Xiāntiān jīndān dàdào xuán’ào kǒujué 先天金丹大道玄奧口訣
Arcane Oral Formula of the Great Alchemical Way of Former Heaven
by 霍濟之 (述, zì Jūchuān 巨川); prefaces by 尤焴 (序) dated 1249; 劉子澄 (序) dated 1251; and 郭三益 (序) dated 1119; anonymous postface dated 1257
About the work
A one-juan late-Sòng nèidān 內丹 manual centred on a set of inherited diagrams (tú 圖) and their oral exposition (kǒujué 口訣), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0279 / CT 279 = TC 279), 洞真部 眾術類. The author Huò Jìzhī 霍濟之 (zì Jūchuān 巨川), of Jìnlíng 晉陵 (modern Chángzhōu 常州), was the heir to a family of nèidān practitioners; his great-grandfather first received the Jīndān tú 金丹圖 diagrams, which Lín Língsù 林靈素 immediately recognized as the work of Chén Tuán 陳摶 (d. 989). After passing through Guō Sānyì 郭三益 (whose 1119 preface is appended), the diagrams returned to the Huò family. Huò Jìzhī’s father, a Daoist priest, grasped the meaning of the diagrams and composed an oral instruction (kǒujué 口訣) on them; he died in 1254 before publishing the work, and his son brought it to print between 1254 and 1257.
Prefaces
The book carries (in order) Liú Zǐchéng’s 劉子澄 1251 preface and Yóu Yù’s 尤焴 1249 preface (together at the head); the kǒujué itself; an anonymous postface; the older preface of Guō Sānyì dated Xuānhé 1.11 (1119); and a final colophon dated 1257. Liú Zǐchéng’s 1251 preface (玉淵子 Liú Zǐchéng Qīngshū): “I read alchemical scriptures in my prime; I caught a glimpse of one or two, but with marriage, official duties, and travels I had no leisure to put them to use. Aged twenty-eight, in trouble and demoted to Chōnglíng dào in Yuèyáng, a guest showed me Huìwēng [Zhū Xī] 朱熹’s verse: ‘In the deep ten-thousand-valley qì of the North Mountain, in the ten-thousand deaths of body and ghost grow the wings of feathers.’ I sighed and said: ‘In the cycling of heaven and earth, can I alone not preempt Qǔbó’s recognition of his errors at fifty?’ I dismissed concubines and serving girls, and emptied the dust of falsity at a stroke. One day I met a qiáoyǐn 樵隱 ‘woodcutter-recluse’ who told me alchemical essentials at the Yǎyín pavilion in song-form, but I lightly missed the chance and we parted. Later at Jiǔyí 九嶷 I built a thatched hut among friends in deep mountains and reflected on what the qiáoyǐn had taught — the alchemical method, huǒfú 火符 fire-tally and hexagram-rhythms all matching the formula. Then I was recalled north. Lately, the gentleman Huò of Pílíng 毗陵 brought his dānjué and called on me: it was substantially what I had heard at Yuèyáng, taking real medicine, the kūn 坤 earth, and fire-phasing as the three essentials of alchemy, with origin in the Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇 and a frame indistinguishable from Liánxī Zhōu Dūnyí’s 周敦頤 Tàijí tú 太極圖… I have prefaced this book to give it him on parting. Inscribed Chúnyòu xīnhài, summer first day, Yùyuān zǐ Liú Zǐchéng Qīngshū.” Yóu Yù’s 1249 preface (晉陵 Yóu Yù) parallels Qū Yuán’s 屈原 Yuǎn yóu 遠遊 and Zhū Xī’s Cāntóngqì 參同契 reading, deplores the sea of futile alchemical writing, and praises Huò Jìzhī’s text for its transparency. Guō Sānyì’s 1119 preface introduces the older diagrams and their lineage. The author’s own postface and the 1257 anonymous postface close the volume.
Abstract
Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:849 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), identifies the Jīndān tú diagrams as having reached back to the reign of Sòng Huīzōng 徽宗 (1100–1125), preserved through the chain Chén Tuán → Lín Língsù → the Huò family → Guō Sānyì → back to the Huò family → Huò Jìzhī’s father → Huò Jìzhī. Yú Yǎn 俞琰 had access to a slightly different edition (preface by Yóu Mùshí 尤穆世, Xíshàng fútán 2.8b) under the title Jīndān kǒujué zhízhǐ 金丹口訣直指; the present recension reads Jīndān yàowù zhízhǐ 金丹藥物直指 and Kǒujué zhízhǐ 口訣直指. The text comprises Huò Jìzhī’s introduction (where he asserts the superiority of the xiāntiān 先天 doctrine over the parallel notion among Chán practitioners of Xìngzōng 性宗), diagrams and explanations rooted in the Wùzhēn piān, alchemical poems (7a–8a), and the postfaces (8b–11a). The frontmatter brackets composition between Yóu Yù’s 1249 preface and the anonymous 1257 postface.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Xiantian jindan dadao xuanao koujue,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 849. On the Southern nèidān lineage and the Wùzhēn piān: Wáng Mù 王沐, Wùzhēn piān jiānjiě 悟真篇淺解 (Beijing 1990); Fabrizio Pregadio, The Seal of the Unity of the Three (Mountain View, CA: Golden Elixir Press, 2011).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0291
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 849.