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It is also possible that the alchemy of medicine and immortality came to China from India, or vice versa; in any case, for both cultures, gold-making appears to have been a minor concern, and medicine the major concern. But the elixir of immortality was of little importance in India (which had other avenues to immortality).
One of the most misguided attempts at creating a potion for immortality involved the first emperor of China and mercury pills. In his obsession with finding a formula that would grant him eternal ...
For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosopher's stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, divine illumination, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosopher's stone were known as the Magnum Opus ("Great Work"). [3]
Chinese woodblock illustration of a waidan alchemical refining furnace, 1856 Waike tushuo 外科圖説 (Illustrated Manual of External Medicine). Waidan, translated as 'external alchemy' or 'external elixir', is the early branch of Chinese alchemy that focuses upon compounding elixirs of immortality by heating minerals, metals, and other natural substances in a luted crucible.
A new video from the YouTube channel Adagio revisits futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ideas about how for humans, both singularity and immortality are shockingly imminent—as in, potentially just seven ...
The writings of the Liexian Zhuan describes a man named Wei Boyang who had made such a pill of immortality. [6]Texts dating from the 4th century AD and later present the Yellow Emperor near the end of his reign as finding the pill in the Huang Shan mountain range, then establishing the seventy-two peaks of the mountains as the dwelling place for the immortals.
Ge Hong also states, however, that it is folly to believe that performing the sexual arts only can achieve immortality and some of the ancient myths on sexual arts had been misinterpreted and exaggerated. Indeed, the sexual arts had to be practiced alongside alchemy to attain longevity. Ge Hong also warned it could be dangerous if practiced ...
Chinese alchemy specifically was consistent in its practice from the beginning, and there was relatively little controversy among its practitioners [citation needed]. Definition amongst alchemists varied only in their medical prescription for the elixir of immortality, or perhaps only over their names for it, of which sinology has counted about ...