《庚道集》Vol. 2

When transmitting this book, do not show it to unsuitable people. Proceed with caution and keep it guarded.

End of Volume Three of the Gengdao Collection.

Volume Four of the Gengdao Collection

The Dongpo Three-Yellow Coffer Method is said to produce remarkable results.

Take purple-flowered motherwort, pound it, and press out its natural juice. Use the juice to boil half a jin or one jin of sulfur. There is no set boiling time; continue until testing shows that no “ghost flames” appear and no smoke rises. Then place it in a crucible, melt it down into an ingot, and clean it thoroughly.

If you intend to seal it in a box, refine four liang of material in an ash pit. First refine one liang of the “female” material; after seven full days, refine one liang of the “male” material. To refine a larger amount, you may use one jin or half a jin of material for the female and male substances, but the ratio remains four parts to one. Add the yellow material seven times each day. Cut both the female and male substances into dice-sized pieces, then refine and nurture them using “□ lotus.” To make a “coffer”—the vessel or furnace used for refining—combine equal amounts of the three yellow materials and set the sulfur aside separately. Then boil the refined female and male substances in natural juice pressed from sunflower greens for three days and three nights. Grind them together with the three yellow materials into a fine powder to make the coffer material, which is used to pour over mercury.

For the procedure, build a frame from thin bamboo inside the coffer and make several dozen holes in it. Pour the mercury inside, then refine and nurture it with fire for seven days. After seven days, open the box; the book claims that the mercury will have been transformed into fine gold. The mercury is also mixed in a ratio of four parts to one. This method is described as exceptionally subtle and must be kept strictly secret.

The Cinnabar Pouring Method

Wrap half a jin of cinnabar (red mercury sulfide) in a powder that contains no paste, then bind it tightly with loosely woven silk. Place it in an earthenware pot and suspend it in rice vinegar to simmer over a low flame for one day and night. Grind Sichuan aconite, kusnezoff monkshood, Sichuan pepper, black pepper, parasol-tree resin, Chinese goldthread, dog’s backbone, groundcover, eggplant herb, and the other medicinal ingredients into a fine powder. Add four liang of this powder to the vinegar, then continue boiling for three days and nights.

Take out the cinnabar and wipe it clean. While it is still hot, wrap each piece of mercury sand tightly; if any spot is left uncovered, replace it with another piece of cinnabar and wrap it again. Then coat it with honey, roll it first in parasol-tree resin powder and then in the herbal powder. Wipe it clean, and while it is still hot, wrap each piece again, coat it with honey, and roll it in the parasol-tree resin powder and herbal powder in turn.

Next, place the cinnabar in a container, spread herbal powder over the bottom, and arrange the cinnabar evenly on top. It may be stacked in two or three layers. Cover it with herbal powder. Grind red stone fat, teasel root, and gypsum into powder, mix with vinegar, and add six-one clay. Wrap the clay in Kunlun paper and seal the container, applying a layer of sealing clay about two fingers thick. Patch any cracks, then leave it to dry in the shade.

Bury a bottle in clean ground and fill it nine-tenths full of water, with its mouth level with the ground. Set the container in place and seal the joints with salt clay. Separately, mix fine wood ash with vinegar and pack it around the container. Heap five jin of charcoal on top and light it, allowing it to burn on its own. When the fire reaches six or seven tenths of its full strength, cover it with yellow earth. The next day, take out the container and remove the herbal ash. The cinnabar will have turned into silver-bean shapes.

A Method for Coagulating Mercury Sand

Take ten liang of flower silver, chisel it into pieces, and put them in a container. Heap five jin of charcoal on top and light it, following the method described above. When the fire reaches six or seven tenths of its full strength, cover it with yellow earth. The next day, take out the container and remove the herbal ash. The cinnabar will have turned into silver-bean shapes.

First take ten taels of flower silver and break it into five to seven pieces. Pour half a jin of sesame oil into a Jian ware bowl (a porcelain bowl fired in a Jian kiln) and heat it slowly over a low flame. Add the mercury and flower silver and fry them together. Break the flower silver into fine grains, then add them slowly to the oil and mercury, one grain at a time. After two “fu periods” (units of time used in refining), the mixture will congeal into hard lumps of sand.

The Method for Completing the Fire Method by Pouring and Washing

Place the calcined cinnabar (cinnabar treated by firing) in a porcelain box. First spread the herbs mentioned earlier across the bottom. Add a layer of wutong lü (a material used in alchemical refining), then arrange as much cinnabar and silver beans as needed on top of the powdered herbs, in two or three layers like a lotus flower. Pour two taels of mercury over them, add another layer of wutong lü, and cover everything with herbs. Refine it gently over a low flame for three days. When the box is opened, the materials will have congealed into “cold-forest jade trees.” Remove and store them.

Then repeat the pouring and gentle refining as before. After five rounds, if the cinnabar has become “golden and numinous,” no more medicinal substances need be added; continue the gentle pouring and refining directly. Add another four taels of mercury and refine the mixture, collecting the sprouts that form (crystalline buds produced during refining). When there are many sprouts, take mountain silver, cover them with the medicinal substances in the proportions used before, and refine the sprouts for seven days. Each tael of sprouts can refine two taels of flower-silver beads. First roast the flower-silver beads until dry, then place them among the refined sprouts; this is called the superior grade. Silver refined in this way differs from ordinary silver and can be used to “hook geng and make a container” (as the container material for refining geng metal). It is said that nothing cannot be refined and transformed with it.

If the sprouts have not yet been refined to completion, place them in a cinnabar container and continue refining until the ninth transformation. This is called the Great Elixir. Used to transmute alum, it can turn it into gold. Calcine a small amount, and it becomes flying sand.

The Method of the Dragon-and-Tiger Container

Three taels of bright, superior-quality cinnabar from Chen, and half a tael of sulfur.

Grind the medicinal ingredients together into a fine powder. Wrap them in boiled silk, tie the bundle tightly, and press it firmly. Then take one jin of needle iron sand and wash it repeatedly with clean water. Use a large gan (a crucible for holding substances during alchemical firing). First spread a layer of needle iron sand over the bottom, place the wrapped ingredients inside, then cover them with the remaining sand, leaving the mouth of the crucible uncovered. Fire it with one sheng of charcoal until the ingredients have turned to ash. When removed, the substance will be green; this is called the “Dragon-Tiger Coffer.”

Next, take two liang of this sand medicine that has undergone hidden-fire treatment. Grind it finely, add half a liang of raw cinnabar, and mix it thoroughly with the matured sand. Place the mixture in a thick porcelain container, seal it, and cultivate it in an ash pit over a gentle fire for seven days. Remove it, add another half liang of raw cinnabar as before, grind and mix thoroughly, seal it, and cultivate it for another seven days. Repeat this once more. Then grind open the cinnabar. Once the matured sand has formed, put three liang of it into the container each time and cultivate it as before. For every liang of matured sand, one fen of raw sand may be added. After the amount cultivated reaches five liang or half a jin, pour three or five liang of mercury into the hidden-fire sand, seal it, and cultivate it for seven days. The text says that the three liang of mercury will be absorbed by the sand and congeal into granules. Then add another two liang of mercury and cultivate it for seven days; a layer of white frost should form over the surface of the sand. The scripture says this frost can be taken internally to make a person live forever, and can also be used to transmute mercury into a precious substance. As long as more mercury is added and cultivation continues, the process can be repeated to increase the yield. At the end, it says that raw sand and mercury may be added to the sand each time, with immeasurable results, and warns: “The fire must not exceed four liang; this must not be passed on recklessly.”

The Secret of the Golden Elixir

The method for refining the Great Elixir depends on lead and mercury. Medicines of lead and mercury are the foundation for refining the Great Elixir. Lead and mercury can respond to one another… (The text is incomplete here, but continues by repeating, “The fire must not exceed four liang; this must not be passed on recklessly.”)

The art of the Great Elixir—the Golden Elixir spoken of in Neidan or Waidan cultivation—hinges on lead and mercury. Their medicinal forms are the foundation for refining the Great Elixir. Lead and mercury respond to and restrain one another, following the principle of Heaven and Earth’s Yin-Yang union.

Lead belongs to Yin and is black, symbolizing the Black Tortoise, the divine beast of the north, and corresponding to the Kan trigram. It receives the Qi of Ren and Gui water in the north. Water generates metal; metal is white, symbolizing the White Tiger, the divine beast of the west, and corresponding to the Dui trigram. It belongs to Geng and Xin metal in the west. Mercury belongs to Yang and is blue-green, symbolizing the Azure Dragon, the divine beast of the east, and corresponding to the Zhen trigram. It receives the Qi of Jia and Yi wood in the east. Wood corresponds to cinnabar, which is red and symbolizes the Vermilion Bird, the divine beast of the south. It corresponds to the Li trigram and belongs to Bing and Ding fire in the south.

Thus, Kan represents lead, water, and the moon, while Li represents mercury, fire, and the sun. The union of Kan and Li symbolizes the meeting of sun and moon; the struggle of lead and mercury symbolizes the union of dragon and tiger. They must be used skillfully and kept in balance, with “Yellow Mother” (a medium or harmonizing substance that brings Yin and Yang together) helping them unite. Only then can the process reach completion, and the way of the Golden Elixir can be achieved.

First take a superior grade of mountain-and-marsh substance (here, a material used in elixir making), and mix in four liang of purified lead for every liang of it. Melt and fan-refine the mixture, then collect four liang of lead flowers to serve as the elixir container, or outer casing. This is the foundation of elixir making.

Take one liang of cinnabar, add four fen of raw sulfur, and grind them together until fine and even. Place the mixture in the elixir casing made from the superior mountain-and-marsh substance and refined lead described above. Refine it seven or eight times in a water-and-fire cauldron (an alchemical vessel), following the usual method. When the furnace has cooled, remove the material and grind it finely. Then add half a qian of raw sulfur, three fen of raw realgar, and two qian of mother powder boiled with lead, and grind everything together. Pack it firmly into a small pot. Grind soft gypsum and talc in equal parts, spread the powder over the top, and press it down tightly. Cover the mouth of the pot with a curved tile, bind it securely with iron wire, and seal it with clay. Place it in a Weiji furnace (an alchemical furnace) and refine it for half a fu hour using the “one advance of fire” method. Once it has cooled, remove the resulting dice-shaped lump. Sew a small bag from silk gauze, place the cinnabar inside, and suspend it in an earthenware jar. Boil it over a low fire for three fu hours.

First finely slice and crush the two medicinal ingredients, stone-wall lychee and goat-horn vine, then simmer them thoroughly. Add one cup of fresh ginger juice, stir well, and pour the liquid into the cinnabar. Boil it for the length of three fu periods. When it is done, dry the two ingredients in the sun and fry them together with the cinnabar lumps until the herbs are charred black. Blow the herbs away, add fresh herbs, and continue frying, crushing, and simmering them thoroughly. Add one cup of fresh ginger juice, stir well, pour it into the cinnabar, and boil it for another three fu periods. When it is done, again fry the cinnabar lumps with the two sun-dried ingredients until the herbs are charred black. Blow the herbs away, add fresh herbs, and fry again. Continue this process for a full day, then place the cinnabar in a “grass enclosure”—a container or layer of medicinal herbs surrounding and gently heating the substance.

The materials for the grass enclosure are one liang each of side-wutong leaves and iron-footed Brahman herb, chopped; one liang of powdered Chinese gall; and one liang of powdered round cardamom. Mix these ingredients evenly, place them in a box, and layer them above and below the substance. Seal the box and heat it in an ash vessel for three cycles. Follow the fire schedule described earlier for a single day: in the morning use a fire of three liang, and in the evening a fire of two liang and three qian; on the following morning use a fire of one liang and seven qian. In each case, apply the heat from above. After the three heating cycles, take out the cinnabar lumps and roll them in refined honey. Then coat the surface with lead white frost and “mother powder,” a fine powder used as a base or parent material, and return them to the mother enclosure.

For every one liang of cinnabar, take three liang of “mother,” made from boiled and refined lead, and grind it to a fine powder. Put the cinnabar in a small box, cover it with the mother powder, and seal it; this is the inner box. Take a larger box and place the small box inside it. For every liang of lead flowers, add three qian of minium, mix and grind them finely, then use the mixture to cover the inner box and pack the outer enclosure—the layer surrounding the inner box—tightly. Seal and bind it securely, then heat it gently in an ash vessel for twenty-one days. When the time is up, open it and inspect the cinnabar. If it has not yet “died”—an alchemical term for reaching the intended state of transformation through refining—heat it for another seven days. Next, following the same procedure, place the inner box inside the larger box, pack the outer enclosure firmly with the fine mixture of lead flowers and minium, and seal and bind it. Heat it gently for twenty-one days, then open and inspect it. If it still has not “died,” heat it for another seven days. It is then considered successfully refined.

A separate note on the fire schedule gives these instructions: use a top fire of two and a half liang for three days; a top fire of three liang for three days; a top fire of three and a half liang for five days; and a top fire of four liang for five days. From the sixteenth through the twentieth day, use a top fire of four liang, while applying a fire of three liang from three sides.

When the firing stage is complete, take out the cinnabar. It has now “died,” meaning that refining has made it inactive. Each time, it must be revived with the mother material—the substance used to continue nurturing and refining the cinnabar—before it can be made into a kui, the container or mixture that encloses and nurtures it.

Add three qian of mercury to each liang of mother material. Seal them in a small box and nurture them gently over a low, indirect fire for four or five days. Then add cinnabar that has been nurtured with mother material, and nurture it once more as before, until the firing stage is complete. Next, nurture the cinnabar once with mother material as before, until the firing stage is complete. Then add mercury as before and nurture it gently for three to five days. Finally, nurture the cinnabar once more as before, until the firing stage is complete.

If you have three liang of mother material, nurture the cinnabar in three batches: one liang in the first round, one liang in the second, and one liang in the third, yielding three liang of cinnabar in all. Mix the batches together and continue nurturing them until the firing stage is complete.

If you have three liang of mother material, divide the work into three rounds in the same way, nurturing one liang of cinnabar each time, to make three liang in all. Mix the cinnabar and pound it into small pieces. For every six liang of finely pounded cinnabar, add six qian of raw sulfur. Seal them together in a water-and-fire crucible, a vessel for refining through the interaction of water and fire, and refine them once over a strong fire until they melt into a mass. If any mercury separates out on the water crucible, scrape it off. Break open the crucible and remove the cinnabar, then pound it again and fry it in an earthenware vessel until it turns red, to remove the sulfur vapors. This is what the alchemical scriptures mean by “frying it with sulfur to make it firm.”

Then add the mother material used in the earlier nurturing, and make a kui from six parts of mother material. An alchemical scripture says, “Then seek out fresh mother material and use it together for nurturing.” This is called “harmonizing the Four Images,” or combining different substances for refinement. Use it next to nurture bare cinnabar; this is called the “Way of the Infant Brother.”

If the cinnabar is granular or lumpy, with a surface shining like a wall, boil it with herbs as before, then add more herbs and make an herbal kui for nurturing. This, too, is called “harmonizing the Four Images.” Use it next to nurture bare cinnabar, which is called the “Way of the Infant Brother.” The cinnabar must be nurtured seven times, using the same method and firing stages as before, without adding anything further. When the process is complete, take out the cinnabar, wash it with water, roll it in refined honey, and coat the outside with lead frost, a refined lead-based medicinal substance. Place it in a mother-cinnabar kui and cover it with lotus-shaped material.

For example, if you have half a jin of dead cinnabar, use half a jin of the mother material used earlier to make a kui. Use it to nurture bare infant cinnabar. This kui can nurture four liang of cinnabar. Afterward, it can serve as a kui for long-term use.

The fire regimen calls for a heat of one and a half liang, using top heat to mature the material for fifteen days. Then increase the heat to three liang and continue with top heat for twenty-one days. Open the vessel and inspect the material to see whether it has reached the “dead” state. If a little vapor remains, mix it evenly again, observe it and spread it out as before, then cover and seal it. Mature it over a heat of three liang for another five to seven days; only then is the material truly finished.

Once it is finished, take out the “Old Woman”—here, powdered frost, a mercury-based alchemical material—and combine it with the “Infant,” here an alchemical substance made by refining cinnabar. Though the “Old Woman” and the “Infant” come from the same source, their substance and form differ: the “Old Woman” has not yet formed a foetus, while the “Infant” has already condensed into shape. It is said that, once refined, the Infant can communicate with spirits, respond to transformations, and be put to limitless use.

To bring this “husband and wife,” the Infant and the Old Woman, into harmony, take two liang of cinnabar for the Infant and four liang of powdered frost for the Old Woman. First wrap the powdered frost by itself in paper, then bind it in many layers of silk and hang it up. Burn ground ivy, Zi He Che (a name for a medicinal material), or lotus leaves to make ash. Put the liquid from the ash into an earthenware bottle and simmer it over low heat for two or three “fu” periods—a technical alchemical term for extended periods of heating—to remove the smell of salt and alum.

Next, grind the treated powdered frost together with the refined cinnabar into a fine powder. Mix it with paper mulberry juice to make a paste, shape it into cakes weighing about one qian each, and press each cake firmly. Wrap them in two layers of black gui paper and place them in a small box, pressing each layer firmly into place. Separate the layers with thin, diamond-shaped pieces made from “Holy Mother,” taking care that none of the material leaks out. Add layers of black gui paper, place refined lingchu on top as a weight, bind everything tightly with iron wire, seal it according to the method, and put it into the “Uncompleted Furnace” to continue maturing over the fire.

The “Old Woman” is called “White Snow” in heaven, “Dark Vessel” on earth, and “powdered frost” in the terminology of alchemy within the human body. The immortals liken it to an old woman; in fact, it is mercury. It arises from raw cinnabar and is called the essence of mercury. The scripture says that it is black in color, does not turn cloudy when stirred, and does not become clear when it settles. It is found among fissures in high mountains, and its nature is soft and clear, not easily contaminated by impurities. For this reason, alchemists regard it as a life-prolonging medicine and a treasure for transforming substances, believing that nothing in the world can compare with it.

The “Unfinished” furnace uses a firing arrangement with fire above and water below, with the top of the furnace connected to the fire. From the first day through the fifth, use one liang of material. The “treasure that transforms through firing” produced is called a worldly treasure, with nothing else considered its equal.

Continue using the Unfinished furnace, with fire above and water below: use one liang from the first through the fifth day, one and a half liang from the sixth through the tenth, and two liang from the eleventh through the fifteenth. After fifteen days, remove it and place it in the “Bright Li furnace” (another furnace used for nurturing and refining) to continue the process.

Next, take out the vermilion powder. For every liang of vermilion powder, add two liang of bare vermilion. Grind them finely for use as packing material, which wraps and contains the substance being refined. Put the block of vermilion powder into a small box and cover it with lotus leaf. Lay a sheet of Golden Coffer paper over that, then cover it again with a piece of sacred silver. Press honey-deadened arsenic on top and seal it. Place the box in a larger coffer, spread foundation sulfur around it, seal it firmly, and put it in the Bright Li furnace. Make a cover from iron wire above the box, with its top about half an inch higher than the box, to serve as a marker for regulating the firing. Place the furnace in an ash vat to maintain the heat. Whenever the fuel is changed, let the fire reach only as high as the wire cover, so the fire’s intensity has a fixed measure.

To repeat the final instructions: after laying in bright sulfur and sealing it firmly, place it in the Bright Li furnace. Use the iron-wire cover to set the height, then put it in the ash vat to maintain the heat. When changing the fuel, use the cover as the guide for regulating the firing.

Combine the medicinal substances and refine them with controlled heat. First tend the fire for seven days, using three liang of charcoal each day. Then tend it for another seven days, using three and a half liang each day; for the next seven days, use four liang each day; and for the following seven days, use five liang each day. After that, for one seven-day period, use three liang of “top fire” each day, adding heat from above, and place eleven liang of fuel on each of the three sides.

When the period is over, open the vessel and inspect the powder. It should have been truly refined to “death”—that is, after refinement, the medicinal substance no longer smokes or flares. If smoke or flame remains, tend the fire for another seven days as before, until it is truly “dead.”

For example, if the refined cinnabar frost powder yields six liang, adjust the amounts as needed to suit the size of the vessel. Take four liang of the cinnabar powder and set it aside. Add two liang of raw powder to the remaining two liang, adjusting the amount to suit the vessel. If the total is six liang, again remove four liang of cinnabar powder and set it aside. Mix the remaining two liang of cinnabar powder with two liang of raw powder and form them into a cake. Place it in the previously used casket—the vessel in which the cinnabar was held for refining—and tend the fire as before until the period is complete. Remove this batch of cinnabar powder and combine it with the four liang set aside earlier. The total will be half a jin, enough to serve as a “Jade Field casket” for further refining “White Snow.”

The Jade Field casket is standardized at half a jin

Take four liang of raw powder and form it into pieces the size of beans. Add water to the ash of lotus leaves or the ash from burning soap-pod branches, and draw off the resulting lye. Suspend the medicinal substance in silk gauze so that it does not touch the bottom of the pot, then simmer it gently for one or two fu—traditional units of refining time. Mix powdered raw realgar and orpiment with white lead frost using vinegar, and apply the mixture to the surface of the “dead powder.” Then place the medicinal substance close against the inside of the Jade Field casket, seal it with lotus flowers, and tend it over a low fire for fifteen days until it is truly “dead.” If it has not yet reached this state, refine it for another two or three days. At this point, two qian of this medicine can transform one liang into a “treasure.” When the period is complete, remove it.

First refine it for five days at a heat of one liang, then for five days at a heat of one liang and two qian, and finally for five days at a heat of one liang and five qian. When the allotted days are complete, take it out. You will obtain four liang of White Snow; store it safely. Add another four liang of raw powder, and boil and refine it using the liquid collected by percolating substances such as lotus-leaf ash. Let it undergo two fu stages. Use raw female lead in the same way. When the allotted days are complete, take it out. You will obtain four liang of White Snow; store it safely. Add another four liang of raw powder, and boil and refine it using the liquid collected by percolating substances such as lotus-leaf ash. Let it undergo two fu stages. Also apply raw female and male lead white frost to the surface of the medicine. Place it in the Jade Field container as before, and nurture and refine it by the same method for thirty-five days. When the time is complete, you will obtain half a jin of White Snow, called the “White Snow container,” which is used to further nurture the Great Elixir of the Divine Talisman.

Using half a jin of White Snow as the container material

Take four liang of raw powder lumps and break them into the size of small beans. Using ginger juice and lotus-root juice, add half a qian each of raw female and male lead, then boil and refine the mixture for one fu stage. Take it out and wash it clean. Apply White Snow to the surface of the medicine, place it in the White Snow container, seal it firmly according to the method, and nurture and refine it using the Bright Li Fire method.

Fire control and top fire

First refine it for five days at a heat of one liang, then for five days at a heat of one liang and two qian, and finally for five days at a heat of one liang and a half. When the allotted days are complete, take it out. You will obtain four liang of Divine Talisman; store it safely. Add another four liang of raw powder, and boil and refine it for one fu stage with lotus-root juice and ginger juice. Add raw female lead and boil and refine it together as before, then apply White Snow to the surface of the medicine. Place it in the White Snow container as before and nurture it over the fire for fifteen days. Once the medicine is fully refined, you will again obtain four liang of Divine Talisman. The two batches yield half a jin in total, to serve as the container material.

The longevity container for the Great Elixir of the Divine Talisman

Take half a jin of Divine Talisman and use cinnabar mercury. Wrap four liang of the medicinal material in paper, then boil and refine them together. Apply White Snow to the surface of the medicine, place it in the White Snow container as before, and nurture it over the fire for fifteen days. Once the medicine is fully refined, you will again obtain four liang of Divine Talisman. The two batches yield half a jin in total, to serve as the container material.

In this alchemical passage, “container” refers to a material or vessel used to hold or enclose the medicine and nurture it through controlled heating; “fu” is a term for a stage in the heating process.

Take the rising powdered frost, boil it, coat it with raw realgar, then place it in a sealed vessel for firing. Use one liang of mercury, one liang of salt, two liang of alum, and six qian of saltpeter. First grind the salt, alum, and saltpeter into a fine powder. Add one liang of mercury and grind them together until no droplets of mercury are visible. Then put the mixture in a water-and-fire crucible and begin firing over a low flame, gradually increasing the heat until the water in all four cups has boiled away. Let it cool, then remove it the next day; the medicine will have solidified at the bottom of the cups.

Remove the medicine and boil it for a full day in liquid strained from plant ash water, allowing the liquid to come to a rolling boil several times. Then take out the alum and other medicinal ingredients, place them like a lotus flower in a sealed arsenic vessel, and fire them for fourteen days. On the first day, use top heat and an ash bath, with two liang of fuel; on the second and third days, use two and a half liang each day; from the fourth through the seventh day, three liang each day; from the eighth through the tenth day, three and a half liang each day; and from the eleventh through the fourteenth day, four liang each day. Take it out and test it over a fire. If the arsenic has not yet been subdued by firing, fire it for another seven days.

“Dead arsenic” refers to processed arsenic-based medicine; “Purple River Chariot” is the traditional medicinal name for the human placenta; a “gan crucible” is a heat-resistant crucible; and a “sealed vessel” is a container used to enclose medicinal materials and fire them. The “powdered frost,” “realgar,” and “mercury” mentioned here are all alchemical materials. “Nurturing the fire” means continuing the firing at the prescribed heat. The preceding passage also claims that a small amount of medicine can transform or dry a larger quantity of mercury into a “supreme treasure,” which it calls the “great medicine of long life.”

Arsenic (arsenic trioxide) becomes immediately lethal when boiled for some time in juice squeezed from pounded spinach leaves. Grind tuotiya—a name used by northern Muslims for smithsonite—into a powder, then pound it together with the flesh of Chinese dates until evenly mixed into a paste. Spread the paste over the bottom of an earthenware pot, shape it like a pot, and let it dry in the sun. Put in one liang of bone and one qian of arsenic, cover them with the pot made from smithsonite and date paste, then seal the cover with date paste. Finally, fill the pot with salt. Heat it first over a low flame, then gradually raise the heat until the whole pot is red-hot. When removed, the contents will have become high-grade silver.

The Cinnabar Crucible Pouring Method

For controlling the heat, begin at the top, alternating gentle and fierce heat and gradually working downward. Control of the heat is crucial. The method of sealing the vessel—using materials to prevent gases from escaping during heating—is said to have miraculous efficacy and to be a superior alchemical method that must be kept secret. If a fierce fire is used, the silver will escape along with its original Qi.

The Cinnabar Crucible Pouring Method

For controlling the heat, begin at the top, alternating gentle and fierce heat and gradually working downward. Control of the heat is crucial. The method of sealing the vessel is said to have miraculous efficacy and to be a superior alchemical method that must be kept secret. If a fierce fire is used, all the silver will escape.

Grind one jin of “shan,” half a jin of “hu,” and half a jin of clay mixture together evenly, several hundred or thousand times, until extremely fine, then sift. Add well water and pound repeatedly with a stone pestle several hundred or thousand times, until it forms a gelatinous paste, which is used to seal the vessel.

The Oil Method

Grind the fine, sound blue-white portions of the ceramic bowl shards into a powder. Put the powder in an iron pan and stir-fry it over high heat. Add equal amounts of bamboo leaves and rush pith, and continue frying them together until the ceramic powder turns to ash. Place the ash in a small silk bag and rinse it with well water. Then prepare an adhesive by mixing oil and water, and spread the prepared medicinal material over the surface of the vessel. The older this oil mixture, the better.

To seal the joints of a vessel, first roll Tangxinlian—a kind of paper used for sealing seams—into strips tapered at both ends. Press the strips firmly into the seams, then smooth the joints with the paste prepared earlier and coat them with the oil-and-water mixture. Let the vessel dry for a day, apply another layer of paste, and then seal it with salt mud.

If there are sand pits or small holes in the bottom or body of the jar through which the medicinal liquid might seep, first take a little paste, add water, and apply it in a thin layer. Then attach two or three layers of Tangxinlian paper and coat them with paste to a thickness of about two or three fen, a traditional unit of length. Coat the surface with oil as well, then seal it with salt mud. This method of sealing with medicinal material is the key and represents the finest technique.

The method of preparing Elixirs: a technique for refining elixirs.

First take half a catty of cinnabar (dansha, zhūshā) and suspend it in the finest rice vinegar. Cook it over a low flame for three days and three nights. Add four taels of powdered herbs and continue boiling them together until all the liquid has evaporated. Remove the cinnabar, wipe it clean, and while it is still hot, immediately wrap each piece in mercury amalgam (a wrapping material made from mercury and flower silver). Any part left unwrapped will cause the cinnabar to be damaged there.

After wrapping the pieces, coat them first with a layer of honey and sprinkle on powdered wutong lü (a medicinal material from the wutong tree). Coat them with honey again, then sprinkle on a layer of powdered herbs. Once dry, spread a layer of herbs across the bottom of a box, arrange the cinnabar pieces evenly on top, then cover them with herbs and add another layer of cinnabar. Alternate the layers in this way, three to five times, and cover the top with herbs. Seal the seams of the box with red stone paste, a mineral used for sealing. Alternatively, coat the whole box to a thickness of two finger-widths. Repair any damaged spots, then leave it to dry in the shade.

Next, seal the outside with salt mud and leave it to dry in the shade. Then spread herbs and arrange the cinnabar as before, alternating the layers three to five times. Cover the top with herbs, seal the box’s seams or body with red stone paste, and repair any damaged spots. Once it has dried in the shade, seal it with salt mud again and leave it to dry in the shade.

Bury a bottle in level ground and fill it with water to nine-tenths full, with its mouth level with the ground. Set the sealed box over the bottle’s mouth and seal the join between the bottom of the box and the bottle’s mouth with clay. Separately, mix wood ash with vinegar and use it to pack tightly around the box. Pile five catties of charcoal around it and set the charcoal alight, letting it burn on its own. When the fire reaches six or seven tenths of its full heat, cover it with yellow earth. The next day, remove the herbal ash. The cinnabar obtained will weigh half a catty and look like silver beans in both color and shape.

For every half catty of cinnabar, use half a catty each of the following herbs: Sichuan aconite, wild aconite, pepper, Sichuan pepper, golden thread, dog’s backbone, arisaema, pinellia, and wutong lü. These herbs are used to refine and cover the cinnabar.

How to Make the Mercury Amalgam for Wrapping the Cinnabar

Take five taels of mercury and five taels of flower silver. Divide them into three to five pieces, put them together in sesame oil, then slowly place them in a crucible, a heat-resistant vessel for refining. Boil and refine them until they solidify. Peel off the silver-mercury mixture and boil it again. Repeat until the mercury has completely solidified.

Instructions for Pouring and Tending the Fire After Refining the Cinnabar

Slowly place the materials in a crucible of sesame oil and boil them until they solidify. Peel off the silver-mercury mixture and boil it again, repeating until the mercury has completely solidified.

After the cinnabar has been prepared, water it and tend the fire according to the method given earlier. This is the secret to refining the Great Elixir.

Once lead sand has been refined, it no longer gives off its original fumes when exposed to fire. With a simple secret method, one can refine the Great Elixir, which appropriates the transformative power of Heaven and Earth. Only nine ingredients are needed inside the container; outside, everything depends on lead to support and protect it. When lead leaves its mother, its child follows the female. The key to moving from the ordinary to the sacred and surpassing ordinary people is profoundly mysterious. Take the cinnabar that has been subdued by refining and water it according to this method; the mercury will then coagulate.

Method for Watering and Refining the Great Elixir

After refining the cinnabar, first spread herbs across the bottom of the container as in the previous method, then add a separate layer of powdered wutong wood (wood shavings from the parasol tree). Use as much as needed. Arrange the cinnabar evenly in two or three layers and pour mercury over it. Begin by tending and refining it with two liang of mercury for three days. When you open the container, the cinnabar will have turned into “Jade Trees in a Cold Grove” (crystalline formations produced during alchemical refining). Pick them off, save them, and grind them very finely.

Next, spread the herbs and arrange the cinnabar as before. Scatter the finely ground “Jade Trees in a Cold Grove” evenly over the surface of the cinnabar, then pour on two liang of mercury. Collect the crystals that form, grind them finely, and again spread the herbs, arrange the cinnabar, scatter the crystal powder, and water it. As you pour, let the mercury fall onto the crystal powder rather than directly onto the cinnabar. Repeat this process five times, and the cinnabar will become still more numinous. Afterward, you may stop adding herbs and use the container directly as a “Longevity Container” for prolonged tending and refinement.

When watering it, add another four liang of mercury and collect the “sprouts” that form during the process. If you obtain a plentiful amount of beads formed from mountain-silver fumes, or of white numinous sand that has already been subdued by refining, then materials such as “lotus” will yield one liang of sprouts for every two liang tended and refined. In seven days, they can produce superior “Immortal Silver.” This is no ordinary silver. It can be used to make a Geng container, a vessel for tending and refining made of lead or other metals; to tend and refine the Three Yellows, three substances so named in alchemical practice; or to make “Yellow Sprouts” that transform Geng. By continually adding mercury and watering it, one can refine superior purple gold.

If you do not make it into a container, you can tend and refine it nine times in a cinnabar container to produce a superior elixir. A tiny amount can transform ordinary copper, iron, and six other minerals into gold. Take only a very small quantity, and you can become an immortal.

Method for Making True Deceased Cinnabar into a Liquid, Then Using It in a Container for Watering and Refining the Great Elixir

This material is found on the western mountain and is also called “Golden Lotus Grass.”

The amount of cinnabar is unrestricted. Take yellow-flowered chicken-intestine herb, also known as step-by-step lotus or immortals seated facing one another herb. Use any amount, crush it and extract the juice, then boil the cinnabar in the herb juice for three days and nights. Once it has dried, knead the plant residue into a ball and wrap it around the cinnabar. Wind Kunlun paper around it, then seal the outside with salt mud. When dry, heat it until the furnace glows red, and leave it for a while before taking it out. The cinnabar treated this way is considered “dead”: after firing, it no longer changes.

Alternatively, wrap the cinnabar only in the plant residue and place it in a lidded crucible. Pack it full with yellow clay, then seal the gaps with ground oyster shell. Warm it over a low fire for seven days, using a fire strength of two liang, and the cinnabar will be refined.

Next, take realgar, orpiment, and lead yellow flower, each in an amount equal to one tenth of the cinnabar. Add three fen of juice, then grind everything together with the cinnabar until evenly mixed. First heat the gan crucible, used for alchemical refining, until it glows red. Put in the ingredients and use a strong, bellows-fed fire to melt them into a liquid. Once cooled, the result becomes a “treasure.”

To make mercury combine with it, use four parts mercury to one part of the prepared material. Place it in the elixir refined earlier and warm it over a low fire, using a fire strength of two liang, for three days. The mercury will then “die” and sprout. Once it has coagulated and grown sprouts, take as much as needed; it can all be refined into a supreme treasure, attaining the state of the “Geng Dao.”

How to Obtain Lead Yellow Flower

The stems and leaves of linglingxiang can also be kneaded into small balls. The scripture goes on to mention putting them into juice, followed by the characters “kang yi.”

Some people pound the stems and leaves of aromatic herbs into a small ball and put it in a liquid. If it still does not dissolve, add another ball of yellow lead weighing one liang. Pack it tightly into a gan crucible, used for alchemical work, and heat it until it glows red. Then make a hole in the center with fire tongs, place a white aconite in the hole, and heat it over a strong fire until the yellow lead melts into liquid. After some time, take it out. Once the crucible has cooled, open it: the lead inside will be yellow, with attractive markings resembling orpiment. Only about two or three qian of lead should remain at the bottom, its color like silver. Put the cinnabar refined earlier into the crucible, melt the suspended lead, and pour it over the cinnabar. Refine them together, and the result is what is called a “supreme treasure.” The original calls this an “immortal technique.”

Using genuinely refined cinnabar to turn lead into silver, and methods for making the gui head and pouring over it

Take one liang of cinnabar. Pound wild kudzu to obtain a small bowl of its natural juice, and boil the cinnabar in it until dry. Then wrap the cinnabar in the kudzu pulp, put it in a small pot, and pack more kudzu pulp around it. Seal the outside tightly with ling clay, the clay used to seal vessels during alchemical work. Once dry, fire it with three jin of charcoal. Let it cool, then take it out. According to the original, after being fired in this way, the cinnabar is “dead,” and its weight has not decreased at all. One qian of this cinnabar can turn one liang of pure lead into red silver; after firing, it becomes a genuine treasure. The original says it works just as well for transmuting other substances. It can also be made into a gui head, a device used in alchemical work to seal in or collect substances, for pouring over mercury and refining what is called the “Cold Grove Jade Smile Great Elixir.”

Another method

Use materials such as tortoise-backed turmeric and tianjin. After the furnace cools, take out the cinnabar. The original says it has been refined and has not lost any weight. One qian can transmute one liang of pure lead into red silver; after firing, it becomes a genuine treasure. It can also be used to transmute other substances, or made into a gui head for pouring over mercury and refining what is called the “Cold Grove Jade Smile Great Elixir.”

Yet another method

Grind tortoise-backed turmeric and the herb Arisaema into a fine powder. Add water and boil the mixture with cinnabar for three fu periods, approximately forty days in ancient reckoning. Mix the powder with honey, wrap the cinnabar in it, and fire it in a gan crucible. The original says the cinnabar refined in this way is “dead.” Then fire it together with golden-top arsenic, a mineral containing arsenic, until it melts into liquid. Alternatively, melt this refined cinnabar by itself and use it.

Method for refining “dead peng”

Spread finely ground anemarrhena over the bottom, place pengsha in the middle, and cover it with more anemarrhena. Heat until it melts into liquid.

First wrap the cinnabar in three to five layers of shrimp spiderwort, then bind it tightly with iron wire and place it in a jumping vessel. Grind bai zhi and cao wu into a fine powder, and fry the plant wrapping the cinnabar in this mixture. When the heat is right, remove it and grind the medicinal material finely; mix it with rice vinegar to make a paste. Put the cinnabar into a gan crucible used for elixir refining, and spread the paste over and beneath it. Cover the mouth of the crucible with a roof tile, bind it tightly with iron wire, seal it securely, and calcine it with a three-jin fire. After some time, remove it and let it cool. The cinnabar will then be refined without shedding. Make another paste with rice vinegar, and follow the same procedure: place the cinnabar in the gan crucible, coat it with the paste, seal it, and calcine it with a three-jin fire. After some time, remove it and let it cool. The cinnabar will then be refined without losing its original embryo color. This is a marvelous method of refining. It can be used to transmute other substances, to make a kui—a container for holding medicinal materials—in which to nurture cinnabar, or for refining by the pouring-and-washing method.

The secret method called “Yangjun Who Does Not Shed His Embryo” first makes a kui in which to nurture and refine the Sun-and-Moon Elixir, then uses the pouring-and-washing method to refine the Great Elixir.

Take one liang of sulfur and pound it into a fine powder. First boil the Chinese gallnuts for a full day, then strain out the medicinal residue. Add Scutellaria, Coptis, and rhubarb, and simmer them into a thick liquid. Continue boiling for two days, until the medicines have been fully subdued. Then use Chinese gallnuts to dye the mixture black. Mix the liquid with egg white and apply one coat inside a container. When the color has deepened and darkened, apply two or three more coats. Then put in the sulfur and let it rest for seven days. When removed, it should be the color of gold.

Continue nurturing and refining it until it becomes loose, then make it into a Lingsheng cabinet, a container for nurturing and refining elixirs. Use it to nurture and refine the two yellow elixir seeds; this will be complete in fourteen days. Nurturing and refining Vermilion Spirit brings about endless transformations. To nurture Vermilion Spirit, use ten liang of the subdued substance as the main ingredient. When it is removed, its quality will be apparent. Continue nurturing and refining it by this method until it becomes loose, then make it into a Lingsheng cabinet for nurturing and refining the two yellow elixir seeds. This will be complete in fourteen days. Nurturing and refining Vermilion Spirit can produce many transformations.

Use ten liang of subdued Vermilion Spirit as the main ingredient. Once removed, it is called “treasure.” Pound it into powder and first make a treasure cabinet. Then take five parts of mother-forming sand and subdue it according to the method above. Divide each liang of this sand into four or five pellets, arrange them in the treasure cabinet like lotus seeds, and nurture them for seven days. Open the cabinet and remove the mercury-sand: this can yield “old man’s whiskers,” a mercury product shaped like white whiskers. Sift out the dried mercury; it is white as willow fluff and forms into strands. This is truly dried and subdued mercury: a precious ingredient for elixir-making and the very essence of the supreme medicine. Heaven and Earth are made radiant by it, and all things are endowed with spirit. It is the foundation of creation’s inexhaustible workings, ceaseless transformations, and undying life. The principles taught in the myriad scriptures do not go beyond this; to seek other things recklessly is to make it difficult to accord with the Dao.

Instructions for Pouring Mercury

First take the Vermilion Sand whose color has developed through the preceding nurturing and refining, and use it as the elixir base. Pound it into pieces the size of beans; for example, take ten liang. Pour in five liang of mercury. After nurturing and refining it for seven days, open it once, then seal it again and let it rest for five days. When removed, the mercury should be solid. Nurture and refine these five liang of subdued mercury for seven days, open it, then nurture and refine it for another seven days. Remove this genuine treasure: mercury that has been thoroughly dried and transformed. It is called “White Snow Spirit Elixir.” The method for preparing ten liang is transmitted orally from master to disciple and is used to pour mercury, transforming it into treasure.

Drying Instructions

Use the ten liang of cinnabar essence refined earlier as the main ingredient. Pound it lightly, then refine it with mercury that has been subdued through processing. “Subdued mercury” here means mercury treated with medicinal substances so that it can take part in the refining process. After undergoing the “great Qian transformation,” the resulting mercury is called the White Snow Divine Elixir. This method uses ten liang as one batch. It must be transmitted orally from master to disciple, then used to pour over and refine mercury, transforming it into a treasure.

Qian Instructions

Use the ten liang of cinnabar essence refined earlier as the main ingredient. Pound it lightly and refine it with subdued mercury. Add three medicinal herbs: sheep’s-foot root, gentian, and Achyranthes root.

Use the liquid made by boiling the medicinal herbs to treat the mercury, then pour the subdued mercury over the elixir base—the foundational material used to refine an elixir or metal. For the first pouring, add four liang of subdued mercury; after nurturing and refining it for seven days, open the furnace and inspect it. For the second, add three liang, then nurture and refine it for another seven days before opening the furnace to inspect it. For the third stage, add no mercury at first, but nurture it alone for five days. Then add another three liang of subdued mercury and, after seven days of nurturing and refining, open the furnace to inspect it.

In total, this yields ten liang of primordial subdued mercury. Together with the elixir base, the total is twenty liang. Set aside the refined treasure for later use. Put ten liang of the combined primordial subdued mercury and elixir base back into the furnace for further refining, as the mother material for “seating the embryo.” Set aside the other ten liang—the mercury treasure produced by pouring and refining it—for use in later transformations. The scripture says this method allows transformations without end and can become the foremost under Heaven.

Qian Treasure and Kun Mercury Produced by Subduing and Pouring

Use a pot with a capacity of twelve liang. First place two liang of the precious mercury produced by the earlier pouring and refining into it, then put ten liang of raw mercury at the bottom of the pot. Sprinkle two qian of genuine dead cinnabar over the top—cinnabar that has been treated so it no longer displays an active state—and wrap the outside of the pot in silk paper to hold it in place. Slowly brush on sheep’s-foot-root juice so that the materials inside the pot are gradually subdued and become soft and crumbly.

After waiting for a time, take the pot out and place it on the ground. Let its vapors cool, then open it and inspect the contents; the resulting treasure weighs twelve liang. Cover the mouth of the pot with a clay lid, bind it firmly in place, and seal it. Pound the residue of the sheep’s-foot-root medicine into a paste, press it onto the joint between the pot and lid, and seal it tightly. Then place the pot in a pit in the ground, in a shaded spot, and heap charcoal above it for heating. After one night, take it out and process it through “passing the barrier” to complete the refining of the treasure.

The scripture says: “After mercury dies, mercury dies again; dead mercury is still dead mercury. Raw mercury is transformed into true precious mercury. Apply transformations as you please; its wondrous workings penetrate the spirit.”

The First Transformation

The marvelous function of this method is to combine the two ingredients of cinnabar first, then place them in a container made from alum mother and nurture and refine them until they form the “revealed treasure.” Only then should one proceed to the next step.

Second Turn

Nurture and refine this method in a cinnabar container to produce mother sand and its seed. Then extract the “old Xi mustache” that has formed and bring it to maturity so it can emerge. Next, bring it into resonance with the Qi of Heaven and Earth, refining it into sand and dry mercury.

Third Turn

Gather the old man’s mustache obtained earlier and make it into a container. Use it to pour over and subdue mercury, producing jade bamboo shoots and jeweled branches.

Fourth Turn

Combine equal amounts of the jade bamboo shoots and jeweled branches refined earlier and the old Xi mustache to make a sacred container. Then refine the cinnabar divine elixir through another turn.

Fifth Turn

Place cinnabar in the sacred treasure container to nurture and refine it, allowing the female and male substances to mature together into the great medicine. Then combine it in equal amounts with the old Xi mustache to make a sacred container, and continue refining the cinnabar divine elixir through another turn.

Fifth Turn

Place cinnabar in the sacred treasure container to nurture and refine it, allowing the female and male substances to mature together as the great medicine divine elixir.

These two turns mark the start of refining the Golden Elixir immortal medicine. The practitioner’s skill has not yet reached this stage, so the two later turns must still be carried out.

The poem says:

Seven turns refine the elixir, and success is achieved through the workings of creation; the mortal body has become that of a great immortal.

The white-robed figure leaps beyond the Dragon Gate, while the vast body changes along with the myriad forms.

The sun, moon, and Heaven and Earth seem to rest in one’s palm; transformed, one rises in a red flight, leaving tracks like an immortal crane.

The great medicine is complete, with gold hidden within mercury; whatever transformations you undergo, they are all divine powers.

The Elixir Kept at the Elbow

Use the great sacred treasure container mentioned earlier. First refine four liang of powder frost into pills. Divide each liang into five pills and place them directly in the container to be nurtured and refined; open it once every seven days. Outside the container, one liang of thirty-seven mother sand will also form. Shape it into cakes and balls of powdered elixir, bind it tightly, and nurture and refine it for another seven days. Remove it and open the container a second time. Then return it to the treasure container and let it mature for a full seven days. When removed, it is called the White Snow Divine Elixir. Three qian can subdue one liang of red silver.

Liquefy the cinnabar and use it to make a container.

Grind one liang of cinnabar and half a liang of realgar together into a fine powder. Boil yellow flower and chicken-intestine grass for about three double-hours, then use the juice to mix with the cinnabar and realgar and shape the mixture into a ball. Wrap it in a layer of plant material, then coat it with a paste made from powdered gypsum and honey, and seal the whole thing in clay. Once the clay seal has dried, heat it first over a gentle fire, gradually increasing the heat until the whole mass glows red. Let it cool and remove it. The cinnabar has now been refined into what is called “dead cinnabar.”

To use it in refining the “Geng Way,” wrap the medicinal material piece by piece in gold foil. Grind lead frost and realgar into a fine powder, then fry them together with the cinnabar. When the gold foil has melted into the cinnabar, place the material in a pot and refine it. The product is called “golden cinnabar.” It is said to be capable of transmuting metals into gold and can also be used as a “container”—a vessel for wrapping or holding substances during elixir-making.

Another method for making dead cinnabar: Take one liang of cinnabar, half a liang of Wan Prefecture yellow herb (choose one shaped like an egg; those of other shapes are not considered genuine), and Chinese pink. Grind them into a fine powder. Pound fresh yi, extract its juice, and mix it with the two herbs to make a paste. Spread half the paste across the bottom of a ding cauldron and place the cinnabar in the center. Cover it with the remaining paste and press it down gently. Lay two sheets of damp leather paper on top, set a water cup over them, and seal the vessel. Once the clay seal has dried, gradually increase the heat from a low fire and add hot water as it calcines. When the heat gathers and the cauldron has glowed red for a short while, wait for the fire to subside, then remove the vessel and let it cool. When opened, the cinnabar will have been refined into “dead cinnabar.”

Yet another method.

The amount of cinnabar (mercury sulfide) is unrestricted. Grind mulberry root bark, goji berries, Arisaema rhizome, and aconite into a fine powder. Boil them in their juices, suspend the cinnabar above the liquid, and cook it for three fu periods (an ancient unit of time, roughly six days). Then remove it. Grind western peng, Chinese woad, alum, nitre, and calomel into a fine powder; mix it with vinegar to make a paste, apply it firmly to the cinnabar, and seal it. Next, place pengsha and salt at the bottom of a fireproof crucible, set the cinnabar ball inside, cover it with pengjian, pack it tightly, and cover it with a tile cap. Seal it and let it dry.

Once one portion of the treasure has been prepared, place it in a chest to nurture and refine the mother cinnabar. After seven days, remove it; it is then called “formed treasure.” Increase the heat gradually according to the number of days: on the first and second days, use one and a half liang of fire; on the second and third days, use two liang; from the third through the fifth day, use two and a half liang; on the sixth and seventh days, use three liang.

Another method

Use one liang of cinnabar, one and a half liang of motherwort, and sheep’s sorrel leaves. Grind the two medicines into powder, spread it beneath and over the cinnabar, pack it tightly, seal it, and let it dry. Then calcine it once with five jin of fire.

Subduing sulfur to make it liquid

Boil it in Rehmannia juice for seven fu periods, then extinguish the fire. If the medicinal mass has not changed color, it will melt into liquid when exposed to fire. Place it in Rehmannia water to soak: the portion floating on the surface is called Heaven Sulfur, the portion half floating and half submerged is called Human Sulfur, and the portion settled on the bottom is called Earth Sulfur. This shows that its Qi has been completely spent.

Subduing sulfur

Boil it in the natural juice of Chinese woad for twenty-eight days, allowing true pine to die and revive three times, then add one jin of mercury. Add two liang of sulfur at a time, and wait for it to melt into liquid over the fire. Then add raw huanyuan for use. Do not let it come into contact with iron implements.

Another method

Boil it in the natural juice of chive blossoms in an earthenware vessel for seven fu periods, until it solidifies. Nurture and refine true pine, allowing it to die and revive three times. Then add a coating of mercury as in the previous method, and be sure to mix in raw huanyuan before use.

First take the natural juice of white-flowered motherwort. Boil the medicinal ingredients in it for seven shichen, then test-refine them over a fire. If they have not yet been subdued by refining, continue boiling for another two or three days. Spread the boiled motherwort residue beneath and over the medicine. Gradually increase the heat from a low flame, then refine for another three to five days, until the medicine’s properties have been subdued. The medicine chest made this way, a vessel used to seal and cultivate medicines, is highly efficacious and can be used to cultivate and refine the Three Yellows.

Another method is to pound water banana and extract its juice. Boil sulfur in it for a day or two, until the sulfur has been subdued by refining, then proceed with the subsequent steps.

The Great Elixir Formula of the Most High Cavern Mystery

This secret formula was sealed away for a long time by the Supreme Lord in a jade casket. It was occasionally revealed to people because they truly possessed the heart of the Dao. Whenever the Supreme Lord appeared, a divine person would transmit the formula. Those who received it had to observe purification, bathe, and cleanse their minds, then renew their vows before the Jade Emperors of the Three Palaces, daring not to divulge it lightly. Afterward, they were to burn incense and study it with focused attention.

“Four yellows require the support of four sands” means that the four yellow medicines must be prepared in combination with four kinds of sand.

The “four yellows” are cave realgar, imported sulfur, leaf orpiment, and arsenic yellow. The “four sands” are Chen brocade cinnabar, lustrous sleeve sand, pure and gleaming western peng sand, and needle sand. Together, these make eight ingredients. First put the needle sand in a mortar and grind it little by little with fine rice vinegar until it is finely broken down. Then place it in an iron pot and fry it until red-hot, before adding the other ingredients.

“Lift it toward the frost foundation and combine it in a corner”: here, “frost platform” refers to powdered frost. Add powdered frost to the eight ingredients listed above, making nine ingredients in all. Powdered frost is Yin, while the eight ingredients are Yang. Pairing this one Yin with the host of Yang is called “the old Yang capturing the young Yin.”

“Grind it three thousand times, with two liang” means to grind it repeatedly three thousand times. “Two nines make eighteen” refers to the ingredients’ total weight of one jin and two liang; one portion is to be ground separately.

“Ge Gong’s blending requires skill”: “Ge Gong” here refers to purple kudzu. Take about five jin of purple kudzu, remove its outer skin, and extract its natural juice. Mix this with the nine ingredients mentioned above to form a paste of moderate softness and firmness. Sun the Perfected One said that purple kudzu is the essence of Earth and can subdue the four yellows and four sands, causing them to congeal into a treasure.

“Within the golden hall, it is fitting to turn it three times” means that the gold is suitably refined and turned three times in the furnace.

Apply gold leaf to the ointment prepared earlier, then wrap it in three layers.

A Furnace in the Green Waters Palace

“Green waters” refers to green salt, since salt is the essence of water. Prepare a sand container—an iron container is better—and cover the medicine inside with green salt until the container is full. Bind the seams tightly with iron wire, then seal them with red halloysite, white clay, salt crystals, and oyster shell. Choose an auspicious day to place it in the furnace.

The furnace should be three chi and two cun high, and one chi and eight cun wide. Place a water jar beneath it, also one chi and eight cun across; this is called “embracing Yin.” Build the furnace above it from new bricks and clay. Place a stand inside the furnace, set the medicine ball on the stand, and cover it with light ash. The fire should be eight cun and four fen from the medicine. This distance is also compared to “the human heart drawing upon the kidneys,” and is likewise eight cun and four fen.

Observe abstinence and bathe. In a clean room, keep the Daoist methods in mind and visualize the true realm. Tend the fire for three days, carefully following the prescribed method. Add charcoal four times each day, at the hours of Zi, Wu, Mao, and You. Once the fire has reached the proper intensity, add mercury as described below.

When the Old Woman’s Daughter Marries, She Must Have Her Match

After the medicine above has been tempered by the fire, place it in a mortar and grind it finely. Add two liang of mercury and continue grinding until no grains of mercury are visible. Then mix it with purple kudzu juice and seal it as described earlier.

The Civil and Martial Processes Complete, All Respond to the Origin

The sage explains how to observe the fire’s progress, so that the fire within the mind corresponds to the fire outside the furnace. Heaven has its forms, appearing as the sun, moon, and stars; Earth also has its forms, appearing as metal, water, and fire. Use civil and martial fire to… When Needed, Make Purple Kudzu Pills the Size of Beans

Open the furnace and take out the medicine, then grind it finely. For each use, mix the powder with purple kudzu juice and form it into pills the size of beans. Store them cleanly in a container; they are said to give off a glow.

A single grain of medicine can refine five liang of mercury into a dry, hard substance.

The explanation says: Take five liang of mercury and place it in a Jian ware bowl, set over a flask filled with boiling water. Grind one grain of the medicine to a fine powder and scatter it over the mercury. Then cover the mouth of the bowl and all the gaps with damp paper, and heat the flask over a fierce fire. After a while, you will hear a sound like fine rain falling. Much later, the sound will stop, and you will hear a single noise like silk being torn. At this point, the mercury will be dry. Pour it into a trough; when exposed to the air, it will harden into high-grade silver with a soft texture.

Melt five liang of genuine silver, and add three grains of the medicine in three portions to transmute it. Once poured out, it is called “Hundredfold.” Next, take five liang of eel-blood red copper, remove all its lead vapor, and add two grains of the medicine in two portions to transmute it. This will produce “Dan,” high-grade silver with a soft texture.

Melt five liang of genuine silver, and add three grains of the medicine in three portions to transmute it. Once poured out, it is called “Hundredfold.” Next, take five liang of eel-blood red copper, remove its lead vapor, and add two grains of the medicine in two portions to transmute it. This will produce “Danyang,” pure white silver.

If anyone in the world can take this medicine,

The explanation says: For any serious illness, whether the person is young or old, grind one grain of the medicine into powder and use date flesh to make a pill the size of a soybean. Take one pill at a time on an empty stomach, swallowing it with well water. It is said to prolong life and prevent all illness.

Then the mortal world can be transformed into an immortal realm.

The explanation says: This elixir is secret and must not be disclosed lightly; otherwise, the nine generations of ancestors will suffer calamity. “Nine generations of ancestors” here means the ancestors of the family throughout successive generations.

End of Volume Four of the Geng Dao Collection

Geng Dao Collection, Volume Five: Method for Destroying Cinnabar

“Hundred flowers” used as the base means honey; “red seal” used as the cover means Sichuan pepper.

The many flowers serve as the base—that is, honey. The red covering is Sichuan pepper (huajiao). The morning glory is used as its companion: specifically, white morning glory seeds. Ground-root bark is a good partner. Use the full prescribed weight of charcoal. Once the cinnabar has been refined until it no longer changes, the process can stop. After ten years of studying the art of alchemy and reaching this point, what more could one ask for?

Take a porcelain box and coat its inside with honey. Spread a layer of powdered morning glory seeds and ground-root bark over it, then place inside the prepared cinnabar and cover it with Sichuan pepper. Bind the box tightly with iron wire and seal the joints with salt mud. Place it in the fire to refine.

The Pouring and Rinsing Method

Use any amount of cinnabar, together with red sunflower petals; other red sunflowers may also be used. Pound and grind the petals into a fine paste. First spread a layer of flower paste inside the box and grind down the sharp edges of the cinnabar. Then grind willow leaves and golden-star fern into powder, mix them with honey, and wrap the cinnabar snugly in this mixture. Place it on the sunflower paste and cover it with more paste. Seal the gap at the mouth of the box with red halloysite, then seal the outside with salt mud. When it is dry, refine it over eight jin of fire. After it cools, take it out, replace the snug wrapping and inner container, and seal it again as before. Refine it over eight jin of fire. Repeat this three times, and the cinnabar will become “dead cinnabar.”

Take three liang of this dead cinnabar to nourish and refine one liang of living cinnabar. Increase the quantity gradually in the same way; the more that is refined, the more efficacious it is said to become. It can be used to pour over mercury. Three liang of the container material can be used to refine one liang of mercury. Apply two liang of fire from above, and the process will be complete in seven days.

Further Method for Adding to and Nourishing Living Cinnabar

Take one liang of dead cinnabar, grind it into a fine powder, add one liang of living cinnabar, and grind them together. First spread one liang of dead cinnabar inside the box…

Grind one or two liang of “dead cinnabar” (cinnabar that has already been processed) into powder. Add one liang of “raw cinnabar” (unprocessed cinnabar) and grind the mixture until fine. First spread one liang of dead cinnabar across the bottom of the box, then add the mixed cinnabar, and spread another liang of dead cinnabar over the top. Seal the joints with red ochre (a red clay sealing material), then coat the outside with salt mud and let it dry completely. Heat it gently with a fire of two liang for seven days, then fire it once more with a fire of three jin. The raw cinnabar will thereby be refined into dead cinnabar.

Next, pour mercury onto the powder. Press the cinnabar powder firmly into place and smooth it flat, then make a small hollow in the middle and pour in the mercury. Seal the joints with red ochre, then seal the whole vessel with salt mud. Gently heat the top with a fire of two liang for seven days. When finished, a solid mass will form in the hollow; this is called “the marvel.”

Method for Subduing Cinnabar

For each liang of cinnabar, fill the opening of the hollow with powdered “Five Directions Grass,” then burn it with a fire of one jin until the fuel is spent. Repeat the procedure once. After that, it can be “destroyed in the white.” “Destroyed in the white” is the wording of the source; its precise meaning is unclear.

The Treasure Revealed by Fire-Subdued Cinnabar

This method is also called “The Nine Transformations: Adding and Augmenting the Bubbling Spring Crucible,” and is also known as “The Buddha Nods.” Once refined, a solid mass forms in the hollow; this is called “the marvel.”

Two liang of silver powder and four liang of mercury.

Place all the materials described earlier together in a refractory crucible. Add a small amount of ground qianghua, and position the materials with their heads facing upward. Seal the mouth of the crucible with two layers of round paper dipped in water. Heat it over charcoal until the paper turns slightly yellow-brown and the scent of qianghua can be detected, then move the crucible onto cold ashes. After a while, when it is cool enough to touch, remove the paper seal and pour the contents into an earthenware vessel. Blow away the qianghua, then grind the sand-like material finely, sift it, and weigh it. If it weighs less than six liang, prepare it again. A quantity under six liang is also acceptable, provided it is matched with the “mother”; the result is said to be better. Wash it three times with water, sift it, and it is then called “sand.”

Next, process the cinnabar from Chenzhou: sift the cinnabar lumps into a fine powder, weigh it, and prepare and wash it as described above to obtain sand. Take another cinnabar lump from Chenzhou, place it in a bag of raw silk, and suspend it in a bottle. Cook it for several days in rice-washing water or weak vinegar, adding ground qianghua, diyuu, weilingxian, and other ingredients. Remove it, wash it with warm water, and fry it dry. Then coat the cinnabar lump with the sand prepared earlier, adjusting the thickness of the coating to the size of the lump.

Next, grind the non-ash wood into a fine powder and spread it over the bottom of a clean tile box. Place the sand-coated cinnabar lump inside, cover it above and below with non-ash wood powder, and press it down firmly. Seal the box with oyster-shell powder mixed with vinegar, then reinforce the seal with paper fibers and clay. Place the box in an ash pit and gently heat it over charcoal for several days. Remove it and then fire it at high heat. The text says that, after the box cools and is opened, the cinnabar lump will have turned into a silver-like substance. When weighed, it will be less than four liang: the mercury has departed, and what remains is called “cinnabar silver mother,” or the “elixir seed.”

Then pound and grind this cinnabar, coat it with sand as before, place it in a box, cover it with non-ash wood, and gently heat it. Each time it is removed, weigh it and divide it into two portions. Take one portion and continue the preparation and heating process, repeating this nine times. This is called the “nine transformations.” The text describes the process as “rising from the ordinary to the sacred” and says that the alum and silver, along with other substances, have been eliminated, leaving mercury.

Afterward, the text describes grinding the resulting substance finely, pouring in a measured amount of mercury, sealing it in a box, and gently heating it. As the quantity of mercury increases, more is poured in. If a large amount of what is called “dead mercury” is obtained, it can be made into an outer casing and used to process other substances. Realgar, orpiment, borax, arsenic, powdered cinnabar, and mercury are also said to be suitable for processing by this method.

The text also records a method using “dead sulfur,” combined with sand, powdered aromatic spices, and clay, and says that the finished product can be used to process various substances. Finally, it describes making pills from the product obtained by processing mercury: boil pinellia in wine and use it to make a paste, form the paste into small pills, and take one on an empty stomach. Face east and swallow it with cold water. This is called the “Lesser Reverting Elixir.” The text claims that it can treat all kinds of illnesses and says to take another pill after three or five days, with no more than three to five pills taken in a lifetime.

This account involves toxic substances such as cinnabar, mercury, and arsenic, and describes heating sealed containers and taking pills by mouth. The claimed products and effects should not be treated as conclusions of modern medicine or chemistry.

“Free from illness” is also a phrase in the original text; it means having no disease.

Method for Preparing the Great Elixir by Blending

Take four liang each of alum and saltpeter, add a little cake medicine, and boil them separately until dry. Then place them in a large Jian bowl set on an iron stand. Put the three ingredients mentioned above into the bowl and cover it with another Jian bowl. Heat with five jin of charcoal. Once the substances boil and solidify into a lump, keep the heat steady, then gradually reduce it. When the bowls have cooled, remove the substance. It should be crystal-colored, with no loss of weight. Grind it into a fine powder and seal it in a sand crucible.

Next, take two liang each of realgar, orpiment, and arsenic yellow. Grind them finely and mix with purple kudzu root juice to form a cake. Place it on its side in the sand crucible and cover it, binding the crucible tightly with iron wire. Mix four liang of clay with six liang of salt and seal the crucible completely. After drying it in the sun, bury it in ashes. Place one liang of burning charcoal on top, then cover it with ashes. Replace the charcoal once a day in this way, and keep it gently heated for forty-nine days. Remove the cake and add two liang of mercury; grind them together into a fine powder. Mix with purple kudzu root juice to form a cake, then place it in the sand crucible and seal it as before. Keep it gently heated over a fire for forty-nine days. Remove it, add another two liang of mercury as before, and grind finely. Mix with purple kudzu root juice to form a cake, place it in the crucible, seal it, and heat it gently over a fire for another forty-nine days. Finally, remove it, grind it finely, and form it into pills. Take one zi (a very small dose) of the powder and add it to five liang of mercury; it is said to transform the mercury into “treasure.”

White Cinnabar

Take an unspecified amount of cinnabar and wrap it inside a lotus-root joint. Seal the outside with clay, heat and fire it, then remove it.

Cinnabar Crucible for Pouring and Soaking

Take four liang of high-quality cinnabar, one liang of kansui, two qian of lead frost, one liang of gongyuan flower, and one liang of caowu. Grind them all into a fine powder and mix with three sheng of weak vinegar. Suspend the cinnabar above the medicinal liquid and boil it for one fu (about twelve double-hours). Remove it, then proceed to the next step.

Take four taels of high-grade cinnabar, one tael of kansui (Euphorbia kansui), two qian of lead white frost, one tael of gongwuhua, and one tael of aconite. Grind them into a fine powder. Add three sheng of mild vinegar, suspend the cinnabar in it, and boil it for a full day. Remove the cinnabar, then prepare the medicinal material described below for wrapping it.

Take three qian each of pengxin and white alum, grind them into a fine powder, and mix with refined honey to make the wrapping material. First wrap each piece of cinnabar in a silver sheet. Then pound eight taels of “silver mother” (the silver used in the refining process) into fragments. Place the fragments and cinnabar together in a vessel, layering them one above the other and covering the top as well. Pack it tightly with “Sheng Wuzhi,” then seal the gaps with red bole clay (a mineral material used for sealing), mixed with water. After maintaining the fire for three days, remove it. This is called “having undergone Heaven and Earth.”

Mix together the four ingredients—arsenic, alum, saltpeter, and clam-shell powder—and give them a preliminary treatment. Separately, take ten white plums, grind them finely into a paste, and wrap the cinnabar in it. Place it among the medicinal material in the furnace cavity and heat until it has burned to ash. Then put it into the “Celestial Pool,” add five qian of white alum, a little arsenic, five white plums, and five qian of white benevolent earth. Grind everything finely, wrap the cinnabar again, and let it cool briefly before removing it. Wash it clean with hot water to make a gui (a container for wrapping and holding the medicine). Pour in one tael of mercury and maintain the refining fire for three days. Remove half a tael of “sprouts” (crystals that separate out during refining), then refine them with white hearth material to make the treasure.

For the fixed medicine applied close to the body: take five qian each of anemarrhena and fritillaria, and grind them into a fine powder. First fumigate the furnace cavity until its interior turns black, then heat it until it is red-hot. Quickly add the medicinal powder and refine it with “Sheng Wu” to make the treasure.

For the fixed medicine applied close to the body: five qian each of anemarrhena and fritillaria.

Grind the medicinal ingredients into a fine powder. First heat the vessel that will hold the medicine (called the “nest”) until its interior turns black. Then heat the vessel until it glows red, and quickly add Sheng Wuzhi, saltpeter, and alum. When the ingredients melt into a liquid in the pan, fan them rapidly. Pour out the mixture, grind it into powder, and make the medicine used to wrap the substance. Warm it over the fire for seven days. After removing it, subject it to the “Heavenly Pool” (a specific processing step in this method); only then can you warm mercury over the fire and pour over it to obtain the treasure.

At first, add no mercury. Warm the mixture over the fire for one day, following this schedule: on the first day use half a liang of fire, out of a total measure of one liang; on the second day, eight qian; on the third and fourth days, one liang each; on the fifth and sixth days, one and a half liang each; and on the seventh day, two liang. Stop there. Then add mercury and continue warming over the fire according to the schedule: on the first day, use one qian of fire in the morning and half a qian in the evening; on the second day, seven qian in the morning and half a qian in the evening; on the third day, one liang in the morning and half a qian in the evening. On the fourth day, when the fire reaches the full measure, remove half a liang of white, bud-shaped material. The “stove treasure” is then complete.

Long-Life, Fire-Subdued Pouring Method for the Cinnabar Casket

Take eight liang of refined Chen cinnabar (cinnabar from Chenzhou), wrap it in raw silk, and suspend it in rice vinegar to soak and boil for one period of twelve double-hours (about twelve hours). Add powdered Shizhu—that is, powdered galangal—to the vinegar and boil them together. When done, remove the cinnabar and take off the silk wrapping.

Wrapping Medicine

Take equal parts Sichuan langdu and Taixi xin, and grind them into a fine powder. Mix the powder with honey to make a paste. Wrap each piece of the boiled cinnabar in the paste, and leave it until slightly dry.

Method for Placing It in the Casket

Take a sand vessel and put powdered Shizhu into it, pressing it down until the vessel is half full. Place the cinnabar pieces wrapped in medicine among the powder, arranging them like lotus seeds. Cover them with the remaining powder and press it down. Close the lid, seal the join with red ochre mixed with vinegar, and warm the vessel over the fire according to the prescribed schedule.

Place the medicine box in the ash pan and cover it with a layer of paper ash two fingers thick. On the first day, use four liang of charcoal morning and evening; do the same on the second and third days. On the fourth day, use six liang morning and evening, and repeat this on the fifth day. On the sixth day, use seven liang at the Mao and You hours; on the seventh day, use four liang at the Mao hour. That evening, lift out the medicine box and heat it with three jin of charcoal until it glows red. When the heat has died down, continue tending the fire as described above. On the sixth day, use seven liang at the Mao and You hours; on the seventh day, use four liang at the Mao hour. That evening, lift out the medicine box and heat it again with three jin of charcoal until it glows red. When it has cooled, take out the sand.

Method for Tending the Fire Again

Eight qian of silver, eight qian of mercury.

After refining these two substances together into sand, wash it and grind it finely with cinnabar. Put the mixture in the box and seal the joints with red stone clay. Place it in the paper ash pan and tend the fire as described above until it has received sufficient heat. Use a total of two liang of charcoal each day, morning and evening, without a strong fire. The next day, after it has cooled, take it out.

Method for Tending the Mother Sand

Wash the thirty-seven mother sand. Divide each liang into three pieces and bind them in raw silk; then treat the mother sand with akebia stem.

Grind equal quantities of the listed medicines into powder. Add one cup of water and suspend the mixture in it. Cook it over both gentle and strong heat until dry. Take it out and shape it with a “lily net ball.” Seal the outside with salt clay, then heat it over a strong fire until it glows red. Take it out and put it in water. Then remove the sand, place it in a vermilion box, and tend the fire as described above. After seven days, take it out and refine it in a furnace into a treasure.

Method of the Immortals for Repeatedly Accumulating Geng

One qian of Geng, one liang of mercury.

Refine the listed materials in pure sesame oil until they glow red, then take them out and put them in water. Remove the sand, place it in a vermilion box, and tend the fire as described above. After seven days, take it out and refine it in a furnace into a treasure.

Method of the Immortals for Repeatedly Accumulating Geng

One qian of Geng, one liang of mercury.

Pour half a bowl of pure sesame oil into a pot and add the Geng mercury (a refining material named in the scripture). Bring it to a boil over the fire. Add one melon seed and continue frying until the medicinal material turns yellow, then add another. Repeat until seven seeds have been used. Next add six or seven qian of white rosin (a resin-based medicinal material) and fry for a little longer. Remove the pot from the fire, set it in a cool place, and pour out the oil. Use four or five layers of paper made from paper mulberry bark to filter out the Geng mercury, then squeeze the oil from the paper, leaving the mercury material behind. Continue boiling and refining it as before until all the Geng material has been processed. Then wash the sand with hot water until it is clean and bright.

Method for Placing It in a Cavity to Nourish

Take an ume plum pit and split it in half. Fill the cavity with Geng sand, then pour the sand back out. Moisten the inside of the pit with honey, then grind fire-refined cinnabar to a very fine powder and spread it evenly over both halves. Refill the pit with the Geng sand. Moisten the edges of the pit with paper mulberry juice and press the halves together, binding them tightly with thread. Moisten the outside with honey, then sprinkle the powder called “Caoci Ming” in the scripture along the seam. Wrap the pit in the flesh of four or five white plums, pounded into a paste. Next, mix vinegar with powdered Aconitum kusnezoffii and wrap the pit in a layer of this mixture. Finally, seal it in a layer of salt mud about a finger thick, and let it dry.

Method for Placing It in an Ash Jar

Fill an earthenware jar with paper ash and place the medicinal ball in the center, covering it completely with ash. Keep it warm over a low fire overnight. The next day, remove the Geng pit; the other medicinal materials will have turned to ash.

Another Sealing Method

Grind the root of ziheche (used here as the name of a medicinal substance) into a fine powder. Mix it with honey to form a paste, then roll it into a pill about the size of a marble. Place the geng core (the principal medicinal ingredient named in the original) at the center of the pill, then knead the pill firmly into shape. Wrap it in silk and tie it securely. Next, grind equal portions of asarum, kusnezoff monkshood, lily, and jiangzi (that is, croton) into a powder. Mix the powder with honey and coat the pill with it. Finally, seal the pill in salt mud to a thickness of about one finger. When the mud is dry, place it in an ash jar, bank a fire around it, and warm it gently overnight. Then remove it.

The Over-the-Fire Method

Take three qian of saltpeter stone, and half a qian each of duck-egg alum, yellow alum, baojin earth, alum red (which may be used in place of cinnabar), dead cinnabar, gardenia, and snake gourd seed. Grind them into a fine powder and mix with vinegar to form a paste. Place the “geng” in the paste, knead it into a ball, and set its shape. Coat the outside with powder made from snake-yellow stone and hematite, then place it in a pot and fan the fire over it to calcine it into what is called the “treasure.”

Method for Wearing Cinnabar Close to the Body

Place one liang of cinnabar in a Jian ware bowl (a tea bowl fired in the Jian kiln). Mix ground Sichuan pepper with honey and spread it over the cinnabar to a thickness of about one finger; cover it with another bowl. Then seal the seam where the bowls meet with red ochre mixed with vinegar, and bind them tightly with iron wire.

Separately, grind equal portions of kusnezoff monkshood, yellow mulberry bark, yellow yam, and spiked larkspur into a powder. Mix it with vinegar and apply it to the outside of the bowl to a thickness of about one finger. Then encase it in “Green Dragon enclosure” (that is, vinegar ash), leaving the bowl’s foot exposed at both top and bottom, and set it on the ground. Burn eight jin of charcoal until it glows red, then gradually withdraw the fire. Once it has cooled, remove it for use.

The Cinnabar Method

Take one liang of cinnabar and boil it in chicken-intestine herb for a day and a night. Apply a layer of material one finger thick to the outside of the bowl, then encase it in “Green Dragon enclosure” (that is, vinegar ash), leaving the bowl’s foot exposed at both top and bottom, and set it on the ground. Burn eight jin of charcoal until it glows red, then gradually withdraw the fire. Once it has cooled, remove it for use.

Take one liang of cinnabar and one liang of Sanqi mother-sand. Wrap the cinnabar and place it in a stone huanggui vessel. Nurture and refine it with a three-jin fire for one day. When it has cooled, remove the medicinal material clinging to the cinnabar. Then place it in a crucible, add one liang of mercury and one qian of sand, cover the mixture with powdered asarum, and calcine it over the fire. Take out half a liang of sand and drive off the oily mercury it contains. Then add one and a half qian of silver according to the stove method. Next, boil the cinnabar in vinegar and alum. Repeat the previous procedure: put it in the crucible, add mercury and sand, cover with powdered asarum, and calcine over the fire. Take out half a liang of sand, drive off the oily mercury, and add one and a half qian of silver according to the stove method. After boiling the cinnabar again in vinegar and alum, repeat the calcining and sand-forming process as before.

The Pouring-and-Washing Method

Take one and a half liang of Sanqi sand and wrap it around one liang of cinnabar. Place it in a stone huanggui vessel and nurture and refine it for seven days with a four-liang mao-you fire, adding fuel at mao and you hours—around six in the morning and six in the evening. Remove the mother-sand, keeping only four liang of cinnabar, and use it to pour over two liang of mercury. Place water below and fire above, and nurture and refine the mixture for three or five days with a four-liang mao-you fire. After pouring and washing it five times, stop the fire.

Solidify the cinnabar into bud-like pieces, grind them to a powder, and put the powder in a box. Use finely ground aged tea leaves as the packing material, and nurture and refine the mixture for seven days with a fire of four-liang strength. After seven days, take it out, wash it with water, and dry it over a fire. For every four liang of buds, nurture and refine one liang of cinnabar. After seven days, take out the buds, attach ball-shaped yuan mother-sand to them, and put them back in the box to be nurtured and refined. Remove the silver according to the stove method. Finally, pour and wash the cinnabar obtained through this refining process five times, following the method above. Repeat this cycle of replacement seven times, and the results will be more efficacious.

What was described earlier is this: once the yellow elixir has melted into liquid in the furnace, set the pot over it and collect the finest crystals that have formed in front of the furnace.

The Cinnabar Pouring Method

Take four liang of cinnabar and five liang of silver. Shape them into pieces about the size of dice and mix them together. Boil them for three days in the juices of heartbreak grass and earth centipede. Remove the cinnabar and silver, place them in a lidded container, and warm them for seven days. At the Mao and You hours, use four liang of fire for each firing. Then pour in two liang of mercury, following the same firing method; pour in another two liang. On the third application, remove the silver and pour in mercury. Stop after pouring five times in total. Continue boiling, firing, and pouring until it has transformed into what is called the “substance of longevity.”

Cinnabar Prepared Alone

Take one jin of sulfur, shape it into pieces about the size of dice, and place them in a silk bag suspended inside a vessel. Separately, take half a jin of field clover and half a jin of Sichuan heart-tongue grass, a plant that grows by the water. Boil both plants in eight sheng of river water until five sheng of liquid remain, then add the sulfur and boil it for a full day and night. Remove the sulfur, let it dry, and grind it into powder.

For every liang of cinnabar, cover it with half a liang of sulfur powder. Place it in a cup and cover it with another cup. Set three large charcoal pieces beneath the cups and warm them gently for seven days. If the sulfur rises and sticks to the upper cup, scrape it off and place it back over the cinnabar. After seven days, remove the cinnabar from the cup and pour in two liang of mercury. Cover it again with sulfur and warm it for seven days; then pour in another two liang of mercury, cover it as before, and warm it for another seven days.

Remove the cinnabar, wash it clean with soapberry water, and place it in a lidded container. Pour in mercury and seal the container tightly. At the Mao and You hours, warm it for seven days using four liang of fire. After each addition of mercury, continue warming until the “sprouts” have matured, then gradually collect their vapor.

The Efficacy of Cinnabar Prepared Alone (a Family Transmission from Xue Zili)

First take ten liang of shanze mu and refine it into beads. Then take four liang of coarsely grained cinnabar, pound it with the root of white-flowered Shanglu, and use the plant’s natural juice to boil it for three days and nights. When it is done, remove it and wash it in jujube broth. Separately, boil borax together with Nanxing and Caowu for one day. Remove the mixture, let it dry, and grind it finely. This will serve as the “contact medicine,” the material that wraps around the substance being refined.

Process the boiled cinnabar once more, using borax powder to dry and shape it. First spread a layer of mother beads across the bottom of a vessel, place the cinnabar among them, then cover it with another layer of mother beads. Repeat these layers, seal the vessel, and place it in an ash container. Refine it for fourteen days, applying two liang of fire at each session during the Mao and You hours. When removed, the cinnabar should be blue-white. If it can be fused into beads by blowing heat onto it, this indicates that the batch has been transformed. To make the “kui head”—the outer material used to contain and nourish the substance—more solid, use more mother beads. The usual ratio is two and a half liang of mother beads to nourish one liang of cinnabar. This is the first transformation.

Pound the cinnabar produced by the first transformation and place it in a box. For every four liang of mother beads, nourish one liang of boiled cinnabar; prepare the wrapping material by the same method as before. Nine days of refinement should complete the transformation. Remove the cinnabar and test it by blowing heat onto it to form beads, as before. Eight liang of the resulting material is considered ideal for use as the “kui.” This is the second transformation.

Take four or eight liang of the cinnabar produced by the second transformation to serve as the kui head. Separately, boil raw cinnabar with white-flowered Shanglu for three days and nights; five days and nights is also acceptable. Use the herbal residue to form a ball around the cinnabar and pack it tightly. Wrap the herbal ball in paper-fiber salt mud, let it dry in the shade, and place it on the ground. Cover it with warm ash and calcine it with two jin of charcoal. When the charcoal has burned down by about three-fifths, use paper ash to bring the fire to a glow, then let it cool on its own. Once the furnace has cooled, remove the cinnabar: it should have turned bluish and no longer be bright red.

Next, mix honey with borax to make the contact medicine, and wrap the cinnabar in it. Place it in the dead-sand kui from the second transformation, cover it above and below with mother beads, and seal it as before. Refine it for seven days: use one and a half liang of fire from the first through the third day, then two liang from the fourth through the seventh. When the furnace has cooled completely, remove the cinnabar and test it by blowing heat onto it to form beads, as before. The resulting product is called “the most potent three-times-transformed cinnabar.” It is said that two and a half qian can transmute one liang of mixed-color material into a precious substance.

A secret method called “forming the kui by the yang phase without shedding the embryo, to nourish the sun-and-moon elixir seed” proceeds as follows. Take one jin of aged sulfur and pound it into powder. First boil Chinese gallnuts for a full day, then strain out the residue. Replace them with Scutellaria, Coptis, and rhubarb, simmer into a thick liquid, and continue boiling for two more days. Then fumigate the box with the gallnuts: first coat its inside once with egg white and fumigate it heavily; then coat it twice more. Put the sulfur inside and nourish it gently for seven days. When removed, it should be golden in color. Continue refining with this material to make a solid, potent kui, which can be used to nourish the two-yellow elixir seed; the process is complete after fourteen days.

“Subduing the Blue Dragon Treasure Casket” describes a method for subduing sulfur. Refining a substance called “Ruiqing Golden Mother Sand” can bring about endless transformations in the Geng process. First, nourish and refine the frost powder. Then take the Blue Dragon and extract its juice by pounding it; use this to boil the sulfur for three periods of three days. Next, place the sulfur in a box, with black paper separating it from the box. Pound red stone fat and brine into a paste, shape it into a cake, and cover the sulfur with it. Add a layer of White Tiger, then seal and bind the box tightly. Nourish and refine it for seven days, then place it in an underground pit and refine it by turning and kneading. When removed, it is said to have become “truly dead.” Here, “nourishing,” “kneading,” and “sealing securely” are all technical terms for treating substances, sealing vessels, and heating them during alchemical refinement.

This Geng casket uses the Red Male method, by which the elixir’s seed transforms inside the casket. Then put the Solitary Male into the medicine and refine it by sublimation. Once removed, combine it into a bead to form the elixir’s seed. The scripture says that a seed nourished and refined in this casket retains its original embryo color.

For example, when nourishing and refining blue gold, use ten taels of material for each batch. First take out two taels of green vitriol and two taels of “Twenty-Eight Mother Sand,” and mix them together. Pack the bottom of the box firmly, then cover the surface with the eight taels of blue gold mentioned earlier. Seal it, nourish and refine it for seven days, and remove it. Then follow the same procedure: mix two taels of Twenty-Eight Mother Sand with two taels of the eight taels of blue gold, and grind them together. Pack this mixture into the bottom of the box, cover it with six taels of blue gold, and continue nourishing and refining it for seven days before removing it. This leaves six taels of blue-gold treasure.

At this point, grind the four taels of treasure produced in the first stage into powder, then mix it with the six taels of blue gold. This makes fourteen taels of material for the treasure casket. Refinement can then continue according to the method; the more material, the better, though the amount used may also depend on one’s means. To make mercury coagulate and refine into a solid, the mercury must first be refined until it reaches a “dead” state.

The treasure casket has six uses: first, to nourish and refine sand; second, to roast and refine the Golden Male into shape; third, to transform other substances; fourth, to refine treasures separately so that they emerge into the world; fifth, to bring Mother Sand into contact with cinnabar; and sixth, to scatter sand over the surface as a covering.

This is a method for subduing and degrading the Green Gold Elixir Head, a medicinal ingredient used in alchemy, so that it changes and can serve a wondrous purpose. The specific procedure is given in the secret recipe below.

Another Method for Subduing Sulfur

Take ten ounces of sulfur and boil it for one hour in the natural juices of lotus root and radish. Then wrap the boiled sulfur in the lotus-root and radish pulp, place it in a sand vessel, and seal it securely. Fasten the vessel with salt clay, set it on the ground, and heat it with a fire of thirty catties. When the furnace has cooled, use a kuei—a container for holding medicines during heating and refinement—to refine the Mother Sand and the two yellows.

Another Method for Processing Sulfur

Take any amount of sulfur and grind it to a fine powder. Pound it together with Houttuynia and spinach. Take two large bowls of the juice, place it in a sand vessel, and seal the vessel securely. Fasten it with salt clay, set it on the ground, and heat it with a fire of thirty catties. When the furnace has cooled, use a kuei to refine the Mother Sand and the two yellows.

Another Method for Processing Sulfur

Take any amount of sulfur and grind it to a fine powder. Pound it together with Houttuynia and spinach, then take two large bowls of the juice. Put the juice in an iron pot and boil the sulfur in it for about a day and night, until the liquid has boiled dry. The sulfur is then considered subdued.

Another Method for Subduing Sulfur

Take four ounces of sulfur and grind it to a powder. Boil it for about a day in an iron pot with juice extracted from yellow yam. Take an oil-amber jar and coat the inside of the jar and its lid with honey. Put in the stems, nodes, and roots of ephedra, then heat it over a fire. When the smoke has dispersed, blow away the ash, add fresh ephedra roots and nodes, and burn them as before. Repeat this three to five times. Then put the sulfur into the jar, seal the seam around its mouth tightly, and refine it in an ash pit for three days. Sulfur treated this way can serve as a kuei for refining Geng Sand, Spiritual Sand, Mother Sand, and the other three yellows. It can also be used as a transmuting agent.

To refine the three yellows, first take ample cat’s-eye plant and mint, following the method given below, and pound them to extract their juice. Boil the three yellows in the juice. When the liquid turns black, pour it away and replace it with fresh juice. If it turns black again, replace it once more, continuing until the juice stays green. Then place the three yellows in the sulfur kuei for refinement. Afterward, when they are used to transmute substances, their color will not turn black.

Method for Dead Sulfur: Making a Kuei

Pound the five-leaf vine and large crested fern together and squeeze out their juice. Use the juice to boil sulfur. Then pack the sulfur in plant fiber and wrap it in a lump of clay made with salt, paper, and sinew. Once the clay has dried, set it on the ground and burn it over a strong fire. The sulfur will quickly lose its reactivity.

Method for Boiling Sulfur Sand and Making Green Gold Collapse at Once

Use any amount of sulfur. Simmer the tuber of Huangyaozi in water and use the resulting liquid to boil the sulfur. When the sulfur begins to jump, add drops of the liquid and continue boiling. Then pack the sulfur in plant fiber and wrap it in a lump of clay made with salt, paper, and sinew. Once it has dried, set it on the ground and burn it over a strong fire. The sulfur will quickly lose its reactivity.

Method for Boiling Sulfur Sand and Making Green Gold Collapse at Once

Use any amount of sulfur. Boil it in a decoction of Huangyaozi. When the sulfur begins to jump, add drops of the liquid and continue frying and boiling. When the reaction has weakened by about half, add mercury and fry them together for roughly one or two shichen. The Green Gold will then collapse. Next, grind and mix realgar, green vitriol, saltpeter, and lead frost together to make the Green Gold collapse. Heat the crucible until red-hot, then remove it; the Green Gold will melt into liquid and solidify into what is called the “treasure.”

There is another method: place only raw saltpeter and solid Green Gold together in the middle of a pot. Make a small hole and insert a little stem of lingling incense. Then put Shaofen into the lead. Heat only the bottom of the pot with borax powder; this too will melt them into liquid, with excellent results.

Destroying Sulfur and Making It Completely Inert

Use any amount of sulfur. Pound sheep’s sorrel root to extract its juice, then use it to boil the sulfur for one fu (an ancient unit of time, roughly equivalent to a day and a night). Wrap the sulfur in the root pulp and seal it outside with salt clay. Once the sealing clay has dried, heat it over a fire until the sulfur has completely lost its reactivity.

Another Method for Making Sulfur Inert

Add a little glutinous rice to winter melon juice and boil the sulfur for three days, then leave it to rest and mature for seven days. When removed, the sulfur will be purplish gold in color. Boil it once more and leave it to rest and mature for fourteen days. Then seal it again with the original salt clay. Once the clay has dried, heat it over a fire until the sulfur has completely lost its reactivity.

Another Method for Making Sulfur Inert

Add a little glutinous rice to winter melon juice and boil the sulfur for three days, then leave it to rest and mature for seven days. When removed, the sulfur will be purplish gold in color. Boil it once more and leave it to rest and mature for fourteen days. When it has returned to its original color, try stopping the application of heat.

Secretly Transmitted Instructions for the Marvelous Use of the Solitary Powder in Subduing, Controlling, and Cultivating It to Transform Substances

Place it in the Green Dragon sulfur vessel described earlier for cultivation.

Form five liang of powdery cream into blocks about the size of small dice. Add rhubarb, Chinese gallnut, gardenia, Sichuan pepper, twigs of Chinese wild ginger, ginger juice, honey, strong rice vinegar, and river water. Boil for one fu, a common unit of time in Daoist alchemical practice, until the color turns black. Once dry, put it into a yao, then add five qian of powdered raw sulfur. Mix it in gently and roast until the heat is right and the ingredients are thoroughly matured, then dry them gradually. The original five liang and one qian should remain the final measure; reaching this amount means the preparation is satisfactory.

This powder can be used to “fortify the body of the stone,” meaning to treat the stones used in alchemical preparation. For every liang of roasted powder, add one qian of mother flakes. Wrap them in successive layers into a ball and tie it securely. Coat the outside with two qian of powdered alum and one fen of powdered amomum fruit, forming a close-fitting outer wrap. Then place it in the cinnabar-sulfur mixture and the Azure Dragon Vessel mentioned earlier, and incubate it for two cycles of seven days (fourteen days). When removed, it will have become a treasure. If smoke rises when it is heated, incubate it for another seven days. It works very well for transmutation.

Secretly Transmitted Method for Incubating Cinnabar in the Mother Vessel Without Swallowing It

The subtlety of this method lies in using ten liang of true mother substance as the main ingredient. First melt it into a liquid, then add five liang of purified lead and stir it evenly in the mother liquid, first to the left and then to the right, forming small beads of powder. These beads can be used to incubate and boil five liang of spiritual sand. Place them one after another in the mother vessel, the container used to seal and incubate alchemical materials. After seven days, they will be refined. When removed, the grains should all be the color of a blue-black crow; when heated, they should become silver-bead-like. This is the required standard. Continue incubating them in the sealed vessel, wait for them to become a treasure, and then separate out the sacred embryo, the refined essence produced in the process.

The verse says: Deep in the night, three solitary stars turn; the mother vessel is broken open, revealing a jade-like texture.

This method is regarded as the finest among the various techniques for refining elixirs and must never be passed on to others. First, drip genuine iron slurry into the niter and refine it; then stir-fry it dry and set it aside. For each liang of cinnabar, grind it into powder, add two qian of prepared niter, and mix well. Spread the ingredients across the bottom of a pot and pack them firmly. Place two liang of a small silver toad on top to weigh them down. Leave the pot uncovered and put it in a qi furnace. Use top heat until it glows red; after the heat has reached the bottom of the pot for a while, slowly pump air with a bellows. When the ingredients above and below have melted and become as clear as water, remove the pot. If the surface has no honeycomb-like pores and is a burnt yellow color, the refinement is considered successful and its effects remarkable. The text says that no method in the world compares with this one, and repeatedly warns that it must be kept strictly secret.

Subduing and refining: first obtain the “blood paste,” then purify the material and give it form

Following this method, first place the “Red Dragon” (the name of a refining material) in a pot. Add one part old soil, three parts each of salt, calamine (a zinc-bearing mineral), and northern niter. Mix them, cover the pot with its special lid, and pack it tightly with a thick layer of material. Place it in a fiercely heated qi furnace and refine it once. After taking it out, break the pot and remove the “Red Blood,” the red substance produced by the refining.

Next, put the Red Blood into a new pot and spread a layer of borax powder over it. Mix raw niter and raw salt in equal proportions, pack the mixture firmly, and level the surface. Then cover and seal the pot tightly as before, and refine it once in the fiercely heated qi furnace. After taking it out, break the pot and remove the Red Blood. The text says that when the material is taken out and loosened with a tap, a layer will separate at the bottom, its color like a tender, pale hue.

The following instruction

Each time, melt some of the purified material and add two qian of a small Elixir seed, allowing it to develop into “tile sprouts,” a medicinal form resembling the tender shoots of a roof tile. Secretly add half a qian of powdered raw arsenic. When the grains of sand roll to the surface, press them down into the medicinal liquid. Then put this small amount of material into decoctions of black beans, lees from aged wine, and asparagus root, using one part of each.

This passage describes a method of alchemical preparation and transmutation. First, the materials are repeatedly processed, with small amounts of salt and niter added, and made into tiny pellets of powder for later use. After a long period of cultivation and refinement, following the prescribed stages of heating, the so-called “Yang Black” is allowed to accumulate. Only then can the elixir be successfully transmuted; it is called “Cinnabar Yang,” meaning a medicine of pure Yang. When this medicine of pure Yang is combined with a substance of pure Yin, the result is called the “Red Dragon.”

The author criticizes some seekers of the Dao of the time for lacking guidance from enlightened teachers and for their disciples’ lack of diligence. They covet medicines that are easy to obtain and give immediate satisfaction, without understanding that the supposedly precious medicines require the accumulation of a thousand years of Qi and cannot be acquired lightly. The passage then says that these elixirs are made by following the Qi of Heaven and Earth through the four seasons and refining materials such as plants and minerals.

The text lists seven names: “Vast and Great,” “Elder Brother,” “Red Flesh,” “Staff,” “Bone,” “Transmuting Silvergrass,” and “Cinnabar Yang Bone Transformation.” These appear to be names for related medicines, materials, or methods of refinement.

The passage then turns to “the method for transmuting arsenic powder and frost” and “preparing arsenic to transmute the staff.” “Arsenic powder and frost” refers to an arsenic-bearing refined substance; “castor beans” and “croton seeds” are poisonous medicinal materials. The text describes making these ingredients into a paste and processing it in a “Water-Fire Crucible,” a vessel used for refinement by water and fire, claiming that this can quickly produce a usable substance. It then records heating and sublimating arsenic with powdered Japanese bead tree fruit in a crucible. Once the water in a water cup has dried, the arsenic that has condensed at the bottom of the vessel is removed and used to transmute the so-called “Snow-White Mother,” combining them to make a “Treasure.” These are records of ancient Waidan (external alchemy) practices involving highly poisonous materials.

Take two liang of powdered frost and eight liang of bright arsenic. Break each into small pieces and place them in separate silk bags. Take the roots and leaves of sheep’s-foot plant, add fresh ginger, and pound them to extract the juice. If there is not enough juice, add a few bowls of water. Boil the two bags of ingredients together for three fu, an ancient unit of time lasting about forty days, then remove the ingredients and let them dry.

First take the boiled powdered frost and wrap it in a ball of silk floss. Grind eight liang of arsenic frost into powder, spread it over the outside, and wrap it in silk as well. Then use the medicinal liquid left from the earlier boiling to cover the outer layer. Put it in a lidded vessel used for sealing and heating, and heat it at a fire setting called “three jin, fire one.” Once thoroughly heated, remove it. After it cools, grind the arsenic frost to a fine powder; this serves as the “casing,” an auxiliary material for wrapping or holding the substance.

Next, divide the powdered frost into four pieces and wrap each securely in a small silver container or covering. Spread arsenic frost powder over the outside and wrap each in silk. Again cover the outer layer with the medicinal liquid described above, place it in the lidded vessel, and heat it at the same setting until thoroughly heated. Remove it, let it cool, and grind the arsenic frost finely again to make the “casing.”

Finally, wrap the four pieces of powdered frost securely in the small silver containers and seal them with “wo lian,” a term given in the source that may refer to a sealing material or technique. Place them in an ash pit, a furnace insulated with ash, and gently heat them morning and evening for fourteen days, using two liang of fire each time. After removing them, two qian of powdered frost can transform one liang of Danyang arsenic; the powdered frost serves as its “casing.”

Powdered frost transforms Danyang.

Grind one liang of calomel into a fine powder and wrap it in two layers of silk. Shell one hundred croton seeds and one hundred castor beans. Then take one jin of fresh ginger, pound it to extract the juice, and let the juice settle. Keep the ginger powder that sinks to the bottom. Suspend the calomel and both kinds of seeds together in the ginger juice and heat them until the juice has completely dried up. Remove the calomel and grind it finely again. Mix it with the ginger powder to make a pill, and wrap it in Kunlun paper, a kind of paper used for wrapping medicines.

Pound the croton seeds and castor beans that were boiled earlier into a paste and wrap the pill with it. Then mix equal amounts of salt, flame niter (saltpeter), alum, and powdered oyster shell, pound them into a paste, and wrap the pill again. If the mixture does not form a paste easily, pound in a little sour rice vinegar. Add another layer of wrapping, heat it briefly over a fire of ash, and then dry it in the sun. When shaking it produces a loose rattling sound from inside, place it on the ground, support it with bricks, and calcine it using a fire of five jin. Once the furnace has cooled, remove the material. The resulting powder weighs about six qian and is called “True Death.” Melt one qian of it together with seven qian of molten zhangzi, a metal used in alchemical refining, to make it turn bright white. Add three qian of silver and melt them together to produce flower silver, an alloy containing silver.

The Jade Ring Arsenic Method

Grind four liang of arsenic trioxide into powder and put it in a refractory crucible. Cover the mouth of the crucible with two layers of hemp cloth and tie them tightly, then heat the crucible over a fire. Keep sprinkling fresh ginger juice onto the cloth. After a while, remove the arsenic trioxide from the mouth of the crucible, where it will have taken a shape resembling a jade ring. Store it for use in transmuting He (the metal referred to in the original text) and refining it into treasure. First burn silkworm-eaten mulberry leaves and silk stems to ash. Use the ash to roast and refine the He until it is clean; then refine it with arsenic trioxide, and combine it with zhangzi to refine it into treasure. This material is suitable only for making utensils.

The Method of Using Arsenic to Nourish Calomel, Then Using Calomel to Transmute Danyang, as a Crucible

The title means: use arsenic trioxide to nourish and refine calomel, then use the calomel to transmute Danyang, with the mixture serving as a crucible—a vessel used to enclose or hold materials during refining.

Take one jin of arsenic trioxide (arsenic), grind it into a fine powder, and place it in a large jar. Take the branches, leaves, and stems of castor-oil plant (Ricinus communis), excluding the seeds, and pound them to extract two large bowls of juice. Use the juice to boil the arsenic until it has evaporated. Then burn it fiercely with three jin of firewood. The arsenic is now considered “dead arsenic.” Only twelve liang will remain after refining. Grind it finely, return it to the large jar, and boil it dry again with castor-oil plant juice as before. Burn it with another three jin of firewood. Set aside the refined arsenic for later use as the container material in which the powdered mercury preparation is placed and heated for further processing.

Take four liang of powdered mercury preparation, choosing grains of similar size. Soak slices of yellow ginger in distiller’s grain until soft, wrap each slice around some of the powder, and bind it tightly with fine iron wire. Place the packets in the arsenic container described above. Keep a fire going day and night, using one jin of fuel each day, and refine them for three days. When you open the container and remove the packets, the powder is considered “dead powder” and will be blackish green. Each time, use two qian and insert it into one liang of a zhangzi to make what is called the “Supreme Treasure.”

Method for Refining Dead Powdered Mercury

There is no fixed quantity of powdered mercury preparation. Grind it finely, mix it with wood honey, and form it into pills. Put the pills into a small tube made from the stem of kuzhang (a medicinal plant), then plug the opening with kuzhang. Grind kuzhang leaves into powder and mix them with wood honey to make a paste. If using fresh leaves, simply pound them into a paste. Spread the paste over the outside of the kuzhang tube. When the leaves dry, make more paste with wood honey and apply it again. Then place the medicinal tube in a “dead saltpeter container” for further heating and refinement. The powdered mercury preparation is now considered “dead powder.” This powder can be used to treat zhangzi and to prepare shimeng shazi; it works especially well, producing a soft, pure white material. If mixed into silver at a ratio of seven parts silver to three parts powder, it can be made into a “tenfold treasure.”

This passage records several ancient methods for preparing mineral medicines, involving toxic substances such as saltpeter and arsenic (arsenic trioxide, the main component of white arsenic). The text calls minerals “dead” after heating, when they were believed to have lost their original properties, and says the resulting powders could be used in further transmutation. These are terms from ancient alchemy.

The opening section describes heating saltpeter until it becomes liquid, then repeatedly treating it with Chinese honey locust and soap. The material is then calcined over a strong fire and placed in a container for further “nurturing”—sealed heating for a period of time. The author claims this produces “dead saltpeter” and “frost powder,” which can be used for transmutation. The text also compares the results of using this method to treat “mother cinnabar of Sanqi” and frost powder.

The “Method for Dead Arsenic” describes treating arsenic with the juices of two herbs, forming it into a ball, sealing it with clay, and calcining it over charcoal in a pit. At the end, it says that once the furnace fire has cooled, the arsenic is considered “dead.”

The “Danyang Arsenic Formula” describes mixing arsenic with frankincense, moistening the mixture with scallion juice, and calcining it in a Jian bowl, a tea bowl made in the Jian kiln. Ash from burning lamu vine is then spread over it, and heating continues. The author claims that the treated arsenic can be heated with silver foil until it melts, producing a soft, white substance.

Terms such as “dead” and “transmutation” belong to the language of ancient alchemy. They describe practitioners’ judgments about the properties of minerals and the results of their transformations; they do not mean that white arsenic has become nontoxic. The substances and procedures described in the text pose severe poisoning risks.

Grind one liang of powdered frost into a fine powder. Mix it with the juice that naturally flows from fresh ginger until it forms a paste, then wrap it in new silk to make a ball and tie it tightly with thread. Melt four liang of raw honey together with two liang of white mastic resin. Put in the ball of powdered frost and stir-fry it over the fire until the honey and resin have dried completely. Then place it in a box, seal the lid and all the seams tightly, and let it refine overnight over a low flame. Open the box and inspect it. If the medicine has not yet “turned” (that is, reached the required state of refinement), continue refining it for three more days. Once the powdered frost has melted into liquid or has poured out completely, put it over the fire and burn it. When it no longer gives off smoke as it burns, it is called “dead.” Powdered frost in this state can be used for transmutation.

Method for Making Dead Arsenic

Dry bitter stalks in the sun and burn them to ash; the quantity is not specified. Boil arsenic in water for a day, until it can be poured out. This is said to be the finest method of refinement.

The True Method for Making Dead Arsenic in the Golden Cauldron to Nourish the Elixir of Numinosity

The text reads: “Then add alum, and again … four liang ground to powder, four liang of white alum ground to powder.” Some characters and phrases are difficult to decipher, and the surviving text does not provide enough information to reconstruct the procedure in full.

Next add the alum, then grind the two kinds of “sand” separately into powder, four liang of each. Take four liang of lead, melt it into liquid, then stir-fry it with paper ash until it becomes sandlike. Wash it clean, dry it over heat, and mix it thoroughly with the arsenic and alum.

First heat the Gan crucible—the crucible used for alchemical smelting—until it glows red, then put in the mixture and calcine it. Once the arsenic melts, continue calcining over a strong fire for a long time, until the arsenic loses its original properties and turns a female yellow; the lead will settle beneath it. Remove the arsenic and grind it finely. Then take one liang of mercury, three qian of “mother,” and two qian of raw sulfur. First combine the mercury and “mother” until they form a sandlike substance, then add the sulfur. When the arsenic has finished calcining, add one qian of it and stir-fry the mixture; then add two qian more arsenic, place everything in the Gan crucible, cover it, and heat it. At this point, the Lingsha melts into a liquid and settles at the bottom. Pour it out; its color will still be black.

Next, smelt it in a lead bath, and it will soon become a pure white treasure. Alternatively, the calcined arsenic can be used as the furnace enclosure—a vessel for surrounding and nurturing the elixir—to nurture and refine Lingsha containing “mother.” Or take two liang of Lingsha wrapped in mother foil and nurture it over a fire for seven days; remove it and smelt it, and it will become a treasure.

End of Collected Daoist Methods, juan five.

Collected Daoist Methods, juan six

The Danyang Method

As transmitted by Master Shen of Guangde to the Daoist Zhang of Huating

First: Method for Making a Staff

Take fifty Kai Tong coins and select those that are lustrous and in good condition. Put them in a Gan crucible and melt them into liquid. Then add prepared alum and stir with a finger-shaped clay tool until the liquid becomes clear and bright. First combine two bowls of sour dong with one cup of persimmon lacquer, and boil the mixture until piping hot. Pour it into a shallow tub and place a brick in the middle, making sure the liquid does not rise above the top of the brick. Slowly pour the melted “staff liquid” onto the brick and let it flow into the water on its own. The resulting material will be clean, pliable, and satisfactory.

Second: Method for Making Alum

Take two ounces of white alum, choosing pieces that are clean and translucent, and grind them into a fine powder. Then take two qian of sourgrass powder and mix it evenly with the alum powder. Once the stove rod—a tool used to handle materials in the stove—has melted into liquid, add the mixed powders to it in several portions. Stir with a clay stirrer shaped like a finger until the liquid is clear and translucent. Then pour it into the bucket used earlier and pour it over the brick.

Third Method for Making Arsenic Powder

Take two ounces of arsenic and one ounce of powdered mercury frost, a white powder made from mercury, and grind them together until evenly mixed. Add one ounce of anemarrhena powder, grind again until uniform, and place the mixture in a water-and-fire vessel for calcination. Use three jin of water, an ancient unit of weight, and weigh the mixture until the water has been exhausted.

If powdered mercury frost is unavailable, use one ounce of mercury instead. Grind it with the arsenic medicine until no grains are visible, then calcine it. Use four jin of water and weigh the mixture until the water has been exhausted. For every one qian of this medicinal powder, apply it to one ounce of the stove rod mentioned earlier. This will make it soft and white, without dark marks.

A later passage says to grind one ounce of silver with the arsenic medicine until no grains are visible, then calcine it. Use four jin of water and weigh the mixture until the water has been exhausted. For every one qian of the medicinal powder, apply it to one ounce of the stove rod, making it soft and pure white, without black spots. Then combine it with another ounce of silver and process them together with the “stove-bright trough” (a name for an object or material as recorded in the source). Once poured out, it can proceed to the next stage, called “passing through the shop” in the source.

Fourth Method for Making Powdered Mercury Frost

Using one ounce of mercury as the base, take about three qian each of clay, alum, and table salt, then add a small amount of “red binding residue” (an auxiliary ingredient named in the source). Grind them together. Fill a fire-resistant crucible halfway and cover its mouth with a tile, sealing it according to the prescribed method. Dig a pit and tamp its bottom firm, then fill the pit with water. Set the crucible mouth-down in the water, so that it is immersed but its body remains about one inch above the bottom of the pit. Pack earth around the crucible and heat it with fire from all sides until the ground cracks. After it cools, the powdered mercury frost will have congealed and be ready for use.

Method of Sealing and Calcining Powdered Mercury Frost for the Danyang Bone-Transformation Method

Five ounces of mercury, two ounces of arsenic, five ounces of salt, three ounces of calcined alum, and three ounces of saltpeter.

First grind the calcined alum into small pieces and heat it, then grind it finely. Slowly add arsenic ore, grind it somewhat finer, then add mercury salts and niter. Grind them together until no particles are visible. While the mixture is hot, use a spoon to put it into a crucible used for alchemical refining, spreading it loosely and evenly. Cover the mouth of the crucible with a tile bowl. First mix thick ink with ginger juice and brush it over the underside of the bowl two or three times. Let it dry, then cover the crucible with the bowl.

Grind red ochre and nameless mineral, two medicinal minerals, finely. Mix them with brine and knead repeatedly until even. Then coat the outside of the crucible thickly with mud, to a depth of about ten finger-widths. Make a sky plate in the same way as for subliming cinnabar. Begin with a low fire and gradually increase it. When the medicinal liquid in the bowl boils vigorously, the medicine has risen. Raise the fire further and continue heating for a while, then put out the fire. Once it has cooled, remove the medicine from the underside of the bowl and shape it into small pieces. Wrap them in silk.

Pound the roots and leaves of the sheep’s-foot plant together to extract their juice. Bring it to a boil once, then remove the juice. Let it settle until clear, filter it, and pour it into a large vat. Suspend the wrapped medicine in the juice and boil it for three days and nights. Remove it, then grind the alum, niter, and salt prepared earlier on an iron millstone, and calcine them together for another two days. After cooling, remove the medicine from the underside of the bowl and break it up. Following the earlier method, boil it for three days and nights in pure sheep’s-foot juice. Remove it, then use two qian of this medicine to refine each liang of clean bone. This will turn it snow-white.

Method for extracting the bone

Melt the staff into liquid. Grind together dead arsenic, white alum, smithsonite, and dead niter until evenly mixed, then add them to the molten staff in the crucible. Let the mixture boil until the surface is as bright as a mirror, with no cloudlike impurities. Repeat the melting and addition of the ingredients, placing new tiles in the mixture to draw out the reddish impurities. Once all the red impurities are gone and the surface is clear and bright, the process is complete. For each liang of red, fully refined copper, a yield of five or six qian is appropriate.

Method for dead arsenic

First break the bright arsenic into small pieces and wrap them in a silk bag. Simmer balloonflower root into a concentrated decoction, pour it into a clay pot, and suspend the pieces in the liquid. Boil them for three fu (a long simmering period in Daoist alchemical practice). After taking them out, they are called “dead.”

Method for Dead Niter

Use any amount of dental niter (a nitrate-based medicinal substance). Take five liang each of fangfeng and fangji. First fumigate the pot, then put in the dental niter and heat it until it melts into liquid. Add the seeds of the “plugging” soapberry. Before long, the niter will stop moving; this is called “dead.” If it continues to move, keep boiling until it becomes as soft as cotton.

Take one liang each of plugging grease, dog fat, and sesame blossom. Put them in a clay pot and simmer over a low flame until they form a paste, until they melt into a liquid like bone marrow. After treating it with the blood-removing medicine, wait until all the blood has been removed. Transfer this ointment into an iron trough, then pour in the stick decoction and soak it. After soaking two or three times, the stick decoction will soften; then use the cinnabar starter to transform it.

Method for Purifying the Four White-Headed Cinnabar Yang

Transfer this ointment into an iron trough and pour in the stick decoction. Soak it two or three times until it softens, then use the cinnabar starter to transform it.

Method for Four White-Headed Cinnabar Yang

Peng, one part; lu, two; arsenic, three; and fen-shuang, four.

Grind the above substances into a fine powder. First put a piece of purple gromwell into a bottle, then fill the bottle with the powder up to its mouth. Cover the mouth with a tile and secure it with iron wire. Mix the grinding pill with red ochre and seal the gap around the mouth; then seal it firmly with earth mixed with Chinese dock root. After it has air-dried in the shade, fire it with three liang of fuel. Once it has cooled, gradually increase the fire, eventually firing it with three jin of fuel. One qian can transform one liang. When refined, it will be white as snow. First use the blood-removing method, then remove the dark halo, and only then transform it.

Blood-Removing Medicine for the Stick

Take ten liang of the stick. First combine it with one jin of fresh water chestnuts and pound them together a thousand times or more. Take the mixture out, put it in a melting crucible, and melt it into liquid; then stir it into beads. Next add a little raw salt and a little white shan powder. After adding the salt, perform the transformation.

Take ten liang of blood medicine sticks and mix them with one jin of fresh water chestnuts. Pound the mixture repeatedly a thousand times, then place it in a crucible and heat it until it melts into a liquid. Stir it and shape it into beads. Next, add a little raw salt and a small amount of white shan powder. Mix with salt brine until moist, then return it to the crucible and melt it. When it turns red and the heat has subsided, take it out and wash it clean. Return it to the crucible and melt it into a liquid. Red oil will now float on the surface, with clear water beneath. Push aside the oil layer and pour the liquid into broom water (water in which a broom has been soaked), where it will solidify into beads. Then stir in black-removing medicine to remove the dark impurities.

Shanyindong, Fudao mugwort, and golden-thread vine juice.

Use “Four White Heads” as the container or material for enclosing and nurturing the medicine, and nurture and refine white sand.

Arsenic, frost powder, borax, realgar, and cinnabar are used to make the container for nurturing and refining one liang of powdered silver. Transform twenty-four liang into a precious substance.

Method for refining cinnabar.

Take equal amounts of spurge, Qianghua, and Polygala. Also take one liang of cinnabar, choosing a solid piece with a firm texture. Grind the medicinal ingredients into a fine powder and roast the cinnabar in it. First boil the cinnabar with three liang of the medicinal ingredients for one day and one night. Then roast the ingredients used earlier until they are charred black; blow away the ash and continue roasting. Repeat this process three times, then remove the cinnabar and grind it into a fine powder.

Mix the fine cinnabar with honey into a ball. Wrap it in silk, flatten it, and place it in a container. First line the bottom of the container with “Four White Head Covering” (an auxiliary material used to wrap and cover substances during refining). Place the cinnabar in the middle, cover it with the covering material, seal the container, and place it in an ash vessel for firing. Use two liang of fire above, with a small amount of fire set a little way from each side. After firing it for one day and one night, remove it.

Grind the cinnabar finely, add five qian of silver mother (a silver material used in refining), and fire it for another day and night as before; then remove it and grind it finely. Next, put fine-quality flower silver into a Gan crucible (a heat-resistant crucible) and melt it. Remove it and cast it into a block. Dip the block in honey, place it in the container on top of the silver block, then sprinkle over it the cinnabar fired earlier. Seal the container and place it in the ash vessel. Fire it for one day and one night, using three liang of fire above and a small amount of fire on each side. Remove it, peel off the refined substance, and mix it with one liang of frost powder (a mineral medicine used in refining). Then place it in the arsenic covering material in the ash vessel and fire it for five to seven days, timing the process by the length of one breath. Remove it; it is then ready for transmutation.

Materials used to boil the medicines and the head of the covering material:

Placenta, Sichuan pepper, ginger juice, dindin herb, and lotus root juice.

Method for preparing the base powder and the Danyang elixir.

Measure out equal parts of powdered arsenic trioxide and white arsenic sublimates. Place them in a water-and-fire crucible and sublimate them; then add the prepared medicinal ingredients. Take seven jin of worm-free Chinese honey locust pods and burn them to ash, taking care not to burn them too fiercely, so their medicinal properties remain. Take five sheng of good vinegar. Heat the locust-pod ash with the vinegar, then leach it through five times. Next, pound the pods, add five sheng of good vinegar, and soak briefly for two shichen. Knead them until broken down, strain out the residue, and combine the liquid with the ash extract obtained earlier. Suspend the mixture and cook it for three days.

Then place it in the crucible for sublimation, gradually increasing the heat from gentle to intense. When the night has reached the second watch, remove it and let it cool. Wrap the medicine in wutong lü—the ash or charcoal dust of the Chinese parasol tree—and suspend it inside the crucible for another round of sublimation. Afterward, grind it into a fine powder and sublime it once more. If the medicine settles at the bottom, this serves as one way to judge the heat and the medicine’s properties; it may also form a ring-shaped support. Take one qian of the powder to transform one liang of medicine. Sublime it until the second watch, then remove it and let it cool. Next, wrap and suspend it in wutong lü as before, sublime it, grind it finely, and sublime it again. Whether the medicine settles at the bottom or forms a ring-shaped support provides a basis for judging the result. Take one qian to transform one liang, and sublime it until it is snow-white.

Method for Stir-Frying White Arsenic Sublimate

Take equal amounts of Buddha-seat grass seeds, millet grass, gujing grass, shangu, rehmannia root, monkey-head herb, and elephant-foot yam, and grind them into a fine powder. Mix the powder with mulberry-ash water and lotus-root juice. Set half aside, and boil a smaller portion for one fu period, about twelve shichen. Remove it and wrap it in silver foil. Then mix the previously prepared powder with lotus-root juice and mulberry-ash water until it forms a mass, wrap this around the silver foil, and finally bind it tightly with cotton cloth.

Outer Sealing Compound (a material used to seal vessels and wrap medicines): Grind Japanese glory bower, Indian birthwort, Chinese clematis, rhubarb, and golden thread into a fine powder. Mix it with lotus-root juice and mulberry-ash water to form a paste, then wrap the medicine in successive layers and stir-fry until charred black. Replace the wrapping with fresh material and repeat this process several times, occasionally placing the medicine in a gan’guo crucible used for alchemical refining or melting medicines. First spread the residue left from boiling the herbs inside the crucible, then place the medicine over it and cover it. Grind litharge, monkshood lead powder, and dead saltpeter finely, and sprinkle them on top. Finally, make a cake from lotus-root juice, mulberry-ash water, rhubarb, and the other ingredients, and cover the medicine with it. Seal it, calcine it until it forms a solid mass, then break it up and set it aside.

Method for Subliming Arsenic, Vermilion, White Arsenic Sublimate, and Lu for Transformation

Wrap one liang of powdered arsenic, half a qian of arsenic trioxide, half a liang of cinnabar, and two qian of sal ammoniac in cotton cloth and tie it tightly. Boil the bundle overnight in scallion juice, ginger juice, and water. Remove it, let it dry, and place it in a cauldron.

Also put kochia seeds, pinellia, fritillaria, baical skullcap, kusnezoff monkshood, “juanwu,” and gray amaranth into the cauldron. Grind these ingredients into a fine powder and mix them with the materials prepared earlier. Put the mixture into the cauldron, cover it with another layer of medicinal material, seal the joints tightly, and let it dry. Then use a water-and-fire cauldron to heat and refine it; the text claims this can transform it into a snow-white substance.

“Ge Xianweng Sees Precious Arsenic” is a short heading or inscription. Beneath it are the names of several medicinal substances: Sichuan pepper, atractylodes, Sichuan langdu, Sichuan chinaberry, pyrrosia, and purple-backed saxifrage.