Alongside Huang Di, the First Emperor could look to plenty of other long-lived sages for inspiration, such as Peng Zu, said to have lived to eight hundred. The Roman historian Pliny also recorded cases of eight-hundred-year-olds (though noted that at this age they were so tired of life they would jump into the sea). Those in the Jewish and Christian traditions could look to the Old Testament for even longer-lived forefathers—Noah was said to have made it to 950 and Methuselah to 969. Although in our own time, better record keeping and higher standards of evidence make such tales rare, nonetheless they still circulate, such as, for example, the popular story of very long-lived Georgians in the Caucasus Mountains—a myth that inspired millions to buy yogurt after a hugely successful set of 1970s television commercials assured viewers that this was their secret elixir.
• • •
A S natural as it might be to dream of staying alive, the nature of our bodies is working against us. Unaided or unrefined, they will ail, age, die and rot. Something must be done; in order to withstand the trials of time we must somehow transcend the ordinary limits of biology. We must somehow be
transformed
to be made fit for eternity. The idea of an elixir of life embodies this desire for transformation: it is the legendary substance that, when consumed, will halt the usual processes of decline and decay, elevating the imbibers above the fate of mortals, making them what the Chinese call
hsien—
transcendent, celestial, immortal.
Although we might now imagine the elixir of life to be a bubbling potion or a neat pill, the First Emperor would have had no such preconceptions: he would have been equally unsurprised to discover it was a single plant, or a set of exercises, or some arcane combination of powders and spells. Tales of life-giving objects of one kind or another were remarkably diverse and widespread: magic cups, cauldrons, fountains, springs, rivers, trees, mushrooms, fruits, vegetables, horns, hairs, animals, spirits, witches, monsters, spells, curses, rings—all have at one time or another been ascribed death-defying properties.
When aspiring to live forever, it was therefore best to keep an open mind about the means. The elixir was whatever helped to stave off aging and death for a little bit longer, and its pursuit encompassed what we would now consider to be very disparate traditions, from medicine to magic and science to religion. But despite these many strands, the quest for the elixir has come to be known by one name: alchemy.
The oldest mention of alchemy in history is in the records of the first-century BCE Chinese historian Sima Qian, who also recorded most of what we know of the First Emperor. He describes how the court alchemist sought to transform cinnabar, a bright red mercuryore, into gold—and that if this was then used for eating and drinking it would ensure “you will never die.” Thus from its earliest days, alchemy has been associated with the pursuit of two goals united by the idea of transformation: the transformation of base metals into gold and of base humans into immortals.
Although now more associated with the first of these, most alchemists would have considered at the very least that they were inextricably linked, and very often, as in Sima Qian’s description, that the production of gold was merely a means to the end of indefinite life. This was equally true of Western alchemy, as the Oxford scholar Roger Bacon, an early advocate of scientific experimentation, put it in 1267: “That medicine which would remove all impurities and corruptions of a baser metal so that it should become silver and purest gold, is thought by scientists to be able to remove the corruptions of the human body to such an extent that it would prolong life for many ages.”
The name “alchemy” itself reflects the art’s mysterious origins. We have inherited the word from the Arabic
al-kimia
, as it was the Islamic
• • •
A S natural as it might be to dream of staying alive, the nature of our bodies is working against us. Unaided or unrefined, they will ail, age, die and rot. Something must be done; in order to withstand the trials of time we must somehow transcend the ordinary limits of biology. We must somehow be
transformed
to be made fit for eternity. The idea of an elixir of life embodies this desire for transformation: it is the legendary substance that, when consumed, will halt the usual processes of decline and decay, elevating the imbibers above the fate of mortals, making them what the Chinese call
hsien—
transcendent, celestial, immortal.
Although we might now imagine the elixir of life to be a bubbling potion or a neat pill, the First Emperor would have had no such preconceptions: he would have been equally unsurprised to discover it was a single plant, or a set of exercises, or some arcane combination of powders and spells. Tales of life-giving objects of one kind or another were remarkably diverse and widespread: magic cups, cauldrons, fountains, springs, rivers, trees, mushrooms, fruits, vegetables, horns, hairs, animals, spirits, witches, monsters, spells, curses, rings—all have at one time or another been ascribed death-defying properties.
When aspiring to live forever, it was therefore best to keep an open mind about the means. The elixir was whatever helped to stave off aging and death for a little bit longer, and its pursuit encompassed what we would now consider to be very disparate traditions, from medicine to magic and science to religion. But despite these many strands, the quest for the elixir has come to be known by one name: alchemy.
The oldest mention of alchemy in history is in the records of the first-century BCE Chinese historian Sima Qian, who also recorded most of what we know of the First Emperor. He describes how the court alchemist sought to transform cinnabar, a bright red mercuryore, into gold—and that if this was then used for eating and drinking it would ensure “you will never die.” Thus from its earliest days, alchemy has been associated with the pursuit of two goals united by the idea of transformation: the transformation of base metals into gold and of base humans into immortals.
Although now more associated with the first of these, most alchemists would have considered at the very least that they were inextricably linked, and very often, as in Sima Qian’s description, that the production of gold was merely a means to the end of indefinite life. This was equally true of Western alchemy, as the Oxford scholar Roger Bacon, an early advocate of scientific experimentation, put it in 1267: “That medicine which would remove all impurities and corruptions of a baser metal so that it should become silver and purest gold, is thought by scientists to be able to remove the corruptions of the human body to such an extent that it would prolong life for many ages.”
The name “alchemy” itself reflects the art’s mysterious origins. We have inherited the word from the Arabic
al-kimia
, as it was the Islamic
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