Talisman system

Based on this, it could be but a small step to conclude that waidan has no more than a marginal relation to Daoism as it evolved during the Six Dynasties and in later times. This step, in fact, has been made in some studies on Chinese alchemy. The existence of about one hundred waidan texts in the Daoist Canon (one of the largest corpora in that collection, if considered as a whole), in addition to the inclusion of the Great Clarity, of the various transmutations and the talismanic charts descended from that heaven, and of deities, saints, and immortals associated with alchemy into the system of the Three Caverns, shows, instead, how closely waidan was integrated into the construction that Daoists erected—with awareness and intention, as shown by the very complexity of that system—during the Six Dynasties. 

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