Huang Yuanji黄元吉

Style & Daoist names

given name Chang, courtesy name Yuanji, sobriquet Master of the Hall of Joyful Cultivation

Period

Qing

Dates

? — ?

School

Longmen (Dragon Gate) Lineage of Quanzhen

Role

Internal Alchemy MastersLecturer

Birthplace

Fengcheng (present-day Fengcheng, Jiangxi)

Life

Huang Yuanji, given name Shang, a native of Fengcheng in Jiangxi, was an internal-alchemy master of the Daoguang and Xianfeng reigns of the Qing; his dates of birth and death are unknown. According to the records of his disciples, in the late Daoguang era he established the “Leyu Tang” (Hall of Joyful Cultivation) at Fushun (according to one account, Ziliujing) in Sichuan, where he lectured for over a decade, teaching the Daodejing and the study of internal alchemy; his lectures were compiled by his disciples into the Recorded Sayings from the Hall of Joyful Cultivation, the Lectures on the Daodejing, and the Daomen Yuyao (道门语要, Essential Sayings of the Daoist Gate), among other works. Huang Yuanji advocated “direct penetration through the central yellow,” promoting the Dual Cultivation of Nature and Life with the single aperture of the Mysterious Pass and “guarding the center” as essential, combining Neo-Confucian self-cultivation with alchemical practice in plain, accessible language; he is regarded as representative of the Qing-dynasty “Central Lineage” of internal alchemy. His writings were championed after the Republican era by figures such as Chen Yingning, were included by Xiao Tianshi in the Daozang Jinghua (道藏精华, Essence of the Daoist Canon), and continue to circulate widely among practitioners of internal alchemy both in China and abroad. He is a different person, of a different era, from the Yuan-dynasty Jingming Daoist Huang Yuanji, a disciple of Liu Yu, who shares the same name.

Contributions & Influence

• Lectured at the Hall of Joyful Cultivation in Sichuan, leaving behind the Recorded Sayings from the Hall of Joyful Cultivation
• Expounded internal alchemy through the principle of “guarding the center,” representing the Central Lineage in the Qing dynasty
• His Lectures on the Daodejing is one of the most widely circulated modern alchemical commentaries on the Laozi

Works

• Recorded Sayings from the Hall of Joyful Cultivation
• Lectures on the Daodejing (Commentary on the Daodejing)
• Essential Sayings of the Daoist Gate

Legends

Popular tradition holds that he “lived to be three hundred years old,” among other claims, which belong to the realm of legend.