Ge Hong
Ge Hong 葛洪 (283–343/363), author of the Baopuzi — the fourth-century scholar who collected the sitting traditions of his day and gave this site its primary source for taixi and shouyi.
Who he was
Ge Hong (葛洪), courtesy name Zhichuan (稚川), self-styled Baopuzi — “the Master Who Embraces the Uncarved Block” — was born in Danyang Jurong (present-day Jiangsu) around 283 CE into a southern gentry family in decline. He studied with the esoteric master Zheng Yin, heir to the alchemical lineage of Zuo Ci and Ge Xuan; served as a military officer in the campaigns of the early fourth century; and in his fifties obtained the minor magistracy of Goulou (in present-day Guangxi) specifically for its cinnabar deposits — then stopped at Luofu Mountain in Guangdong, was detained there by hospitality and good conditions, and stayed: writing, alchemy, and teaching until his death, traditionally placed in 343 (some accounts extend it to 363, age 81; the sources disagree and this page keeps both dates visible).
Why this site needs him
Because the Baopuzi — his great compilation — is the primary documentary source for two practices this site covers: the classical definition of taixi (“one who has attained taixi breathes without nose or mouth, as in the womb”) and the economy-argument for shouyi (“among thousands of visualization methods, knowing the One completes the ten thousand affairs”). Ge Hong did not invent these practices; he preserved them, at a moment when the tradition was consolidating, with a scholar’s care and a practitioner’s caution — he repeatedly marks what he has practiced, what he has only heard, and what the texts keep secret for oral transmission.
The three Ge Hongs, kept apart
- The historian — author of the outer chapters’ essays on government and society, and of a partial account of his own life (the Zixu chapter), which is the basis of every later biography.
- The compiler-practitioner — author of the inner chapters, where the sitting, breathing, and visualization methods of the third–fourth century survive.
- The legend — the later tradition’s “Little Immortal Elder” (小仙翁), credited with feats of alchemy and immortality in Luofu. This site records the legend as legend and cites the texts.
Uncertainty preserved: the death date dispute (343 vs 363) and the hagiographic later material are flagged, not flattened; what is secure is the man’s authorship of the inner chapters and their witness to the sitting practices.
Sources
- Jin shu (Book of Jin), biography of Ge Hong (received account); his own autobiographical chapter (Baopuzi, outer chapters, Zixu)
- Baopuzi, inner chapters (received text, 20 juan)