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Chinese alchemy (煉丹術 liàndānshù "method for refining cinnabar") is a historical Chinese approach to alchemy, a pseudoscience. According to original texts such as the Cantong qi , the body is understood as the focus of cosmological processes summarized in the five agents of change, or Wuxing , the observation and cultivation of which ...
The full title of the text is Zhouyi cantong qi, which can be translated as, for example, The Kinship of the Three, in Accordance with the Book of Changes. According to the well-established view in China, the text was composed by Wei Boyang in the mid-second century CE, and deals entirely with alchemy, in particular with Neidan (or Internal ...
Zou Yan is commonly associated with Daoism and the origins of Chinese alchemy, going back to the (ca. 100 AD) Book of Han that calls him a fangshi (方士 [literally "technique master"] "alchemist; magician; exorcist; diviner").
Wuxing (Chinese: 五行; pinyin: wǔxíng), [a] usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents, [2] is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain a wide array of phenomena, including cosmic cycles, the interactions between internal organs, the succession of political regimes, and the properties of ...
Chinese alchemy was closely connected to Taoism and Indian alchemy with the Dharmic faiths. In contrast, Western alchemy developed its philosophical system mostly independent of but influenced by various Western religions. It is still an open question whether these three strands share a common origin, or to what extent they influenced each other.
Chinese woodblock illustration of a waidan alchemical refining furnace, 1856 Waike tushuo 外科圖説 (Illustrated Manual of External Medicine). Waidan, translated as 'external alchemy' or 'external elixir', is the early branch of Chinese alchemy that focuses upon compounding elixirs of immortality by heating minerals, metals, and other natural substances in a luted crucible.
Development of the immortal embryo in the lower dantian of the Daoist cultivator. Neidan, or internal alchemy (traditional Chinese: 內丹術; simplified Chinese: 內丹术; pinyin: nèidān shù), is an array of esoteric doctrines and physical, mental, and spiritual practices that Taoist initiates use to prolong life and create an immortal spiritual body that would survive after death. [1]
Wei Boyang (traditional Chinese: 魏伯陽; simplified Chinese: 魏伯阳; pinyin: Wèi bóyáng) was a Chinese writer and Taoist alchemist of the Eastern Han dynasty.He is the author of The Kinship of the Three (also known as Cantong Qi), and is noted as the first person to have documented the chemical composition of gunpowder in 142 AD.