Ge Xuan葛玄

Style & Daoist names

Xiaoxian (courtesy name), Immortal Lord Ge, Immortal Elder Ge (Ge Xiangong), Left Immortal Lord of the Great Ultimate, Perfected Chongying

Period

Wu (Three Kingdoms)

Dates

164 — 244

School

Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) School

Role

AlchemistPatriarch venerated by the Lingbao School

Birthplace

Danyang Jurong (present-day Jurong, Jiangsu)

Places of activity

Mount Gezao, Mount Tiantai

Life

Ge Xuan, courtesy name Xiaoxian, was a native of Jurong in Danyang under the Wu of the Three Kingdoms, a great-uncle of Ge Hong, and known to the world as "Immortal Elder Ge" and "Left Immortal Duke of the Great Ultimate." According to the Baopuzi: Inner Chapters and the Biographies of Divine Immortals, he received the Elixir Scripture of Great Clarity, the Nine-Cauldron Elixir Scripture, and the Liquefied-Gold Elixir Scripture from Zuo Ci, and also obtained the Writ of the Three Sovereigns and the True Forms of the Five Marchmounts, transmitting his arts to his disciple Zheng Yin. Tradition holds that he compounded the elixir and cultivated the Dao at Mount Gezao, Mount Tiantai, and elsewhere, and that Sun Quan, Great Emperor of Wu, honored him with courtesy. At the end of the Eastern Jin, Ge Chaofu composed the Lingbao scriptures, claiming that they had been transmitted to Ge Xuan by the Perfected of the Great Ultimate, Xu Laile, and that Ge Xuan transmitted them to Zheng Yin and Ge Hong; the Lingbao School therefore honors Ge Xuan as its founding patriarch, and Mount Gezao in Jiangxi became the ancestral mountain of the Lingbao School, ranked together with Mount Longhu and Maoshan as the "Three Mountains of Registers." In the third year of the Chongning era of the Northern Song (1104) he was enfeoffed as "Perfected of Chongying," and in the sixth year of the Chunyou era (1246) further titled "Perfected Lord of Chongying Fuyou." The cult of "Immortal Elder Ge" was extremely popular in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang and Jiangxi regions.

Contributions & Influence

• Inherited Zuo Ci's alchemical methods, founding the family tradition of the Ge lineage's Daoist arts
• Honored as founding patriarch by the Lingbao School, the basis for the Lingbao ancestral altar at Mount Gezao
• The cult of "Immortal Elder Ge" spread widely among the common people

Works

• Preface and Instructions to the Daodejing (attributed)
• Preface to the Scripture of Five Thousand Characters (attributed)

Legends

According to legend, he could divide his body, abstain from grain, and sit unharmed amid water and fire; he achieved Liberation from the Corpse and ascended as an immortal in the seventh year of the Chiwu era (244). He is said to have compounded the elixir at Mount Gezao, where relics such as the elixir well and the medicine-washing pool survive.