Nivin -- Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time

7/27/2019 Nivin -- Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time

1/16

Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time

Author(s): N. SivinSource: Isis, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Dec., 1976), pp. 512-526Published by: The University of Chicago Presson behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/230559.

Accessed: 20/01/2011 13:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress..

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Pressand The History of Science Societyare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access toIsis.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hsshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/230559?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/230559?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=hsshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress


2/16

Chinese lchemy n d t hanipulation o i m e

By N. Sivin*

For the dedicationof Willow HouseTJ'O WARD WHAT ENDS did the Chinese alchemists master chemical1Lmanipulations? On what principles did they shape their processes? Theirgoals, I claim, were not in any significant sense chemical-a point easilyoverlooked if we restrict our attention, as we usually do, to those isolatedaccomplishments that entitle the alchemist to credit in the light of modernchemistry.Alchemy (wai tan)a,l was the art of making elixirs of immortality, perfectedsubstances which brought about personal transcendence and eternal life-which,in other words, communicated their own perfection to human beings wheningested (or, as I will show, even without being ingested). Their power couldalso be applied to the maturation of metals into silver and gold, to thecure of sickness, and other matters of practical benefit. But almost everyalchemical treatise used its manipulations as concrete metaphors for cosmicand spiritual processes.Even so routine and preliminary a process as the extraction of silver fromlead by cupellation was assimilated in many-layered imagery reflecting theseparation of the positive and negative macrocosmic energies and the emergenceof the perfected self when a human is metamorphosed into an immortal:

Refine silver within leadAnd the spiritualbeing is born of itself.In the ash reservoir,melting in the flame,

Invited paper.*Technology Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.This essay summarizes as concisely as possible parts of an extensive and considerably moretechnical study of the theoretical foundations of laboratory alchemy, completed in 1970 and duefor publication c. 1978 in Joseph Needham, Ho Peng Yoke, Lu Gwei-djen, and N. Sivin, Scienceand Civilisation in China, Vol. V, Pt. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Many moreexamples and citations are provided there for each step in my argument, but this version incorporatesfive years' further reflection. I intend only to exhibit the general character of alchemy overthe period in which it flourished (second to eleventh century A.D.). Because few texts can yetbe dated precisely, I am not prepared to trace its origin or evolution without excessive resortto guesswork. The reader should be aware that given the enormous limitations of understandingand control of the literature, even a rough sketch of the sort I offer can have little value exceptto encourage further study. For additional orientation and bibliography, see Needham and Lu,Scienceand Civilisation, Vol. V, Pt. 2 (1974), and Sivin, ChineseAlchemy:PreliminaryStudies (HarvardMonographs in the History of Science, 1) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).All translations below are my own. I acknowledge with gratitude support from the NationalScience Foundation and the National Library of Medicine and hospitality from the SinologischInstituut, Leiden, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and the Research Institute for HumanisticStudies, Kyoto.' Superscript letters refer to the list of Chinese characters at the end of the article.Isis, 1976, 67 (No. 239) 5 13


3/16

($Io _

A Chinese version of the alchemical GreatWork,portrayedas an arrayofcorrespondences. Theadept is surrounded by correlates of yin and yang(the moon containing a hare pounding the elixir in a jade mortar;the suncontaining a three-legged raven; tiger and dragon), the Five Phases, andthe trigramsof the Book of Changes. Below the tiger in the circle is theelixirof immortality,and issuing from it the essences characteristic of theFive Phases and four of the visceral spheres of function within the body.From a text of internalalchemy (Chen-yuanmiao tao hsiu tan li-yench'ao,auprobably between the seventh and tenth centuries,in Yun chi ch'i ch'ien), 72:34a.


4/16

514 N. SIVINLead sinks down, silver floatsup.Pristinewhite the Treasure appearsWith which to make the Golden Sprout.2

A necessary first step toward understanding the character of Chinese alchemi-cal thought is to look at how alchemists drew on concepts of natural change,especially temporal change, that practically all Chinese thinkers shared.TIME IN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

Scientific thought began, in China as elsewhere, with attempts to comprehendhow it is that although individual things are constantly changing, always comingto be and perishing, nature as a coherent order not only endures but remainsconformable to itself. In the West the earliest such attempts identified theunchanging reality with some basic stuff out of which all the things aroundus, despite their apparent diversity, are formed.In China the earliest and in the long run the most influential scientificexplanations were in terms of time. They made sense of the momentary eventby fitting it into the cyclical rhythms of natural process. The life cycle ofevery individual organism-its birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death-followed essentially the same progression as those more general cycles whichwent on eternally and in regular order: the cycle of day and night, whichregulated the changes of light and darkness, and the cycle of the year, whichregulated heat and cold, activity and quiescence, growth and stasis. It wasthe nested and intermeshed cycles of the celestial bodies that governed theseasonal rhythms and, through them, the vast symphony of individual lifecourses.This pattern held for minerals as well as for flora and fauna. The Chineseshared what seems to have been a traditional belief among miners everywherethat earths matured within the terrestrial womb. The metallurgist was merelyaccelerating a natural progress of metals toward perfection-a perfection that,except in the cases of silver and gold, nature's corrosion would eventuallyundo.3The concepts that molded this organismic world-view were above all functionaland relational. They specified what was significant about each thing (its wayor tao)b in terms of what it did in relation to what others did, its role inthe cosmic system (the greater Tao) rather than its static qualities. Yin and

2 Chin pi ching' (Gold and Cerulean Jade Canon, c. A.D. 200?), cited in Tan lun chueh chihhsin chienu (Heart-Mirror of Mnemonics and Explanations from Writings on the Elixir, probablyprior to the tenth century; in Cheng-t'ung Tao tsangv [hereafter TT], Vol. 598), p. 7a; excerptedfrom an unpublished complete translation of the Heart-Mirror, based on a text edited fromthree printed versions. Although this quotation refers to a chemical operation, the Heart-Mirrorcontains a great deal of material on the physiological analogue of alchemy (nei tan),w which usesalchemical language to describe the pursuit of immortality through breathing or meditativedisciplines. This internal (nei) form and external (wai) alchemy were so closely complementary,and were so regularly practiced in conjunction before the eleventh century (when external alchemybegan to die out), that it is often impossible to distinguish which sort of operation a text isconcerned with. Their theoretical basis was largely identical. The Golden Sprout is an intermediaryin the preparation of the elixir.3This view of the miner, the smith, and the metallurgist in all the major civilizations has beendocumented by Mircea Eliade in Forgerons et alchemistes(Paris: Flammarion, 1956), translated byStephen Corrin as The Forge and the Crucible(New York: Harper, 1962); for more recent referencessee Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: A Postscript, History of Religions, 1968, 8:74-88.


5/16

CHINESE ALCHEMY 515yang were the passive and active phases through which any cycle must pass.Although used analytically, to break down change into its parts, the aim ofthese concepts was as often as not synthetic, to explain the relation of partsin the whole. Yin and yang could also be used to distinguish aspects ofconfigurations in space-down and up, back and front, inside and outside.Here too the Oxford English Dictionary sense 2 of phase ( any one aspectof a thing of varying aspects; a state or stage of change or development )is not out of place; yin and yang were almost always applied to spatial relationsthat are either changing or in dynamic equilibrium. The Five Phases (wu hsing,coften mistranslated as Five Elements) were a very closely analogous divisionof cycles or configurations into five functionally distinct parts (not, in scientificexplanations, into five types of ultimate constituents). The phases Fire andWood, for instance, made possible a finer analysis of the yang, or active, aspectof change. Wood is the name of the phase of growth and increase, and Fireis the maximal flourishing phase of activity, when the yang is about to begindeclining and yin must once again reassert itself. In the cycle of the yearWood and Fire thus correspond to spring and summer respectively.4 A thirdset of concepts of the same kind, much used in alchemy, were the eight trigramsand a set of twelve hexagrams from the Book of Changes, each defined witha function that played a due part in the preparation of elixirs.All these concepts belong to the most general level of early Chinese thoughtabout nature. The various fields of science, such as medicine and alchemy,simply applied them to different classes of phenomena, redefining and supple-menting them with technical concepts as necessary.

THE NATURAL ELIXIRGold was an obvious endpoint for the evolution of minerals, for it was exemptfrom decay. In China a second line of development, more important in alchemy,led toward cinnabar (HgS). Chinese gave its large, translucent, nearly vitreouscrystals, the color of fresh blood, a special place among semi-precious stones.Cinnabar was, like gold, associated with vitality and immortality from veryearly times. Alchemists associated it with the maximal phase of yang, Fire,and adapted tanrd (cinnabar) as a term for elixirs whether or not mercuricsulfide was among their ingredients.5The alchemist's elixir, although certainly the product of artifice, reproducedthe work of nature. Here is a theoretical text, so far undatable but before4The aspects of yang that correspond to Wood and Fire are conventionally distinguished asyoung or minor yang (shao yang)x and mature, old, or major yang (t'ai yang).Y Metal and Waterare the corresponding subphases of yin, and Earth is the neutral point of balance between yinand yang. I capitalize the names of the Five Phases to avoid confusion with ordinary wood,fire, and so on. The first philologically adequate explication of yin-yang and the Five Phases

in any language is that of Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine (MITEast Asian Science Series, 3) (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974), pp. 9-54. Porkert is concernedonly with their use in certain aspects of medicine.5A typical scheme of cinnabar evolution is given in Huang ti chiu ting shen tan ching chuehz(The Yellow Emperor's Canon of the Nine-Vessel Spiritual Elixir, with Explanations, Chs. 2-20apparently of the late tenth century; TT584-585), 14:1a. Some early writers, e.g. those citedc. 320 by Ko Hung,aa make cinnabar a stage in the evolution of gold; see Pao p'u tzu nei p'ienab(The Inner Chapters of the Philosopher Pao p'u tzu; P'ing chin kuan ts'ung-shuaced.), 16:5a,translated by James R. Ware in Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion in the China of A.D. 320. TheNei P'ien of Ko Hung (Pao-p'u tzu) (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966), p. 268.


6/16

516 N. SIVINA.D. 900, on the elixir that the cosmic order produces in its own time. Itcorresponds to the alchemist's two-ingredient process in which silver extractedfrom lead and mercury recovered from cinnabar are conjugated to bring abouta perfect balance of yin and yang function. The natural elixir, unattainableby mere mortals, is called cyclically transformed because it is matured bythe alternations of the seasons, which we will see the alchemist modeling byalternations of his fire:

Natural cyclically ransformedelixir is formed when flowing mercury,embracingSquire Metale [i.e., lead], becomes pregnant. Wherever there is cinnabar thereare also lead and silver. In 4320 years the elixir is finished. . It embracesthe ch'if of sun and moon, yin and yang, for 4320 years; thus, upon repletionof its own ch'i, it becomes a cyclically transformed elixir for immortals of thehighest grade and for celestial beings. When in the world below lead and mercuryare subjected to the alchemical process for purposes of immortality, [the elixir]is finished in one year. . . What the alchemist prepares succeeds because ofits correspondence on a scale of thousandths.g6The number 4320 implies the scale of thousandths that relates the naturaland artificial elixirs. There were twelve hours (shih)h in a Chinese day and4320 in a round year of 360 days. An hour in the laboratory thus recapitulateda year in the terrestrial matrix.Just as the diversity in color and other physical properties of native goldsuggested that there could be red and purple varieties which excelled thenormal, cinnabar was believed to constitute a range of substances. The rarestand most evolved kinds (again unattainable by mortals) were in effect naturalelixirs. Ch'en Shao-wei's i great monograph Arcane Teachings on the AlchemicalPreparation of Numinous Cinnabar (written perhaps c. 712) first discussesthe best cinnabar at the alchemist's disposal (similar to that shown in Fig.1), then its eventual maturation into an elixir, and finally the endpoint ofcinnabaric evolution which the alchemist tries to approximate:

Now the highest grade, lustrous cinnabar,ioccursin the mountainsof Ch'en-chouand Chin-chou [in modern Hunan] upon beds of white toothy mineral. Twelvepieces of cinnabar make up one throne. Its color is like that of an unopenedred lotus blossom, and its luster is as dazzling as the sun. There are also thronesof 9, 7, 5, or 3 pieces or of one piece. . . . In the center of each throne is alarge pearl [of cinnabar],ten ounces (liang)k or so in weight, which is the monarch.Around it are smaller ones . . .; they are the ministers. They surround anddo obeisance to the great one in the center. About the throne are a peck (tou)'or two of various kinds of cinnabar, encircling the jade throne and cinnabarbed. . . . If lustrous cinnabar is further taken in the sevenfold-recycled orninefold-cyclically-transformedtate, then without ado the yin soul is transformedand the outer body destroyed, the spirit made harmoniousand the constitutionpurified. The yin ch'i [i.e., the material configuration organized by energy of yintype] dissolves and the persona floats up, maintaining its shape, to spend eternityas a flying immortal of the highest grade of realization . . ..

6 Tan lun chueh chih hsin chien, p. 12b. Ch'i refers to the active energy (in the colloquial, purelyqualitative sense of the word) that organizes matter into configurations, causing change, or thatmaintains the organization of configurations and thus resists change. The word is also appliedto configurations of matter so organized. Such configurations are generally defined by their functionsrather than by their constituents. See Porkert, Theoretical Foundations,pp. 167-168. The earliestsenses of the term are surveyed in Kuroda Genji,ad Ki, Toho shukyo, 1953, No.3:1-40; 1955,No.7:16-44.


7/16

CHINESEALCHEMY 517

Figure 1. Throne ormations of large cinnabarcrystals, growing on beds of what is apparentlydrusy quartz. From a 1957 Peking reproduction ofthe Chinese Materia Medica printed in 1249(Ch'ung hsiu Cheng-ho ching shih cheng lei peiyung pen-ts'ao),ar 3:2b.After imbibing the active energy of the cosmos for twenty-two thousand years,lustrous cinnabar is spontaneously

. . .transformed into celestial throne cinnabar, n which the throne is jade-green.There are nine pieces in the center, growing in layers, pressed closely about by72 [smaller] pieces. It floats in the midst of the Grand Void, constantly watchedover by one of the spirits of the Supreme Unity. On a Superior Epoch daym[the full moon of the first lunar month] the Immortal Officials descend to collectit. The mountain [on which it is found] suddenly lights up as if illuminated byfire. This celestialthrone cinnabar s collected [only] by ImmortalOfficials; peopleof the world can have no opportunityto gather it.7

ALCHEMICAL PROCESSESThe alchemist's simulation of the hidden operations of nature was founded

upon a much more ancient simulation, that which made possible the accomplish-ments of the metalworking artisan. In extracting a metal from its ore or inmaking strong steel from brittle cast iron, the metallurgist was demonstratingthat humans can imitate natural processes, can stand in the place of natureand bring about natural changes at a rate immensely faster than nature's owntime. People in traditional societies did not know of any way to speed upthe growth cycle of plants or animals. Only the life rhythms of minerals couldbe manipulated.Upon the craftsman's mastery of metalline growth alchemists built processesto fit their own purpose. They constructed in their laboratories working modelsof the cosmic order as manifested in time. They not only shrank the dimensionsof the universe to fit their four walls but also compressed time to make the

7Ta tung lien chen pao ching hsiu fu ling sha miao chueh,ae TT586), pp. 5b-7b; excerpted froma complete draft translation based on collation of two printed texts. The first six characters ofthe title indicate that this book (like the one cited in n. 11) provides supplementary instructionsfor the process given in the Great Void Canon on Making the Realized Treasure, an otherwiseunknown work. Realization and realized throughout this essay are my rather literal translationsof chen,af which denotes the authenticity and perfection attained by the elixir, or by the adeptwho attains a high grade of immortality. The text mentions Immortal Officials and grades becauseimmortals were given appointments in the hierarchy of the gods, bureaucratically organized likethe imperial government.


8/16

518 N. SIVINduration of their manipulations feasible. Thus through point-by-point corre-spondence the artificial circumstances of the laboratory were made profoundlynatural and responsive to the operation of the cosmic Tao, to the rhythmsof the great order outside: When earth mixes with water to form mud, andis kneaded [by subterranean forces] below a mountain, gold will be formed,and generally cinnabar above it. When this [cinnabar] is ceaselessly metamor-phosed and cyclically treated [by the alchemist], and once again forms gold,this is merely a reversion to the root substance, and not something to bewondered at. 8 How could the alchemists be sure that what went on withintheir reaction vessels was identical with the work of nature? If they erredthey would be overruled by the Tao, and their elixirs would wither.They depended upon numerological correlations, correspondences, andresonances-in a word, upon analogy.9 There were three points at whichanalogies could be applied to cosmic process: materials, apparatus and otheraspects of spatial arrangement, and control of time and temperature incombustion. Space permits examination only of the last, but it is importantto keep in mind that all were used in conjunction.

FIRE PHASINGSince the heat of the flame stood for the active cosmic forces, to recreatethose forces in the laboratory required that fire be bound by time. Fire phasing(huo hou)n was the gradual increase and decrease of fire intensity by usingprecisely weighed increments of fuel. It is true that a constant increment inthe weight of charcoal burnt in the furnace does not cause a constant increasein temperature. But it was well known by craftsmen that each weight of fuelburnt in the same way yields a fixed heat and a predictable product. Whatthe alchemists did was to make this concept of fire phasing dynamic, varyingthe weight of fuel in a regular way over a very long period of heating. Theywere bringing their processes under the control of one of the few exact measuringinstruments at their disposal, the balance. The profile of the flame's intensitywas thus governed by correspondences that tied it to the seasonal cycles. Ananonymous early author calls into play yin and yang phases and other divisions

of the annual cycle and cites two of the most canonic sources of alchemicaltheory: The amounts of fuel to be weighed out are increased and decreasedin cyclical progression according to the proper order of yin and yang. Theymust conform with the signs of the Book of Changes and the ThreefoldConcordance, tally with the 4, 8, 24, and 72 seasonal divisions of the year,and agree with the implicit correspondences and ch'i phases of the year, month,day and hour-all without a jot or tittle of divergence. 108 Huang ti chiu ting shen tan ching chueh, 13:2a.9On correlative thinking see Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, Science and Civilisation in China,Vol. 11 (1956), pp. 279-291 and elsewhere. The most important source on numerology in Chinais Marcel Granet, La pemsie chinoise (L'evolution de l'humanite, 5.3) (Paris: La Renaissance duLivre, 1934), pp. 149-299.'0Cited in Chu chia shen p'in tan faag (Wonderful Elixir Formulas of the Masters, tenth centuryor later; TT 594), 4: lb. On this collection, see Sivin, Chinese Alchemy, pp. 75-76. The ThreefoldConcordance is the Chou i ts'an t'ung ch i,ah traditionally dated c. A.D. 140, which would makeit the earliest extant alchemical text. Even though the present version is probably much later,its putative antiquity gave it great status in the eyes of later writers. See Chinese Alchemy, pp.36-40. There is a very rough English translation, Wu Lu-ch'iang, An Ancient Chinese Treatise


9/16

CHINESE ALCHEMY 519

Figure 2. Furnaces similar to the one described by Ch'enShao-wei, from Wu Wu,asTan fang hsu chihat (IndispensableKnowledge for the Alchemical Laboratory, 1163; in TT588). Ch'enspecified nine openings in the top level, twelve in the middle,and eight in the lower. His furnace was fired only through themedian doors, each of which was equipped with tuyeres. In Wu'sbook these structures were no longer used as furnaces; theymerely supported a small stove which enclosed the reactionvessel.Consider a single fire-phasing scheme, from Arcane Teachings on the NinefoldCyclically Transformed Gold Elixir (c. 712?), a companion work to the bookby Ch'en Shao-wei cited earlier. Ch'en repeats a sixty-day cycle six times overa round year to make his elixir. The furnace is built in three tiers (see Fig.2), which correspond to sky and earth and man centered between them. Thecentral tier has twelve doors, which correspond to hours in the day and months

in the year. Ch'en fires through each door for five days to complete a cycle.As for the time of firing the furnace, the fire should be applied at a midnightwhich is also the first hour of a sixty-hourcycle, on the first day of a sixty-daycycle, in the eleventh month [i.e., the month which contains the winter solstice].Begin by firing through door A for 5 days, using 3 oz of charcoal.There mustalwaysbe 3 oz of well-coked charcoal, neither more nor less, in the furnace. Thenopen door B and start the fire, firing for 5 days, using 4 oz of charcoal. Thenopen door C and start the fire, firing for 5 days, using 5 oz of charcoal.

This scheme proceeds until 8 oz of charcoal have been fed through the sixthdoor for 5 days. Then the alchemist is told to move on to what Ch'en callsthe yin doors, reducing the fuel by 1 oz per day at each door, until at thetwelfth the charge has been reduced to 4 oz. The cycle is not quite closed,for the weight of fuel has not been reduced to the original amount. Thesecond sixty-day cycle begins with 5 oz of fuel and goes up to 10 oz. Thethird cycle begins with 7 oz and goes up to 12 oz. The sixth cycle, whichcompletes the elixir, begins at 17 oz, rises to 22 oz, and falls again to 16oz.1I

on Alchemy Entitled 'Ts'an T'ung Ch'i,' Written by Wei Po-Yang about 142 A.D. with an Introductionand Notes by Tenney L. Davis, Isis, 1932, 18:210-289.Ch'i phases are phases of the regular temporal variations in energy and activity (see n. 6).In other words, the cycles which yin-yang and the Five Phases analyze are cycles of ch'i, whethermanifested as heat, light, or some other factor that brings about change or maintains a configuration.1l Ta tung lien chen pao ching chiu huan chin tan miao chuehai (TT 586), pp. 12a-13a, excerptedfrom a complete translation based on two texts. The first sentence quoted places the epoch ofthe process at the moment when calendrical cycles begin. For certain purposes connected withimperial ritual-including astronomical computation-the year was considered to begin in theeleventh month, the month which contained the winter solstice. See N. Sivin, Cosmos and


10/16

520 N. SIVIN25-

200

10C

O . I ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I I100 200 300 360Days

Figure 3. The cyclical pattern of precisely controlled fire phasing.

As graphed in Figure 3, the zigzag time-weight profile represents mostreasonably the notion of a change in the alchemical ingredients at once cyclicand progressive. If, mentally, we were to superimpose the six cycles, whichin principle repeat each other, it would be very tempting to call this a helicalfire-phasing schema.Some fire-phasing schemata are a good deal simpler than this one, andsome are more elaborate-for instance, a thirteenth-century two-variableprocedure in which the weight of charcoal below the reaction vessel and thatof water in a cooling apparatus in its upper part are varied regularly in sucha way that the sum of this yin-yang pair remains constant.'2THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FIRE PHASING

From the documents I have quoted and many others like them, one cansee that number and measure were being used in a way not much like their

Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy, T'oung Pao (Leiden), 1969, 55:10-1 1.There is an excellent discussion of furnaces and other apparatus in Ho Ping-yiu and JosephNeedham, The Laboratory Equipment of the Early Mediaeval Chinese Alchemists, Ambix, 1959,7:57-1 15.12A system in which the increase in weight of charcoal is linear and repeated in each cycleis given in T'ai shang pa ching ssu jui tzu chiang wu chu chiang sheng shen tan fangai (Methodfor Making the Eight-Radiance Four-Stamens Purple-Fluid Five-Pearl Incarnate Numinous Elixir,a Most High Scripture, probably late fourth century; in Yun chi ch'i ch'ien,akThe Seven BambooTablets of the Cloudy Satchel, c. 1023; TT691), 68:4b-5a. The two-variable system appears inChin hua ch'ung pi tan ching pi chihal Confidential Instructions on the Canon of the Heaven-Piercing[?] Golden Flower Elixir, preface dated 1225; TT592), 2:20a-21b. Although Meng Hsun,ar whorecorded this treatise, claims that he carried out the process, its great complexity suggests athought experiment. On the origins of this treatise, see Needham and Lu, Science and Civilisation,Vol. V, Pt. 2, p. 316. Note that Needham and Lu translate the last word of the title as manual.It is true that although ching usually designated books of philosophic or religious doctrine, it


11/16

CHINESE ALCHEMY 521use in modern science, where time-temperature specifications also controlchemical preparations. What makes alchemical operations resemble those ofmodern chemistry is that the quantities that controlled the process were derived,by way of theory, from observations and measurements. While they servedas models of cosmic change, the alchemical processes also had to transformone substance into another, and so at some point certain chemical and physicalconditions had to be satisfied. Ch'en Shao-wei was well aware, for instance,that 1 lb of cinnabar would yield 14 oz of mercury (a figure he almost certainlylearned from mercury smelters).Alchemy and modern chemistry differ in the ways number served theory,as well as in the links between theory and the observations on which it wasbased. The foundation on which chemical theories rest is essentially mathemat-ical; Chinese alchemical theories were essentially numerological. The latterused numbers, not as measures, but as a means of ranking phenomena intoa qualitative order, an order that reflects their subjective values. It is notat all unusual for measured quantities to be combined with symbolic numbersin such schemes, nor for the results of numerological manipulations to betreated as though they were quantitative. (These complexities may be seenin the grading system prevalent in American universities, the most influentialsurvival of numerology in modern society.)Fire phasing was one of many means of constructing in the laboratory asystem analogous part by part to another system-the cosmic order. Alchemistsdrew upon all the numerological and emblematic correspondences availableto describe the activity of the cosmos, especially those correspondences relatedto the Five Phases, yin-yang, and the symbols of the Book of Changes. Butbecause these concepts had already been extended to so many areas of thought,their connotations were too rich and diverse to be entirely integrated intoalchemical theory (or any other sort of early scientific theory). They werequite adequate for some kinds of explanation, but not for others. By weavinga new fabric of associations to supplement conventional natural concepts adaptedto their own concerns, the alchemists were in effect picking and choosingwhat meanings would be included in the overtones of their discussions. Firephasing was a way of creating special structures embodying number-patternsof times and weights-which conveyed no more and no less than what alchemistswanted to teach their disciples.

SPATIAL AND MATERIAL CORRELATIONSThe alchemist's model could be complete only if it were aligned with theuniversal order in space as well as time. In spatial correlations an enormousvariety of verbal and numerological associations, mostly analogous in kind to

those I have already mentioned, were called into play. The laboratory wasoriented to the cardinal points of the compass, the furnace centered in it,and the reaction vessel centered in the furnace to make it the axial pointof change. The designs of furnaces and vessels were precisely specified towas occasionally applied to what moderns would consider technical manuals; but this was doneprecisely to assert their status as canons of craft traditions, and there is no reason not to translateching literally.


12/16

522 N. SIVINmake them concrete metaphors for sky and earth, with the work of man centeredbetween the two and in perfect concord with both.The more theoretically inclined alchemists tended to use processes in whichtwo ingredients represented the alternating conjugation and separation of yinand yang. One of the two most usual processes began with cinnabar and lead,representing yang and yin, from which were extracted mercury, representingyin emergent from yang, and silver, representing yang emergent from yin.The other combined mercury and sulfur to form vermilion (artificial cinnabar,finely divided), which could be repeatedly decomposed and resynthesized. AsCh'en Ta-shiho (Sung period) put it, That cinnabar should come out of mercuryand again be killed by mercury: this is the mystery within the mystery. 13Despite the many types of modeling that it incorporated, alchemy was notmodel-making for its own sake, nor was it the pursuit of chemical knowledgefor its own sake, nor even an alternative way of doing natural philosophy.It had its own goals, and we are now ready to look at them.

THE GOALS OF ALCHEMYI have already mentioned that in a certain sense alchemy grew out of themetalworking artisan's ability to accelerate mineral maturation. The alchemist'sdiscovery was that the life courses of minerals could be accelerated by manin the interest not only of metal production but of understanding and evenof wisdom. No one could wait 4,320 years to experience nature's productionof an elixir, and in any case her womb was not open to contemplation. Analchemist who set out to fabricate an elixir in a few months or a year wascreating an opportunity to witness the cyclical sweep of universal change.The alchemists' enterprise, as they themselves defined it, was not chemistry.They were not primarily motivated by curiosity about the properties and reactionsof specific substances (which they generally learned about from craftsmen).Those properties and reactions fascinated some alchemists, but they were nomore intrinsically important than the characteristics of pigments that paintersmust know about in order to set down images. In fact the response of alchemiststo their materials was at least as esthetic as it was manipulative. Charming

(k'o-ai)P is one of the most common adjectives in alchemical writing for mineralspecimens.Chemical knowledge and concepts of a chemical kind, in other words, wereto some extent indispensable means and to some extent byproducts (as werephysical relations and ritual patterns). Alchemists recorded a great deal oftheir chemical knowledge as well as their attempts to make sense of it. Theirdocuments are chemically far richer and more explicit than those of the Westbefore the Renaissance.'4 But the aims of Chinese alchemy were of a differentsort than those of modern science.

13 Pi yii chusha hanlin yii shu kueian (On the Cerulean Jade and Cinnabar Jade-Tree-In-a-Cold-ForestProcess, eleventh to fourteenth century?; TT587), p. la.14The chemical knowledge reflected in alchemical practice is being surveyed systematically inNeedham and Lu, Science and Civilisation, Vol. V, Pts. 2 (1974) and 3 (1976), and I discusschemical aspects of theory in Vol. V, Pt. 4 (see n. *). Chinese alchemy, no less than the traditionsof other civilizations, depended on recondite language and symbolic images (see the Frontispiece)both to multiply levels of meaning and to exclude people unprepared spiritually and morallyto use its teachings responsibly. But the degree of mystification has been badly overestimated


13/16

CHINESE ALCHEMY 523The old books reflect many different aims and many kinds of curiosity.Some interests were on the whole pragmatic; it was the product, the elixir,that mattered, and one way of making it was in principle as good as another.The emphasis was on benefits elixirs yielded: health, wealth, above all immortal-ity. This was especially true of certain medical men such as Sun SSu_moq(fl. 673), who described his alchemical processes in much the same way ashis techniques for preparing drugs.'5 But the aim that runs through mostof the roughly one hundred treatises on laboratory alchemy that still exist,'6the aim that makes them a coherent literature, that conditioned every stepin the design of the processes, was to construct a model of the Tao, to reproducein a limited space on a shortened time scale the cyclical energetics of thecosmos.This goal values contemplating the process over using the product. In the

Threefold Concordance, the most influential of the early alchemical canons,the product was practically ignored. There are no instructions for compoundingor ingestion. There are a mere couple of cursory descriptions of that immortalbeatitude which to pragmatic alchemists was the highest reward of their art.'7Among the posterity of the Threefold Concordance we find such a concernwith gnostic rapture over the process that the steps between understandingand becoming an immortal are occasionally skipped altogether. This gap isapparent in the Most Ancient Canon of Earth and Tui (between sixth andninth centuries?): If [the devotee] attains a clear and penetrating understandingof these Five Phases, one can proceed to a discussion of fire-subduing, andcan then talk to him about the tao [i.e., the art] of projection. When hehas comprehended every aspect of the Five Phases, he will be a man of balancedRealization, and the Three Wormsr will leave his body. '8 In other words,one can understand the preparation of elixirs by rendering volatile mineralsinvulnerable to the fire, and the use of these elixirs in transforming lessersubstances into gold, only after comprehending exactly how the Five-Phasestheory governs these changes. The adept who thus has mastered the alchemicalprocess is invulnerable to the Three Corpseworms (demonic presences who

by a few historians who, because they could not trouble themselves to understand the conceptuallanguage of yin-yang and the Five Phases, assumed that it was also occult.15His T'ai ch'ing tan ching yao chuehao Essential Formulas from the Alchemical Classics, a MostPure Scripture; in Yun chi ch'i ch'ien, Ch. 71) was edited and translated with commentary inSivin, Chinese Alchemy.fNeedham and Lu, Science and Civilisation, Vol. V, Pt. 2, Bibliography A and Concordancefor Tao tsang Books and Tractates, lists over two hundred alchemical texts. One can only estimatehow many are concerned with external alchemy (see n. 2). For a list of thirteen published translations,see Sivin, Chinese Alchemy, pp. 322-324.17The extent to which the Threefold Concordance (see n. 10) was originally concerned withlaboratory procedures remains problematic. It contains elements of external, internal, and sexualalchemy (i.e., disciplines for immortality through the most literal union of yin and yang), butwas interpreted by external alchemists as primarily concerned with their discipline. See R. H.Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China. A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca.1500 B.C. till 1644 A.D. (Leiden: E. J.Brill, 1961), pp. 80-84.8 T'ai ku tu tui chingav TT600), 1 :4b. T'u refers to the phase Earth (in which opposed tendenciesreach balance), and tui to one of the eight trigrams of the Book of Changes, but there is noindication in the text of what association of the latter the author meant to invoke. BalancedRealization describes the perfect complementarity of yin and yang energies that characterizesimmortals; see n. 7.


14/16

524 N. SIVINnormally live in the body and are responsible for natural death) and is thereforeimmortal.The content, tone, and balance of the evidence strongly suggest that thedominant goal of Chinese alchemy was contemplative, and even ecstatic. ATaoist book of the early sixth century has this to say about the use of a smallamount of elixir to turn lead to gold:

You may also first place the lead in a vessel, heat it until it is liquefied, andthen add one spatula of the Scarlet Medicine [i.e., the elixir] to the vessel. Asyou look on, you will see every color flying and flowering, purple clouds reflectingat random, luxuriant as the colors of Nature-it will be as though you were gazingupward at a gathering of sunlit clouds. It is called Purple Gold, and it is a marvelof the Tao.19This is a splendid description of what a metallurgist sees on a lead button

as it oxidizes and the oxide is moved by surface tension. The richness andvividness of the details suggest a state of heightened awareness. That is perhapsnot surprising, since meditative practices were normally part of the alchemist'sdiscipline. If Purple Gold was that fugitive iridescence on the surface of moltenlead, as the text clearly says it was, it was not a gold for selling or spending,only for seeing and wondering.The alchemists constructed their intricate art, made the cycles of the cosmicprocess accessible, and undertook to contemplate them because they believedthat to encompass the Tao with their minds-or, as they put it, with theirhearts and minds (comprised in one word, hsin)s-would make them one withit. That belief (by no means confined to Taoists) was not at all unlike oneof the central convictions that underlay the birth of physics in the West beforethe time of Plato: the idea that to grasp the unchanging reality that underliesthe chaos of experience is to rise above that chaos, to be freed at least forthe moment from the limits of personal mortality.

CONCLUSIONIn the great metaphysical and religious significance given to alchemicalprocesses the Chinese art was remarkably similar to that of the Hellenistictradition, although the dominant metaphors were constructed out of very dif-ferent world-views and beliefs. The idea of immortality did not enter Europeanalchemy until the twelfth century and may have been received from China(predominantly via Islam), but it would be arbitrary to deny that the traditionof Zosimos was true alchemy because it lacked this notion.20 The Stoic andGnostic scheme of spiritual death and rebirth played much the same role

19T'ai ch'ing chin yeh (or i) shen tan chingaP (Classic of Liquefied Gold and Divine Elixir, aMost Pure Scripture; in Yun chi ch'i ch'ien), 65:15b. A more extended version appears in T71582.The part of the text cited almost certainly dates from the early fifth century. See Henri Maspero,Une texte tadiste sur l'Orient Romain, pp. 97-98 in Etudes historiques(Melanges posthunwssurles religions et 1'histoirede la Chine, 3) (Paris: Civilisations du Sud, 1950).20Needham has taken the position that for this reason the Hellenistic proto-chemists oughtnot to be called 'alchemists ' (Science and Civilisation, Vol. V, Pt. 2, p. 12); for early criticismsee the review by Robert P. Multhauf in Ambix, 1975, 22:218-220. A view of Alexandrian alchemybroadly similar to my understanding of the Chinese tradition is taken by Allen G. Debus, e.g.,in The Significance of the History of Early Chemistry, Journal of World History, 1965, 9:39-58,and by H. J. Sheppard in The Origin of the Gnostic-Alchemical Relationship, Scientia, 1962,97:146-149 and other writings.


15/16

CHINESE ALCHEMY 525in thought about transcendence as the Chinese belief that the adept's perishablebody would be left behind as a lifeless husk when his new, imperishable self(embodying his old but purified personality) was ready to hatch out andjoin the ranks of the immortals. The religious depth as well as the chemicalingenuity of alchemists at both ends of Asia deserves serious consideration.There is evidence that the arts of both civilizations were means towardself-perfection through disciplined contemplation of manual operations (some-times the patterns of manipulation were so idealized that they could not possiblyhave been carried out). It misses the point to assume that either traditionwas dedicated to the search for abstract knowledge.In China the operative alchemy of the laboratory, no less than the physiologicaland introspective disciplines that borrowed its language and symbols, was aform for self-cultivation, a means toward transcendence.

Necessary that the maturing come within man,Due to the maturing of his heart and mind.If heart and mind have reached divinity,so willthe Medicine;If heart and mind are confused the Medicinewill beunpredictable.The Perfect Tao is a perfect emptying of heartand mind.Within the darkness, unknowablewonders.When the wise man has attained the August SourceIn time he will trulyreach the clouds.21CHINESE CHARACTERS

a. 81 eb. tc. _,INTd. -'e. fi I =-kEf. ig. * 4 I 't f- t-,IIh. a?i. I* 'S Vuki -L aS ;ayk. A31 X+n. >)), i -;

q.

.Sp _X. /V.

aa.nb. it1 vvXX

'From the Arcane Memorandum of the Red Pine Master (Ch'ih sung tzu hsuan chi,aqprobablyT'ang or earlier), cited in Tan lun chuehchih hsin chien (see n. 6), p. 14a. Medicine is a conventionalsynonym for the elixir.


16/16

526 N. SIVIN

ac. - ;ad.ae. 'rlfRatA

ah. f 1~ah.ai . -Yut taj.

_akJ_

al. /} ;t 'am. Ian. 4ao. 4ap*aq.ar.

at.au. X 77Las. t $

Documents

Nivin -- Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time