ABSTRACT
Marie Boas refers to the above quotation from Marlowe in describing the Scientific Renaissance in Europe.1 Before the birth of modern science it was difficult to differentiate between natural philosophy and mystic science. Renaissance science was science, but was not universal and not modern science. This is also true in traditional Chinese science, and the book title of Yoshida Mitsukuni2 underscores this similarity when applied to alchemy in pre-modern Japan. In a recently published work, I have shown the application of the anthropologist J.G.Frazer’s two rules of similarity and contiguity of magic to Chinese astrology.3 While the relevance of the above quotation to Chinese alchemy will only emerge in the last chapter of this book, another commonly known but less defined characteristic of magic that distinguishes it from modern science pervades this book. Magic tries to conceal its secrets. This aspect of magic is of concern to alchemical texts. Unlike writers of modern science, Chinese alchemists made no attempt to write in a clear and unambiguous style. This is the first obstacle that one has to come to terms with when delving into Daoist alchemical literature in particular.
