Hill—Y in. A Plane or V alley. Saturn. Earth. The Retort. METAL. Y ang. A W eapon—Y in. A K ettle. V enus. Copper . Sublimate of mercury . WATER. Y ang. A W ave—Y in. A Brook. Mercury ,
Quicksilver . Aqua fortis. V itriol. These ﬁve agents, powers, or elements, also known as
‘the Univers al Quintet,’ are, as Professor Needha m says,
‘ﬁve powerful forces in ever-ﬂowing cyclical motion, and
not passive motionless fundamental substances.’ They are
both creative and destructive; they predominate
alternatively and each is followed by the one it cannot
destroy; they are thus bound up with the cyclical view ofNature as the round of birth, death and rebirth, everything
inﬂuencing and in relationship with everything else. This
process of both giving rise to and destroying each other
binds the ﬁve elements together and makes them totally
interdependent, each having in itself the potentiality of the
other and being united in the cosmos. This is known as ‘the cyclic conquest.’ The ﬁve yin and
ﬁve yang  elements make up the Ten Celestial Stems (a
cycle of ten characters or ideographs). Tung Chung-shu, a
second-century neo-Confucianist, wrote:
The Five Elements move  in a circle in proper order ,
each of them perform ing its proper functio ns. Therefore Wood is located in the East and
characterizes the ch'i of Spring. Fire is located  in the
South and characterizes the ch'i of Summer . Metal is
located in the West and characterizes the ch'i of
Autumn. Water is located in the North and
characterizes the ch'i of Winter. Earth dwells in the
Centre and is called the Heavenly Nourisher . . . Water is that which soaks and descends; Fire that
which blazes and ascends; Wood that which  is
straight and crooked; Metal that which obeys and
changes; Earth that which is used for seed-time and
harvest. There is also this transforming feature in western
alchemy . Alphidius says:The Earth becomes liquid and is transformed into
Water; Water becomes liquid and is transformed into
Air; Air becomes liquid and is transformed into Fire;
Fire becomes liquid and is transformed into gloriﬁ ed
Earth, and this eﬀect is what Hermes meant when he
said in his secret: “Thou shalt separate the earth
from ﬁre and the subtle from the dense.”
The Emerald  Tablet says that all things proceed from the
One, the One divides into the elements and then
recombines in unity . In the West, too, the elements maintain the yin-yang
quality of being contrary but complementary . Their duality
exists in the hot and moist and the cold and dry. Fire is hot
and dry; Air hot and moist; Water cold and ﬂuid; Earth
cold and dry . The Five Elements are, in every respect, associated with
the cyclic view of the universe, which in turn aﬀected
Chinese history also, since it was held that the dynasties
rose and fell according to the dominance of the Five
Powers. The dynasties also followed the Five Elements in
taking the Five Colours in turn for use for oﬀicial dress
and occasions. (The last dynasty , the Ch'ing, was yellow .) These ﬁve colours also appeared on the pre-co mmunist
Chinese ﬂag. The elements played a vital role in alchemy , medicine
and astrology; they were associated with the metals in
alchemy; in medicine it stood to reason that they had to be
taken into account since they control the bodily organs
and each part of the body is aﬀected by the others. Being
connected with the planets they related to astrology , which
was also closely tied to the cyclic viewpoint. Divinities of
stars were also divinities  of cycles, each having control of
a sixty-year cycle. This ‘cycle of Cathay’ is calculated from
the Ten Celestial Stems and the Twelve TerrestrialBranches. Each stem has a yin and yang  aspect, counting
as one: hence 5 × 12. Also the lowest common
denominator of 10 and 12 is 60 (the year 1984 starts the
next cycle, which continues until 2043). Years are yin or
yang  according to whether they are even or odd numbers,
but cycles always start with a yang  number and end with a
yin. The Ten Celestial Stems with the Twelve Terrestrial
Branches together form a cycle of days, months and years. The cyclic standpoint is fundamental to all alchemy and
is symbolized  by the Ouroboros as the dragon in the East,
the serpent in the West, swallowing its own tail; it
represents the whole alchemical work. It is the cycle of
disintegration and reintegration, the power that
perpetually consumes and renews itself; it is also the
latent power of the prima materia , the undiﬀerentiated in
which the end is implicit in the beginning, or ‘the never-
ending begin ning,’ or, again ‘my end is my beginn ing.’ The
symbol appe ared early in both eastern and western
alchemy and in Chinese, Egyptian and Greek iconography . In the latter the serpent  was depicted as encircling the
words ‘All is One.’ In Chinese alchemy it is expressed thus:
‘The ends and origins of things have no limit from which
they began. The origin of one thing may be considered the
end of another; the end of one may be considered the
origin of the next.’ The neo-Confucianist Chou Tun-i wrote
that there always have been ‘successive periods of growth
and decay , of decay and growth, following each other in an
endless round. There never was a decay which was not
followed by a growth.’ A Taoist doctrine maintains: ‘There
is no real creation or destruction, only densiﬁcation and
rareﬁcation.’
Great importance has always been attached to the
number ﬁve, known as the Magic Quintet, in all things
Chinese and especially in alchemy and magic. In alchemy
the signiﬁcance of the number rests on its astrologicalassociations with the ﬁve major planets (later discoveries
of other planets were not allowed to alter the cosm ological
importance of the original ﬁve) and the ﬁve metals, lead,
mercury , copper , silver and gold. These were combined in
varying proportions and procedures with their ﬁve planets. The processes in alchemy were also controlled by the
number ﬁve; metals should be heated, or roasted, ﬁve
times, or in multiples of ﬁve, up to ﬁve hundred. In ordinary life there were also endless groups of ﬁve:
the ﬁve planets, sacred mountains, social relat ionships,
blessings, virtues, sacriﬁces, colours, internal organs,
tastes, poisons, tones, grains, pungent ﬂavours, directions
(North, South, West, East and Centre), spirit ual and
domestic animals, while ﬁve memorial poles were put on
graves to represent the Five Elements at rites of the
commemoration of the dead. In magical invocation, or as a
talisman, the Five Elements are represented as:
Five also holds sway in alchemical yoga where the ﬁve
vitalities are used in arousing the kundalini-like circular
power in the body; the vitality of the heart, spleen, lungs,
liver and kidneys. Exoteric alchemy was closely associated with magic and
use was made of talismans and amulets when heating the
mixture for the ﬁve or multiple of ﬁve times. The chief of
these amulets was the magic square, using the digits 1-9
with 5 in the central place. This square was the basis, one
might call it the mand ala, of the Imperial Temple of
Enlightenment, used mainly for the regulation of the
calendar , the Chinese years being variable in length, and
for other astrological purposes.The cyclic death and rebirth symbolism is also inherent
in the Pa Kua, the Eight Trigrams denoting the eight
directions, associated also with the numbers 1-9, omitting
5 since  it is the centre. The Eight Trigrams were  said to
have been revealed to Fu-hsi, on the back of a tortoise (the
tortoise-shell is universally employed in divination ), and a
Tibetan tablet shows the trigrams with the animals of the
Zodiac, or the Twelve Terrestrial Branches, on the back of
a tortoise, while another tortoise-shell appears  in the
centre, supporting the circle and magic square. The kua
were assoc iated with alchemy since its processes
depended on divination of auspicious times and seasons. The I Ching  was the basis of this divination as ‘there is
absolutely nothing which does not depend on the symbols
of the Book of Changes. ’ The I Ching  carries this cyclic
signiﬁcance throughout. The trigrams represent forces in
Nature and the transmutations involved: ‘Each  in turn
gives birth to the next and is overcome by the next in
turn.’ This is the interpla y of the yin-yang  power s and the
Five Elements which are the agents or movers; this
principle, carried in the trigrams and hexagrams, is
implicit in all Nature. Taoist cosmology assumes a harmonious pattern in the
universe; its changes are not brought about by chance or
by the arbitrary will or decrees of a creator-god, but by the
spontaneous workings of the Tao: everything in it is
interdependent in a cyclic recurrence, which, as Professor
Needham points out, ‘does not necessarily imply either the
repetitive or the serially discontinuous.’ He writes of the
Tao as ‘a ﬁeld of force’: ‘All things oriented themselvesaccording to it, without having been instructed to do so,
and without the applicati on of mechanical compulsion . . . the same idea springs to mind in connection with the
hexagrams of the I Ching ; yang  and yin, acting as the
positive and negative poles respectively of a cosmic ﬁeld of
force.’
Tibetan Mystic T ablet on the back of a tortoise
In the Shu Ching , in the chapter on the Great Plan, it is
said that the elements were produced by the powers of yin
and yang  and their twofold breath, ch'i, which must be
kept in balance to produce favourable conditions in all
things. OceanofPDF .com– 11 –
C H ' I
Mencius, when asked what ch'i was, said: ‘It is diﬀicult to
express. It is ch'i, immensely great, immensely strong. If it
be directly cultivated without handicap, then it pervades
all Heaven and Earth.’ In modern times Fung yu-lan says:
‘The tendency in ancient times with regard to any thing or
any force which was invisible and intangible was to
describe it as ch'i . . . what is called the ch'i of Heaven and
Earth, may be paraphrased as the basic force of the
physical universe;’ ‘The ch'i is something about which we
cannot say what it is . . . ch'i is not a “what.” It is
unnamable.’ Ko Hung describes it as the breath or spirit
by which all things are vitalized: ‘There is nothing which
does not require ch'i to remain alive.’
So the term ch'i, like the Tao and wu-wei , is not
translated, being too wide in meaning for any one word. It
can be used for anything of an ‘invisible and intangible’
nature, from  gas to the vital breath of the universe . It is in
this latter sense that it is used in Chinese alchemy , though
in between the two extremes of usage it can be interpreted
as eﬄuvia, or any kind of emanation. Nathan Sivin writes
that:
On one level it names the air we breathe, the subtle
material breath of life. In cosmology it is used for a
terrestrial eﬄuence throu gh which the planets move. In chemistry  it can refer to an aroma, to fumes,  to
smoke, or to the activity of a reagent. In medicine the
homoeostatic force within the body is ch'i, so is any
pathological agent which disturbs the balance, so, forthat matter, is abdominal gas . . . In translati ng,
therefore, one must choose between carrying over
the larger concept of the particular sense . . . When
an author speciﬁes that the alchemical vessel be
tightly luted so that the ch'i of the volatile
ingredients may not escape, one naturally choo ses
‘vapours’ as the equivalent which makes his intent ion
clearest, but one loses the implication unless it is
kept in mind that ch'i means ‘activity’ too . A modern Chinese philosopher deﬁnes ch'i as ‘the
tendency to produce and reproduce, or energy .’
The word ch'i is one of those basic to Chinese philosophy
and metaphysics and has been in use from the most
ancient times. The Tao Tê Ching  says: ‘All things are
backed by shade [yin] and faced by the light [yang] and
harmonized by the imma terial Breath [ch'i],’ and Hsiung
Shih-li wrote : ‘When yin and yang  harmonize, all things
are transformed. This is called the union of ch'i.’
The philosop hers of the Han period regarded ch'i as the
vital breath of the universe: ‘the universe produced ch'i.’ A
Taoist treatise said:
The pure ch'i being tenuous and loosely dispersed
made the heavens, the heavy , muddy ch'i being
coagulated and hard to move made the earth. The
pure and delicate ch'i comin g together and making a
whole was an easy matter , the heavy and muddied
solidiﬁcation was diﬀicult. The result was that the
heavens were ﬁnished ﬁrst and the earth became
solid later. The combin ed essence of heaven-a nd-
earth became the yin and the yang  and four special
forms of the yin and the yang  made the F our Seasons,
whilst the dispersed essence of the Four Seasons
made all creatures.The yin and yang  are sometim es spoken of as the two
ch'i. Confucianists equally employed the term: ‘Within the
area of heavens and earth there is the yin ch'i and the
yang ch'i, permanentl y imbuing men as water imbues the
ﬁsh in it, that which constitutes the diﬀerence between
water and ch'i being that one is visible and the other
invisible . . . although it appears to be nothing, yet it is
something. Man is permanently imbued with this stream of
the two ch'i;’ ‘When the ch'i of the univer se is condensed it
becomes One; when it is divided we have yin and yang;
when it is quartered we have the Four Seasons; when it is
further divided we have the Five Elements. Each element
has its own movement. On account of this diﬀerence in
movement, we speak of the Five P owers.’ The elements are
spoken of as the ch'i of the seaso ns. Wood is the ch'i of
Spring, ﬁre that of Summ er, metal of Autumn and water
the ch'i of Winter, with Earth again as the central power ,
since all the other elements need the ch'i of earth as a
basis. And it is the ch'i of the yin and yang  that makes for
the perpetual movement of rise and fall and all the
opposites in creation. The concept of ch'i, the vital breath,
like all energies and forces in the universe, has its
alternating states of yin and yang;  in ch'i the yang  is
inhaling and the yin exhaling; the yang ch'i is solar , ﬁery;
the yin ch'i is lunar , watery. The yin is spoken of as form
and the yang  as spirit and when they are uniﬁed the Ten
Thousand Things (i.e., everything in the universe) are
transformed: ‘This is called the union of ch'i.’
Ch'i can refer both to the physical breath and the act of
breathing in the practices of Taoist yoga, in which the
cleansing power of controlled breathing has always been
recognized; but when ‘embryo breathing is attained the
yogin is said to be “brea thing without breath,” that is to
say he has become one with the primordial.’ Ch'i as breathis synonymous with life; it is the ‘breath of life;’ it is the
breath that maintains the life of the subtle body. ‘It is pure
ch'i which charges the myriad things; where it condenses
it causes life, where it disperses it causes death . . . the
changes occurring in the myriad things are all due to ch'i,
but whether they are hidden or whether they can be seen,
the ch'i remains a unity . The Sage knows that ch'i itself is
One and never changes.’
Ch'i is both a life energy permeating the whole being,
physical, mental and spiritual, and a cosmic  energy
identiﬁable with the Hindu prāna , the Greek pneuma  and
the Hebrew ruah: it is the vital breath of the universe. ‘Everything must be endo wed with ch'i before it can have
material form.’ Forms are the outward and visible
expression of ch'i, call it what you will: Spirit, breath,
cosmic breath, vital energy , material force, ethereal
essence; everything in creation must be in accord with it;
it is the vital force, condensing and dissolving in perpetual
change, alternating betw een yin and yang  in an endless
relationship, interplay and harmony , a constant  ﬂow of
energy passing between them and uniting them in the
cosmos. A neo-Confuciani st philosopher said: ‘I, along with
Heaven and Earth and all things, am a cohering point of
one and the same ch'i. Therefore I, along with Heaven and
Earth and all things, am basically one body .’
A parallel with western alchemy occurs when we are
told that the work must be animated by a Breath, which is
the same as the Spirit which moved upon the face of the
waters at the beginning of the creation of the world. In the
‘condensing and dissolving’ we also see the solve et
coagula , the feminine quicksilver , yin, and the masculine
sulphur , yang , being uniﬁed by salt, the unifying Spirit. Always assoc iated with ch'i is li, usually translated as
‘principle’ or ‘order .’ Li is the order which keeps the
cosmos together (in Confucianism it also means propriety ,ritual, cerem ony and social order), the two combined
comprise energy and matter; li is the directing principle
behind ch'i and ch'i is the force through which li is made
manifest. ‘Throughout the universe there is li and there is
ch'i; li organizing all forms from above is the root from
which all things are produced; ch'i is the instrument
comprising all forms from which all things are produced;
ch'i is the instrument compri sing all forms from below and
the tools and raw materia l with which all things are made;’
‘In the beginning, before any being existed, there was only
li, then when it moved it generated the yang  and when it
rested it generated the yin . . . following a cyclical process
it ﬂows on, ever turning  and returning. The Tao is the
whole cosm os, the li the individual pattern in
manifestation and the ch'i that through which li is made
manifest;’ When li is combined with ch'i then
consciousness arises.' As de Groot says: ‘Taoism  is fundamentally a religion of
the cosmos . . . it concerns the universe as one large
organism of powers and inﬂuences, a living machine, the
core of which is the Great Ultimate Principle, or T'ai-chi.’
Chinese alchemy , having its origins in Taoism, saw the
operations of Nature as reﬂecting the divine, or spiritual,
order of the universe, so the Taoist-alchemist always
worked with Nature; he did not attempt to ‘conquer’ or
subdue her. The Tao was responsible for the whole ever-
changing cosmos and man; the alchemist, was the
mediator , the middle-man through whom the Tao worked. It was for man to work the will of heaven. This attitude ran
not only through Taoism but through all ancient Chinese
thought and philosophy . Taoism never took a profane view
of Nature, which was always sacred in the sense that she
is the workin g of the Tao, the great ruling principle of the
universe. Humanity and the forces of the universe interact,
drawing energy from each other and pouring back thatenergy . Not only was there magic inherent in Nature's
forces and the interaction of the macrocosm-mic rocosm,
but, in following Natu re, the alchemist, using yogic
techniques, learned the perfect spontaneity of Nature, wu-
wei. The Work had to be undertaken naturally ,
spontaneously , as in child 's play; it was a reﬂection of the
divine play of the universe. Alchemy looked for an understanding of the whole of
Nature; it tried to discer n her secrets in a unive rse that
embraced all forms of life, a life which was clearly  evident
in man, animals and plants, but which also existed in the
lower forms of the seemingly inert minerals which the
alchemist brought to birth. All have ch'i. OceanofPDF .com– 12 –
Y O G A
Yoga in Taoism is essentially a spiritual alchemy . Mircea
Eliade draws attention to the aﬀinity between yoga and
alchemy in that both are concerned with the soul. ‘Both
experiment on the soul, using the human body as a
laboratory; the goal is “puriﬁcation,” “bringing to
perfection,” ﬁnal transformation . . . Both oppose the
purely specu lative path, purely metaphysical knowledge;
both work on “living matter” . . . both pursue deliverance
from the laws of time; seek, that is, to “decondition” life, to
conquer freedom and bliss; in a word “immortality .”’
The yogic branch of alchemy aims, as does all Taoism, at
balance. The aspirant neither renounces life in the world
nor is caught up in the realm of the senses; it concentrates
on the vital functions of the body with a view to the
liberation of the spirit or the attainment of immortality . This goal of immortality marks a diﬀerence between
Indian and Chinese yoga;  the former is concerned with the
control of the body as a preparation for meditation and
other religio us exercises  for the sake of the spirit, while
the Chinese cult of immortality in some cases made the
achievement of immortality a goal in itself . These two
schools of thought are distinguished as the masculine
alchemy , yang tan , and the feminine, yin tan;  the ﬁrst leads
to transcendence, the second to longevity . The yang tan is
fully in accord with Indian yoga, while the yin tan is
eminently Chinese. India n yoga attempts to suppress the
bodily powers; the Chinese to increase them to the point of
total puriﬁcation or etherealization.There are both considerable similarities and diﬀerences
between Indian and Chinese yoga, both arising from the
soil in which  they grew . There is much evidence, as Chang
Chung-yuan says, to suggest that ‘Chinese yoga developed
independently during the early centuries of its existence,
and that it had its own roots in ancient Chinese culture . . . it may even have been known in the remote days of the
legendary Yellow Emper or, to whom tradition attributes
the introduction of these practices.’ One of the diﬀerences
is that Chinese yoga adopts a posture distinct from the
Indian ‘lotus’ position; the position assumed is that of
kneeling and sitting on the soles of the feet. Some see in
this Chuang Tzu's ‘breat hing through the heels, ’ though
others take it to be symbolic of the depth of yogic
breathing. In both, the alchemical yoga is essentially the
province of people who put things into practice, who ‘do’
things, rather than specu late on them; it is the search for
perfection through knowledge rather than through faith; it
is, in Indian terms, the karma  yoga. The highest aim of yoga is union, as the word implies;
but ‘yoga’ embraces practices from the spiritual down to
the psychic and physical in the cultivation of health and
‘powers.’ Yoga requires perfect discipline of body and
mind, the object being to rouse the spiritual powers latent
in humanity and to attain realization or immortality . Its
apparent rigours are not of a destructive nature: they do
not kill human instincts but discipline them into useful
servants. The aims of yoga and alchemy are the same: to
change unregenerate nature in humanity , that is the base
metal, into gold, the perfected individual. Both speak of
the soul, the soul in the body and the soul in the metals;
both work for immortality; both work on bringing the
dualistic conﬂicts of the world of the senses under control
until they are resolved and brought to harmony with the
rhythms of Nature. Patanjali deﬁnes yoga as ‘therestrictions of the whirls of the mind’ and when this is
achieved ‘the seer shines forth,’ the ‘seer’ being the
transcendent Self, pure awareness, a goal wholly
consistent with alchemical yoga, which also adopts a ‘do it
yourself ’ attitude towards  salvation. Yoga and alchemy are
both a transforming of the lower to the higher , the base to
the noble; both experiment on the individual; both require
tenacity of purpose, arduous training and exerc ise and
unremitting attention. It has been said that true yoga has
‘a dynamic power of the soul to shed lustre;’ this is the
alchemical gold of the True Man. In the unremitting attention required there are no short
cuts possible  and both East and West warn against by-
paths. The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i  says:
People like trivial doings. They do not understand the
long and the short of the Tao. Abandoning the right
road and following vicious by-paths in the hope of
pursuing a short cut, they ﬁnally ﬁnd themselves at
the closed end of a blind alley . This is like a blind man
who goes about without the help of a staﬀ and a deaf
man who goes to listen to music. One might as well
look for rabbits and birds under water , or try to get
ﬁsh in a mountain. One might as well plant wheat to
reap barley , or use a pair of compasses to draw a
square. Energy is thus wasted and the spirit worn
away for long years without success . . . Many there
have been who have devoted themselves to the
cause, but very few of them have met with the good
fortune of success, by searching far and wide for
reputed drugs they fell into by-paths which are
incompatible with the Tao. Only he who concentra tes
his eﬀorts with a single-mindedness will be able to
attain the T ao. From the W est the same warning is given:I have set you on the good road; follow it always and
do not take it into your head to take lanes and by-
ways believing to shorten your work and to arrive
sooner at the end of your desires. You would make a
great mistak e to do so, for it is only the great road
which leads to the great work. The beginning is a
little rude, rugged and diﬀicult to take, but the
further one goes, the more it smooths out and the
more beautiful discoveries are made. Nor should you ‘cast your eye far ahead into a country
very distant from where you are, take care not to lose your
way by forcing yourself to see things to which you cannot
pay adequate attention . . . the further you advance in
those byway s the further you will be from the great and
veritable road . . . you will be altogether bewitc hed and
not able anymore to ﬁnd the true road.’
All excess must, of course, also be avoided. In Taoist
yoga the Ten Excesses have their eﬀects on various parts
of the body: (1) excessiv e walking harms the nerves, (2)
excessive standing adversely aﬀects the bones, (3) too
much sleep is bad for the blood vessels, (4) to sit too long
is harmful to the blood, (5) listening to excess impairs the
generative powers, (6) looking at things for too long harms
the spirit, (7) talking too much aﬀects the breath, (8)
thinking too hard upsets the stomach, (9) over-ind ulgence
in sex injures the life, (10) eating to excess damages the
heart. There are also warnings along the alchemical-yogic path
that there will occur distracting or dangerous states of
mind, such as visions of the horrors of the demonic world,
demon apparitions or encounters; on the other hand, there
may be beautiful visions,  glimpses of paradise, wonderful
states of ecstasy and the development of psychic or siddhi
powers. All are to be shunned. Again, faulty techniques or
indolent and intermittent  practices, instead of the rigorousattention required, will lose any gains made and produce
an ‘evil ﬁre’ which destroys, as against the beneﬁcent
‘controlled ﬁre’ of the alchemical furnace which gives
spiritual power and light. Wrong, or excessive, food and
drink can also cause evil ﬁre to burn in the body and so
destroy any progress made. The evil ﬁre also represents
the very real dangers of undertaking any yogic exercise
without the instructions of a competent mast er; this
applies particularly to breathing and sex techniq ues. All
ailments of the body must be eradicated. Yoga-medicine is
preventive; illnesses must not be allowed to develop and
no Sage suﬀers from illnesses, unless he deliberately takes
on the karmic burden of someone else. The yogin and hsien  can always leave the body and
return at will; but in the early stages of training, out-of -
the-body experiences should be limited until the yogin is
familiar with the necessary conditions and the practice
should be limited to the day time. For six months this
exercise should not be performed more than once  in three
days; after a year it can be undertaken daily and after two
years it can be increased  and may be allowed to occur at
any time. This hsien  faculty, after three years , enables the
yogin to travel in spirit to distant places. In hsien  terms,
he becomes a shen hsien , or earthly immortal, from which,
after nine years, he may rise to the state of a golden
immortal, the body then being illuminated by a golden
light. When, after many years, the work of transmutation
is complete, the adept can leave the body and wander
abroad to help heal the sick and bring salvation to
suﬀering humanity . The principle behind all yogic and
alchemical work is that nobody who has not ﬁrst healed
himself and put his own house in order is capable of
helping anyone else. The right posture is important in all yogic practices
because it assists the ﬂow of ch'i; the wrong posturehinders it. This is particularly true of breathing exercises. Breathing exercises are essential to becoming a hsien  on
the exoteric level. The method employed was known as
‘womb breathing,’ so called because the air should be
inhaled and exhaled independently of the nose and mouth,
like the foetus in the womb:
When you are beginning to learn how to control your
breath, you take in the air through the nose and hold
it while you count your heart beats. When you have
counted one hundred and twenty , let out the air very
gently throu gh the mouth. During the process care
should be taken that the passage of air either way is
quite inaudible to yourself and more should go in
than comes out. A good test is to place a piece of
swan's-down at the aperture of the nostrils and see
that it does not move when the breath is expelled. Breathing had to be rhythmic to harmonize with the
rhythms of the universe; processes of inhalation and
exhalation were gradually prolonged to produce an even
slower and quieter rhythm. The exercises had to be taken
in ‘live air.’ The twenty-four hours are divided into twelve
two-hour periods: the six from midnight to mid-day are
‘live air’ and the six from mid-day to midnight are ‘dead
air’ periods. Any form of anger must always be avoided as
it disturbs the rhythmic ﬂow of the breath. Breathing exercises aime d to transmute the breath into
soul-substance and so make it one with the universal
breath or ch'i. ‘Womb breathing’ had another association
in the esoteric sense in that it helped to develop and bring
to birth the embryo of the imperishable spiritual body. In
the Tao Tê Ching  the regulation of the breath is spoken of
as becoming  ‘soft and pliant as an infant.’ Ko Hung said
that medicines could help in the work but breathing
exercises speeded the attainment of the goal, whileChuang Tzu said: ‘The pure men of old slept without
dreams and woke without anxiety . They ate with
discretion, breathing deep breaths; for pure men draw
breath from their uttermost depth, literally “from their
heels”; the vulgar only from their throats.’ Chuang Tzu
obviously knew of and accepted yogic practices of
breathing, but, with characteristic amusement, rejected
the too serious minded and vigorous eﬀorts of the yogins
and ascetics. In Chinese yoga, as has been said, one adopted the
posture of sitting on the heels (which always was, and still
should be, the correct posture for women) or one might
‘lie with the eyes shut and hands closed, keep the breath
shut up inside to two hundred, then expel it from inside
the mouth.’ Ultimately one should be able to hold the
breath for one thousand respirations; at this point the
pulse practic ally stops and a state of total serenity is
achieved; this is called the ‘freezing spirit.’ Holding the
breath was also used therapeutically . The breath was
‘harmonized’ then swallowed and held as long as possible,
while concentrating the mind on the aﬀected organ. Here
we have direct evidence  of the theory of the power of
thought in inﬂuencing physical conditions; the ﬁrst
psychosomatic remedy . Before starting exercises ‘One must withdraw  to a
retired chamber , shut the doors, seat oneself on a bed with
a soft cover and a pillow two and a half inches high, lie
down with the body in the right position, close the eyes
and keep the breath shut in the diaphragm of the chest so
that a hair laid on the mouth will not move.’ This deep
breathing, almost silent, is a characteristic of both the
condition of hibernation  in animals, the experience of
mystical ecstasy , and of the samhadi  or satori  of yoga; it is
achieved at both extremes of the animal-human
experience; in other words, throughout nature. Thishibernation-yogic breathing also transcends time and rises
out of it into the eternal Now . In Taoist-yog ic breathing  exercises a circular motion is
set up; the ‘voluntary’ or ascending movement draws the
breath up from the base of the spine to the top of the
head, while the ‘involuntary’ or descending movement
goes back from the lower lip, through the other ‘centres,’
to the tail of the spine, known as the ‘gate of the tail.’ This
motion can set up a heat current. Each centre is known as
a ‘ﬁeld of the elixir ,’ the lowest centre or ﬁeld being
symbolized by the cauldron. This circular movement, and
the heat it involves, brings about the union of the two
great powers, ﬁre and water , the ﬁre of the heart region
and the watery element of the stomach and kidneys. It is
also a reﬂection in the microcosm of the human  body of
the cycles of the macrocosm.
_OceanofPDF.com_Chinese_Alchemy_-_Jean_Cooper.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Like Prometheus, he
brought the secret and use of ﬁre to humanity and had a
close association with the sky and thunder gods. These
were the white smiths. Among shamanistic tribes these
smiths were also descendants of a celestial smith who
came to earth to teach men the use of ﬁre and metals. Thesmiths’ sons married the daughters of earth and all smiths
are descende d from them. Smiths held a high position at
court, or were treated as royalty, on account of their divine
descent; they were the divine artisans and the smithy was
a centre of ritual and worship. Among Mongols  and in
Turkistan the smith was also a culture hero,  ‘a free
horseman. ’ There is a tradition that Genghis Khan was a
smith before he rose to become ruler of the Mongols and a
world conqueror. There were also king-smiths in Africa. On
the other hand, also in A frica, among the Massai, the smith
was ‘an unclean one’ and it was dangerous to go near his
hut, while to sleep with a woman of the smith class could
cause a man to go mad or beget deformed oﬀspring. It was largely the pastoral, nomadic and hunting tribes,
with the exception of the Mongols, who looked down on
the smith and regarded him as an untouchable. But in all
cultures the smith was held in awe and feared as a Master
of Fire. He could reduce solid matter to liquid, something
without form, and then could turn the pliable liquid into
the solid again. Like all ‘creation’ craftsmen, and like the
alchemist, he was a transformer and a transmuter of
matter and dealt with the mysterious and magical ; like the
potter he turned the pliable into form; like the carpenter
he brought form out of the formless, the prima materia. In
his ambivalent position the smith could be creator or
destroyer; he made both the weapons of death, the sword
and the spear, and the tools of life and growth, the spade
and plough. As the blacksmith he handled iron, an almost
universally disliked and feared metal, though it was sacred
in some cases as an apotropaic. This association with iron
was also ambivalent; the metal is everywhere dreaded by
the spirit world, evil spirits, witches or fairies will not go
near it or cross an iron object: ‘Iron scares spirits. ’ As an
evil metal it was not allowed to be used in the construction
of any sacred place; but since it repels evil spirits, theshaman loads himself and his ritual robes with iron
articles and iron is used for this purpose in amulets. The
blacksmith, as a master of ﬁre, is naturally associated with
the hearth and this puts him in touch with the powers of
the underwo rld; the hearth gives access to the forces of
the dark regions and the blacksmith originally learned his
craft from an underworld divinity. In the Hebrew tradition
the craft was brought down to earth by the fallen angel
Azazel. With this connection with the powers of the
underworld it was natural that smiths were credited with
other magical powers, such as prophecy and healing. Another reason for the fear of the smith was the practice
of blood sacriﬁce, both human and animal, in the smelting
of metal, although somet imes the sacriﬁce was voluntary. Also he was constantly surrounded by evil spirits,
menacing him and against which he had to take every
precaution and there had to be absolute silence
accompanying his movements, all of which made him
worth avoiding. Then, again, his tools, the hammer, anvil
and bellows have magic powers of transformation, while
the stove, cauldron and furnace all have the function of
dissolution and death. Smelting is a work of fusion, the
abolition of individual identity, the return to primordial
chaos. The ores, regarded as male and female, yang  and
yin, becam e one in union. This has a sex symbolism which
is further accentuated by the ‘heat’ involved; a symbolism
also present in the hamm er and anvil, the hammer being
the formative, masculine force in nature, with the anvil as
the passive feminine. The hammer is the weapon of the
Thunder Gods, the Divine Smiths, with the anvil as the
earth, matte r. The striking of the hammer on the anvil
bringing down ﬁre from heaven, represents divine justice
and power; this is why oaths were taken on the anvil, a
practice which continu ed until recent times whenmarriages over the anvil, at such places as Gretna Green,
perpetuated the smith's ancient religious functions. The power of ﬁre is also associated with the stove, oven
or athanor, in which transformation took place. In Chinese
alchemy the Deity of the Stove was frequently appealed to
for help in bringing about a successful transm utation,
especially when the recipe entailed roasting the mixture
for as many as ﬁve hundred times. The stove was one of
the ﬁve annu al objects of sacriﬁce. A Controller of Recipes
advised the Emperor W u:
You should worship the Stove and then you can make
spiritual beings present themselves; when spirit ual
beings have presented themselves, cinnabar powder
can be metamorphosized into gold; when the gold
has been made, it can be used for vessels for eating
and drinking  and will increase the length of your life,
when the length of your life has been increased, the
Immortals of P'englai in the midst of the ocean can
thereupon be given audience; when they have been
given audien ce, by making the sacriﬁces of feng and
shan  [ﬁre and earth] you will never die. The Kitchen God
Later the alchemical Deity of the Stove degenerated into
the ubiquitous God, or Goddess, of the Kitchen, seen in all
Chinese homes. This deity, though sometimes it is neither
the single god or goddess  but a married couple, looks after
the occupants of the home. As the ancient goddess she
was the ‘Old Wife,’ the ﬁrst cook, though sometimes she is
depicted as a beautiful woman dressed in red, the colourof ﬁre; she has her hair done up in a knot on top of her
head As God of the Kitchen the deity makes an annual
journey to heaven to report to the Jade Emperor on the
conduct of the family during the year. Both god and
goddess have obvious associations with alchemy in the
brewing of medicines and the roasting of ingredients. The Stove of Chinese Alchemy is the Athanor of the
West. It has many names: a kiln, sphere, vase, egg or
prison, or it can be the grave, again symbolic of death and
the rebirth from the womb as a place of warmth, growth
and transformation. The heart can also symbolize,
esoterically, the vessel in which transmutation takes place,
it is the ‘secret place,’ and the melting of the heart is
associated with the womb in the idea of return to
primordial unity—that is to say, the embryonic state of the
return to the origins. This, in Taoism, is the retur n of the
Void. There were some alchemical cults, outside the Taoist
tradition, which required blood sacriﬁce in the concoction
of medicines, rites of exorcism, or the casting of metals,
but these were condemned by true Taoists. Blood sacriﬁce,
being based on the idea of blood as the essence of life,
maintained that only life can give life. There is also the
universal theme in mythology and religion that the soul of
one life can be transferr ed to another; the god dying to
bring new life to the world. Stories of unsuccessful
castings of such items as swords or bells, both sacred
objects, tell of the deliberate sacriﬁce of a wife or
daughter throwing herself into the molten  metal,
whereupon the casting immediately took place, ‘life’
having been given to it. OceanofPDF. com– 9 –
A S T R O L O G Y
From its earliest stages Chinese alchemy was associated
with astrolog y and it is impossible to study the one without
the other. Having developed under popular Taoism,
astrology advanced to such a degree of importance that it
became part of the government of the country in the Han
dynasty and was used not only for prediction to avoid
unfortunate inﬂuences, or to take advantage of fortunate
times and seasons, but was also adopted by courtiers as a
powerful way of restraining the Emperor from doing
anything they found undesirable, since they were able to
persuade him that such actions were unpropitious. At court there was the oﬀice of Grand Astrologer, held at
one time by the famous historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien and his
father before him, unde r whom there were thirty-seven
‘expectant appointees. ’ They were responsible for making
the calendar, divining by the tortoise-shell, divining by
yarrow-sticks from the I Ching, looking after all apotropaic
matters and watching the sun and the seasons. The Court
Astrologer was concerned with the state rather than with
personal portents and inﬂuences. The Emperor was the
Son of Heaven, its delegate on earth, and therefore under
its rule, with which he must be in total conformity; to
achieve this the Heavens must be consulted on all matters
of state and the Emperor himself must embody the
qualities of Heaven: any deviation from these rendered
him unﬁt to rule and he could then be replaced. The conduct of all court and state aﬀairs was monitored
by the astrologers, who read the portents and interpretedthe events. Comets, eclipses of the sun and earthquakes
were dire warnings that all was not well in the kingdom. Lunar eclips es, however, were regarded as being less
dangerous. All this gave the astrologers immense inﬂuence
at court; they were high in the oﬀicial hierarchy and it has
been suggested that they were sometimes, in the manner
of bureaucrats, not above manipulating their astrological
readings to suit their own interests at court and in the
state. In the interests of security (and often of the
astrologers' own. ) astrological readings were kept secret,
since they aﬀected the policy of the state and foreign
relationships. For example: ‘When Mercury appears in
company with Venus to the East, and when they are both
red and shoot forth rays, then foreign kingdoms will be
vanquished and the soldiers of China will be victorious. ’
Incidentally, as Professor Needham points out, the careful
and detailed records kept by this astrological bureaucracy
has been the source of much interesting and valuable
information in modern times. It is also of interest to note
that some of the lunar eclipses recorded were not visible
at the time and place of record. Just as Chinese alchemy diﬀered from that of the West in
searching for immortalit y rather than gold, so Chinese
astrology diﬀered in its emphasis on national rather than
personal forecasts. Both, though, had their  Court
Astrologers; in fact it was said that in the West in medieval
times even every great lord had his own astrologer. Early
Chinese astrology was more concerned with the destiny of
the state, with peace and war, the political situation and
the prospect of good or bad harvests. The casting of
individual horoscopes came later, probably introduced
under Indian inﬂuence in the T'ang dynasty with the
translation of Buddhist texts. Such horoscopes were
actually discouraged at ﬁrst, agreeing with the western
Hermann of Dalmatia that it was superstitious to ‘accountfor the entire life of man by astrological reasons. or to. try to explain conceptions and nativities, character,
prosperity and adversity from the courses of the stars. ’ But
when the casting of personal horoscopes became
established later it took so strong and popular a hold and
became so widespread that no important move could be
made without consultation and all marriages were based
on the compatibility of the individual horoscopes and
auspicious aspects, together with the yin-yang  balance. If
one were born at night, one's fate was yin; if during the
day, it was yang. The T welve T errestrial Branches and the T welve
Animals
Universally basic to both astrology and alchemy is the
belief in law and order in the universe. The stars  show a
ﬁxed order, clearly visibl e, controlling times and seasons
and inﬂuencing everything in the cosmos: climatic
changes, the time-keeping moon, the fertilizing sun and
rain, the coming of times of storms and ﬂoods or of fair
weather. In a cosmos that is one whole it is only natural
that all should react on and inﬂuence everything  else; so
the stars must inﬂuence the formation of metals  and areclosely associated with them and each planet has its own
metal. Both Chinese and Chaldean alchemy used
astrological symbols throughout. The sun was gold; the
moon, silver ; Saturn, lead; Mars, iron; Venus, copper;
Hermes/Mercury, tin; Jupiter, electron (an alloy of gold and
silver, later replaced by tin for Jupiter and quicksilver for
Mercury). As the sun was the brightest among the planets,
so was gold among the metals. The gods of Olympus were
also associated with these metals in alchemical thought. The theory of the eﬀect s of conjunctions of planets is
embedded in Chinese history. Ssu-ma Ch'ien notes the
results of Jupiter's conju nctions: with Saturn, the Earth-
planet, there  is famine, political chaos and defeat in battle;
with Mercury, the Water-planet, there is instability and a
time of chang e and alteration in public aﬀairs; with Venus,
the Metal-planet, there comes a period of mourning. Jupiter (T'ai-sui ) is also a powerful deity, the Planet of the
Year; it is also the Unicorn and is auspicious for all regions
and people under it and the deity can be invoked for
protection. As in the West, divinities were connected with
planets that exerted a profound inﬂuence over earthly
matters and the fates of individuals, but in China every
star had its corresponding god and metal, while every herb
used in medicine had its planetary aﬀiliations. The planets are also linked with the I Ching:
The eight kuas [trigrams] are distribute d among the
planets. They never fail to operate properly. The
mystical essence is exquisite but diﬀicult to obser ve. It can be guessed on the basis of the heavenly sign. The heavenly signs should be observed carefully so
as to ascerta in their proper expressions. orders
are to be issued accordin g to the proper seasons. look above and observe the signs of the Milky Way,look down and note the lay of the land, and look in
between to learn the human mind and heart. 1
The stars held an archetypal position and the I Ching
calls them the heavenly images of earthly forms, their
movements controlling the whole of Nature. Stars could be either baleful or beneﬁcient according to
the deities or demons with which they were associated, so
their inﬂuen ces had to be either counteracted or
encouraged. Elaborate and endless rites were employed to
send oﬀ maleﬁc stars and their demons and to invoke the
aid of the auspicious star-deities. Comets were particularly
sinister portents of disaster. Nor was this belief conﬁned to
China; it was almost universal and frequently referred to
in literary symbolism. In the West, the Bayeux Tapestry
shows a comet presaging the death of Edward the
Confessor. As has been said, solar eclipses were also
highly inauspicious; in fact any change in the sun foretold
calamities, general misfortune or the death of an Emperor,
and if an eclipse had been predicted and did not appear
the Emperor was congratulated on his good fortune; an
unpredicted eclipse meant certain disaster. This belief
carried over into modern times; I can remember, as a
child, the pandemonium that broke out when an eclipse
occurred: rockets, ﬁre-crackers, squibs soared and banged
all over the place with people shouting to frighten away
the mad dog that had taken a bite out of the sun. A general
air of fear prevailed. The stars, as living beings, were also portrayed as
people; for instance, the Pole Star was represented by a
Buddha-like ﬁgure seated on a lotus, with a whee l held in
his hands to symbolize the hub of the heavens, the star
remaining static while the universe revolved round it. The Dipper, called the Bushel in China, is particularly
revered as it points to and revolves round the Pole Starand acts as a celestial and seasonal clock -dial. It is said
that ‘when the handle of the northern Bushel points East
at nightfall it is Spring through the land; when it points
South it is Summer; when pointing West it is Autumn;
when North it is Winter. ’ The Bushel is also the dwelling
place of the Fates responsible for everything concerned
with mankind. Like the Greek Moires and the
Scandinavian Norns, these Fates also controlled the life-
span of the individual. The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i says: ‘The
Bushel, being of importance in connection with the Tao,
has control of things. the ﬁve wei [planets] describe
their course according to the seasons. When the
ordinations are not properly followed, untoward
happenings occur. ’
In western alchemy Fate is also associated with the
stars. Boethius, in his Consolation of Philosophy, says that
God governs the universe and though himself unmovable
yet decrees a perpetual reason and order, ‘sowing stars in
the sky and binding the elements by numbers yet revolving
the spheres and decreeing natural events in a ﬁxed series. ’
Fate may be governed by spirits, angelic or demonic,
through the soul or ‘by the celestial motion of the stars. that series moves sky and stars, harmonizes the elements
with one another and transforms them from one to another. it constrains human fortunes in an indissoluble chain
of causes which, since  it starts from the decree of
immovable Providence, must needs itself also be
immutable. ’
At birth the soul enters the body through a particular
star, while at death the same star guides it out of the body. Ko Hung says: ‘On receiv ing birth and taking form in the
womb we all belong to a star or celestial asterism. ’ During
life the Bushel and the Planets inﬂuence fate, but here
alchemy comes in, for although karmic forces are in
operation they are not absolute since by spiritual alchemy,transformation and transmutation, it is possibl e so to
purify and rarefy the body that spirit takes over and
karmic forces are negated; in other words, the True Man is
lifted out of and above the operations of the natural world. The idea of the soul developed in a unique way in China. The soul was made up of two essences, its positive and
negative aspects, the mind-nature and the body -nature,
the yang  and the yin. The yin was the p'o soul, heavier,
earthly, which reverted to the earth at death, and the yang
was the hun or lighter, heavenly soul, rising to the
heavens, each returning to its natural element. Later these
souls multiplied in number, there being three hun and
seven p'o souls, symbolizing the diﬀerent attributes of the
human being. The hun contro lled the intelligen ce and the
p'o the emotions. Some of the souls can leave the body
during illness and should then be brought back again. In
pathological states the soul escapes from the body and a
priest, sham an or magician must be employed to bring it
back; it can be captured and ensnared with nets or knots
and then re-bound to the body. In the case of trance, the
shaman or medium delib erately dissociates the soul and
sends it out to gather information from afar or from the
spirit world. All souls leave the body at death, but if the
body is preserved the souls could remain together, hence
the preventi on of the decay of the body was of great
importance in attaining earthly immortality. Preservation
of the body took two forms, ﬁrstly, in this life, a self-
mummiﬁcation was sought in rendering the body decay-
resistant by a diet entailing total abstinence from meat,
ﬁsh or fowl, or cereals, living on nuts, pine resin, honey
and dates, and practising austerities, yoga and the elixir. Secondly, there was mummiﬁcation after death, preserving
the body by burying it in suits of jade, with jade in all the
oriﬁces; this preservatio n enabled the soul to continue
living with the body on earth and, as we have seen in thecase of the Lady of Tai, it was achieved with a success
beyond the knowledge of modern science. The three hun souls and the seven p'o souls of an
individual in plenary session. The Chinese concept of the soul diﬀers radically from
that of the West not only in its multiplicity but in that it
came under the cyclic, rather than the linear, view of time
and the cosmos. Maspero wrote that ‘The Chinese neverseparated Spirit and Matter, and for them the world was a
continuum passing from the Void at one end to the
grossest matter at the other, hence “soul” never  took up
this antitheti cal characte r in relation to matter. Moreover
there were too many souls for any one of them to
counterbalance, as it were, the body. ’ In alchemy the soul
is expressed as a substance to be worked on, to be
transmuted, as are metals, into the noble and pure state of
gold. The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i  says:
Yin and yang  are the regulating forces of the dwelling
of hun and p'o. The hun of the sun is yang  and the p'o
of the moon is yin. The hun and p'o live in one
another. the active  male goes outwards, the
passive fema le takes things in for keeping. Whene ver
the male goes into excesses the female is there to
restore him. The p'o is there to control the hun,
checking it from excesses. Not too cold, nor too
warm, they go forward at the right time. They both
have their needs properly met. The two souls, although surviving bodily death, were
thought to fade away ultimately unless mystical union had
been attained. The hsien  and the Sage achieved this union. As Chuang Tzu wrote: ‘The masses value money; honest
men fame; virtuous men resolution; and the Sage the soul. ’A street fortune-teller
The association between the fate of the soul in this
world and the stars unde r which it was born, and hence
the importance of the horoscope in later Chinese alchemy,
is seen in the story of the alchemist Cheng Wei who
devoted his whole life to alchemy and obtained a servant
from a magician to help him in his work. His eﬀorts at
making gold from recipes contained in an ancient treatise,
‘The Great Treasure,’ were always unsuccessful. His wife
watched his futile attempts as he heated the retort which
contained the quicksilver and oﬀered to ‘show him
something,’ upon which she threw some of a drug into the
retort, with the result that when the drug was absorbed
the contents became silver. The amazed Cheng wanted to
know why she should have the secret and why she had not
told him sooner, to which she replied that ‘In order to getit it is necessary to have the proper fate;’ that is to say, a
favourable horoscope and a favourable time. This belief in the necessity for right times and seasons
was not conﬁned to Chinese alchemy but was tied to the
universal association between alchemy and astrology. Zosimus believed that experiments do not necessarily
produce results in themselves but must be undertaken at
the right astrological moment; the alchemist requires a
knowledge of the constellations. He also said: ‘It is
necessary that we determine what are the opportune times. I have heard it said by certain ones that an operation
can be carried out under any circumstances, and I hesitate
to believe it. ’ Albertus Magnus wrote that the alchemist
‘should observe the time in which the operation is
performed and the proper hours for sublimations,
solutions and distillations. ’ Geber wrote of the inﬂuence of
the seven planets as the key to alchemy and maintained
that the adept can ﬁnd the mixture of the four elements in
animals, plants and minerals by astrology. Arabic astrology
says that the stars are ‘in accord with all mundane
creatures in all things. by secret institution of divinity
and by natural law. ’ This obtained not only in alchemy
proper but also in its oﬀ-shoots, in such things as
talismans and magic. Roger Bacon maintained that charms
and images,  when made under the proper astrological
inﬂuences, became endowed with power and stored the
energies of the stars and the human spirit. Ko Hung wrote:
‘In divining the myste rious actions of heav en and
measuring the various motions of the sun, moon and ﬁve
planets, we discuss their trespasses in the realms of the
constellations in order to determine prosperity or decline
for the future. We look upwards for signs in the skies;’
‘Our kings established the oﬀice of Grand Astrologer. For
appointments, establishi ngs, worship in the ancestral
temples and sacriﬁces to heaven and earth they alwayschose the right times. ’ And for the aspirant to hsien -hood:
‘To enter mountains one must secure a conjunctio n of the
best season and day, on a day and at an hour that heaven
holds in its grasp;’ ‘Wait carefully for the advent of the
proper days and hours and also observe the wax and wane
of nature. A slight departure from the right path will cause
immense regret;’ ‘Movement and rest should take place at
the proper time as prescribed. Act according to the four
seasons so as to suit the ch'i properly;’ in concocting the
elixir ‘the sun, moon and stars must seven times complete
their circuits and four seasons must nine times return. ’
Astrology was linked with alchemy in the lives of the
hsien. One Taoist, T'ao Hung Ching, had a planetarium
constructed and a globe round which the heavens revolved
by a mechanical device. He also made an elixir from
ingredients given him by the Emperor, which both he and
the Emperor took to their mutual beneﬁt. When the
Emperor wanted him to live at court, Huang Ching drew a
picture of two oxen, one freely disporting itself in a
meadow and the other with a golden head-stall being
whipped to make it go. The Emperor got the message and
laughed. As to the Sage, Yang Hsiung was asked if the Sage  could
make divinations; he replied that he could and was asked
then what was the diﬀerence between the Sage and the
astrologer. He answered : ‘The astrologer forete lls what
the eﬀects of the heavenl y phenomena will be on man; the
Sage foretells what the eﬀects of man's actions will be on
the heavens. ’ Or, as Tung Chung-shu puts it: ‘The actions
of a man, when he reaches the highest level of goodness or
evil will ﬂow into the universal course of heaven and earth,
and cause  responsive reverberations in their
manifestations. ’
Astrology's chief message for humanity is that it is not
isolated, but a part of the whole cosmos. As RaymondHarrison says, it is as well to divest the mind of the idea
that it is ‘a separate entity functioning apart from  the rest
of the cosmos’ and to regard the heavenly bodies more as
elemental forces lying at the roots of its own character,
‘since each atom of life is the universe in miniature. ’
The chief manual of Chinese astrology is the Hung Fan,
the Grand Plan, a section of the great Shu Ching, the
Classical History. It expands the principle of the yin-yang
balance as active in the universe; the Sun is the Great
Yang and the Moon is the Great Yin; the planets are the
Lesser Yin and the ﬁxed  stars the Lesser Yang; these, in
turn, are associated with the Five Elements, the puriﬁed
essence of each rises upwards to the heavens to become
the ﬁve planets: Mercury, water; Venus, metal; Mars, ﬁre;
Jupiter, wood; Saturn, earth, while the ﬁxed stars contain
their various essences. Methods of fate calculation were
not entirely astrological since they also depended on the
Five Elements principle, the Twelve Terrestrial Branches
and the cyclic sixty-year periods; systems which were as
much numerical-mathematical as astrological-
astronomical.
The blacksmith was associated with the stove, which was seen as a symbol of transformation and rebirth, and the blacksmith's role in alchemy was to transform base metals into gold.
What was the association between the blacksmith and the stove in ancient Chinese alchemy?
The number 5 is of great importance in Chinese alchemy, as it represents the balance and harmony of the universe, and is used in calculations and rituals.
What is the significance of the number 5 in Chinese alchemy?
Astrology played a crucial role in Chinese alchemy, as it was used to determine the proper times and seasons for alchemical operations, and to understand the cyclical nature of the universe.
What is the role of astrology in Chinese alchemy?
Ch'i is a vital energy that permeates the universe, and is associated with the breath and the cyclical nature of the universe. It is also seen as a symbol of the transformation of base matter into gold.
What is the concept of ch'i in Chinese alchemy?
The Five Elements are a fundamental concept in Chinese alchemy, as they represent the cyclical and harmonious nature of the universe, and are used to understand and control the transformations of matter and energy.
What is the significance of the Five Elements in Chinese alchemy?