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Foundations of Internal Alchemy: The Taoist Practice of Neidan
Originally written for Chinese readers, this book provides a clear description of the Taoist practice of Internal Alchemy, or Neidan. The author outlines the four stages of the alchemical practice and clarifies several relevant terms and notions, including Essence, Breath, and Spirit; the Cinnabar Fields; the "Fire Times"; and the Embryo. The book is based on the system of the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Reality), one of the main sources of Internal Alchemy, and contains about two hundred quotations from original Taoist texts.
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Table of Contents
Foreword, vii
INTRODUCTION, 1
The Basis: Essence and Spirit, 3
STAGES OF THE ALCHEMICAL PRACTICE IN AWAKENING TO REALITY, 11
The Four Stages, 13
"Laying the Foundations," 15
Main Points in the Practice of "Laying the Foundations," 20
The Functions of Essence, Breath, and Spirit, 36
Terms Related to the "Coagulation of the Three Treasures," 52
Conclusion of the Stage of "Laying the Foundations," 63
"Refining Essence to Transmute it into Breath," 65
"Refining Breath to Transmute it into Spirit," 99
"Refining Spirit to Return to Emptiness," 109
CONCLUSION, 119
The "Arts of the Way," 121
Tables, 123
Glossary of Chinese Characters, 133
154 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 1, 2017
This is a really interesting book on internal cultivation. I appreciate the efforts of the author to break down many of the metaphors found in internal alchemy texts and to help simplify the intellectual side of these techniques. It is also very good that he stresses the practice of neidan. This is something that must be experienced rather than read, but this book is a good start to help simplify the intellectual foundation of that practice.
February 3, 2026
This is a worthwhile little tome: an English translation (by Fabrizio Pregado) of an early 1900s lecture by knowledgeable and experienced Daoist neidan (internal alchemy cultivation/meditation) initiate and teacher Wang Mu, given to a group of practitioners as a means of decoding the incomprehensible symbolic language used by the early manuals writing about the neidan process. Pregado and his imprint have also released translations of such early ~1100 year old neidan alchemical texts, and this translated lecture by Wang is remarkably illuminating for anyone who has parsed those or the original classical Chinese material.
As most people reading this review likely already know, the tree of present-day Daoism is categorized into two main trunk branches. One is the umbrella of Chinese and Taiwanese religious sects and traditions, the 2000+ year old Way of the Celestial Masters. The other is comprised of the schools, sects, and lineage varieties of Daoist internal alchemy meditation founded starting ~1000 years ago, which were also (more and less openly) influenced by Chan and other forms of medieval Chinese Buddhism and have a similar final goal of liberation or transcendence of conditional phenomena. This is a great simplification, with both branches containing various large and small schools and sects and eclectic off-shoots, while there are plenty of communities and people which simultaneously practice and preserve lineages of both kinds of Daoism at once (meaning in many cases there is not a clear distinction or separation between the two, they are just pragmatic in different ways).
It's the latter type of Daoism which is increasingly accessible around the world, which innocuously appeals because it arrives by a non-deistic cosmology and practice trajectory which charts a pragmatic "linear" progression process of transforming human physical vitality qualities (via subtle breathing methods) into continuously more palpable energetic circuitry around and within the (space coinciding with the) body, and then metaphysical experience and states which ultimately realize the final phase of emptiness (which is "emptiness" in a Daoist framework and term, and not that a Mahayana Buddhist one).
The advanced, later phases of Daoist internal alchemy involve the student forming in their body (or its omnidimensional space) a "golden embryo" and then being from their long-realized, consistent esoteric rigors, which is nurtured and trained until it becomes a metaphysical and mystical transcendental expression of the practitioner—which goes on after this mortal life/death, abiding beyond the bonds which comprise causality. The final phase of the refinement and training and merging with this carefully, patiently woven, hyper-real, ultra-dimensional Thing On The Doorstep is said to be a process of 9 years of meticulous cultivation of specific instructions while self-sealed away in monastic isolation or (most authentically) a remote mountain cave hermitage.
The whole process, though generally the same voyage across the same charted intra-introstellar cosmological map, can differ among sects, schools, and lineages of neidan (though surviving lineages today derive mostly of the same sect, Way of Complete Perfection, and the vast majority of those from its school, Dragon Gate, which other schools have tended to overlap with or merge with in their own histories). A teacher only explains the final phases and methods of the golden embryo realization process to "inner door" students who are fully initiated as members of the lineage itself. These inner door teachings are by students kept exclusive and not shared openly to the public (preventing such people from explaining the big secrets fully in their reviews of neidan books on good reads dot com).
I write all this to highlight what is specifically kept exclusive from non-lineage students of neidan, and that Wang Mu here is purportedly breaking down every phase of the practice, including the later secret ones. He's explaining the old texts on alchemy, along with the commentaries and poems the early masters of formalized neidan wrote about them, showing how most of the texts are merely using substituted terms via the tables of correspondences that make up the metaphysical lexicon of Chinese and Daoist cosmology and theory (yin/yang theory, bagua, five elements, heavenly stems, earthly branches, zodiac, luoshu, and so on). You'd probably want to be familiar with these to appreciate Wang's discussions, though there are tables of them in the appendixes.
The big bombshell though is Wang's explanation of the golden embryo and its later stages: Wang doesn't give any big instructions or particular practices here, because... he explains the golden embryo is a metaphorical illustration to convey the fantastic and awesome achievement of the practice to the uninformed, uneducated, unmotivated masses. Wang explains that the golden embryo is more symbolic coded language just like the texts are doing for all the instructions drawn from the metaphysical correspondences, except that due to secrecy and a desire to believe in fairy tales, this representational imagery of the golden embryo is taken literally by everyone in modern times. Which is pretty, well... big if true.
Meanwhile, other supposed final act instructions about the embryo from other lineage teachers of neidan from around the same period as Wang Mu are out there with translations. Then there's the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon practices of the Rainbow Body, which is a corresponding internal alchemy process by way of traditional Tibetan energetic and subtle body processes (which are different than the Chinese/Daoist energetic/internal diagrams and map, and more like ones from Indian traditions and practices), which lineage devotees swear by the literal explicit processes. So, all in all, I suppose you have to do it yourself to know what's good. But Wang's explanation is very pertinent—stuff for our modern times. Traversing the chains of causality is not a fairy tale, unlike the embellished and exaggerated stories of religious figures. Pregadio recognized the resonant parallel context between neidan increasingly being taken up by 21st century students all around the world and with the new variety of students neidan was reaching in early 20th century China.
As most people reading this review likely already know, the tree of present-day Daoism is categorized into two main trunk branches. One is the umbrella of Chinese and Taiwanese religious sects and traditions, the 2000+ year old Way of the Celestial Masters. The other is comprised of the schools, sects, and lineage varieties of Daoist internal alchemy meditation founded starting ~1000 years ago, which were also (more and less openly) influenced by Chan and other forms of medieval Chinese Buddhism and have a similar final goal of liberation or transcendence of conditional phenomena. This is a great simplification, with both branches containing various large and small schools and sects and eclectic off-shoots, while there are plenty of communities and people which simultaneously practice and preserve lineages of both kinds of Daoism at once (meaning in many cases there is not a clear distinction or separation between the two, they are just pragmatic in different ways).
It's the latter type of Daoism which is increasingly accessible around the world, which innocuously appeals because it arrives by a non-deistic cosmology and practice trajectory which charts a pragmatic "linear" progression process of transforming human physical vitality qualities (via subtle breathing methods) into continuously more palpable energetic circuitry around and within the (space coinciding with the) body, and then metaphysical experience and states which ultimately realize the final phase of emptiness (which is "emptiness" in a Daoist framework and term, and not that a Mahayana Buddhist one).
The advanced, later phases of Daoist internal alchemy involve the student forming in their body (or its omnidimensional space) a "golden embryo" and then being from their long-realized, consistent esoteric rigors, which is nurtured and trained until it becomes a metaphysical and mystical transcendental expression of the practitioner—which goes on after this mortal life/death, abiding beyond the bonds which comprise causality. The final phase of the refinement and training and merging with this carefully, patiently woven, hyper-real, ultra-dimensional Thing On The Doorstep is said to be a process of 9 years of meticulous cultivation of specific instructions while self-sealed away in monastic isolation or (most authentically) a remote mountain cave hermitage.
The whole process, though generally the same voyage across the same charted intra-introstellar cosmological map, can differ among sects, schools, and lineages of neidan (though surviving lineages today derive mostly of the same sect, Way of Complete Perfection, and the vast majority of those from its school, Dragon Gate, which other schools have tended to overlap with or merge with in their own histories). A teacher only explains the final phases and methods of the golden embryo realization process to "inner door" students who are fully initiated as members of the lineage itself. These inner door teachings are by students kept exclusive and not shared openly to the public (preventing such people from explaining the big secrets fully in their reviews of neidan books on good reads dot com).
I write all this to highlight what is specifically kept exclusive from non-lineage students of neidan, and that Wang Mu here is purportedly breaking down every phase of the practice, including the later secret ones. He's explaining the old texts on alchemy, along with the commentaries and poems the early masters of formalized neidan wrote about them, showing how most of the texts are merely using substituted terms via the tables of correspondences that make up the metaphysical lexicon of Chinese and Daoist cosmology and theory (yin/yang theory, bagua, five elements, heavenly stems, earthly branches, zodiac, luoshu, and so on). You'd probably want to be familiar with these to appreciate Wang's discussions, though there are tables of them in the appendixes.
The big bombshell though is Wang's explanation of the golden embryo and its later stages: Wang doesn't give any big instructions or particular practices here, because... he explains the golden embryo is a metaphorical illustration to convey the fantastic and awesome achievement of the practice to the uninformed, uneducated, unmotivated masses. Wang explains that the golden embryo is more symbolic coded language just like the texts are doing for all the instructions drawn from the metaphysical correspondences, except that due to secrecy and a desire to believe in fairy tales, this representational imagery of the golden embryo is taken literally by everyone in modern times. Which is pretty, well... big if true.
Meanwhile, other supposed final act instructions about the embryo from other lineage teachers of neidan from around the same period as Wang Mu are out there with translations. Then there's the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon practices of the Rainbow Body, which is a corresponding internal alchemy process by way of traditional Tibetan energetic and subtle body processes (which are different than the Chinese/Daoist energetic/internal diagrams and map, and more like ones from Indian traditions and practices), which lineage devotees swear by the literal explicit processes. So, all in all, I suppose you have to do it yourself to know what's good. But Wang's explanation is very pertinent—stuff for our modern times. Traversing the chains of causality is not a fairy tale, unlike the embellished and exaggerated stories of religious figures. Pregadio recognized the resonant parallel context between neidan increasingly being taken up by 21st century students all around the world and with the new variety of students neidan was reaching in early 20th century China.
April 28, 2013
This is a lovely translation of a 20th century book about internal alchemy and it's practice. It draws on lots of older sources. It is however definitely not something that should be read by people not already familiar with the practices as it is not a general introduction, despite the name, but rather detailed discussions of the practices and ideas of the neidan.
April 26, 2020
This is an interesting book and does a good job of explaining the practice of neidan. However practical advice on practicing it is a bit lacking.
October 19, 2021
I didn't finish this book because I found it too metaphorical for my needs. I'm not at a point right now to enjoy a metaphysical book, I wanted more clarity and focus in the writing.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews