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Fabrizio Pregadio, Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China,
Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2006 (Asian Religions
& Cultures), xviii+368 pp.
Rudolf Pfister
Meditation and the Origins of Inner Alchemy”, in Benjamin Penny (ed.), Daoism in
History: Essays in Honour of Liu Ts’un-yan, London, New York: Routledge, 2006, pp.
121-158.
Reviews 237
the brain” (p. 211). Other Shangqing texts relate the Nine Elixirs to the
pneumas of the Nine Heavens, which are received by humans during their
embryonic development. Further Shangqing practices are based on images
of the Sun and Moon, which are now not essences and pneumas found
within one’s own body. Rather, the adept has to collect Sun and Moon
essences in a vessel containing water and a talisman.
The text to have the greatest impact in terms of historical changes
within the alchemical tradition was the work “Token for the Agreement of
the Three According to the Book of Changes” (Zhouyi cantong qi 周易參同
契). It explains the alchemical process by borrowing the language and
emblems of the Book of Changes (Yijing 易 經 ), and of the system of
correlative cosmology. “These emblems make it possible to describe and
relate to each other different cosmological configurations represented by
Yin and Yang, the Five Agents, the trigrams and hexagrams of the Book of
Changes, the Celestial Stems and the Earthly Branches, the twenty-eight
lunar mansions, and so forth, in ways unknown to the earlier tradition
represented by the Taiqing and other waidan texts” (p. 216). The earlier
meditation texts shared their imagery and technical vocabulary, which
likewise underwent many changes in the later texts. But “the inner gods of
the Daoist mediation practices serve no more”. Instead, the adept of the
Token for the Agreement of the Three now “surveys” (can), examines (cha),
investigates (kao), explores (tan), inquires (ji), and inspects (shen); he gauges
(cun) and measures (du); he reflects (si), ponders (lü), infers (tui), and
assesses (kui). This is not a mere intellectual activity, but takes place,
instead, through “contemplation” (guan) (pp. 219-220).
By the middle of the Tang period, the methods using many different
kinds of minerals fell out of use, and those based on refining mercury from
cinnabar and using lead had grown in importance. The abundant use of
yinyang and Yijing language leads to a binary and abstract way of argu-
mentation in favour not only of the paired use of lead and mercury, but
also to a description of the alchemical process entirely within the (male)
human body. “The development of neidan in the form it took from the Tang
period onward would not have been possible without the earlier traditions
of Daoist meditation, and occurred in parallel with two shifts, related to
each other, in waidan—from a ritual framework to a cosmological
framework, and from methods based on cinnabar or other [mainly mineral]
ingredients to methods based on lead and mercury” (p. 223).
Conspicuous by their absence in Pregadio’s treatment are the sexual
techniques that share with alchemy, however, the metaphors of intake—by
the absorption of ‘female essence’ (nǚ jīng 女精) or the ingestion of the
elixir’s “essence”, with which the male adepts likewise thought to improve
their health and overall wellness in a prospected long life. Moreover, both
238 EASTM 36 (2012)
3 On early Daoist sexual techniques, see chapter 4 “The Yellow and the Red:
Controversies over Sexual Practice”, in Gil Raz, The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of
Tradition, London, New York: Routledge (Routledge Studies in Taoism; 3), 2012, pp.
177-209.