Chinese Alchemy

Coronet, 2016. Chinese alchemy, largely associated with Taoism, has a tradition extending back some 5,000 years to the Yellow Emperor and his Three Immortal Ladies. Yet while alchemy in Europe was concerned with the search for spiritual and material gold, classic Taoist alchemy was a spiritual quest for immortality, its aim being union with the Absolute. Born in China in 1905, philosopher Jean Cooper here offers a comparative history of Taoist alchemy. As she writes in her concluding chapter: "The goal of the Taoist alchemist-mystic was transformation, or perhaps more correctly, transfiguration, of the whole body until it ceases to 'be' and is absorbed into and becomes the Tao.