Original Pneuma

Dian is the same term mentioned above in relation to the fire times. In the Tang waidan texts, the implication is that the particle of Original Pneuma, represented by elixir, confers its properties to the entire cosmos. Despite the difference in formulation, the same notion underlies the Taiqing texts. 

Sherwood-Taylor, Alchemists (1976), 61, 78. The concept of solidified pneuma seems to originate in the Emerald Table which may date from the second to third century AD, hut is known only in early Arabic texts, not in Greek. 

Principe, L.M., Weeks, A. (1989). Jacob Boehme s Divine Substance Saliter its Nature, Origin, and Relationship to Seventeenth-Century Scientific Theories. Bn/AA journal for the History of Science, 22, 53-61. See also Taylor, F.S. (1953). The Idea of the Quintessence. In E. A. Underwood (Ed.), Science, Medicine and History. Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice written in honour of Charles Singer (vol. i, pp. 247-265). London. Note that Taylor s quintessence is something between matter and spirit, while Boerhaave s fire is corporeal. Osier, M.J. (Ed.). (1991). Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquility. Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought. Cambridge. 

THREE PNEUMAS (sanqi) Inaugural, Green (shiqing) Original, Yellow (yuanhuang) Mysterious, White (xuanbai)... 

Elaine Pagels intimates that the author of the Apjn understood the antim-imon pneuma as identical to the sexual impulse. It is equally true that it is identical with heimarmene—an identification emphasized by the dual account of its origins, heimarmene and the antimimon pneuma derived... 

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