The Secret of the Golden Flower (Taiyi jinhua zongzhi)太乙金华宗旨

Also known as

The Secret of the Golden Flower, Patriarch Lü's Secret of the Golden Flower of Prior-Heaven Emptiness and the Great Unity

Author / transmission

Lü Dongbin

Period

Qing · Said to have been revealed through Lü Dongbin, but in fact produced at spirit-writing altars of Jingming Daoism in the Piling and Suzhou area during the Kangxi reign of the Qing (c. 1668–1692), with numerous later versions; after the Qianlong reign it was compiled by Shao Zhilin and others into the Complete Works of Patriarch Lü.

Canon division

Outside the Canon

Collected in

Outside the canon (included in the Complete Works of Patriarch Lü, the Essentials of the Daoist Canon, and the Sequel to the Daoist Canon)

Category

Alchemical Texts

Fascicles

1 scroll, 13 chapters

Synopsis

The Secret of the Golden Flower (Taiyi jinhua zongzhi) is said to have been revealed through Lü Dongbin, and is an internal-alchemy scripture that emerged from spirit-writing altars in the early Qing dynasty, in thirteen chapters ('The Celestial Heart,' 'The Primordial Spirit and the Conscious Spirit,' 'Turning the Light Inward and Guarding the Center,' 'Turning the Light Inward and Regulating the Breath,' 'Errors in Turning the Light Inward,' 'Verification of Turning the Light Inward,' 'The Living Method of Turning the Light Inward,' 'The Formula of Free and Easy Wandering,' 'The Hundred Days' Laying of the Foundation,' 'The Light of Nature and the Light of Consciousness,' 'The Union of Kan and Li,' 'The Celestial Circuit,' and a 'Song Admonishing the World'). Its method centers on 'turning the light inward' — withdrawing the gaze and turning it back to illuminate the ancestral aperture (the celestial heart), so that the primordial spirit takes command and the conscious spirit withdraws into silence, which, combined with regulated breathing, leads into meditative absorption and thence to the manifestation of the 'golden flower' (the light of pre-celestial unitary qi) — a doctrine that continues the language of 'golden flower' and 'turning the light inward' found in the Zhouyi cantong qi and the Scripture of the Yellow Court. In 1929 it was translated into German by Richard Wilhelm, with a lengthy psychological commentary by Carl Jung, becoming one of the best-known Daoist scriptures in the West and exerting great influence on analytical psychology. Within China it has been repeatedly adapted by the Longmen Lineage of Quanzhen and by Jingming Daoism, resulting in numerous versions.

Key Ideas

• Turning the light inward to guard the center, illuminating the celestial heart
• Distinguishing the primordial spirit from the conscious spirit
• Regulating the breath to enter stillness, whereupon the golden flower manifests
• The hundred days' laying of the foundation and the celestial circuit
• The Western reception of internal alchemy

Structure

Thirteen chapters.

Editions

• Edition in the Complete Works of Patriarch Lü
• Essentials of the Daoist Canon edition
• Zhanran Huizhenzi block-print edition
• Daoist Texts outside the Canon edition

Translations

• German translation by Richard Wilhelm, Das Geheimnis der Goldenen Blüte (1929); English translation by Cary Baynes (1931), with commentary by C. G. Jung
• English translation by Thomas Cleary (1991)
• Study by Mori Yuria

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikipedia: Taiyi jinhua zongzhi
• CTEXT Search

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