Page 606 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TAOISM A-L

the fire of desire that stirs up the passions and feeds the sense organs. With
reference to calming the agitated mind and the destructive fire, neidan employs
the expression "extracting Water from the Fire of the heart" (this Water is
represented by the Yin line within li ~ --, the trigram that represents Fire).
This expression means appeasing the mind by making psychic energy descend
instead of going up. Mental concentration corresponds to the emergence within
the body of a form of heat that rises from the lower abdomen, a phenom-
enon referred to in neidan as "extracting Fire from the Water of the kidneys"
(i.e., the Yang line within kan :Ij-: ==, the trigram that represents Water). The
kidneys' Water normally produces seminal essence and flows out of the body
under the effect of the Fire of desires. This illustrates two important alchemi-
cal principles: the reversal of the energetic course (the energy of the heart
descends, the energy of the kidneys ascends) and the union of opposites (the
Fire from the heart joins with the Water from the kidneys).

Precelestial and postcelestial. An important distinction found in neidan and
elsewhere (e.g, in *Shao Yong and other Neo-Confucian thinkers) is between
two aspects of jing, qi, and shen, respectively related to the states "prior to
Heaven" and "posterior to Heaven" (*xiantian and houtian). Essence exists both
as "precelestial essence" (xiantian zhi jing5t -J( Z *~), also known as Original
Essence (yuanjing Jf: *~f), and as ordinary essence, called "postcelestial essence"
(houtian zhi jing 1&X z. ffl). Whereas ordinary essence, which is derived from
desire, is produced and kept in the kidneys, Original Essence, which issues
from the appeasement of mind and the stabilization of breath, is associated
with the Gate of the Vital Force (*mingmen), located in the right kidney or
between the two kidneys.
Similarly, qi exists as "precelestial breath (or pneuma)" (xiantian zhi qi 7t
7(Z 1r-O, also called Original Breath or Original Pneuma (*yuanqi), and as
"postcelestial breath (or pneuma)" (houtian zhi qi 1& 1( Z ~). These different
aspects are represented by two different forms of the word qi: the graph for
precelestial qi G~) is explicated as breath or pneuma "without the fire (of
desire)." At the level of the human being, the distinction between the two qi
develops at birth: with its first cry, the newborn child enters the postcelestial
state through the ingestion of outer air. Original Breath or Original Pneuma
reaches fullness at puberty, then progressively decreases before disappearing
at the age of forty-nine for women and sixty-four for men. Some alchemical
schools even quantifY the precelestial breath that a person has at birth but
progressively loses during life. One of the alchemical processes consists of
compensating for this loss with the help of postcelestial breath. Neidan also
distinguishes between an outer breath (also called Martial Fire or wuhuo Ji~
jo, which is common breath, and an inner breath (also called Civil Fire or
wenhuo .1J:. )(), which corresponds to thought and the Intention (*yi).