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The World Upside Down: Essays on Taoist Internal Alchemy Kindle Edition
Fabrizio Pregadio (Translator) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Isabelle Robinet (1932-2000) was one of the most important Western scholars of Taoism. Her work dealt with several major topics: the Laozi and the Zhuangzi with their commentaries; the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) school of Taoism; Neidan (Internal Alchemy); and Taoist thought and cosmology.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date19 January 2014
- File size508 KB
Product description
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B00HY4IS4U
- Publisher : Golden Elixir Press (19 January 2014)
- Language : English
- File size : 508 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Print length : 140 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 778,801 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 332 in Eastern Philosophy (Kindle Store)
- 333 in Taoism (Kindle Store)
- 735 in Taoist Philosophy
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Fabrizio Pregadio has taught at different universities in Italy, Germany, the United States, and Canada. He is the author of "Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China" (Stanford University Press, 2006) and the editor of "The Encyclopedia of Taoism" (Routledge, 2008). In addition to his scholarly activities, he publishes translations of original texts on Taoism and Taoist Internal Alchemy (Neidan) addressed to a wider audience. These translations, published by Golden Elixir Press, include the "Cantong qi" (Seal of the Unity of the Three); the "Wuzhen pian" (Awakening to Reality); the "Ruyao jing" (Mirror for Compounding the Medicine); the "Yinfu jing" (Scripture of the Hidden Accordance); and "Cultivating the Tao", a work by the great Taoist master, Liu Yiming.
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The first essay looked at how practitioners of internal alchemy viewed the world and it's correspondences differently to traditional yin/yang and 5 phases cosmology. Based on these ideas they would reverse them. But of course it was also more complicated than that. But it was interesting to see that in their interpretations yang and yin were never solely the one thing but contained each other within them. (Like the famous symbol, which actually was a much later invention).
The alchemical language looked at the way words and metaphors from external alchemy was used in internal alchemy. This essay helped me realise that the things that had been confusing me in the French were because they were using a different basis for some of the alchemy than I thought. It wasn't about the qi and jing as much as about yin/yang and more "physical" ideas.
The role and the meaning of numbers explained the importance and significance of different numbers within the practice. A great reference and explanation.
The last essay was the one I found most interesting. It was the one that had the most historical context and looked at how our definitions of weidan (external alchemy) and neidan (internal alchemy) were not at all consistently used that way in texts during the late Tang and early Song and that some practitioners would use them the other way round, that there wasn't a total consistency in their use. It was fascinating and insightful.
This was a really short book that I read in a couple days. But I'm glad I bought a copy, as it's also one that I think I will need to re-read several times to begin to understand everything that it contains. I think it's great that Golden Elixir Press is printing these scholarly works on alchemy at such an affordable price. I shall definitely be buying the others they've produced.

