Inner Chapters

While the sources quoted in the chapter on metals are otherwise unknown, the other chapter highlights three scriptures that had been in the Ge family s possession for about one century, and that Ge Hong deemed to be central to the tradition into which he had been initiated. Their origin and transmission to about 300 CE are related in a well-known passage of the Inner Chapters, which describes them as derived from a revelation granted by an... 

The close relation between alchemy and local traditions, however, extends beyond the sphere of ritual. As will be shown in Chapter 7, the Taiqing texts fully partake in the belief that other local legacies have in the beneficial action of the divine beings, and share their consideration for the noxious influences that demonic and other malevolent forces play in human life. Relations with the roots of the local southern heritage are also documented by some textual peculiarities in the Taiqing sources. An example is found in a passage of the Nine Elixirs whose early date is authenticated by a quotation in Ge Hong s Inner Chapters. Here the adept... 

As shown by some of the passages quoted above, the inner state of Great Clarity corresponds externally to a pure space where the saintly man wanders unrestrained. Ge Hong s Inner Chapters also mentions the Great Clarity as a heaven in which one roams freely after achieving transcendence ... 

In the Inner Chapters, Ge Hong provides an extended summary of the introduction, followed by descriptions of the properties of each elixir. Both correspond to the received version of the Scripture " Ge Hong s synopsis is quoted in four works in the Daoist Canon, testifying to the prestige that the Nine Elixirs enjoyed also beyond the waidan adepts. This prestige is also attested by the existence of other texts based on the Nine Elixirs, which include two works in poetry, a short piece entitled Explanations ( Jue, possibly derived from a lost third recension of the scripture) concerned with the first of the Nine Elixirs, and especially the Secret Written Instructions on the Elixirs of the Nine Tripods ( Jiuding dan yin wenjue ), which provides valuable details on all nine methods. 

Hong s Inner Chapters for the background of the alchemical practice the lost works attributed to Hugang zi for the methods and Tao Hongjing s Collected Commentaries to the Canonical Pharmacopoeia (Bencao jing jizhu ca. 500) for the descriptions of the elixir ingredients. ... 

Besides the Talisman for Expelling the Demons and the five talismans of the Jade Terrace, the commentary to the Nine Elixirs reproduces five other sets of talismans and seals and provides explanations on their materials, sizes, colors, and uses. Several of them also appear in Ge Hong s Inner Chapters, but both the illustrations and the accompanying texts contain variants, sometimes substantial, compared to Ge Hong s work. 

No other source besides the Inner Chapters has preserved a description of this rite the very large amounts mentioned by Ge Hong raise doubts about the accuracy of his report. 

In his Inner Chapters, Ge Hong points out the difficulties that one faces in making Nine Elixirs (jiudan) ... 

The method for compounding the Golden Liquor is not reported in the Inner Chapters, but Ge Hong says that there is no fire to tend the mixture is simply placed in a Flowery Pond for a number of days sufficient to prepare the elixir. " This matches the directions given in the received text. 

In the Inner Chapters, the elixir obtained at this stage of the process is... 

Reflecting with more or less awareness the judgment of the Chinese literati, who found in the Inner Chapters of the Book of the Master Who Embraces Spontaneous Nature (Baopu zi neipian) an accessible introduction to the arts of the elixirs, several scholars in the past have called this work the main Chi-... 

The Inner Chapters, therefore, provides a view of alchemy as seen by a member of the audience to which the Taiqing texts addressed themselves. Needless to say, not all Taiqing adepts must have looked at alchemy as Ge Hong did many of them, however, are likely to have shared his views on how alchemy related to other traditions, which is the point that interests us here. As we shall see, Ge Hong often draws distinctions among the different trends of doctrine and practice that he tries to accommodate into an all-inclusive view, and his views in this concern are found to be fundamentally consistent with statements found in the Taiqing sources. 

One point often made by Ge Hong in his Inner Chapters is that alchemy, meditation, the use of talismans and charms (jin), and the observance of precepts (jie) should be distinguished from the ingestion of herbal drugs. These drugs, says Ge Hong, are inadequate to circumvent the harms caused by demons and spirits ... 

The text translated below is found in the first chapter of the Baopu zi shen-xian jinzhuo jing (Scripture of the Golden Liquid of the Divine Immortals, by the Master Who Embraces Spontaneous Nature CT 917). The commentary is not translated. References to page numbers in the Daozang text are given in brackets within the translation. I divide the text into five parts, corresponding to the summary of the methods and the comparison with the synopsis in Ge Hong s Inner Chapters found above, pp. 114-18. My comments are printed in smaller type (comments found in the translation of the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs are not duplicated here). 

As it is said in the commentary, the Yellow is gold, and the White is silver one should always prepare gold and silver as a test before ingesting this elixir (the corresponding passage in the Inner Chapters mentions only silver). For this transmutation the commentary says that one should follow the same method used for the first of the Nine Elixirs see the translation above, p. 170. 

Two of these sources, both of which are now lost, have left traces in Ge Hong s Inner Chapters. After mentioning that the scriptures on alchemy and meditation are kept together on Mount Kunlun, Ge Hong quotes this passage from an anonymous text ... 

Concerning Ge Hong s summary of the Nine Elixirs in his Inner Chapters, an error found in his report of the method for ma ing the Mud of the Six-and-One (liuyi ni) is worthy of attention. This portion of Ge Hong s summary reads as follows ... 

Hong s Inner Chapters, where the accounts of the Triple zhi cancheng zhi and the Dragon-Immortality zhi longxian zhi f lll ) correspond to those found in the Reverted Elixir in Nine Cycles. Later, this section in turn was incorporated into the Shangqing daobao jing IS (Scrip-... 

The main themes of this chapter (the first of the commentary proper) are the divine origins of the Nine Elixirs and the sovereign s search for the Dao. The ruler should loo for enlightened teachers, and will be rewarded by Heaven with the revelation of scriptures and methods. Drawing from different chapters of Ge Hong s Inner Chapters, however, the commentary also claims that the mythical rulers of antiquity governed virtuously even without the help of sage counselors in times of peace, therefore, some masters should be allowed to devote themselves to the study of the Dao instead... 

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