Return to Life and Elixir 还丹复命篇

Composed by Xue Daoguang, a Taoist priest at the end of the Song Dynasty.

Consisting of one scroll, it is included in the Tai Xuan Section within the Taoist Canon (The Daozang).

The book collects two of the author’s works: Huandan Fuming Pian (Returning Elixir and Restoring Life) and Dansui Ge (Ballad of the Elixir Marrow). The former, compiled in the Bingwu year of the Jingkang reign (1126 CE), includes sixteen five-character quatrains, thirty seven-character quatrains, and nine Xijiang Yue (Moon over the West River) ci-poems; the latter consists of thirty-four short ballads. Both alchemical texts discuss the principles of Internal Alchemy (Neidan) as well as the essentials of collecting medicinal substances, regulating refinement intensity, and controlling fire timing.

Return to Life and Elixir

Following the tradition of Zhang Boduan’s Wu Zhen Pian (Awakening to Truth), the texts often use metaphors such as dragon and tiger, lead and mercury, and conjugal union to illustrate Internal Alchemy, with obscure meanings. In the preface to Huandan Fuming Pian, the author claims that in the Gengzi year of the Xuanhe reign (1120 CE), he encountered a supreme person who imparted the golden elixir mnemonic: "The ancestor of the Great Dao transforms from a single Qi (Vital Energy). It is metaphorically called the sun and moon, named dragon and tiger, categorized as Yin and Yang, and embodied as heaven and earth. One clear and one turbid—metal and wood separate at the gate of Wu and Ji; one emotion and one nature—Yin and Yang converge at the portal of life and death. Gather the Qi before heaven and earth divided, await the essence when dragon and tiger first unite, guide it into the Yellow Chamber, and nurture the supreme treasure. There are specific symbolic mechanisms and mysterious functions of return and reversal. The secret to longevity lies entirely here."

Later generations sometimes believed that Xue Daoguang’s alchemical method advocated dual cultivation of men and women, but a careful reading of the texts reveals that it actually upholds pure self-cultivation. Its core tenets roughly take the spiritual Qi as the foundation of the elixir, true lead and true mercury as the medicinal substances, the coordination of Yin and Yang and the union of dragon and tiger as the refinement process, and concentrating the spirit in the Qi acupoint as the initial practice. In terms of alchemical exposition, Dansui Ge is more straightforward than Huandan Fuming Pian.