The Yang Shen · 陽神 · yang shen
Level 38: Nourishing the Embryo
A long gestation described in classical texts as ten months of "fire phasing".
Description
A long gestation described in classical texts as ten months of "fire phasing". The most technically elaborate stage in the entire neidan corpus.
This entry is a reconstruction. Mo Pai publishes no curriculum for level 38, so what appears above is drawn from the classical stage this band corresponds to — the gestation of the immortal embryo — shi yue huai tai (十月懷胎), the ten months — and from the shape the Mo Pai literature implies for the "The Yang Shen" band. It is a map of the territory that tradition describes, written by this archive and not taken from the lineage.
Practice
- Reconstructed from the most technically elaborate passage in the whole neidan corpus. The embryo is said to be conceived from the fused poles and then carried, and what the texts describe is a firing schedule: periods of active attention alternating with periods called mu yu (沐浴), "bathing", in which the fire is deliberately withdrawn.
- The bathing periods are the part every commentary insists on. An embryo attended to constantly is described as an embryo destroyed — the practitioner who cannot leave the work alone at the appointed points is the failure case the literature names most often.
Signs and effects
- The most technically elaborate stage in the entire neidan corpus.
How it is tested
Not published. Teacher-verified, as at every level below — and unverifiable here in a second sense, since the classical account below is not Mo Pai's.
Obstacles
- Miscarriage, in the texts' own word. Emission, a violent emotion or a shock during gestation is said to end it, and to end it in a way that cannot simply be restarted.
- Premature emergence. The spirit body is said to be let out too early by practitioners impatient for the sign, and to be unable to return.
- The mo jing (魔境), the demonic states: visions, voices and temptations that the corpus treats as a predictable feature of this stage rather than as an interruption of it. They are to be neither believed nor fought.
Sources for this entry
- The classical neidan corpus — Zhong-Lü texts, Wuzhen pian, Longmen commentaries, and the wider internal alchemy literature — the actual technical parent of Mo Pai's methods.
- The Zhong-Lü corpus — The Tang–Song material attributed to Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin: the first systematic step-by-step internal method, and the source of the ten months, the three years and the nine years.
- The Wuzhen pian — Zhang Boduan's verse classic of 1075, the central text of the Southern lineage — and the sharpest classical source on the difference between the yin shen and the yang shen.
- Editorial reconstruction — Written by this archive from the classical material, where the lineage sources do not publish a curriculum.