The true meaning of lead and mercury in Neidan

how energetic substrates form alchemical gold

Lead and Mercury:

Hi friends, to continue the trend of discussing Neidan theory more openly, today I'd like to contribute my current understanding of the concepts of lead and mercury in Internal Alchemy.

The written section of this article is available to everyone and is followed by a twenty two minute video lesson about the practice of the Yellow Sprout and White Snow (two effects of practice indicating lead and mercury have become mature and begun to develop the medicine) which is available to monthly and yearly subscribers. I plan to make more long form lessons about internal alchemy for paid subscribers at IS in order to improve the content here, but also to show my appreciation for your ongoing support of my work. If this sounds like something you might be interested in you can procure a free seven day trial of subscription here, see the video lecture and other relevant posts with no pressure to keep the subscription if you don't want to. I think that is a pretty good offer and worth taking advantage of...

Now on with the article.

1: Lead and Mercury as external alchemy substrates:

The concepts of lead and mercury in Chinese alchemical thought come from Wai Dan/External Alchemy （外丹） and literally refer to the metals of Lead/Qian (铅) and Merury/Gong(汞).

The observation of early alchemists was that lead although being heavy and seemingly inert could undergo a chemical process when heated that would cause its interior to turn red and for small particle filled smoke to rise upward while mercury in its liquid form had a tendency to spread everywhere, but that it could be held together in an alchemical admixture so it did not scatter.

I'm not an expert on external alchemy, but the basic idea was that lead and mercury could be brought together to form an alloy which could be used either to produce a form of gold colored metal or various types of medicine.

The gold colored alloy was especially used in implements used for dining as it was believed to improve the quality of the food while the internal medicine was normally used as an adjunct to Daoist energetic practices in order to improve their effects.

On a positive note, the purpose of refining these substances seems to have been in their ability as antibacterial media, in other words alchemical gold dining implements could potentially kill some food born bacteria, making it safer to dine. At the same time alchemical medicine could be used to treat common bacteria and parasites in the human body.

It is no accident that early understandings of Daoist demons placed them in various parts of the brain, nervous system and digestive system.

Although there is of course no reference to parasites or bacteria on early Daoism since they didn't have the scientific language or knowledge to describe them as such, it is fairly clear that when alchemical practice does things like “kill the three worms,” it could have some relationship with taking medicine to rid the body of common food born parasites.

We can never make a completely objective statement that this was the only point of such practices, but among all the other spiritual implications it certainly shouldn't be overlooked.

On a negative note, lead and mercury are extremely poisonous and plenty of Daoists and even some emperors are said to have died as a result of ingestion of elixir medicine (although of course the emperors could have died of poisoning by other means and their deaths were conveniently pinned on Daoist advisors as a way to shift the blame).

The bottom line is that if you want to study internal alchemy you should know a bit about external alchemy to make it make sense, but never try to replicate it at home.

2: Lead and Mercury in Internal Alchemy:

Internal alchemy is not really alchemy in the metallurgic sense, but it is also an art of transformation of innate substances into a new substance.

In other words, the innate Jing, Qi and Shen of the body are combined to generate alchemical Qi which causes a reaction which transforms one's innate nature over time.

I'm often a little dismissive of using flowery language since what we are really trying to do is achieve enlightenment, but doing so through a backdoor by cultivating innate life energy first, but I write articles mainly for beginners in Neidan and just want to say things clearly, sometimes we have to use more complex language to help understand the genre better so we can make bigger progress.

Lead means the essence of the body and there are two types:

• 黑铅 Hei Qian/Black Lead: this is the Yin essence of the body and is typically associated with sexual essence. Some people may say that it means semen, but if you follow Sun Buer's Nv Dan (female Neidan) you can see that she also believes in lead in women, although in her school the lead must be created by first breaking the red dragon (stopping menses). There are several schools of Nv Dan and not all of them believe this, but basically aside from some particular considerations about timing, women and men can practice Neidan in largely the same way with the caveat that minor changes should be made during menses in order to prevent energy loss. Black lead can be better understood simply as the Yin essence of the body contained in the lower abdomen. Even though the post heaven essence is Yin in nature, it contains Yang latently within it. This is why the classics say 北方黑水谓河车 “the black water of the North is called the water wheel,” in other words the Yin essence contains the capacity for energetic development of the Pre Heaven Yang essence.

• 红铅 Hong Qian/Red Lead: this is the Yang essence of the body after it has been heated up by the spirit fire. Hong qian does not mean the latent Yang essence, but instead means that after the Yang essence is heated by focusing on it with the spirit fire it is warmed and begins to give of Yang energy capable of rising along the Du meridian to the head of facilitating the single opening of the mystery gate.

Mercury on the other hand refers to the spirit.

The spirit is essentially Yang in nature, but it is mainly composed of:

• 识神 Shi Shen/Perceptual Spirit: that aspect of our spirit which perceives the world around us and generates mental phenomena.

• 元神 Yuan Shen/Original Spirit: the innate Yang aspect of the spirit which produces all of our consciousness and is associated with our intrinsic nature.

Mercury has a tendency to scatter when it is in its liquid form and this has both positive and negative implications.

In a negative sense, when awareness is drawn to an outer phenomenon it causes our spiritual awareness immediately to travel to that phenomenon and become unmoored from our inner body.

This can result in fight or flight response and sets off many problematic responses such as adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol release, all of which are required to keep us safe, but all of which are taxing on the brain, nervous system and organs.

The Post Heaven aspect of meditation is about bringing the Shi Shen under control so it does not scatter and instead stays stored up with the essence inside the abdomen (at least in the most orthodox approach to Neidan). This causes the mercury to collect and not scatter, thus calming us and making it so we don't fall victim to our natural responses to changes in the environment or even our own thoughts.

In a positive sense mercury scatters after the culmination of the Pre Heaven state in meditation when the spiritual energy is so strong it can't stay in deep meditation anymore and causes a sudden illumination of our awareness and revelation of the true mind.

This is scattering because the spirit goes from being enclosed with the breath in a relatively small area within the body to extending with the Qi seemingly without boundaries to all parts of the body or even outside the body (the energetic cycle transforms relative to time and practice so the awareness can manifest in many different ways, too much to enumerate here).

3: How Lead and Mercury work:

the basic idea is that in order to stop the mind from wandering (mercury scattering) and lead from leaking (desire causing us to take actions which make us loose essential energy) we can meditate and keep the attention in the lower abdomen. This attention is actually the mind which is called the matchmaker, we've discussed this in past articles, but maybe it is time to do another one in the near future since it ties everything else together. The mind and the breath allow the perceptual spirit to generate a connection to the lower Dantian which then causes lead and mercury to fuse together, first in the Post Heaven, then in the Pre Heaven.

This process can be explained in complex and simple terms, but let's start simply and maybe have a more complex discussion at a later time after all the basics have been clearly laid out.

In a basic sense lead and mercury are merged to form alchemical gold, which is the result of the True Qi of the body being given strength by the spirit and essence so it can rise up along the path of the spine to enter the brain. This is the basic principle of the River Wheel in Neidan and eventually leads to the phenomena of the Yellow Sprout and White Snow which I've presented in a twenty two minute video lecture in today's section for yearly and monthly subscribers.

The basic idea is that the spirit has to be stopped from scattering and the essence needs to be stimulated by the spirit in the Pre Heaven state in order for energetic transformation to take place.

If one can master this basic skill of Neidan they can start to build up the energetic changes required to eventually clarify and strengthen their spirits and achieve liberation from the dusty world.

I talk a lot about these basic concepts in Neidan because they are poorly understood in the West and it really isn't possible to learn the practice without being quite clear about how these things work.

Having said that, understanding the energetic outcome of these practices is also important, so I've decided that as much as possible I'd like to make in depth material for the wonderful people who support my work here at Immortality Study by purchasing monthly or yearly subscriptions.

As such today I've recorded a long form lesson about the nature of those changes as expressed in the Yellow Sprout and White Snow, two specific phenomena that occur as a result of the successful merging of lead and mercury.

This Lecture is significantly detailed and I'm sure it will be useful to you if you are interested in understanding internal alchemy and being successful in your practice, so if you are not already a paid subscriber, why not sign up for our seven day free trial and see if you like the material in this and other posts which explain internal alchemy and Daoist Qigong in detail rarely found elsewhere, there is no pressure to stay, but of course if you like it I am eternally grateful for your support.

Even if you don't subscribe, I still want to thank you for reading my posts here at IS and hope they are deeply beneficial to you.

Starting next week I'll be teaching some new classes about Chinese Medicine Qigong and a very special portal in Neidan practice called the Jia Ji Dual Gate, both are fascinating and useful topics which are deeply transformative so please check out the recently posted ads for those classes by scrolling past this post and let me know if you have any questions.

A lecture on the Yellow Sprout and White Snow in Internal Alchemy: