![]() The aim of the Taoist diet is to change the composition of the body from flesh into durable airy material associated with long life. ![]() In the old days, this diet often included things like jade, gold, cinnabar (ore from mercury is derived) and certain flowers. Special elixirs sometimes contained arsenic and mercury. The inventors of many potions died prematurely from taking their attempts to prolong their life. Many Taoist believed that the best material for prolonging life was air and aimed to take in a variety of different kinds of air - from the four season, from the sea and from the mountains - often accompanied by breathing exercises. ![]() “Air eating” was believed to make people able to ride the clouds and use dragons for horses. One passage on the subject from an ancient text read: “For transforming gold, melting jade, using talismans, and preparing water, efficacious recipes and marvelous formulas exist by thousands and tens of thousands, The best are said to produce feathers for flying to heaven the next best are said to dissipate calamity and exterminate disaster." Immortality Elixirs Among the other methods that were tried were throwing oneself into a fire and attempting to achieve immortality as a flame.Ī great deal of time and energy was put into concocting elixirs of immortality and finding ingredients for them. White rabbit making an elixir of immortalityįabrizio Pregadio wrote: “After the methods of making the elixirs, the Taiqing texts describe the benefits that they afford. The Taiqing alchemical medicines were valued for two main reasons. First, they granted transcendence and immortality second, they made it possible - even with no need of ingesting them - to summon benevolent gods and expel demons and other causes of various disturbances, including illness and death. Īccording to the “Book of the Nine Elixirs”: “ All those who want to live a long life, but do not obtain the Divine Elixirs (shendan) and the Golden Liquor (jinye), merely bring suffering upon themselves.
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