Zuo Ci左慈

Style & Daoist names

Yuanfang (courtesy name), Master Black Horn (Wujiao Xiansheng)

Period

Late Eastern Han–Three Kingdoms

Dates

? — ?

Role

Fangshi (Master of Methods)Alchemist

Birthplace

Lujiang (present-day Lujiang, Anhui)

Places of activity

Mount Tiantai

Life

Zuo Ci, courtesy name Yuanfang, was a native of Lujiang at the end of the Eastern Han and a renowned fangshi. The "Biographies of Practitioners of Magical Arts" in the Book of the Later Han records that he "possessed spiritual powers from youth"; he was said to have fished a Songjiang perch out of a bronze basin at a banquet held by Cao Cao, and to have been able to turn invisible and multiply his body, so that Cao Cao wished to kill him but could not. The commentary to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, citing the Normative Discourses, says he understood the bedchamber arts, and that he, together with Gan Shi, Xi Jian, and others, was summoned by Cao Cao to the state of Wei. Ge Hong's Biographies of Divine Immortals states that Zuo Ci, through meditative concentration on Mount Tianzhu, obtained the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs and Liquefied Gold, the Elixir Scripture of Great Clarity, and the Esoteric Writ of the Three Sovereigns, and later fled the chaos to the region east of the Yangzi, where he transmitted them to Ge Xuan; Ge Xuan transmitted them to Zheng Yin, and Zheng Yin to Ge Hong. Zuo Ci thereby became the founding figure of the Ge-family tradition of the golden elixir, holding an important place in the early lineage of transmission of Daoist alchemical method. His dates of birth and death are unknown; Daoist texts claim he lived to three hundred years of age, but this cannot be taken as reliable.

Contributions & Influence

• Transmitted the Elixir Scripture of Great Clarity, the Nine-Cauldron Elixir Scripture, and the Liquefied-Gold Elixir Scripture to Ge Xuan, the source of the Ge-family alchemical tradition
• A representative figure of the magical arts (fangshu) of the late Han and Wei–Jin period

Legends

According to legend, he fished a perch out of a bronze basin, divided a single cup of wine among many drinkers, made himself invisible, and transformed himself to hide among a flock of sheep to mock Cao Cao; he later entered Mount Huo to compound the elixir and attained immortality through Liberation from the Corpse.