As Ko
Hung said, ‘if we can be so confounded by common plants,
how can we expect to comprehend arcane, recondite
prescriptions?’ This complaint was echoed centuries later
in Europe by the French metallurgist Buﬀon, who said that
in spite of reading and studying all the books on alchemy
they had oﬀered him ‘nothing but obscurities and
unintelligible processes.’
The disadvan tage of esoteric knowledge and of keeping
it secret is that it can be lost with the passing of the adept
or custodian of that lore and the greater the knowledge or
powers of the adept, the less likely it is that these will be
handed down intact, it being unlikely that there would be a
disciple of his own stature to fall heir to it. When the esoteric is ignored or misunderstood,
exotericism takes over completely and proliferates in
outward form s; rituals and rites become meaning less and
are performed mechanically for their own sake, providing
spurious and superstitiou s conditions, which, having lost
their value, merely make the performer feel safe in the
protection of the congregation or crowd. The symbol then
becomes a sign, having lost its inner signiﬁcance. So, too,
do science and techno logy now concentrate on the
outward: machines, space travel, endless gadgets , instead
of the inner study of mankind which, if developed, wouldreveal inner powers capable of achieving the same eﬀects
without the disadvantage s of outward fragmenta tion and
the consequent breakdown of human relat ionships. Humanity displays a genius for technical knowledge and
mechanical invention, the exoteric, combined with an
almost complete failure of adjustment and develop ment in
the character and understanding of the inner , the esoteric,
world. The result is total frustration; conﬂict and war in
national life, and in the personal sphere nervous illness,
tension, imba lance and disharmony . The yin, esote ric, and
the yang , exoteric, here as everywhere, require each other
and must work together with Nature, not against  her; co-
operating, not ‘conquering.’
OceanofPDF .com– 16 –
THE TWO GREAT POWERS
The primar y theme in creation mythology is the
emergence from the One of the Two, the creation of the
primordial pair and the beginning of duality . This male-
female symbolism is basic to alchemy , since the male
sulphur and the female quicksilver must work on and with
each other in balanced relationship. They are diﬀerent but
complementary , seeking out each other to bring about the
restoration of original wholeness. They must continually
stimulate each other . In alchemy everything is growing
and divided into sexes; the whole universe is a living being
working towards perfection. The eternal reactions of
humanity and Nature upon each other , the alternating yin
and yang  in growth and decline, the fusion of the objective
and subjective, all give rise to the cyclic powers of change
and produce the rhythms of the cosmos. Duality is the very essence of life in the manifest world;
the light and dark following earth's turning away from the
sun and returning to the new dawn. Its opposite is present
in every thing: little is harder or more solid than the ﬂint
that gives birth to the spark of ﬁre, the most unstable and
volatile of elements. In man and woman the two powers
manifest themselves in duality not only in sex, but in each
sex. Woman,  the yin, is negative externally and positive
internally; man, the yang , is positive externally and
negative internally: each incorporate both powers. De
Groot says: ‘The hard and soft match and contain one
another , yang  gives and yin receives. The male and female
need one another . It is this need that brings about
creation-procreation, so that the essential ch'i may haveits proper play.’ He calls the two powers ‘the Great
Regulators of the cosmos which cause the phenomena of
creation, evolution and destruction.’ They are also called
the Contraries, the Contending Dragons, the Great
Extremes. The breath, vital essence, or ch'i of the yin and
yang  is necessary  for creation of any form. The Ts'an T'ung
Ch'i says that ‘creation is dependent on the fusion of the
breath of yin and yang  . . . if a thing does not contain yin
and yang  it repudiates its origin. Baby chicks do not come
from infertile eggs.’
In alchemy yin is coagulation and yang  is solution; in
metals yin is quicksilver and silver  and yang  is Sulphur
and gold; yin the moon and earth, yang  the sun and
heavens, while in the work yin represents the esoteric and
yang  the exoteric. The processes of heating and cooling
are also related to yang  the sun and yin, the moon; they
bring about change by balancing each other with their
hardness and softness. In the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i the sun and
moon are said to reach out for one another; they are ‘the
two great luminaries which arose from the Great Ultimate,
the T'ai Chi. The yang  evolved as air and formed the
heavens, the yin coagulated to form the earth; particles
from the yang  formed the sun and yin particles the moon;
between them they begat the stars. Thus the yang  and yin
are also known as T'ien  and Ti, Heaven and Earth.’
All metals were regarded  as the result of the union of
the two powers, male and female, sulphur and quicksilver ,
spirit and soul; their union produced perfection: cinnabar . There is, however , a dual nature in quicksilver or mercury ,
which is consonant with the two natures of the feminine
power , at once the nourisher of the embryo within the
womb, the hermetic vessel, the vase, etc., and the death-
dealing disso lvent, so that it brings life or death according
to its particu lar situation . This lunar material is also the
‘water of life,’ which nourishes in the womb, and thedestructive humid dissolution of death; but that which
decomposes is also the medium for generation. As
Synesius said: ‘It is indeed that which decomposes and
that which makes to generate.’
Metals were divided into the two sexes in smelting
processes and young men and maidens took part in the
rituals in which the ‘marr iage of the metals’ was involved. In a memorial ode, on Ch'u Yuan, by Chia I, c. 170 BC, we
read: ‘Heaven and Earth are like a smelting furnace, the
forces of natural change are the workmen, the yin and the
yang  are the fuel, and the Ten Thousand Things are the
metal.’ Fire for the furnace was also produced by the
male-female interaction in the two ‘rubbing sticks’ which
brought forth  the vital spark; the ﬁre was latent in the yin
wood but was ignited by yang  action. In Shama nism, when working magic and
transformations the shaman has his ‘celestial wife’ who
acts as an instructor and protects and helps him. He is
also assisted  by a woman in the ‘ascent to heaven,’ or
some symbolically feminine object can take her place. It is
the female inﬂuence which not only helps him on his
journey but enables him to emerge victorious. Also, apart
from the wu and hsi female and male magici ans, Chinese
legend is full of magical and alchemical arts being taught
by a female spirit or goddess. Here, again, we are
reminded of the Yellow Emperor and his Three Immortal
Maids and the daughters of the Emperor Yao, who taught
the Emperor Shou (2258-2208) the magical art of ‘ﬂying
like a bird.’  In the West the alchemist had his female
assistant, his soror mystica , to help him in his work. Pictures of the two working together appear frequently in
alchemical texts and the ores on which they worked were
produced by the union of the two powers of sulphur and
mercury . The Emerald Tablet states: ‘Sulphur , solar power ,Mercury , lunar power , are the “father and mother” of the
alchemical embryo .’
In western alchemy , in the imperfect state, the two
powers work  against each other , just as the contraries in
life can be in conﬂict and produce dire results until they
work together in unity . As Burckhardt says: ‘Here we have
the analogy of the love contest between man and woman;
it is the feminine fascination which dissolves the
“solidiﬁcation” of the virile nature and wakens its power . It
is suﬀicient to remark that it is this fascination, spiritually
canalized, which plays a certain part in Tantric methods.’
This ‘love contest’ appears also in western astrology in
Venus and Mars, the Pair of Lovers, who complement each
other in their signs, the old symbol for Mars being the
circle surmounted by the cross 
 , with Venus as the circle
above the cross 
 , both being a perfect union of the male-
female powe rs. Burckhar dt points out that the alchemical
meaning of the planetary signs is identical with the
astrological: ‘Each planet possesses two adjacent
“houses,” a left and right , or feminine and masculine, with
the exception of the moon and sun which have only one
house each and rule respectively the feminine and
masculine halves of the Zodiac.’ The concept of the two
great powers appears in many civilizations. In Egypt Isis
and Osiris are the lunar and solar powers that brought
forth all things, and the doctrine of the contrary powers,
the positive sulphur and negative quicksilver , working on
each other , is present in all alchemy . Zosimus writes of
their interd ependence: ‘Above celestial things, below
terrestrial things, by the male and the female the work is
accomplished,’ and in Le Texte d'Alchymie  we read:
‘Sulphur cannot be without Mercury , and Mercury cannot
be without this Sulphur which is intimately united and
incorporated with it, as the soul is with the body.’ Nicholas
Flamel says: ‘In the second operation thou hast twoconjoined and married natures, the masculine and the
feminine; and they are fashioned in one sole body, which is
the androgyne of the ancients.’ This is the conjunctio , the
union of sulphur and quicksilver , sun and moon, king and
queen; the two together combining the blind strength of
the male with the subtle intuition of the female, of action
and thought, method and wisdom, of all the opposites
which together bring mankind back to the primordial unity
and perfection. In the interplay between the two, sulphur eﬀects the
coagulation of the body in dryness and hardness,
masculine qualities, and therefore requires modiﬁcation
and puriﬁcation in the dissolving and softening qualities of
quicksilver , the feminine power , which helps sulphur to rid
itself of its undesirable features and to reveal its noble
aspect; this is the Tantric play of the feminine on the
masculine which wakens  its active power . Sulphur also
symbolizes the rigid, rational and theoretical outlook of
knowledge which is sterile until dissolved by the
intuitional, instinctive feminine understanding symbolized
by quicksilver . In Hinduism, Purusha , the male,  the
contemplative intelligenc e, is ‘the great impotent one’ who
needs Prakriti , the female, generativ e, intuitional, to
activate it. A similar interaction is found in Buddhism. Though the western religious-philosophical thought,
based largely on Aristot elian dualism, asserted that the
two powers were initially in conﬂict, the yin-yang
symbolism of the East had no such dichotomy; the two
powers are held in harmonious tension, and though called
opposites they are, as Pu Cheng said, ‘incapable of mutual
negation.’ The dualism of Heaven and Earth was resolved
into the unity of the Parent, spoken of as the Father-and-
Mother of all creatures. In a Great Declaration , at the
beginning of the Chou Dynasty (1122 BC), it was stated:
‘The Heavens are repre sentatives of divine majesty, theEarth is representative of divine care: the former teaches
paternal authority , the latter the more-than-maternal love.’
Confucius, in the Li Chi, said: ‘Man is the product of the
attributes of Heaven and Earth by the interactions of the
dual forces of Nature, the union of the animal and
intelligent souls.’ Humanity is frequently spoken of as ‘a
miniature Heaven and Earth,’ a product of the powers of
yin and yang , a microcosm which is a reﬂection of the
macrocosm. Like Heaven and Earth, the two great powers
cannot be separated; one implies the other , they cannot be
thought of in total separation. The two opposites, contrary
but complementary , bind and neutralize each other
without a diminution of either; together they produce
perfection, which is gold in alchemical terms and in
classical Taoism ‘the Return to the Source,’ union with the
Tao. The fact that each sex is only half accounts for the
universally expressed need, often amounting to an acute
longing, to ﬁnd the complementary partner , the ‘other
half,’ a comp letion, the regaining on the personal  level of
union and wholeness. From the alchemical aspect, the
union is spiritual rather than sexual, it is metaphysical in
signiﬁcance, transcendin g the personal and emotional
state and unifying on a higher level. Each individual has
also the two powers within; in the unregenerate state of
the base metal they are in conﬂict and are in the position
of a kingdom divided against itself . In this disharmony the
yin and yang  are out of balance, not only in the individual
but in the world in general, which is, naturally , only as
good as the individuals of which it is composed. The old,
base nature must die and much of alchemical symbolism
deals with death; everything must die before it can be
renewed, a theme found in all initiatory traditions. In
alchemy , the minerals die in the stove or athanor , to be
fused and ultimately united; this is also the ‘marriage’ ofthe metals and marriage  is also associated with death in
dying to the old life in which each partner ‘gives up’ to the
other . In the fusion of sulphur and quicksilver each loses
its individua l identity to take on the united character of
both. But death is always  a reunion, body to earth, soul to
the realm of spirit; it is a transmutation and
transformation. Continuing the marriage symbolism, Burckhardt writes:
‘Man and woman, who in natural fashion incarnate  the two
poles of the alchemical work, sulphur and quicksilver , can
by their mutual love—when this is spiritually heightened
and internalized—develop  the cosmic power , or power of
the soul which operates  the alchemical dissolu tion and
coagulation;’ or, again as Artephius wrote: ‘They will
embrace in such a way that never again will they be
separable one from another . Then indeed will the spirit
unite with the body in perfect harmony , so that together
they become an immortal thing.’ The male-female
symbolism employed is merely a support for the esoteric
understanding of what is involved in the work: the
supreme aim being that of unity and return to primordial
perfection. OceanofPDF .com– 17 –
THE REAL ALCHEMY
That the real alchemy was concerned with the
metaphysical, mystical and religious life is made
abundantly clear in the writings of leading alchemists of
both East and West who state categorically: ‘Our gold is
not of this world.’ All the exhortations to right conduct,
purity and religious observances show that the Work was,
for the true alchemist, a spiritual matter . Writing on yoga and alchemy and discussing the legends
and references in Tantris m, Eliade says: ‘We have here no
pre-chemistry , no science in embryo, but a spiritual
technique, which, while operating on “matter ,” sought ﬁrst
of all to “perfect the spirit,” to bring about deliverance and
autonomy . . . gold is the one perfect solar metal and
hence its symbolism meets the symbolism of Spirit, of
spiritual freedom.’ This is conﬁrmed by John Blofeld who,
travelling in pre-Commu nist China and visiting Buddhist
and Taoist monasteries, received from a Taoist abbot the
statement:
Ours is not a religion but a way to the Way . . . our
yogas and meditation begin with the generating of
tranquillity , that in the stillness of our hearts we may
apprehend the Tao within, around, above and below
us. We seek to nourish our vitality and prolong our
lives in order to gain more time for the reﬁnement of
spirit needed for attaini ng the higher goals. Then
comes the compounding of the Golden Pill which
some misguided persons have sought to produce by
alchemical processes, whereas in truth it can becompounded only within the body and is theref ore
known esoter ically as the immortal foetus. We Taoists
are generally  agreed that its creation is the means to
immortality , but at this point paths diverge, some
seek aeon-long immortality , the attainment of a god-
like state, as an end in itself; others strive to Return
to the Source, an apotheosis identical with the
attainment of Nirvana, though conceptions of the
inconceivable naturally diﬀer . In the spiritual alchemy even the pursuit of longevity
had its origins in the idea that the longer the physical life,
the longer the time for attaining spiritual transformation
into the True Man and becoming one with the Tao; to this
end the alchemist had to transmute the base metal of the
physical desires into the pure gold of the spiritual. From
the Shen Hsien Chuan  comes the instruction: ‘If you are
bent on attaining immortality , begin by getting rid of the
body-spirits. As soon as they are gone you will gain ﬁxity
of will-power and freedom from passion and desire.’
Waley, in his ‘Notes on Chinese Alchemy’ dismisses the
theory that alchemy was a pre-chemistry and pithily
expresses it as: ‘Alchemy , on the rare occasions when it
has been made the subject of reasonable enquiry , has
usually been  studied as part of what one may call the pre-
history of science. But if, to use a favourite phrase , we are
to see in alchemy merely  “the cradle of chemistry ,” are we
not likely , whatever its initial charm, to lose patience with
an infancy protracted through some ﬁfteen centur ies?’ The
true alchemy was, in fact, an applied science  or art
(spoken of as either by its adherents) in the control of the
elements aﬀecting life and Nature and humanity in a
spiritual development; it was called, as Taylor puts it, ‘a
chemistry of the spirit.’ ‘Let alchemy be called a
“chemistry of the spirit” and it will be possible to
understand its many aspects and the conﬂicting views ofthose who have not grasped its essential featur es.’ If it
were only gold-or-pill making and early science, it is
remarkable that as Professor Sivin points out, ‘there were
many treatises which give no directions for making
anything,’ and if it were merely the search for gold, why
the universal reference to ‘our gold’ as being something
distinct from the common gold? The search for gold was the search for wisdom, for the
knowledge of the necessary transformat ion of
unregenerate humanity into the Sage or integrate d being,
expressed as ‘the opaque becomes luminous.’ Roger Bacon
said that ‘Nature has always had for an end and tries
incessantly to reach perfection, that is gold.’ In Vedic
tradition ‘gold is immortality;’ that is, the incorruptible
spirit, the illuminated being. The colouring, or tincture,
represents the colouring  of the unregenerate or base
nature with the divine. In Europe Fludd said: ‘Be ye
transmuted from mortal to living philosophers' stones . . . Indeed, every pious and righteous man is a spiritual
alchemist . . . who . . . understands not only how to
distinguish but with the ﬁre of the divine Spirit to separate
the false from the true . . . for only this way is unclean lead
turned to gold.’ The medieval ‘Rosarium’ says: ‘Our gold is
not the common gold’ and ‘the philosopher is not the
master of the stone but rather its minister .’ Then yet
again, ‘Our gold is not in any way the gold of the
multitude, but is the living gold . . . it is wisdom.’
The real alchemy was the search for wisdom; its work
was esoteric and on the individual, not in the laboratory , or
rather the body is the laboratory in which the knowledge
of the Self is gained. That the quest was spiritual, not
material, is attested by alchemy's religious aﬀiliations, to
Taoism, in particular , in the East; there are also constant
references to it in Hinduism and Buddhism and strong
associations in the Babylonian and Chaldean civilizations,the Egyptian-Greek hermeticism and, later, in Christianity
and Islam. Alchemy is also essentially mystical since its
aim is union, the end of duality and absorption in the
Absolute. Alchemical terms are used throughout for
spiritual processes; the conjunctio  is the same as the
mystic's union with the One, the loss of individual identity
with the limitations of the ego dissolved in the perfect
whole, and again the base metal, transmuted by
puriﬁcation and reﬁning, becomes the gold of perfection,
of wisdom. The alchemist Ali-pili wrote:
The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know
himself . . . therefore let the high enquirers and
searchers into the deep mysteries of nature ﬁrst
learn to know  what they have in themselves, and by
the divine power within them let them ﬁrst heal
themselves and transmute their souls . . . if that
which thou seekest thou ﬁndest not within thee thou
will never ﬁnd it without thee . . . He who desires the
primacy among students of nature will nowhere ﬁnd
a greater or better ﬁeld of study than himself . Therefore will I from  certain true experie nce
proclaim: ‘Oh man, know thyself , in thee is hid the
treasure of treasures.’
The study of man and Nature cannot be separated. As
the alchemis t worked on Nature so he could not avoid
working on himself . As Hopkins says: ‘To Aristotle organic
nature was like man. But to the alchemist all nature was
like man; the spiritual overshadowing the material, and
reproduction, the greatest of all mysteries, was possible
only when the body of the metal was endowed with excess
of the spiritual.’ Sendivogius uses the symbolism of the
mirror: ‘The Sage sees Heaven reﬂected in Nature as in a
mirror; and he pursues this Art not for the sake of gold or
silver , but for the love of knowledge which it reveals.’ Themicrocosm and macrocosm reﬂect each other but are one,
there is no diﬀerence between humanity and the cosmos. ‘The natural world is only an image and material copy of a
heavenly and spiritual pattern; that is, the very existence
of this world is based upon the reality of its celestial
archetype.’ Again, this is the hermetic ‘As above, so below ,’
or, ‘In truth, certainly and without doubt, whatever is
below is like that which is above, and whatever is above is
like that which is below.’ This enunciates the law of
correspondences: that all creation is, in fact, a reﬂection;
the phenomenal reﬂects the spiritual. The hermetic
tradition also says that ‘The work . . . is to be found within
you and is enduring: you will always have it present,
wherever you are, on land or on sea.’
Meditation was an important factor in Chinese alchemy
in developing the ‘inner elixir ,’ and the sealed vase was the
isolated mountain retreat , hermitage, or meditatio n room,
where knowledge of the inner self was attained, where
transformation took place and from which the new man
was born; hence the constant reference to the foetus or
the seed as also symbolically the birth of this new being. There is pre-natal growt h in the seclusion of the closed
room or retreat, the womb, before the new being emerges
from darkness to light, from dependence to indepe ndence,
into the life of the spirit . A modern Taoist Master called
this foetus ‘an incorporeal manifestation of the union of
spirit with vitality ,’ and a Japanese professor , visiting the
Taoist White Cloud monastery in the 1940s, found the
ancient values still alive:
Little signiﬁcance was attached to the artiﬁcial, so-
called cultur al, activities . Taking pride in gathering
scraps of knowledge, conducting surveys, doing
research—those may be eﬀorts to ﬁnd some
satisfaction or self-understanding in the society of
men, but they end, as does life, like the ﬂaring out ofa candle. It is better to be embraced in the vastness
of Nature, to melt into it. Then there is no wasted
resistance to life, no useless conﬂagration. When
one's breath ing is in harmony with nature, one
becomes identical with its very life-ﬂow . Alchemists of both East and West state categorically that
Nature is their guide and exemplar , that they are working
with her and following her laws. In alchemy they may be
hastening some of her processes, but never working
against her. As a science alchemy aimed at the
understanding of the properties and formations of mineral
substances; as a spiritual art or philosophy it was
concerned with the mysteries of life and the cosmos. It had
a cosm ological relationship with every aspect  of life,
human, anim al, plant and mineral. One could not go wrong
in following Nature. As the Golden Tract says: ‘Nature
seeks and demands the gradual attainment of perfection,
and a general approximation to the highest standard of
purity and excellence.’
The cult of longevity was not considered to be going
against living  in accord with Nature since she had long-
lived creatur es whose life span greatly outdid that of the
human being ; in any case, it would be Nature herself who
provided the life-giving plants and substances; the
individual had only to ﬁnd and use them. Moreover , the
aim of a long life for the true alchemist was a spiritual one,
the gaining of time in the body for the development of the
spirit. Eliade writes that ‘Alchemy represents the projection of
a drama, at once cosmic and spiritual, in laboratory terms. The aim of the opus magnum  was at once the freeing of
the human soul and the healing of the cosmos.’ In ancient
India the Master Nagarg una made it clear that the work
was a spiritual technique when he said: ‘The mercurial
system must not be looked upon as a simple eulogy ofmetal, for it is our means . . . of attaining the supreme
goal, which is deliverance;’ and in an ancient Chinese text
he is also reported as answering the question: ‘It is
believed that it is possible to make gold from stones; is
that not absurd?’ by saying ‘It is perfectly possible in the
spiritual sense.’
The whole work of alchemy is summed up in the phrase
‘To make of the body a spirit and of the spirit a body;’ or,
variously expressed, it is ‘the spiritualization of the body
and the embodiment of the spirit;’ or, again, it is ‘to
spiritualize matter and materialize spirit.’ In the hermetic
tradition this is enunciated as ‘We receive not only a new
soul with this regeneration but also a new body . . . it is
more spiritual than the air, akin to the rays of the Sun
which penetrates all bodies, and as diﬀerent from  the old
body as the resplendent Sun is from the dark earth.’
The goal of the Taoist alchemist-mystic  was
transformation, or perhaps more correctly , transﬁ guration
of the whole  body until it ceases to ‘be’ and is absorbed
into and becomes the Tao. The alchemist becomes the
True Man, returning to the Source—the Taoist phrase for
universal Oneness. OceanofPDF .comNOTES
Chapter One:
1. Autobiography , tr. J. R. W are. Chapter T wo:
1. Concerning the Nature of Things. 2. From a Rosicrucian Manual, Kompass der W eisen
(1782). Chapter Six:
1. From the Ts'n T'ung Ch'i  of W ei Po-yang, tr . Wu and
Davis, Isis. Vol. XVIII (1932). 2. Speculum Alkionia Minus . 3. Opus Major . Chapter Seven:
1. Ko Hung, Pao P'u Tzu. XVI. 2. Needham, Science and Civilization in China , Vol. V.
3. Ko Hung, Pao P'u Tzu. Chapter Nine:
1. From the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i. OceanofPDF .comB I B L I O G R A P H Y
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Livres, ou la clef du secret des secrets  (Paris, 1975). Ware, J . R. (tr .) Alchemy , Medicine, Religion in the China
of AD 320 (The Nei P'ien  of Ko Hung [P ao Pu Tzu])
(MIT Press, 1966). Warner , E. T . C. Myths and Legends of China  (Harrap,
1922). Welch, H. and Seidel, A. (ed.) Facets of T aoism  (Yale
University Press, 1979). Wing-tsit Chan. A Source Book of Chinese Philosophy
(Princeton University Press, 1963). OceanofPDF .comI N D E X
Aaron, 6
Abode of Song, 30
aconite, 46
acupuncture, 50
Africa, 63, 66
Albertus Magnus, 37, 79, 108, 133, 134
Alchemical Citadel, 134
Alexander the Great, 8
Alexandrian School, 8
Alipili, 145
alloys, 59–60
Alphidius, 85, 134
aluminium, 60
Amerindian, 65
Amida Buddha, 32
anaesthetics, 50
An Ch'i Sheng, 34
animals, 19–20, 31, 34, 54–55, 72, 79, 86–87, 93, 100,
103, 105, 109, 116
anvil, 67
aphrodisiacs, 49, 102
Aquinas, Thomas, 37
Arabi, ibn, 128
Arabic alchemy , 42, 128
Arhats, 126
Aristotle, 81, 82, 134, 145
arsenic, 46, 60, 132
Artephius, 141
artiﬁcial gold, 58–60asparagus, 54
astrological symbols, 73
astrology , 7, 8, 35, 40, 71–80, 85, 105, 139
astronomy , 2, 50
athanor , 67, 69, 141
Attis, 25
automatic writing, 116, 119
axis mundi , 116
Azazel, 66
Babylonian alchemy , 8, 32, 40, 63, 134, 145
Bacon, Roger , 49, 79, 108, 134, 144
barley water , 59
Bayeux T apestry , 74
bellows, 67, 125
Bellows Blowers, 9, 11, 38, 114
black ( nigredo ), 65
Blofeld, John, 13, 143
body of glory , 104
Boehme, 9
Boethius, 75
Book of Lieh Tzu, The , 102
Book of Medicines, The , 19
botany , 2, 50
brain, 51, 105
brass, 59–60
bronze, 55, 59
Buddha, 105, 116
Buddhism, 1, 32, 104, 105, 126, 128, 140, 145
Budge, A. E.W ., 107
buﬀalo, 16, 18, 83, 102
Buﬀon, 135
Burckhardt, Titus, 43, 124, 139, 141burning of the books, the, 34
Bushel, The, 74–75
butterﬂy , 54
Byzantine alchemy , 8, 107
caduceus, 125
cassia, 54
cauldron, 6, 10, 41, 67, 100, 124–125
cavity of the spirit, 100–101
celestial wife, 138
cereals, 40, 77, 102
chakras, 101
Chaldean alchemy , 73, 134–135
Chang Chung-yuan, 95
Chang K uo, 27
Chan Tzu-liang, 47
Chao Ti (Emperor) 18
charcoal burners, 11, 37
chemistry , 11, 50, 64, 89, 135, 143–144
Cheng W ei, 78
Cheng Y in, 3
ch'i, 79, 81, 84, 89–94, 116, 119, 132, 137
Chia I, 138
chih, 53, 55
Ch'ih Fu, 107
Chou Tun-i, 86
Christianity , 134, 145
Chuang Tzu, 1, 14, 23–24, 56, 77, 96, 99, 103, 128–129
Chu Hsi, 103
Chung-li Ch'uan, 27, 126
Ch'u Y uan, 138
Cinderella, 30cinnabar , 15, 23, 38, 42, 45, 53, 55, 56, 58, 61–62, 67,
104, 116, 123, 13, 135, 138
cinnamon, 54
cock, 39, 62, 128
comets, 71, 74
Confucian Classics, 34
Confucianism, 2, 92, 128
conjunctio , 125, 140, 145
Contraries, The, 137
Coomaraswamy , A. K., 82
copper , 55, 60–61, 73, 84, 86, 132
corpse-free hsien , 4, 17
crane, 27–30, 39, 54, 127
creation craftsmen, 66
cyclic viewpoint, 77, 80, 84–88, 92, 101, 103, 137
cypress, 53
dead air , 99
de Alchemica , 133–134
de Groot, 92, 137
de Medici, Catherine, 108
Deity of the Stove, The, 67–68
Democritus, pseudo, 125
dew, 4, 20, 53, 102
dew mirror , 117
diamond body , 104
digitalis, 46
Dionysos, 25
Dipper , The, 74
Divine Spring, The, 31
dog, 103
dragon, 5, 18, 19, 28, 39, 83, 86, 103, 123, 125, 127,
135dyeing, 50
Dying God, 25
Earth August T ext, The, 116
earthly immortal ( ti hsien ), 17, 98
Earth Mother , 42, 63–65, 124–125
earthquakes, 71
eclipses, 71–72, 74
Edward the Confessor , 74
egg, 39, 42, 69, 124, 132
Egyptian alchemy , 6, 8, 56, 86, 107, 113, 134, 139, 145
Eight Great P owers, The, 105
Eight Immortals or Genii, The, 18, 25–26
Eight Precious Things, The, 38
electroplating, 60
elements, 81–88
Eliade, Mircca, 63, 64, 95, 104, 129, 143, 147
Elixir of Immortality , 3, 7, 9, 20, 35, 135
Elysian Fields, 30
embryo, see foetus
Emerald T ablet, The, 85, 128, 139
Empedocles, 81
Enoch, 20
ether , 83
evergreens, 54
evil eye, 40
exorcism, 69, 114, 116
fairy world, 21, 43
Fang-chan, 34
fate, 22, 40, 73, 75, 78, 80, 119
feather , 28, 126
feng-shui , 119festivals, 64
ﬁeld of the elixir , 100
ﬁre and water , 4, 81, 100, 124, 125
First Ancestor , The, 65
ﬁve, 81, 128
Five Animal Antics, The, 103
Five Colours, The, 85, 128
Five Elements, The, 9, 80, 81–88, 90, 123
Five P owers, The, 85, 90
Flamel, Nicholas, 140
ﬂight, 109, 126–127
Fludd, 8, 144
foetus/embryo, 63, 91, 98, 99, 104, 124, 138, 139, 143,
146
Fo-ti Ting, 53
Four Seasons, The, 79, 81, 90
Four Spiritually Endowed Creatures, The, 127
freezing spirit, 99
Fu-hsi, 87
fungi, 13, 54
Fung yu-lan, 89
furnace, 10, 15, 21, 60, 63, 67, 98, 115, 138
Furnace Master , 115
gate of the tail, 100
Geber , 79
gelsemium root, 46
Genghis Khan, 16, 66
geomancers, 119
ghosts, 108, 112–116, 121
Giles, L, 13
glazing, 50
Gnostics, 56gold, 1–4, 8–12, 15, 18–20, 32–34, 37, 39–43, 45–46,
49, 53, 55–63, 67, 72–73, 77–78, 81, 83, 86, 96, 101,
109, 116, 119, 123, 125, 129, 132, 138, 141, 143–147
Golden Flower , The, 100, 101
Golden Rule, The, 15
Golden Tract, The, 147
grafting (surgical), 51
Grand Astrologer , 71, 79
Great Declaration, The, 140
Great Extremes, The, 137
Great Medicines, 55, 58
Great Monad, The, 27
Great Mother , The, 8, 64
Great Plan, The, 88
Great Regulators, The, 137
Great Spirit, The, 111
Great Treasure, The, 78
Great Ultimate, The, 103, 138
Great W all, The, 34
Greek alchemy , 8, 32, 59, 75, 86, 91, 134, 145
Green Isle, The, 30
Gretna Green, 67
gunpowder , 50
hammer , 37, 67
Han Hsiang Tzu, 30
Han Y ü, 30
haoma , 41
harmlessness, 55
Harrison, R., 80
head gate, 101
heart, 69, 100
heart transplant, 51hearth, 66
heat, 41, 52, 64, 100
heavenly , or celestial, immortal, ( t'ien hsien ), 17
Hebrew , 66, 91, 134
hemp, 46, 50
hen, 39
Henry III, 108
herbalism, 50
Hermann of Dalmatia, 72–73
Hermes, Hermetic tradition, 6, 8, 56, 64, 73, 82, 85,
113, 124, 28, 134, 138, 145, 146, 147
Hinduism, 101, 111, 113, 140, 145
Ho Hsien K u, 30
Holmyard, E. J ., 123
Hopkins, A. J ., 145
horoscopes, 72, 73, 78
Horus, 6
hsi, 115, 139
hsien , 4–5, 12, 13–22, 25, 30, 32–33, 37, 41, 45, 50, 53,
55, 58–59, 61–62, 77, 79, 98, 102–103, 105, 107–108,
111, 114–116, 119, 126–127, 133
hsien tan , 37
Hsiung Shih-Ii, 90
Hsi W ang Mu, Queen of Heaven, 32
Hsuan T sung, (Emperor), 46
Hsü Fu or Hsü She, 34, 35
Huai-nan Tzu, 20
Huang An, 23
Huang-fu Lung, 102
Huo T'o, 51, 103
hun soul, 41, 75, 76, 77
Hung F an, (The Grand Plan), 80
hydrocotya asiatica minor , 53I Ching, 9, 55, 71, 74, 87, 88, 116, 124
incense, 18, 115, 116
Indian alchemy , 7, 8, 24, 41, 65, 72, 95, 96, 101, 104,
107, 126
initiation, 65, 104, 127
Inner Classics, The, 5
iron, 37, 59, 66, 73, 83, 109, 132
Isis, 6, 113, 139
Islam, 145
Isles of the Blessed, 16, 30
Isles of the Immortals, 33, 35, 53, 102
Israelites, 32
jade, 4, 10, 14, 18, 20, 26, 27, 32, 34, 43, 45, 53, 55,
56, 59, 69, 77, 102
jade body , 104
Jade Emperor , 77
Japanese Islands, 35
Johnson, O . S., 24
Jung, C ., 7, 38, 126
juniper , 55
Jupiter , 73, 80, 83
Kao T sung, 8
karma yoga , 96
Khunrath, H., 134
Kiangsi, 55
King, 42, 126
knot-grass, 54
Ko Hung, 2, 4, 10, 13, 15–16, 20, 22, 25, 38, 40, 43,
45–46, 51, 53, 58–61, 75, 79, 89, 99, 105, 111, 121,
133, 135
kolo nuts, 53
Kou-i Fu-jen, 18Kuan Y in-hsi, Master of the P ass, 28
kuas (pa kua) , 74, 87, 120
kundalini , 87, 101
Kung-yüan, 22
ky-lin, 17
ladder , 127
Lady of T ai, The, 51, 77
laminar , 39
Lan T s'ai-ho, 30
Lao Tzu, 1, 18, 24, 28, 117
lead, 11, 19, 46, 62, 63, 73, 81, 86, 100, 104, 132, 135,
145
le Texte d'Alchymie , 139
li, 92
liber Secretorium , 134
Li Chi, 140
Li-chung, 53
lily, 42
linear viewpoint, 77
Li Po, 14, 18
Li T'ieh-kuei, Li with the staﬀ , 28
litharge, 59
Liu An, 18–20, 132
Liu Hsiang, 2
Liu K en, 111
live air , 99
lotus, 96
Lü Shang, 18
Lü Tzu, 125
Lü Yen or Lü Tung-pin, 28
magic, magicians, 1, 6, 8, 21, 22, 28, 35, 43, 46, 54,
55, 62, 64, 66–67, 76, 78–79, 86–87, 92, 105, 107–121,128, 131, 138, 139
Magic Quintet, The, 86
malachite, 39
Manuals of the Immortals, The, 4
Ma Hsiang, 37
Mao Nü, 102
Mars, 73, 80, 83, 139
Ma Shih Huang, 18
masonry , 12, 82
Maspero, 77
Massai, 66
Master Nagarguna, The, 147
Master Ning, The, 47
meadowsweet, 53
meat, 20, 40, 54, 77, 102
medicines, 2, 3, 5, 14, 21, 34, 37, 40, 45–52, 53, 55, 69,
99, 101, 135
Mencius, 89
mercuric sulphide, 51, 61
Mercury , 72, 73, 80, 83, 84
mercury , 4, 6, 59, 61, 84, 86, 100, 104, 125, 35, 138,
139
Mesopotamia, 25
messiahs, 25
metempsychosis, 25
Mexicans, 41
mica, 30, 38, 39
midwife, alchemist as, 42, 63–70, 124
Milky W ay, 74
miner , 6, 65
mirror , 4, 109, 117, 128–129, 146
Moires, 75
Mongolia, 66Moon, 8, 38, 56, 80, 110
mortal gate, 101
Moses, 6
Mo Ti, 47
Mountains of the Immortals, The, 33
mushroom, 20, 41, 45, 54
musk, 45
Muslim, 24
name, power of , 113
Narayanasvamin, 8
Nature, 3, 9, 11, 14, 25, 31, 63, 64, 74, 81, 84, 87–88,
92–93, 96, 107, 114, 119, 128, 134, 136–137, 140, 144–
147
Needham, J ., 4, 38, 51, 60, 72, 84, 88, 107
nei p'ien , 2
nei tan , 10, 37, 135
Newton, 107
nickel, 59–60
nine, 6, 42, 45, 79
Nirvana, 32, 143
Norns, 75
Northernland, 30
North P ole, 34
Odin, 25
old wife, 69
Olympiodoros, 107
Olympus, 73
ore of cobalt, 38
orpiment, 38
Osiris, 25, 113, 139
Ourobor-os, 93pak tong , 60
Palace of the Immortals, The, 32–33
Pallis, Marco, 81
Pao P'u Tzu , The, 2, 4, 10, 20, 25, 38, 61
Paracelsus, 10
Paradise, 30, 32, 34, 53
Patanjali, 96
peach of immortality , 27, 34
pearls, 19, 32, 34, 39, 59
P'eng-lai , 15, 34, 35
Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu, 16
perfumes, 40, 50, 115
Persians, 8, 41
peyotl, 41
Philosophers' Stone or Egg, 37, 42, 61, 101, 124, 144
phoenix, 28, 65, 91, 127–128
physiognomy , 119
Pied Piper , 20
pine, 30, 53, 54, 77, 83, 102
planetarium, 79
planets, 73–75, 79–80, 83, 85–89, 119
Plato, 134
pneuma , 91
Pole Star , 74
Popes, 108
Po Sea, 33–34
p'o soul, 75–77
possession, 45, 114, 127
prakriti , 140
prana , 91
prima materia , 63, 64, 66, 81, 86, 124, 125
Prometheus, 65
Pu Cheng, 140puﬀers, 11
Pure Land, 32
purusha , 140
Queen, 32, 42
quicksilver , 8, 34, 39, 45, 61, 62, 73, 78, 91, 125, 132,
137–141
quintessence, 82
Quintet, The Magic, 86
raspberry juice, 59
realgar , 38, 39, 83, 135
red, 62
red and white, 42
Returned Medicine or Elixir , 41–42
Return to the Source, The, 141, 143
rhinoceros horn, 45, 49
Rig V eda, 41, 126
Rishis , 126
Rosarium, The , 145
Rosicrucianism, 12, 82
ruah, 91
sacriﬁce, 15, 63, 67–69, 79, 86, 109
Sages, 23, 34, 51, 57, 77, 778, 80, 91, 98, 102, 103,
105, 129, 144, 146
salt, 38, 83, 91, 102
saltpetre, 31, 61
samhadi , 100
Satipatthana Sutra, The , 14
satori , 100
Saturn, 73, 80, 83
Scandinavia, 75
Secret of the Golden Flower , The , 119Sendivogius, 146
Senior , 42
sesame, 54
Set, 113
sex symbolism, 67
shakti , 101
Shamanism, 1, 105, 108, 126, 138
Shangri-la , 33
Shao Chün, 14–15
Shen Hsien Chuan, 144
shen tan , 37
Shih Huang Ti (Emperor) 16, 18, 34, 35
Shou (Emperor), 139
Shu Ching, The  (Classical History), 80, 88
Siberia, 55
siddhi  powers, 43, 98, 101
silver , 3, 4, 8, 19, 27, 32–34, 42, 56, 59–61, 73, 78, 86,
119, 132, 138, 146
sister ( soror mystica ), 40, 139
Siva, 101
Sivin, Nathan, 89, 144
smith, 64–67
Sol and Luna , 8
solve et coagula , 91, 104
soma , 41
sorceress ( wu), 114
soul, 9, 10, 12, 32, 37, 41, 43, 45, 63, 69, 75–78, 95–96,
99, 102, 104, 124–128, 135, 138, 140, 141, 145, 147
soya bean, 50
Ssu-ma Chi Chu, 47
Ssu-ma Ch'ien, 33, 34, 71, 73
stars, 32, 40, 73–75, 78–80, 85, 138
stove, 39, 63, 67–69, 100, 111, 141 (God of the), 111stupa , 82–83
sulphur , 6, 8, 38, 39, 45, 56, 61, 91, 125, 137–141
Sun, 8, 56, 80, 147
Sun Ssu-mo, 43, 46
Su Tung P o, 135
swallow , 128
swan, 39, 99
sword method, 22
sword swallowing, 115, 121
Synesius, 125, 138
Syrian, 134
Szechuan, 61
T'ai Chi , 103, 138
T'ai Ch'i Chuan , 103
T'ai I Chin Hua T sung Chih , The, 124
Tan Ching , 104
Tantrism, 24, 100, 101, 104, 105, 139, 140, 143
Tanyang copper , 60
Tao, 5, 9–11, 13, 24, 27, 32, 75, 88, 89, 92, 96, 97, 121,
141, 143, 144, 148
Tao chia , 1
Tao Chiao , 1
T'ao Hung-ching, 27, 55, 79
Taoism, 1, 2, 5, 9–11, 14, 23, 24, 32, 64, 69, 71, 92, 95,
101, 104, 105, 107, 108, 114, 126, 128, 141, 145
Taoist Canon, 124
Tao Tê Ching , The, 28, 90, 99
Taylor , 144
Ten Celestial Stems, The, 84, 85
Ten Excesses, The, 97
Ten Thousand Things, The, 91, 138
Theravadin Buddhism, 14thistles, 53, 54
Thoth, 6, 8, 113
Three Pure Ones, The, 1
Thunder Gods, 65, 67
ti, 138
Tibet, 33, 65, 87–88
t'ien, 138
tiger, 19, 83, 100, 103, 104, 117, 123, 135
tin, 59, 73
tortoise/turtle, 23, 39, 71, 87, 88, 109
torture of metals, 65
trigrams, 74, 87, 88, 124
Trismosin, Solomon, 37
True Man, The, 9–12, 23, 57–58, 75, 96, 101, 104, 124,
144, 148
Ts'an T'ung Ch'i, The , 2, 15, 40, 75, 77, 96, 133, 137,
138
Tsou Y en, 2, 83
Tung chung-shu, 80, 84
Tung-fang, 21
Tung Pin, 119
Turkistan, 24, 66
turn, 42
T'u Shu Chi Ch'eng, The , 18
Twelve T errestrial Branches, The, 72, 80, 85, 87, 121
unicorn, 16, 73
Valentinus, Basil, 16
Vaughan, Thomas, 9
Vedas, 41, 111, 126
Venus, 72, 73, 80, 83, 84, 139
vermilion (cinnabar), 61
vermilion bird (phoenix), 65, 83, 127vermilion grass wine, 59
vinegar , 39, 62
vitriol, 84
Void, The, 69, 77
von Eschenbach, W olfram, 127
Waley, A., 8, 9, 15, 144
Wang Chih, 21
Wang Hsuan-ts'e, 7
water and ﬁre, 62, 81, 105, 125
water of life, 138
wei p'ien , 2
Wei Po-yang, 2, 4, 47–48
wei tan , 10, 37, 135
White Cloud Monastery , 146
white light, 111
White-stone, Mr ., 17
Work, The, 9, 62, 132, 143
wu (sorceress), 114
Wu P'u, 103
Wu Ti (Emperor), 16, 35
Wu Tse Tien (Empress), 27
wu-wei , 89, 92
Yang Hsiung, 80
yang tan , 95
Yangtze River , 20
Yao (Emperor), 139
yellow , 56
Yellow Emperor (Huang Ti), 1, 4, 6, 15, 18, 32, 40, 95,
107, 133, 139
Yellow Springs, The, 32
yellow and white, 60, 61
Ying Chou, 34, 102yin tan , 95
yin-yang , 6, 9, 77, 80, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 100–103,
105, 120, 125, 128, 132, 137, 140, 141
yoga, 54, 77, 87, 91, 95–106, 114, 125, 143
Yu the Great (Emperor), 6, 30, 32
Yü Tzu, 18
zinc, 59–60
Zodiac, 87, 139
zoology , 2, 50
Zosimus, 79, 139
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_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:

        As Ko
Hung said, ‘if we can be so confounded by common plants,
how can we expect to comprehend arcane, recondite
prescriptions. ’ This complaint was echoed centuries later
in Europe by the French metallurgist Buﬀon, who said that
in spite of reading and studying all the books on alchemy
they had oﬀered him ‘nothing but obscurities and
unintelligible processes. ’
The disadvan tage of esoteric knowledge and of keeping
it secret is that it can be lost with the passing of the adept
or custodian of that lore and the greater the knowledge or
powers of the adept, the less likely it is that these will be
handed down intact, it being unlikely that there would be a
disciple of his own stature to fall heir to it. When the esoteric is ignored or misunderstood,
exotericism takes over completely and proliferates in
outward form s; rituals and rites become meaning less and
are performed mechanically for their own sake, providing
spurious and superstitiou s conditions, which, having lost
their value, merely make the performer feel safe in the
protection of the congregation or crowd. The symbol then
becomes a sign, having lost its inner signiﬁcance. So, too,
do science and techno logy now concentrate on the
outward: machines, space travel, endless gadgets, instead
of the inner study of mankind which, if developed, wouldreveal inner powers capable of achieving the same eﬀects
without the disadvantage s of outward fragmenta tion and
the consequent breakdown of human relat ionships. Humanity displays a genius for technical knowledge and
mechanical invention, the exoteric, combined with an
almost complete failure of adjustment and develop ment in
the character and understanding of the inner, the esoteric,
world. The result is total frustration; conﬂict and war in
national life, and in the personal sphere nervous illness,
tension, imba lance and disharmony. The yin, esote ric, and
the yang, exoteric, here as everywhere, require each other
and must work together with Nature, not against  her; co-
operating, not ‘conquering. ’
OceanofPDF. com– 16 –
THE TWO GREAT POWERS
The primar y theme in creation mythology is the
emergence from the One of the Two, the creation of the
primordial pair and the beginning of duality. This male-
female symbolism is basic to alchemy, since the male
sulphur and the female quicksilver must work on and with
each other in balanced relationship. They are diﬀerent but
complementary, seeking out each other to bring about the
restoration of original wholeness. They must continually
stimulate each other. In alchemy everything is growing
and divided into sexes; the whole universe is a living being
working towards perfection. The eternal reactions of
humanity and Nature upon each other, the alternating yin
and yang  in growth and decline, the fusion of the objective
and subjective, all give rise to the cyclic powers of change
and produce the rhythms of the cosmos. Duality is the very essence of life in the manifest world;
the light and dark following earth's turning away from the
sun and returning to the new dawn. Its opposite is present
in every thing: little is harder or more solid than the ﬂint
that gives birth to the spark of ﬁre, the most unstable and
volatile of elements. In man and woman the two powers
manifest themselves in duality not only in sex, but in each
sex. Woman,  the yin, is negative externally and positive
internally; man, the yang, is positive externally and
negative internally: each incorporate both powers. De
Groot says: ‘The hard and soft match and contain one
another, yang  gives and yin receives. The male and female
need one another. It is this need that brings about
creation-procreation, so that the essential ch'i may haveits proper play. ’ He calls the two powers ‘the Great
Regulators of the cosmos which cause the phenomena of
creation, evolution and destruction. ’ They are also called
the Contraries, the Contending Dragons, the Great
Extremes. The breath, vital essence, or ch'i of the yin and
yang  is necessary  for creation of any form. The Ts'an T'ung
Ch'i says that ‘creation is dependent on the fusion of the
breath of yin and yang. if a thing does not contain yin
and yang  it repudiates its origin. Baby chicks do not come
from infertile eggs. ’
In alchemy yin is coagulation and yang  is solution; in
metals yin is quicksilver and silver  and yang  is Sulphur
and gold; yin the moon and earth, yang  the sun and
heavens, while in the work yin represents the esoteric and
yang  the exoteric. The processes of heating and cooling
are also related to yang  the sun and yin, the moon; they
bring about change by balancing each other with their
hardness and softness. In the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i the sun and
moon are said to reach out for one another; they are ‘the
two great luminaries which arose from the Great Ultimate,
the T'ai Chi. The yang  evolved as air and formed the
heavens, the yin coagulated to form the earth; particles
from the yang  formed the sun and yin particles the moon;
between them they begat the stars. Thus the yang  and yin
are also known as T'ien  and Ti, Heaven and Earth. ’
All metals were regarded  as the result of the union of
the two powers, male and female, sulphur and quicksilver,
spirit and soul; their union produced perfection: cinnabar. There is, however, a dual nature in quicksilver or mercury,
which is consonant with the two natures of the feminine
power, at once the nourisher of the embryo within the
womb, the hermetic vessel, the vase, etc. , and the death-
dealing disso lvent, so that it brings life or death according
to its particu lar situation. This lunar material is also the
‘water of life,’ which nourishes in the womb, and thedestructive humid dissolution of death; but that which
decomposes is also the medium for generation. As
Synesius said: ‘It is indeed that which decomposes and
that which makes to generate. ’
Metals were divided into the two sexes in smelting
processes and young men and maidens took part in the
rituals in which the ‘marr iage of the metals’ was involved. In a memorial ode, on Ch'u Yuan, by Chia I, c. 170 BC, we
read: ‘Heaven and Earth are like a smelting furnace, the
forces of natural change are the workmen, the yin and the
yang  are the fuel, and the Ten Thousand Things are the
metal. ’ Fire for the furnace was also produced by the
male-female interaction in the two ‘rubbing sticks’ which
brought forth  the vital spark; the ﬁre was latent in the yin
wood but was ignited by yang  action. In Shama nism, when working magic and
transformations the shaman has his ‘celestial wife’ who
acts as an instructor and protects and helps him. He is
also assisted  by a woman in the ‘ascent to heaven,’ or
some symbolically feminine object can take her place. It is
the female inﬂuence which not only helps him on his
journey but enables him to emerge victorious. Also, apart
from the wu and hsi female and male magici ans, Chinese
legend is full of magical and alchemical arts being taught
by a female spirit or goddess. Here, again, we are
reminded of the Yellow Emperor and his Three Immortal
Maids and the daughters of the Emperor Yao, who taught
the Emperor Shou (2258-2208) the magical art of ‘ﬂying
like a bird. ’  In the West the alchemist had his female
assistant, his soror mystica, to help him in his work. Pictures of the two working together appear frequently in
alchemical texts and the ores on which they worked were
produced by the union of the two powers of sulphur and
mercury. The Emerald Tablet states: ‘Sulphur, solar power,Mercury, lunar power, are the “father and mother” of the
alchemical embryo. ’
In western alchemy, in the imperfect state, the two
powers work  against each other, just as the contraries in
life can be in conﬂict and produce dire results until they
work together in unity. As Burckhardt says: ‘Here we have
the analogy of the love contest between man and woman;
it is the feminine fascination which dissolves the
“solidiﬁcation” of the virile nature and wakens its power. It
is suﬀicient to remark that it is this fascination, spiritually
canalized, which plays a certain part in Tantric methods. ’
This ‘love contest’ appears also in western astrology in
Venus and Mars, the Pair of Lovers, who complement each
other in their signs, the old symbol for Mars being the
circle surmounted by the cross 
, with Venus as the circle
above the cross 
, both being a perfect union of the male-
female powe rs. Burckhar dt points out that the alchemical
meaning of the planetary signs is identical with the
astrological: ‘Each planet possesses two adjacent
“houses,” a left and right, or feminine and masculine, with
the exception of the moon and sun which have only one
house each and rule respectively the feminine and
masculine halves of the Zodiac. ’ The concept of the two
great powers appears in many civilizations. In Egypt Isis
and Osiris are the lunar and solar powers that brought
forth all things, and the doctrine of the contrary powers,
the positive sulphur and negative quicksilver, working on
each other, is present in all alchemy. Zosimus writes of
their interd ependence: ‘Above celestial things, below
terrestrial things, by the male and the female the work is
accomplished,’ and in Le Texte d'Alchymie  we read:
‘Sulphur cannot be without Mercury, and Mercury cannot
be without this Sulphur which is intimately united and
incorporated with it, as the soul is with the body. ’ Nicholas
Flamel says: ‘In the second operation thou hast twoconjoined and married natures, the masculine and the
feminine; and they are fashioned in one sole body, which is
the androgyne of the ancients. ’ This is the conjunctio, the
union of sulphur and quicksilver, sun and moon, king and
queen; the two together combining the blind strength of
the male with the subtle intuition of the female, of action
and thought, method and wisdom, of all the opposites
which together bring mankind back to the primordial unity
and perfection. In the interplay between the two, sulphur eﬀects the
coagulation of the body in dryness and hardness,
masculine qualities, and therefore requires modiﬁcation
and puriﬁcation in the dissolving and softening qualities of
quicksilver, the feminine power, which helps sulphur to rid
itself of its undesirable features and to reveal its noble
aspect; this is the Tantric play of the feminine on the
masculine which wakens  its active power. Sulphur also
symbolizes the rigid, rational and theoretical outlook of
knowledge which is sterile until dissolved by the
intuitional, instinctive feminine understanding symbolized
by quicksilver. In Hinduism, Purusha, the male,  the
contemplative intelligenc e, is ‘the great impotent one’ who
needs Prakriti, the female, generativ e, intuitional, to
activate it. A similar interaction is found in Buddhism. Though the western religious-philosophical thought,
based largely on Aristot elian dualism, asserted that the
two powers were initially in conﬂict, the yin-yang
symbolism of the East had no such dichotomy; the two
powers are held in harmonious tension, and though called
opposites they are, as Pu Cheng said, ‘incapable of mutual
negation. ’ The dualism of Heaven and Earth was resolved
into the unity of the Parent, spoken of as the Father-and-
Mother of all creatures. In a Great Declaration, at the
beginning of the Chou Dynasty (1122 BC), it was stated:
‘The Heavens are repre sentatives of divine majesty, theEarth is representative of divine care: the former teaches
paternal authority, the latter the more-than-maternal love. ’
Confucius, in the Li Chi, said: ‘Man is the product of the
attributes of Heaven and Earth by the interactions of the
dual forces of Nature, the union of the animal and
intelligent souls. ’ Humanity is frequently spoken of as ‘a
miniature Heaven and Earth,’ a product of the powers of
yin and yang, a microcosm which is a reﬂection of the
macrocosm. Like Heaven and Earth, the two great powers
cannot be separated; one implies the other, they cannot be
thought of in total separation. The two opposites, contrary
but complementary, bind and neutralize each other
without a diminution of either; together they produce
perfection, which is gold in alchemical terms and in
classical Taoism ‘the Return to the Source,’ union with the
Tao. The fact that each sex is only half accounts for the
universally expressed need, often amounting to an acute
longing, to ﬁnd the complementary partner, the ‘other
half,’ a comp letion, the regaining on the personal  level of
union and wholeness. From the alchemical aspect, the
union is spiritual rather than sexual, it is metaphysical in
signiﬁcance, transcendin g the personal and emotional
state and unifying on a higher level. Each individual has
also the two powers within; in the unregenerate state of
the base metal they are in conﬂict and are in the position
of a kingdom divided against itself. In this disharmony the
yin and yang  are out of balance, not only in the individual
but in the world in general, which is, naturally, only as
good as the individuals of which it is composed. The old,
base nature must die and much of alchemical symbolism
deals with death; everything must die before it can be
renewed, a theme found in all initiatory traditions. In
alchemy, the minerals die in the stove or athanor, to be
fused and ultimately united; this is also the ‘marriage’ ofthe metals and marriage  is also associated with death in
dying to the old life in which each partner ‘gives up’ to the
other. In the fusion of sulphur and quicksilver each loses
its individua l identity to take on the united character of
both. But death is always  a reunion, body to earth, soul to
the realm of spirit; it is a transmutation and
transformation. Continuing the marriage symbolism, Burckhardt writes:
‘Man and woman, who in natural fashion incarnate  the two
poles of the alchemical work, sulphur and quicksilver, can
by their mutual love—when this is spiritually heightened
and internalized—develop  the cosmic power, or power of
the soul which operates  the alchemical dissolu tion and
coagulation;’ or, again as Artephius wrote: ‘They will
embrace in such a way that never again will they be
separable one from another. Then indeed will the spirit
unite with the body in perfect harmony, so that together
they become an immortal thing. ’ The male-female
symbolism employed is merely a support for the esoteric
understanding of what is involved in the work: the
supreme aim being that of unity and return to primordial
perfection. OceanofPDF. com– 17 –
THE REAL ALCHEMY
That the real alchemy was concerned with the
metaphysical, mystical and religious life is made
abundantly clear in the writings of leading alchemists of
both East and West who state categorically: ‘Our gold is
not of this world. ’ All the exhortations to right conduct,
purity and religious observances show that the Work was,
for the true alchemist, a spiritual matter. Writing on yoga and alchemy and discussing the legends
and references in Tantris m, Eliade says: ‘We have here no
pre-chemistry, no science in embryo, but a spiritual
technique, which, while operating on “matter,” sought ﬁrst
of all to “perfect the spirit,” to bring about deliverance and
autonomy. gold is the one perfect solar metal and
hence its symbolism meets the symbolism of Spirit, of
spiritual freedom. ’ This is conﬁrmed by John Blofeld who,
travelling in pre-Commu nist China and visiting Buddhist
and Taoist monasteries, received from a Taoist abbot the
statement:
Ours is not a religion but a way to the Way. our
yogas and meditation begin with the generating of
tranquillity, that in the stillness of our hearts we may
apprehend the Tao within, around, above and below
us. We seek to nourish our vitality and prolong our
lives in order to gain more time for the reﬁnement of
spirit needed for attaini ng the higher goals. Then
comes the compounding of the Golden Pill which
some misguided persons have sought to produce by
alchemical processes, whereas in truth it can becompounded only within the body and is theref ore
known esoter ically as the immortal foetus. We Taoists
are generally  agreed that its creation is the means to
immortality, but at this point paths diverge, some
seek aeon-long immortality, the attainment of a god-
like state, as an end in itself; others strive to Return
to the Source, an apotheosis identical with the
attainment of Nirvana, though conceptions of the
inconceivable naturally diﬀer. In the spiritual alchemy even the pursuit of longevity
had its origins in the idea that the longer the physical life,
the longer the time for attaining spiritual transformation
into the True Man and becoming one with the Tao; to this
end the alchemist had to transmute the base metal of the
physical desires into the pure gold of the spiritual. From
the Shen Hsien Chuan  comes the instruction: ‘If you are
bent on attaining immortality, begin by getting rid of the
body-spirits. As soon as they are gone you will gain ﬁxity
of will-power and freedom from passion and desire. ’
Waley, in his ‘Notes on Chinese Alchemy’ dismisses the
theory that alchemy was a pre-chemistry and pithily
expresses it as: ‘Alchemy, on the rare occasions when it
has been made the subject of reasonable enquiry, has
usually been  studied as part of what one may call the pre-
history of science. But if, to use a favourite phrase, we are
to see in alchemy merely  “the cradle of chemistry,” are we
not likely, whatever its initial charm, to lose patience with
an infancy protracted through some ﬁfteen centur ies. ’ The
true alchemy was, in fact, an applied science  or art
(spoken of as either by its adherents) in the control of the
elements aﬀecting life and Nature and humanity in a
spiritual development; it was called, as Taylor puts it, ‘a
chemistry of the spirit. ’ ‘Let alchemy be called a
“chemistry of the spirit” and it will be possible to
understand its many aspects and the conﬂicting views ofthose who have not grasped its essential featur es. ’ If it
were only gold-or-pill making and early science, it is
remarkable that as Professor Sivin points out, ‘there were
many treatises which give no directions for making
anything,’ and if it were merely the search for gold, why
the universal reference to ‘our gold’ as being something
distinct from the common gold. The search for gold was the search for wisdom, for the
knowledge of the necessary transformat ion of
unregenerate humanity into the Sage or integrate d being,
expressed as ‘the opaque becomes luminous. ’ Roger Bacon
said that ‘Nature has always had for an end and tries
incessantly to reach perfection, that is gold. ’ In Vedic
tradition ‘gold is immortality;’ that is, the incorruptible
spirit, the illuminated being. The colouring, or tincture,
represents the colouring  of the unregenerate or base
nature with the divine. In Europe Fludd said: ‘Be ye
transmuted from mortal to living philosophers' stones. Indeed, every pious and righteous man is a spiritual
alchemist. who. understands not only how to
distinguish but with the ﬁre of the divine Spirit to separate
the false from the true. for only this way is unclean lead
turned to gold. ’ The medieval ‘Rosarium’ says: ‘Our gold is
not the common gold’ and ‘the philosopher is not the
master of the stone but rather its minister. ’ Then yet
again, ‘Our gold is not in any way the gold of the
multitude, but is the living gold. it is wisdom. ’
The real alchemy was the search for wisdom; its work
was esoteric and on the individual, not in the laboratory, or
rather the body is the laboratory in which the knowledge
of the Self is gained. That the quest was spiritual, not
material, is attested by alchemy's religious aﬀiliations, to
Taoism, in particular, in the East; there are also constant
references to it in Hinduism and Buddhism and strong
associations in the Babylonian and Chaldean civilizations,the Egyptian-Greek hermeticism and, later, in Christianity
and Islam. Alchemy is also essentially mystical since its
aim is union, the end of duality and absorption in the
Absolute. Alchemical terms are used throughout for
spiritual processes; the conjunctio  is the same as the
mystic's union with the One, the loss of individual identity
with the limitations of the ego dissolved in the perfect
whole, and again the base metal, transmuted by
puriﬁcation and reﬁning, becomes the gold of perfection,
of wisdom. The alchemist Ali-pili wrote:
The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know
himself. therefore let the high enquirers and
searchers into the deep mysteries of nature ﬁrst
learn to know  what they have in themselves, and by
the divine power within them let them ﬁrst heal
themselves and transmute their souls. if that
which thou seekest thou ﬁndest not within thee thou
will never ﬁnd it without thee. He who desires the
primacy among students of nature will nowhere ﬁnd
a greater or better ﬁeld of study than himself. Therefore will I from  certain true experie nce
proclaim: ‘Oh man, know thyself, in thee is hid the
treasure of treasures. ’
The study of man and Nature cannot be separated. As
the alchemis t worked on Nature so he could not avoid
working on himself. As Hopkins says: ‘To Aristotle organic
nature was like man. But to the alchemist all nature was
like man; the spiritual overshadowing the material, and
reproduction, the greatest of all mysteries, was possible
only when the body of the metal was endowed with excess
of the spiritual. ’ Sendivogius uses the symbolism of the
mirror: ‘The Sage sees Heaven reﬂected in Nature as in a
mirror; and he pursues this Art not for the sake of gold or
silver, but for the love of knowledge which it reveals. ’ Themicrocosm and macrocosm reﬂect each other but are one,
there is no diﬀerence between humanity and the cosmos. ‘The natural world is only an image and material copy of a
heavenly and spiritual pattern; that is, the very existence
of this world is based upon the reality of its celestial
archetype. ’ Again, this is the hermetic ‘As above, so below,’
or, ‘In truth, certainly and without doubt, whatever is
below is like that which is above, and whatever is above is
like that which is below. ’ This enunciates the law of
correspondences: that all creation is, in fact, a reﬂection;
the phenomenal reﬂects the spiritual. The hermetic
tradition also says that ‘The work. is to be found within
you and is enduring: you will always have it present,
wherever you are, on land or on sea. ’
Meditation was an important factor in Chinese alchemy
in developing the ‘inner elixir,’ and the sealed vase was the
isolated mountain retreat, hermitage, or meditatio n room,
where knowledge of the inner self was attained, where
transformation took place and from which the new man
was born; hence the constant reference to the foetus or
the seed as also symbolically the birth of this new being. There is pre-natal growt h in the seclusion of the closed
room or retreat, the womb, before the new being emerges
from darkness to light, from dependence to indepe ndence,
into the life of the spirit. A modern Taoist Master called
this foetus ‘an incorporeal manifestation of the union of
spirit with vitality,’ and a Japanese professor, visiting the
Taoist White Cloud monastery in the 1940s, found the
ancient values still alive:
Little signiﬁcance was attached to the artiﬁcial, so-
called cultur al, activities. Taking pride in gathering
scraps of knowledge, conducting surveys, doing
research—those may be eﬀorts to ﬁnd some
satisfaction or self-understanding in the society of
men, but they end, as does life, like the ﬂaring out ofa candle. It is better to be embraced in the vastness
of Nature, to melt into it. Then there is no wasted
resistance to life, no useless conﬂagration. When
one's breath ing is in harmony with nature, one
becomes identical with its very life-ﬂow. Alchemists of both East and West state categorically that
Nature is their guide and exemplar, that they are working
with her and following her laws. In alchemy they may be
hastening some of her processes, but never working
against her. As a science alchemy aimed at the
understanding of the properties and formations of mineral
substances; as a spiritual art or philosophy it was
concerned with the mysteries of life and the cosmos. It had
a cosm ological relationship with every aspect  of life,
human, anim al, plant and mineral. One could not go wrong
in following Nature. As the Golden Tract says: ‘Nature
seeks and demands the gradual attainment of perfection,
and a general approximation to the highest standard of
purity and excellence. ’
The cult of longevity was not considered to be going
against living  in accord with Nature since she had long-
lived creatur es whose life span greatly outdid that of the
human being ; in any case, it would be Nature herself who
provided the life-giving plants and substances; the
individual had only to ﬁnd and use them. Moreover, the
aim of a long life for the true alchemist was a spiritual one,
the gaining of time in the body for the development of the
spirit. Eliade writes that ‘Alchemy represents the projection of
a drama, at once cosmic and spiritual, in laboratory terms. The aim of the opus magnum  was at once the freeing of
the human soul and the healing of the cosmos. ’ In ancient
India the Master Nagarg una made it clear that the work
was a spiritual technique when he said: ‘The mercurial
system must not be looked upon as a simple eulogy ofmetal, for it is our means. of attaining the supreme
goal, which is deliverance;’ and in an ancient Chinese text
he is also reported as answering the question: ‘It is
believed that it is possible to make gold from stones; is
that not absurd. ’ by saying ‘It is perfectly possible in the
spiritual sense. ’
The whole work of alchemy is summed up in the phrase
‘To make of the body a spirit and of the spirit a body;’ or,
variously expressed, it is ‘the spiritualization of the body
and the embodiment of the spirit;’ or, again, it is ‘to
spiritualize matter and materialize spirit. ’ In the hermetic
tradition this is enunciated as ‘We receive not only a new
soul with this regeneration but also a new body. it is
more spiritual than the air, akin to the rays of the Sun
which penetrates all bodies, and as diﬀerent from  the old
body as the resplendent Sun is from the dark earth. ’
The goal of the Taoist alchemist-mystic  was
transformation, or perhaps more correctly, transﬁ guration
of the whole  body until it ceases to ‘be’ and is absorbed
into and becomes the Tao. The alchemist becomes the
True Man, returning to the Source—the Taoist phrase for
universal Oneness.
The emergence of the Two, the creation of the primordial pair and the beginning of duality.
What is the primary theme in creation mythology?
The attainment of spiritual wisdom and the transformation of the human soul.
What is the purpose of alchemy, according to the text?
The male and female are complementary opposites that must work together in a harmonious balance, symbolizing the union of the divine and the material.
What is the relationship between the male and female in alchemy?
The yin and yang principles represent the fundamental forces of the universe, and their harmony is necessary for the attainment of spiritual perfection.
What is the significance of the yin and yang principles in alchemy?
The alchemist's work is focused on the spiritual transformation of the self, rather than the material pursuit of gold or wealth.
What is the main focus of the alchemist's work?
The concept is not mentioned in the provided text.
What is the concept of the "Great Declaration" in Chinese alchemy?