Cui Xifan崔希范

Style & Daoist names

Perfected of Utmost Unity (Zhiyi Zhenren)

Period

Late Tang and Five Dynasties

Dates

? — ?

School

Zhong–Lü Internal Alchemy Tradition

Role

Internal Alchemy Masters

Birthplace

Unknown

Life

Cui Xifan was an internal-alchemy master of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period, styled the Perfected Zhiyi; little is known of his life, though one account places him in the reign of Emperor Xizong of Tang. His Mirror for Compounding the Medicine (Ruyao jing) summarizes the essentials of internal-alchemical practice in eighty-two lines of three-character verse — "Pre-celestial qi, post-celestial qi: whoever attains them is forever as if drunk" — treating the medicinal ingredients, the crucible and furnace, fire phasing, gathering, and the formation of the embryo. Concise yet comprehensive, it is one of the most distilled of all internal-alchemy classics, and attracted numerous later commentaries, including Wang Jie's Commentary on Master Cui's Mirror for Compounding the Medicine in the Yuan and one by Hunranzi in the Ming. Variant versions circulated under titles such as Tianyuan ruyao jing and Cuigong ruyao jing. Zhang Boduan's Awakening to Reality contains the line "I dare to set down the fire phasing in writing," which scholars take as evidence of the influence of the Mirror for Compounding the Medicine; both the Southern and Northern Lineages regard Cui Xifan as one of the patriarchs of their alchemical methods.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Mirror for Compounding the Medicine, a programmatic classic of internal-alchemical practice

Works

• Mirror for Compounding the Medicine (Ruyao jing)