Hey dear community, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you had a Friday that brought one or the other interesting experience into your life! Today I would like to talk a little about alchemy and hope you can expand your knowledge.
In the past, I have already dealt a lot with European alchemy and here I would like to go into old China where the alchemy also has strongly developed and specifically, I would like to go into the golden elixir which can be considered one of the main goals of Chinese alchemists. This elixir is also associated with the Neidan, which can also be considered as a form of internal alchemy that arose during the Song Dynasty, which is considered one of the culturally most important dynasties in ancient China and during this time the economy, culture and technology in ancient China was strongly promoted and pretty much all important areas experienced a heyday during this dynasty. This part of alchemy is also strongly connected with Daoism, which has dealt with important questions of the human body by philosophy, but the focus was not on external influences but was strongly associated with spiritual wisdom and it was about transforming oneself into a higher being and it can also be compared with the inner alchemy from European culture where it is much about reaching spiritual enlightenment with various exercises or spiritual insights. This Chinese teaching was much associated with discovering exercises that strengthen health or to achieve immortality and most of it was based on a psychological level and the golden elixir is also considered a potion of immortality or eternal youth, but the interesting thing here is that philosophy was not about producing a physical elixir that should achieve this goal but leading the body to eternal life from the inside and on a spiritual level.
With the help of different exercises, it was about reversing or stopping the aging process and for this it was first very important to know your whole body from the inside and to understand that almost everything consists of internal energies and also all substances in the body could be transformed with the help of the psychic powers and here your own spirituality was at the top. Simply said, it was assumed that it should be possible to find the way back to its origin with different practices and to reverse all psychological and physical aging processes and slowly return to the source or chaos. The Chinese alchemists were of the opinion that the nutrients that most people take every day were in the wrong place and are not used sensibly and with these exercises you could transport them to the right place and train the body to absorb or process them differently and the whole metabolism as well as the resulting biological reactions could be influenced. This philosophy has been strongly influenced by numerous scholars who are said to have managed to find the own higher self with the help of his spiritual powers and here it was also a lot about separating the mind from the body and to add it again after a few exercises and during the end of the Song Dynasty even schools were created that had specifically focused on the teachings of neidan. According to this philosophy, every person already has the elixir in himself and similar to Europe, there are also some metaphors about Chinese alchemy in mythology and here a golden elixir also appears in connection with the moon goddess Chang'e, but here the golden elixir is represented in physical form, but represents a good metaphor.
Thank you for the visit and I hope you could learn something new about alchemy! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens
I didn't know anything about all these things before, after reading your post, my knowledge has increased.
It motivates me a lot to read these words :)
#hive #posh