The Great Compendium of the Golden Elixir 上阳子金丹大要

Composed by Chen Zhixu (styled Master Shangyang), a Taoist priest of the Yuan Dynasty.

It was completed around the first year of the Zhiyuan reign (1335). The original text had ten volumes.

The current edition in The Daozang is divided into sixteen volumes and included in the Taixuan Section.

The Great Compendium of the Golden Elixir

This work is a major text of the Internal Alchemy school in the Yuan Dynasty. The book consists of nine chapters:

Each chapter extensively discusses the origin and essentials of internal alchemy, the methods and formulas of elixir cultivation, and also expounds the way of enlightening the mind and seeing the true nature.

His internal alchemy teachings inherit the Southern Lineage patriarchs such as Zhang Boduan and Bai Yuchan, taking the Golden Elixir as the foundation. He holds that the pre‑heavenly true single qi is black lead externally and black mercury internally. At the moment of Gui’s arrival, the practitioner must swiftly gather the black lead within Kan and place it into Li; refined by the true fire within Li, it returns to pure yang — then the Golden Elixir is perfected.

The Golden Elixir is none other than the two substances of Kan and Li, which are nothing but true yin and true yang. Therefore, it takes the pre‑heavenly true single qi as the root, and one yin and one yang as the Dao. His so‑called black lead seems to be obtained from the female body, differing from the internal alchemy methods of the Northern Quanzhen Lineage.

The author also inherits his teacher Zhao Youqin’s doctrine that immortality and Buddhism share the same origin, and strongly advocates the unity of the Three Teachings. He states that the way of the Golden Elixir is none other than Confucius’s way of the One, and the single vehicle of the Buddha Dharma. Thus cultivating the Golden Elixir enables one to become an immortal, a Buddha, and a sage. He proclaims that his cultivation aim is “to clarify both Chan and Dao, and to verify immortality and Buddhahood together”.

His discussions on Chan and nature closely resemble those of Chan masters. He takes Yuanwu Keqin’s “Chan without Chan” as an unbreakable, untearable “leather-pouch Chan”, and denounces those who sit stubbornly in emptiness as heterodox Chan.

In his exposition of internal alchemy, he also frequently cites the Confucian Neo‑Confucian cosmology, and stresses that the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues are the unchanging Dao through the ages.

This work represents the maturation and completion of Taoist internal alchemy theory.

After the main text in the Daozang edition, there are three additional works: Diagrams of the Essential Points of the Golden Elixir by Master Shangyang, Records of the Transcendent Immortals in the Essential Points of the Golden Elixir by Master Shangyang, Lineage of the Immortals in the Essential Points of the Golden Elixir by Master Shangyang. These were originally appendices to Essential Points of the Golden Elixir. The edition in Collection of Essential Daozang combines them into one compilation, collectively titled Essential Points of the Golden Elixir.