Elixirist

There was the school of simplicity, socialism, and universal love, the head of which was a Quixotic Diogenes called Mêh-tsz or Meccius (fifth century b.c.); the school of denominationalists, or pedantic adherents to the letter of absolutely defined principles; the legists, or partisans of a system of repression and punishment (on the Plehve-Pobyedonóschtschoff basis); the astrologists, or believers in occult influences; the medicals or elixirists; the sensualists; and many others, recalling to our minds the various divisions of Greek philosophy at the same period.

In Tang dynasty alchemist elixir really flourished. Unfortunately the art did not stand real testing. Three of the Emperors who took the elixir died of poison. Taoist elixirists were blamed and executed, and the art suffered a fatal blow. Evidently a new approach to the development of an elixir was in order.

If Western thinking arrived at a dualism of “God the father” and “Mother Earth,” Chinese elixirists strove to transcend the yin materiality of earth and rise to the yang spirituality of heaven.