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Body Gods and Inner Vision: The Scripture of the Yellow Court

Paul W. Kroll

The Scripture of the Yellow Court, or Huangting jing, is one of the cardinal scriptures of medieval Daoism. A text by this name is mentioned by Ge Hong (283-343), author of He Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi) and collector of the occult traditions of South China, but that version-if it was indeed seen by Ge Hong no longer exists. The Scripture of the Yellow Court that was known from the mid- fourth century on, and which became a fundamental and hugely popular text, shows clear signs of being influenced by or adapted to the new Shangqing revelations (see chapters 11 and 12).
There are in fact two redactions of the Scripture of the Yellow Court, an “inner” (nei) scripture and an “outer” (wai) one. Both are composed in verse of heptasyllabic lines-the longer inner scripture consisting of 435 verses, divided into 36 stanzas, and the shorter outer scripture made up of a single run of 99 verses. Generally speaking, the inner scripture is a more difficult and grammatically troublesome text to read, perhaps bearing out the suggestion that “inner” connotes esoteric, as opposed to the “exoteric”teachings of the “outer”scripture. However, scholars are divided over the question of which version is primary-that is, whether the inner scripture represents an intricate elaboration of the outer scripture, or whether the latter is a summary in simpler language of the former.
In any event, the rfocus of the Scripture of the Yellow Court is on the corporeal divinities believed to reside in one’s physical form and on the means by which they may be cultivated, so as to ensure the production within and ultimate escape from one’s mortal frame of a refined and purified embryo, an etherealized self. Central to this goal is the practice of “inner vision,” by which the adept is able to
turn his gaze within and fix distinctly and sensibly the gods of his body, whose appearance and attributes are closely described in the scripturexhis process of visualization or, to render the Chinese term literally, “actualization”(cun) further reveals that the indwelling spirits of one’s body are identical with their counterparts in the macrocosm; indeed the somatic landscape is a perfect, complete
microcosm.
Prominent among the body spirits are the Five Viscera-liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys-which are fundamentally involved with the traditional system of the Five Phases (wuxing) and thus coordinated symbolically with the five directions, five colors, five flavors, five sacred peaks, and so forth. It is in fact the spleen, symbolizing the center and known by the esoteric name “Yellow Court,” that invests the scripture with its title. In addition to the viscera, each with its individual powers referred to in detail in the text, there is much allusion to the three “cinnabar fields " (dun tian) situated in the brain, near the heart, and below the navel, which control the three major divisions of the body, and also to the two-tiered ‘nine palaces” (jiu gong) of the brain-all of these points with their own presiding spirits and complex of connections linking the body with the universe. Conduction and circulation of the vital breath through the somatic passages, along with the swallowing of saliva and channeling of other bodily
humors-the one a yang action, the other a yin-are critical practices for the nourishing and harmonizing of these inner organs and spirits.
But the Scripture of the Yellow Court is less a manual than an aide-memoire. The rhythmic gait of the verses, with jingling end-rhyme on every line (instead of on every other line, as in classical poetry), betokens the oral/aural nature of the text and its basically mnemonic function. It is to be recited in order to render one’s body fit for meditation and ultimate etherealization. In one of the scripture’s prefaces we are given instructions for the proper method of recitation, requiring the burning of incense, the ritual purging and purifying of oneself. Ten thousand recitals, we are told, will enable one to “see one’s five viscera, one’s entrails and stomach, and also to see the spectres and spirits of the whole world and put them in one’s own service.”The therapeutic powers of the scripture are such that if one can recite it when at the point of death, one will be made whole again.
The imagery of the Scripture of the Yellow Court is often puzzling, and sometimes seemingly incomprehensible, when considered literally. But the adept will have learned, through private gaining with his teacher, the true reference and secret significance of the lines-the reality behind the words. Thus, as with Laozi’s CIassic on the Way and Its Power (Duo de jing), that often cryptic scripture that
stands at the head of the Daoist tradition, commentators occasionally differ radically in their interpretation of specific terms and lines. The Scripture of the Yellow Court is not, in this regard, a text for reading-it is a script pointing primarily beyond itself, to action.
The selection below features the first four stanzas of the inner scripture. The translation is as close as possible to the original and aims to suggest the metrical- sometimes mesmerizing-pulse of the verses. The prose paraphrase following each stanza then unpacks the meaning in plainer words, relying mainly on the explicationsoffered by medieval commentators.

First Stanza

In the purple aurora of Highest Clarity, before the Resplendent One of
the Void,
The Most High, Great Dao Lord of the Jade Source of Light,
Dwelling at ease in the Stamen-Pearl Palace, composed verses of seven words,
Dispersing and transforming the five shapes of being, permutating the
myriad spirits:
This is deemed the Yellow Court, known as the Inner Book.
The triple reprise of a concinnate heart will set the embryo’s transcendents dancing;
Glinting and luminous, the nine vital breaths emerge amidst the empyrean;
The young lads under the Divine Canopy will bring forth a purple haze.
This is known as the Jade Writ, which may be sifted to its essence-
Chant it over ten thousand times, and ascend to the Three Heavens;
The thousand calamities will thereby be dispelled, the hundred ailments healed;
You will not then shrink from the fell ravaging of tiger or of wolf,
And also thereby you will hold off age, your years extended forever.

First Stanza-Paraphrase

In the light of perpetual morning, in the Shangqing heaven, in the
realm of the cosmocrat who puts all of space in order,
The great deity whose seat is in the ultimate illumination of dawn,
Who resides in a palace symbolic of perigynous jewels, wrote a poem
in seven-word lines,
Having the power to affect all entities, from fish, birds, men, mammals,
and invertebrates to the multitudinous gods.
That poem was this very text, the Inner Scripture of the Yellow Court.
Once the three “cinnabar fields” are brought into harmony through it,
the spirits of one’s immortal embryo will respond with delight,
And the pneumata of the Nine Heavens, conducted through the three
“cinnabar fields,” will shine forth from the chambers of one’s brain,
As the deities of one’s eyes, beneath the eyebrows’ arch, emit a
vaporous aura of supernatural purple.
This text, also called the Jade Writ, deserves the closest study,
For, after ten thousand recitations of it, one may be translated to the
highest heavens,
Immune to earthly misfortune, impervious to disease,
Proof against attacks from savage beasts,
And able to enjoy perpetual life.

Second Stanza

Above there are ethereal souls, below is the junction’s origin;
Left serves as lesser yang, the right as greatest yin;
Behind there is the Secret Door, before is the Gate of Life.
With emergent sun and retreating moon, exhale, inhale, actualizing them.
Where the Four Breaths are well blended, the arrayed mansions will be distinct;
Let the purple haze rise and fall, with the clouds of the Three Immaculates.
Irrigate and spray the Five Flowers, and plant the Numinous Root.
Let the channeled course of the Seven Liquors rush into the span of the hut;
Circulate the purple, embrace the yellow, that they enter the Cinnabar Field;
Make the Shrouded Room bright within, illuminating the Gate of Yang.

Second Stanza-Paraphrase

The spirits of the liver, lungs, and spleen are above, representing Heaven, as contrasted with the navel (or, alternatively, a spot three inches below the navel), representing the underworld of matter and
generation.
The left and right kidneys are yang and yin.
The Secret Door of the kidneys is at the back of one’s body, while the Gate of Life, located below the navel (equivalent either to the lower cinnabar field or to the ‘)unction’s origin” where semen is stored), is in front.
Sun and moon, imaged in one’s left and right eyes, respectively, are to be made sensibly present in concentrated visualization, so that they will shed their light on one’s internal organs, while one conducts the breath carefully through the body.
Bringing together the pneumata of the four seasons in oneself will render distinct the astral lodgings and somatic dwellings of sun, moon, and Dipper.
As the purple vapor of the divinities of the eyes infuses one’s body, it is joined by clouds of purple, yellow, and white, symbolic of the Primal Mistresses of the Three Immaculates-goddesses who preside over the three major divisions of the body and the twenty-four major corporeal divinities.
One should swallow the saliva that nourishes one’s internal organs, especially the essential “flowers” of the five viscera, taking care to cultivate the “Numinous Root” of the tongue, which activates and
gathers in the saliva.
The humoral juices of the the body’s seven orifices are channeled throughout the body and into the bridge of the nose, the “hut” between the eyebrows.
The spreading purple vapor from the eyes and the rising yellow pneuma from the spleen are brought into the upper cinnabar field located three inches behind the sinciput,
While, below, the “Shrouded Room” of the kidneys is bathed in light, as is the Gate of Yang (the Gate of Life) in front,

Third Stanza

The mouth is the Jade Pool, the Officer of Greatest Accord.
Rinse with and gulp down the numinous liquor-calamities will not encroach;
One’s body will engender a lighted florescence, breath redolent as orchid;
One turns back, extinguishes the hundred malignities-one’s features
refined in jade.
With practice and attention, cultivate this, climbing to the Palace of Ample Cold.
Not sleeping either day or night, you will achieve then full perfection;
When thunder sounds and lightning spurts, your spirits are placid, impassive.

Third Stanza-Paraphrase

The mouth is the reservoir of the jade liquor of saliva, controlling in this capacity the nourishing and harmonizing of the body’s organs.Drinking down the spiritually potent saliva and circulating it in
prescribed fashion will enable you to avoid misfortune;
Your body will be lit from within like a luminous flower, and your breath will acquire a sweet fragrance;
All debilitating influences will be opposed, and your skin will become pure as snow, white as jade.
Through repeated exercises you will become expert in this practice and be able to ascend to the celestial palace where the white moon itself is bathed when at apogee, at the winter solstice.
Unstinting concentration will lead to complete spiritual realization,
Such that your corporeal spirits will remain serenely fixed when confronted by any outer startlements.

Fourth Stanza

The person within the Yellow Court wears a polychrome-damask jacket,
A volant skirt of purple flowering, in gossamer of cloudy vapors,
Vermilion and azure, with green withes, numinous boughs of halcyon- blue.
With the jade cotter of the Seven Panicles, shut tight the two door- leaves;
Let the golden bar of the layered panels keep snug the door-post and catch.
The shrouded barrier of the murky freshets will be lofty, tall and towering;
In the midst of the Three Fields, essence and breath will become more subtle.
The Delicate Girl, winsome but withdrawn, screens the empyrean’s radiance;
The tiered hall, shiningly iridescent, illumines the Eight Daunters.
From the celestial court to the earthly barrier, arrayed be the axes and bills;
With the numinous terrace hardy and firm, forever one will not

Fourth Stanza-Paraphrase

The “Mother of the Dao,” one of the spleen’s indwelling divinities, is clothed in a rich coat with the symbolic colors of all Five Viscera;
Her buoyant skirt, made of the silky gauze of cloud-breaths, is decorated in the purple hues of the deepest heavens and the celestial pole,
With tints of red, green, and blue, in sylvan designs, embellishing her other garments.
One must keep one’s gaze focused within, concentrating on the interior gods, oblivious of the outside world, letting nothing escape through the doors of one’s eyes, turning the key of one’s seven orifices.
Barring the exits at all bodily levels, keeping the portals shut fast.
Then the shrouded barrier of the kidneys, source of bodily juices, will grow in strength;
Elemental essence and vital breath will become rarefied, less carnal, within the three “cinnabar fields.”
The shy divinity of the ears turns away from the brilliant lights of the heavens,
While the layered chamber of the throat-passageway for the saliva- now gleams with a splendor that shines out to the divinities of the eight directions.
All the inner spirits are stalwart as arrayed weapons, from the celestial hall between the eyebrows to the earthly barrier of the feet,
And the sacred estrade of the heart will prove an everlastingly impregnable structure. weaken.