Secret of the Golden Flower – A Chinese Book of Life

secret-of-the-golden-flower-pdfSecret of the Golden Flower subtitled ‘A Chinese Book of Life’. This ancient esoteric treatise was transmitted orally for centuries before being recorded on a series of wooden tablets in the eighth century. It was recorded by a member of the Religion of Light, whose leader was the Taoist adept Lu Yen (also known as Lu Yen and Lu “Guest of the Cavern”). It is said that Lu Tzu became one of the Eight Immortals using these methods. The ideas have been traced back to Persia and the Zarathustra tradition and its roots in the Egyptian Hermetic tradition.

Secret of the Golden Flower
Ancient esoteric treatise transmitted orally for centuries before being recorded on a series of wooden tablets in the eighth century.
Written by: Translated by Walter Picca
Published by: Walter Picca
Edition: First
ISBN: None
Available in: Ebook

Download Secret of the Golden Flower here in full length as a free PDF file:

PDF ebook downloadSecret of the Golden Flower

 

6 thoughts on “Secret of the Golden Flower – A Chinese Book of Life”

  1. As someone who lives in Vietnam and has spent my life studying Daoism and Buddhism, I am astounded that people keep assuming that Richard Wilhelms’s translation is acceptable. It is not, it is garbage. It should be completely ignored by westerners. Why oh why do westerners, especially Americans keep thinking they have some kind of special understanding of this. Wilhelms command of Asain languages was at best conversational. His translation should not be taken seriously. Just because Carl Jung wrote a foreword doesn’t improve the terrible translation. Clearys is also really bad. If only more American scholars of Asian religion would actually live abroad int he countries they claim to have mastered the language of.

    Reply
    • I wholly agree with you George. Wilhelm’s version (as translated into English from German) is not just bad, it is psychologically harmful to the reader. Similar can be said for everything written by James Legge, Homer Dubs, and most all other translators of Chinese texts. I enjoy doing my own translations of ancient texts, and though my skills are not great (not so much as an arms wide da over ren :) ), still I am able to glean sensible concepts from the texts. There is a lot of beauty in original texts, but none in any known popular translations.

      Reply
  2. Pica seems to have reproduced the Wilhelm-Jung-Baynes version with only a few very superficial changes to some terms, perhaps adding a more external (Christian) sense, contrary to the internal-pointing terms and phrases in the source materials of Tang Dynasty Tientai Buddhism and Taoism. Both the Wilhelm-Jung-Baynes version and the Cleary version have a great deal of additional information compared to this Pica rendition, and are more suitable for starting meditation practice. Also have a look at JJ Semple, the most recent advocate of golden Flower Meditation.

    Reply
  3. The pdf here doesn’t seem to be the book. It’s called Secret of the Golden Flower, but is only fourteen pages and not a translation by Wilhelm.

    Reply

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