A lot of people are very against the world “golden pill” or even thinks that the word “alchemy” is something that is evil or cult-like. That’s because most of the people don’t even know what the real practice is about and they have been misled by the books out there, which are not even written by real Taoist in practice. This article will open your eyes to see the real deal, what we call the “alchemy” in Taoism or 煉丹.

What is the Pill

The golden pill 金丹 (Gum Darn) is referring to the heart in your energy body, which we call the Faat-Sun 法身. The “heart” is called the Faat-SUM with an M 法心. It is the heart that all of us use to feel, it generates feeling, character, and emotions. You cannot see it because it is not a physical thing, but you can understand it when I try to relate it to your everyday life experience.

When you wake up, you feel happy, and you know what to do today. That’s your heart doing great! It got good energy in there that motivate you to live a life and not feel dreadful and dead.

You got to the doctor’s office, and you feel anxious because you are about to get your report for the covid test!  This nervous and anxious feeling is from the heart, it’s making you feel that way.

The heart can be happy, not happy, sad, love, like, etc. You get it now!

The heart is also what gives you what we call confident, courage, and the will power to keep going in life. When the heart is strong, you won’t give up on things. When the heart is being attacked, broken, shattered, you will want to give up everything. Just like when you are heart broken from a break-up with another person, you will want to just give up everything “too” and “might-as-well” end it all for good. Some people can even feel so extreme that they want to kill themselves.

Why is this the “golden” pill? First, the “shape” of it looks like a pill, a ball, or sphere. Golden is the color, it’s yellowish in color if you can see it in that dimension like how we do with our celestial vision.

What About the Altar?

When you invest your heart by outputting your faith, over time, with energy (doing rituals) at the altar, you are just investing all that to create the spiritual embryo as explained in the “Creation of God” article.

After that, your altar will have its own “heart” as well. Just like yours! However, the altar is not only about your energy. The altar can be a combination of your and others’ energy investment, and it can also be where your lineage’s gods are beaming down their powers to you over time too. With that said, the altar accumulates powers that is beyond yours and stronger than yours.

Over time, you will take that energy by using the Taoism FU method and consume them back into your body. This has been explained in the FU Consumption article too. By doing so, you are getting an upgrade for your heart. In short, you cook up the altar power and consume it to upgrade your own heart’s power. Then, you invest more into the altar again. Like a non-stop cycle of giving, taking, giving, taking.

By “cooking” this pill and cultivating it, that’s what we mean by alchemy or the pill-cooking.

There are many kinds of “metal” being used which are all just metaphor. For example, we say add iron, mercury and so on. They are all coded words to describe the kind of energy.

Iron is black, it is referring to the #2 ingredient, desire and the power of WANTING something.

Mercury is call “water-silver” 水銀 it is a metaphor of water (to put down) and silver (the intention and time). So, you need to put down more intention and visualizing over time.

There are also herbs used as coded names such as realgar 雄黃, and that is translated to “boost, the yellow” (meaning a boost of faith or heart power).

Sometimes even flowers are used as a code, like lotus, meaning the burning of the internal power. Red lotus, yellow lotus, white lotus, meaning the burning of the lower, mid and upper powers or Darn Teen 丹田.

Those people who try to understand all these by digging up books? No chance. Taoist art is very secretive, and you don’t expose all these to public in a book. Therefore, thieves dig them up and try to use it as-is, oh my gosh, they got poisoned and even die from “eating” that pill because it’s totally not meant to be like that.

How to Start

To start learning, you would really need to ordain first, nothing can be done if you are not inside the lineage. Alchemy is a big subject, and you need close guidance and teaching to learn about the altar and how to work with it etc. It cannot be learned by yourself. Don’t be like those who have commitment issues and just lurk around the internet doing research all day. I am telling you up front, I won’t teach it to the public and waste my time risking people doing stupid things. You need close supervision, guidance, and teaching. I care for my disciple, and that is why I don’t let them goof around on their own. If you want to learn, ordain and you will get to learn it in your journey.