From the Introduction: A Guide to Reading the Dragon-Tiger Classic

To age with the sun and moon and be renewed by spring and summer, to conserve the seeds of growth in autumn and winter and to be nourished by the eternal breath of the Tao —these are the goals of the Taoist alchemists, the masters of the arts of health, longevity, and immortality.

Taoist alchemy is also concerned with spiritual transformation. This transformation involves changing the body and mind from a mundane state to one that mirrors the timeless and permanent reality of the Tao. Alchemy is said to be the most challenging and dangerous path of Taoist spiritual practices. If the endeavor is successful, the alchemist can attain longevity and immortality in his or her own lifetime. If it fails, illness, mental derangement, and even death can result.

The Chinese arts of health and longevity are the products of centuries of experimentation, research, and development. Those of us who practice the techniques of internal transformation today are grateful to the Taoist alchemists for their efforts in searching for the elixir of immortality. True, the idea of immortality has changed, and now immortality no longer means eternal life on earth. But without the efforts of the early alchemists, herbal and traditional Chinese medicine, ch'i-kung, Taoist calisthenics, the internal martial arts, and Taoist meditation would not have achieved the kind of sophistication they exhibit today.

This book is a translation of the Dragon-Tiger Classic and its two most important commentaries. The texts are collected in the T'ai-hstian ("Great Mystery") section of the Taoist canon published during the reign of the emperor Cheng T'ung (1436–1449 CE) of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE).

About the Dragon-Tiger Classic

The Dragon-Tiger Classic is regarded by contemporary practitioners of Taoist alchemy to be the most complete guide to spiritual transformation. It describes the ingredients, the catalysts, the equipment, the nature of the physiological transformations, and, most important, the schedule of the firing process needed to initiate the alchemical interactions. All this information is encoded in a set of mnemonics of 1,293 words, making the Dragon-Tiger Classic one of the most challenging alchemical treatises to understand. That so much information is packed into so few words does not mean that there is little to say about the transformations. Rather, it is characteristic of Taoist alchemical treatises to reveal only partial information, and even then, in symbolic language. Since the basic information was general knowledge among the community of practitioners and instructions for advanced adepts were transmitted orally, Taoist alchemical treatises often leave out the most basic and the most advanced information. This arrangement worked well as long as there was an active community of practitioners. However, as practitioners dwindled, knowledge not written down was lost.

Given the complexity of the alchemical processes described in the Dragon-Tiger Classic and the amount of background information needed to understand the text, I have written a "reader's guide" for it. Unless you are extremely familiar with the theory and practice of Taoist alchemy, I would urge you to read this introduction before you tackle the text and the commentaries. My own understanding of the Dragon-Tiger Classic was helped tremendously by my practice of the Taoist alchemical arts. It has allowed me to reconstruct missing information and unravel the multiple layers of meanings encoded in the text.

The authorship of the Dragon-Tiger Classic is unknown. The version in the Cheng-t'ung Taoist canon was edited by two Sung dynasty (960–1279 CE) Taoists, Wang Tao and Chou Chen-i, who also added comments in parts of the Secondary Commentary. Wang Tao considered the Dragon-Tiger Classic one of the oldest known texts of Taoist alchemy, possibly written before the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). However, Chu Hsi, the Sung dynasty neo-Confucianist philosopher, argued that the text was written much later, probably during the T'ang dynasty (618–906 CE). At present, there is no agreement about when the Dragon-Tiger Classic was written. The authorship of the Primary Commentary is also unknown, and there is no information about when it was written. All we can say is that it could not have been written earlier than the second century CE because it contains extensive references to the Tsan-tung-cbi (Triplex Unity), the alchemical classic of the Eastern Han. The Secondary Commentary was most likely a work of the Sung dynasty because it contains ideas that were characteristic of the internal-alchemical treatises of that period.

Three levels of meaning are encoded in the Dragon-Tiger Classic. The original text can be read simultaneously as a manual of external, sexual, and internal alchemy. The Primary Commentary can be read as a manual of both sexual and internal alchemy, and the Secondary Commentary is best read as a manual of purely internal alchemy. To understand these three levels of meaning, we need to first familiarize ourselves with the three forms of Taoist alchemy—external, sexual, and internal.

The three forms of Taoist alchemy

Eternal Alchemy
In external alchemy, practitioners ingest substances to attain health, longevity, and immortality. The idea that plants, metals, and minerals could enhance health and help mortals attain immortality dates back to China in the fourth century BCE. However, the belief that certain minerals and metals have life-giving and transforming properties goes back as far as the eighth or ninth century BCE. The Chinese have always admired the beauty and indestructibility of metals such as gold and silver. Thus it was not surprising that these metals became the symbols of an indestructible and immortal corporeal body. Red ochre and red cinnabar were also valuable substances in ancient China. They were used to make the red pigment that adorned oracle bones and sacred ceremonial objects. The ancient Chinese believed that the color red was associated with blood and life, and that substances with that natural color embodied the essence of life. That cinnabar can be transformed into quicksilver, or mercury, made it even more magical and mysterious.

By the second century BCE, when the belief in immortals became the center of social and intellectual life among the court and the nobility, the search for methods of attaining immortality began. The emperors of both the Cb'in (221–207 BCE) and the Han (206 BCE–291 CE) dynasties employed researchers, called the fang-shih, to find or make a substance that, if ingested, could make them immortal. Some fang-shih experimented with plants and herbs and became the precursors of Chinese herbal medicine. Others entertained the idea that if substances like cinnabar, gold, and mercury were made "potable" and ingested, they could make the human body indestructible and immortal. The fang-shih reasoned that if the right metals and minerals were compounded in the correct way, a pill or an elixir of immortality would materialize. Thus external alchemy was born. The principal alchemical ingredients were mercury, lead, cinnabar, and silver; the equipment needed for refining the substances were a furnace, a cauldron, and bellows; and the procedures for heating and compounding the substances were patterned after the movement of the sun, moon, and stars, and the cycle of the seasons. The elixir of immortality was called the lung-hu ta-t'an, or the Great Dragon-Tiger Elixir.

The attempts at making elixirs and pills of immortality by compounding metals and minerals flourished in China from the third century BCE to the tenth century CE. By the eleventh century CE, external alchemy lost its momentum. Twelve hundred years of research and experimentation had failed to produce an elixir of immortality. Moreover, people became skeptical of external alchemy when they saw many patrons and proponents die of lead and mercuric poisoning. Today we would not consider eating substances like mercuric sulphide, lead, quicksilver, or cinnabar, but the belief in ingesting minerals to attain health and longevity is still around—one need only look at the list of minerals on the bottles of vitamin and diet-supplement pills.