Alchemical Ode of Gao Xiangxian 真人高象先金丹歌

Composed by Gao Xian (styled Xiangxian) during the Song Dynasty.

Recorded in History of the Song Dynasty·Treatise on Arts and Literature as "One Scroll of Gao Xian’s Song of the Great Dao and Golden Elixir," this is the very text. Preserved in the Taoist Canon (The Daozang), it is included in the Tai Xuan Section.

Alchemical Ode of Gao Xiangxian

Gao Xian’s song is a long seven-character ancient poem with a powerful and majestic momentum. It was written in 1014 (the seventh year of the Dazhong Xiangfu reign) when the author, drunk in the capital, responded to the questions of Senior Official Gao from various palaces. Opening with an account of his early years as a Confucian scholar studying the classics and coming to the capital to take imperial examinations, he later realized the futility of pursuing fleeting glory after being shocked by his graying hair, thus turning to cultivating immortality and the Dao.

By chance, during quiet meditation and contemplation, his spirit wandered to the Shangqing Heaven (Highest Pure Heaven) where he met Lady Xihua, who instructed him on the essentials of longevity. She stated that the Dao of True Unity requires first opening the Gate of Wu and Ji (Central Earth), obtaining the root of the Yellow Sprout, seeking it in indistinctness, and returning it to the Crimson Palace (Middle Cinnabar Field). After ninety days of practice, one achieves success and attains immortality.

The poem also reveres the Cantongqi (The Unity of the Three) as the "King of Alchemical Classics Through the Ages," denouncing the world’s practices of visualization, smelting, sitting forgetting, and solitary asceticism as not the ultimate Dao. With lines such as "Xu Que endlessly sought the Crescent Moon Cauldron, traveling through all powerful capitals and important prefectures," the described alchemical method appears to be Yin-Yang Elixir, a form of dual cultivation between men and women.