Sources and Bibliography

Source keys used on level entries

• magus The Magus of Java — Kosta Danaos, Inner Traditions, 2000. The founding Western text.
• neikung Nei Kung: The Secret Teachings of the Warrior Sages — Kosta Danaos, Inner Traditions, 2002.
• ringoffire Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey — Lorne and Lawrence Blair, 1988. The "Dynamo Jack" segment, later withdrawn at the subject's request.
• leaked The leaked level 1–4 instruction sheets — Circulated on internet forums from the mid-2000s, and the basis of most unsupervised practice since.
• forums Community testimony — Forum archives, student accounts, and interviews from the 2000s–2010s.
• mcmillan Jim McMillan's accounts — Writing and teaching by a second Western student of Chang.
• cantongqi The Cantong qi — The "Seal of the Unity of the Three", attributed to Wei Boyang and Han in origin: the founding text of Chinese alchemy, read as a charter by both the external and the internal traditions.
• wuzhenpian 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.
• zhonglu 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.
• baopuzi The Baopuzi and the early alchemical record — Ge Hong, c. 320 CE, and the Great Clarity scriptures after him: the fullest early accounts of what Chinese alchemists actually did, before the work turned inward.
• neidan 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.
• numerology Chinese numerological and literary tradition — The 36/72 pairing, the seventy-two transformations, the seventy-two disciples — the cultural source of the number.
• manual The Mo Pai Training Manual — The compiled level 1–4 method circulating since 2020, assembled by Jeff McDuffie from the instruction sheets and from Jim McMillan's material. Technical, undated in its parts, and the fullest single statement of the method in open circulation.
• lunghushan Lung Hu Shan material (a separate school) — Booklets by Shifu Lin — "Training Tips for Level 2" and "Overcoming Sickness with Nei Kung" — which describe Mo Pai's levels in detail while teaching a different curriculum and offering corrective training. Much of the circulating detail about level 2 and about practitioners falling ill originates here rather than with Chang's lineage, and this archive marks it wherever it is used.
• editorial Editorial reconstruction — Written by this archive from the classical material, where the lineage sources do not publish a curriculum.

Bibliography

• The Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal — Kosta Danaos, 2000.
  The primary source for essentially everything on this site.
• Nei Kung: The Secret Teachings of the Warrior Sages — Kosta Danaos, 2002.
  More technical; broader context on internal martial practice.
• Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey — Lorne & Lawrence Blair, 1988.
  Documentary series. The Dynamo Jack segment appears in original releases only.
• The Mozi (墨子) — Mohist school, c. 4th–3rd c. BCE.
  The Mohist canon: ethics, logic, optics, mechanics, and siege defence.
• Huangdi Neijing Suwen (黃帝內經素問) — Compiled, Han dynasty, c. 2nd c. BCE – 2nd c. CE.
  The foundational medical classic. Its opening chapter sets out the schedule of jing across a life in cycles of seven and eight, and it is the source for most of what The Three Treasures: Jing, Qi, Shen describes.
• The Taoist Body — Kristofer Schipper, 1993.
  Serious scholarship on Taoist practice and cosmology, and the best way to see any single lineage in its wider context.
• Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism — Harold D. Roth, 1999.
  Translation and study of the Neiye — the earliest text on cultivating qi, and the root of everything on this site.
• Daoism Handbook — Livia Kohn (ed.), 2000.
  The standard survey of the tradition's history, schools, texts and practices. The place to check anything in Taoism, and Where Mo Pai Sits in It.
• Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945–63 — Kim Taylor, 2005.
  How traditional practice was reorganised as state medicine — the context in which the word "qigong" was invented.
• Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China — David A. Palmer, 2007.
  The definitive account of the 1980s–90s qigong boom, the external-qi research programme, and the 1999 crackdown.
• A close look at therapeutic touch — Rosa, Rosa, Sarner & Barrett (JAMA), 1998.
  The best-known controlled test of a practitioner's claimed ability to detect a human energy field. Relevant to Qi: The Word Everything Rests On.
• Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity — Isabelle Robinet, 1993.
  Rigorous academic treatment of the meditative traditions underlying the alchemical corpus.
• The Encyclopedia of Taoism — Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.), 2008.
  The standard reference. Entries on neidan, dan tien, yang shen, shi jie, and everything else in the glossary here.
• Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin — Livia Kohn, 2008.
  The historical development of the practices, with the scholarship attached.
• The Cambridge History of Ancient China — Loewe & Shaughnessy (eds.), 1999.
  For the historical Mohists and their place in the Warring States period.
• Varieties of contemplative experience — Lindahl, Fisher, Cooper, Rosen & Britton (PLoS ONE), 2017.
  The modern literature on adverse effects of intensive meditation practice. Relevant to Safety and not otherwise easy to find.

The annotated reading list →

How to read the source keys