Wei Boyang魏伯阳

Style & Daoist names

Wei Ao, Yunyazi (courtesy name), Perfected Huolong (Fire Dragon)

Period

Eastern Han

Dates

c. 100 — c. 170

Role

AlchemistAuthor of Alchemical Texts

Birthplace

Shangyu, Kuaiji (present-day Shangyu, Zhejiang)

Life

Wei Boyang was an alchemist of the Eastern Han, a native of Shangyu in Kuaiji, styled Yunyazi. Ge Hong's Biographies of Divine Immortals says he was "the son of a distinguished family, yet by nature fond of the arts of the Dao, unwilling to serve in office, and living in retirement to nourish his nature"; he led disciples into the mountains to compound the elixir. His work in three juan, the Zhouyi Cantong Qi, draws together the hexagrams and lines of the Yijing, Huang-Lao thought, and the furnace-and-fire arts, holding that "the Great Changes, Huang-Lao, and the furnace-and-fire are one and the same Way," and uses the waxing and waning of yin and yang and the symbolism of Kan and Li, Lead and Mercury, to explain the methods of the elixir; it has been honored by later generations as the "king of alchemical scriptures through the ages." Originally a work of External Alchemy, from the Tang and Song onward it was appropriated by practitioners of Internal Alchemy as a theoretical charter for their practice, and it has attracted many commentators (such as Peng Xiao of the Five Dynasties, Zhu Xi and Yu Yan of the Song, and Chen Zhixu of the Yuan). No official history records Wei Boyang's life, and his dates of birth and death are unknown; his text may have been supplemented by later hands, and scholars hold differing views on its date of composition, some placing it at the end of the Han and others in the late Tang or Five Dynasties, though the mainstream view still regards it as an Eastern Han work.

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Zhouyi Cantong Qi, the foundational work of Chinese alchemical theory
• Established the tradition of interpreting alchemical method through the imagery and numerology of the Yijing
• Revered by all schools of Internal Alchemy as the founding patriarch of alchemical scripture

Works

• Zhouyi cantong qi (The Seal of the Unity of the Three)

Legends

According to legend, Wei Boyang and three disciples went into the mountains to compound the elixir; when it was complete, they first tested it on a white dog, which died. Boyang and one disciple then took it and also died; the remaining two disciples went down the mountain, whereupon Boyang revived, and he and his disciple, together with the dog, ascended as immortals (Biographies of Divine Immortals).