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Alchemy and Taoism
What if you could live forever? ... 1
And so began alchemy. ...
Alchemy, although linguistically derived from the Arab word al-kimiya, is in fact the oldest form of its kind the world. ... In the Chinese language, alchemy is known as chin-tan, translated literally as “gold cinnabar”, which is considered in these terms to be the most powerful yang energy that nature can produce. ... The texts that were restored displayed an interesting theory: practitioners stated that by transforming cinnabar into mercury, Chinese alchemy sought to reproduce an alternation of yin and yang, hence duplicating the work of time, and the secrets of life. The original basis of alchemy then, is simple to comprehend. Seeing as how over extensive periods of time, gold is naturally transformed into cinnabar, one of the founding concepts of alchemy was reverting this process. ... The role of core raw earth minerals and base metals were essential in early alchemy. ... Their desire to create a constantly more improved modification of the practice begin, and eventually, the aim of alchemy developed into not so much to make gold, but rather to refine any raw ingredient. ...
In the early days of practice, so much of alchemy’s focus was on contemplating natural processes, rather than manufacturing a product. One could say, perhaps, that alchemy was born from spiritual questions of the universe, and that the research attempted to answer these, by way of putting study and attention into the ways of life and death. From this, practical questions arose, and the medical aspect of alchemy was created. ... And so arose the two levels of alchemy.
In laboratory terms, heidan and weidan alchemy have a great deal of similarity between the two, especially in terms of vocabulary and procedures, and hence there is much overlapping among the two. External alchemy, or weidan, is defined by the processes previously mentioned. ... Internal alchemy, or heidan, on the other hand was a slightly more abstract take on the whole belief. ... Another term for heidan is elixir alchemy, referring to the concoctions of medicinal ingredients that were used in correlation with each other to create the perfect drug; the drug capable of bringing immortality to the patient. ... The latter effect goes to illustrate strong ties in the search for immortality between Taoist spiritual practices, and elixer alchemy, reinforcing, once again, the statement that heidan and weidan are in some forms, parallel.
Alchemy was, in many senses, the act of applying physical and chemical procedures to the quintessential religious end of transcending one’s mortality.
Approximate Word count = 2091
Approximate Pages = 8.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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