“Daoist Alchemy” is an interactive website that reinterprets the Daoist Inner Alchemy practice in light of the planetary crisis of climate change. Specifically, it takes the philosophical stages from the Daoist interior visualization technique of the human body and adapts them to the contemporary quest to lower the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere.

My diagram draws philosophical references from the “Chart of the Inner Landscape," a famous diagram in Inner Alchemy. This image was engraved by Liu Chengyin in the late 19th century after he came across a similar old scroll.¹ The exact date for the original diagram remains unknown, but the knowledge depicted is an accumulation of two thousand years of development in Daoist cosmophilosophy. Rich with references to symbols and myths, the diagram illustrates the inner workings of the human body via the circulation of qi (气， “pneuma”, “air”, “vital energy”) in meridian channels. Daoist adepts today still use this diagram in their practice.

I must first confess my way into this diagram is purely intellectual and philosophical. To those who have experienced Chinese culture immersively, Daoism is not practiced as a religion most of the time but is often exercised as a philosophical guidance in daily life. Through Daoism, I see an opening of possibility in the root of technological imagination. This work is my invitation to envision something new.

What might an alternative present look like—one with no ontological divide between nature and technology? What if we can feel the breath of the planet? How do we realign with our original intuition of the cosmos? If Hans Blumenberg announced “the renunciation of intuition is a precondition of modern science,” what cognitive tools are we left with to return from the psychological terrain shaped by modern science?²

“Daoist Alchemy” illustrates the central philosophy of a 3D computer game I have been developing with game designer and programmer Yi Xie for the past year. Titled “Inner Carbon,” the game is a dynamic 3D environment consisting of three levels, each corresponding to a spiritual stage of Inner Alchemy with a unique gameplay mechanic. Embodying a ball of primordial breath, the player traverses an organic landscape of machine-nature, solving puzzles, gathering resources, and performing carbon alchemy. It is a rite of passage folded into the procedural actions and animations of a 3D game. The player is akin to a Daoist adept, performing a ritual for Earth through a series of simulated somatic tuning via the game controller, thereby reconfiguring the relationship between the individual human and planetary health, and between technology and spirituality in a virtual landscape assemblage of 3D models.

This project has been a research process of constructively reinventing (old) philosophies to provide alternatives to contemporary technological thinking. I believe in the cultural value of the amateur mixing of threads from divergent practices, as a playful intervention of urgent intellectual labor often delegated to specialist experts.

Today’s climate crisis demands holistic thinking. As Dipesh Chakrabarty proposes, “the ‘now’ of human history has become entangled with the long ‘now’ of geological and biological timescales.”³ The planetary change of climates and landscapes requires new modes of governance and new configurations of technological activities to repair. To imagine radically, we need to source more divergent philosophies of the nature of human existence on Earth. Particularly, it is worthwhile to resurrect old theories of the cosmos, if, properly translated and adapted to today’s condition, they shed new light on the possible moral narratives for guiding our conduct and potential rituals for re-tuning our sensibilities of other living matters.

Why Daoism? The metaphysical foundations of Daoist philosophy treat living beings differently than the ontology that ascended and prevailed along with the modern scientific method in the last few centuries. This core difference in understanding the essence of life, and henceforth “living”, is what matters to me. In a decolonial reading, James Miller suggested, Daoism is “a tradition of praxis that functioned in critical tension with dominant social orderings.”⁴ Looking at the history of Daoist technologies helps me assert a worldview that centers on healing and restoration. I search for a way to retain an active optimism of technological thinking without reverting to a naive worship of the artifice of a “pastoral, pristine past.”

Daoist adepts were some of the first experimentalists in China. Similar to alchemists in Western history, practitioners of Daoist Outer Alchemy from two thousand years ago sought an ultimate elixir of longevity. After unsuccessful attempts to ingest potions containing mercury (from cinnabar), they directed attention inwards, alchemizing through the less intrusive practice of interior meditation, Inner Alchemy.

Alchemy, to the Daoist adepts, is a simulation of the cosmic processes.⁵ Humans and the cosmos share the same essence and nature in Daoism, and the yin and yang interplay forms the fundamental dynamic of the universe. Since everything stems from Dao (“the Way”), everything is within control, including one’s longevity. The adept’s goal is to cultivate the body and become an immortal (zhenren 真人), the process of which would be aided by successful alchemical operations advancing their grasp and attainment of dao.⁶ This core belief led to a long history of astronomical and medical inventions devised for Daoist spiritual pursuits.

Life cultivation in Inner Alchemy happens through balancing the yin and yang and maintaining the smooth flow of qi. Representing at once air, breath, vapor, and pneuma, qi is a substance that could be congealed or coagulated into liquids or solids, while also referring broadly to notions of energies, or force of life.⁷ Various subtypes of qi occur frequently in classical texts: yuan qi, jing qi, yin qi, and yang qi, for example. Human life is a product of yin and yang forces, and too much of either force within a body would cause a blocked or hyperactive circulation of qi.

In my world of Carbon Alchemy, the player-adept is a meta-embryo representing yuan qi. Yin- and yang-qi reveal their form through the shifting behaviors of the organic machines in lotus gardens. The starting premise of my project is to equate the metaphysical qi with a material substance, taking it as a literal energy flow, subject to the laws of physics.

Yin-yang is a dynamic of extremes. Wang Bi, whose 3rd-century commentary on Laozi set the foundation for Daoist studies, listed four analogical pairs as important to unify in Chinese philosophy: dao and qi(器, “machine”, “vessel”, “material”), nothing and being, center and periphery, and body and instrument.⁸ The Daoist method treats everything through the lens of a force between two contrasting directions. In this space of tension, we find ourselves closer to the Way.

My diagram similarly attempts at the unification of contrasting pairings: the bodies of human-mountain and machine-instruments, and the spirit of dao and the technology of machines. Despite the appearance of extremes, they are of the same substance. I hope to see through relations and treat technology as embedded in dynamic interactions.

Qi, yin-yang, and concepts derived from them can be applied to carbon, if we make an analogy between the Earth and the human body. In Chinese medicine, two central circulations exist in the human body: the governing and the conception vessels, also called meridians. One is ruled by yin, and one by yang, the two meridians form the core circulation channels for qi, running through the front and back of the human body. Chart of the Inner Landscape, the main diagram I reference in my work, focuses on portraying the Governing vessel: the flow of qi along the spine.

An expert in climate biotechnology explained to me that we can view carbon as capable of shifting energetic states. Once carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere, we can either “de-energize” it into solids—like carbonate rocks—and inject them into the geological layer, or “re-energize” it into liquids or gases—like fuels, and use them in day-to-day operations. The former brings the transformed carbon into the slow cycle, and the latter into the fast cycle. While operating on vastly different time scales, both carbon cycles need repair and remedy in the aftermath of anthropogenic operations.

In my diagram of Carbon Alchemy, I connect the meridian channels to the carbon cycles, matching the fast and slow cycles with the yin and yang. I overlay two types of cycles and circulations to foreground how various forms of bodies may sustain regenerative cyclicity. In doing so, I ask if the classical philosophy of Daoism may provide useful metaphysical guidance on devising and deploying new technologies today. Can it regain relevance in our public discourse on the governance of planetary technologies, by transferring its wisdom to the invisible and immeasurable, yet no less real, cyclicities in (human) bodies?

In my imagined world, Daoist technologists set up technical relations based on the principle of harmony. Instead of mechanical gimmicks imitating divine forces, technology is a sincere means of seeking the Dao, the experience of cosmic truth, and a higher dimension of conscious existence.

I imagine that sages would be roughly distinguished based on the chemical elements. The “carbon sages” would have devised this Diagram of Carbon Alchemy, to document a somatic operation of regulating the circulation of carbon (dioxide) in Earth’s “meridian channels.”

Neither tracing the diagram nor playing the computer game should bring transcendence to the player in the real world. As the designer of these pictorial and conceptual configurations, I am far from reaching the cosmic unity suggested by my own diagram. Working with a vast philosophical tradition not short of obscure texts was a daunting task. However, the Daoist discourse has been full of innovations throughout time, and I attempt to weave it into the context of an urgent global condition today. I want to align us with a more valuable vector for action, and I hope my dilettante mixture can be excused for the sake of a novel angle of thinking and an inviting visual aid.

Historian of medicine Shigehisa Kuriyama argues in his seminal book, Expressiveness of the Body, that the Chinese and Greek traditions of medicine established and departed from two vastly different ways of seeing the human body. Contrary to the pursuit of musculature in the ancient Greek tradition, the Chinese body is a vessel: natural matters flow in to replenish it, and qi streams through. The differentiation between the exterior and interior is not clear, nor important because the body is a continuous reassemblage of matter gathered from nature.

Rooted in the same cosmophilosophy as Daoism, Chinese medicine provides a wealth of philosophical approaches that challenge the dominant epistemic virtues—the pursuit of precision in the image-making of instrumental senses, and the reliance on the type of objectivity separated from one’s direct experience, in particular. Consequently, the modalities of knowledge transmission also differ in Chinese medicine from what gave rise to modern-day science. Tu, a diagram, or a technical image, is often used to transfer knowledge about the body and relations. Chart of the Inner Landscape is one classic example, using a collage of natural landscapes to portray the human body as a dynamic process.

“Daoist Alchemy” also drew inspiration from Taiji shunni tu 太极顺逆图 (Chart of the Normal and Contrary Direction of the Taiji), which can be found in the 14th-century text Shangyang zi jindan dayao tu 上阳子金丹大药图 (Images of the Golden Elixir of the Master of Upper Yang). It demonstrates the main stages of alchemical transformations that happen to and within a human body, including “the spatio-temporal collocation, the trajectory to be followed, the dynamics of the process, and the means of setting it in motion.”⁹

Both examples of tu portray the human body. Contrary to the perspectival view of Western anatomical images, tu is disinterested in illustrating the material form of the body, but often maps connections between the viscera, and outlines correspondences between the human body with natural elements. Tu presents ideas in a spatial, and sometimes topological, manner. Just like shanshui paintings, they allow, encourage, and even demand the meandering of the eyes. They are “templates for action.”¹⁰

As an artist, I am broadly interested in the aesthetic of knowledge production, based on my research into the material culture, visual aids, epistemic virtues, and cosmological frameworks in the past. Through geometrical arrangements of symbols and texts, diagrammatic forms particularly fascinate me as schematics of epistemic procedures that simultaneously encode the cosmological frameworks of the image maker. Hundreds of years apart, there are new things I can excavate from these old traces of minds.

Today, responding to the climate crisis, we laboriously measure and quantify individual chemical elements cycling through all corners of the planet. We set up infrastructures of industrial units to extract specific elements out of the atmosphere. We make simulation models of climate change with computationally heavy data sets. We purchase and trade credits of carbon in the market. Elements of air have become deeply enmeshed in global computational networks and the financial ecosystem. As they become increasingly calculable, what gets lost in this growing resolution of air, is the sensibility of how we feel the metabolic cycles of Earth. How could climate remedy feel more personal, somatic, and visceral? Ultimately, the climate problem is a health problem of the human body. Despite the obscure terms and phrases, my fictional diagram is not about anything esoteric after all.

Maybe in the future, we will find more connections between the spirit and the material. There would no longer be a harsh line between “idealism” and “materialism” in the classic philosophy of mind debate. The spiritual would share the same physics as the material. They influence and implicate each other.

In that world, the human body is an energy house, a microcosm of the macro cosmos, capable of guiding the airy matters on the planet. Purely mechanistic technologies would be relegated to the realm of the past for their lack of efficiency. Our intention would materially influence how technology is exercised in the world, and our sincerity powers the planet.

Reading Aid

Stage 1 of Inner Alchemy is transforming “essence (jing 精)” into “qi.” This is represented by the mountain in the shape of a pelvis bone and the gardens of machines in front of it and corresponds to Level 1 of the Inner Carbon game.

Stage 1 is about attaining two types of “qi”, which are two different characters with the same pronunciation in Chinese: 气 (pneuma, air, energy) and 器 (machine, vessel). As a meta-embryo or a ball of primordial life force, the player-adept traverses the game world landscape, solving puzzles to synthesize the Carbonic Elixir. Pressing the controller trigger to mimic breathing, the player-adept’s virtual breaths act as a physical force in the game world. The simulated breathing is used to absorb Carbon Jewels and Solar Orbs at the Luminous Carbonary—the equivalent of gathering carbon dioxide and solar energy from a lotus garden of jade machines. Bringing these essences to the Field Electrolyzer, the player converts their resources into the initial phase of Carbonic Elixir: the carbon-neutral fuel.

Here, the Carbonic Elixir is both a new type of “pneuma” qi and a mechanical vessel. The technical activity is the attainment of essences, and their transmutation into a new pneuma. Timing is key to both processes. Like firing is the key to outer alchemy, it demonstrates the adept’s attunement to the rhythm of the environment and is an expression of his or her resonance with the cosmos.

Stage 2 of Inner Alchemy is concerned with transforming “qi” into “spirit (shen 神)” Namely, imbuing the technical object—the Carbonic Elixir—with spirit, bringing the machinic qi closer to Dao.

Passing through the Tailbone Gate, the player enters Level 2, an upward stream along the tunnel of spinal rocks. Within the Eight-Trigram Channel is a double helix stream of yin and yang—the Governing Vessel of Fast Carbon, ruled by the yang energy. In the adept’s process of ascension, the Carbonic Elixir gets purified. The carbon-neutral fuel becomes more clean, renewable, and self-generating, as the player-adept moves through the double helix stream, facilitated by his or her increased focus, intention, and awareness. The attentional path of the player-adept becomes an energetic operation in reconfiguring the chemical composition of the Elixir. Meditating on the correspondence between the human body and the Earth body, and their shared circulation, the player-adept reaches closer to Dao.

Stage 2 revolves around sincerity (cheng 诚). Zhongyong writes “Sincerity is the way of heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of men.”¹¹ Yuk Hui interprets that sincerity aids intelligence’s path towards dao. In Carbon Alchemy, the player-adept is challenged to maintain the elixir between extremes, steering the technical relation with sincerity, which is to pay uncompromising and grounded attention to the human-mountain and machine-instrument. The prolonging and fortification of an attentional path gives rise to a stronger, more purified technical object. A self-sustaining attentional mind results in a self-generating energy source.

Stage 3 of Inner Alchemy is about transforming “spirit” back into “the void (xu 虚)”.

The player-adept arrives at the state of the unification of machine qi and Dao (qi dao heyi 器道合一). Having ascended through the spinal stream, the player-adept comes to the top region of the diagram: the snowy Mount Kunlun, the epicenter of the immortals’ universe. Represented only with brush strokes I copied from the original diagram, I wanted to leave ample room for the imagination of the multiple “scapes” here. The shanshui tradition attempts to render the “Great Image without form” (daxiang wuxing 大象无形), as Laozi famously says, “The great square has no corners. The great vessel takes long to complete. The great note is rarefied in sound.”¹² The shanshui painters did not seek the sublime but pursued ease and freedom from extremes (xiaoyao 逍遥). The mechanistic diagram itself would be a Great Image that cannot be endowed with full form.

Next to the circle representing the Daoist “Third Eye”, Mudball Palace (Niwan gong), on the second highest peak, I kept the phrase from the original diagram of reference: “A grain of millet contains the world (一粒粟中藏世界)” It is from a poem by Lu Dongbin, a legendary poet who rose to the realm of the immortals. The microcosmos of the human body is the macrocosmos of the world. This was the philosophical impetus for me to embark on the research-art project as a whole. My alternative diagram, as well as the game world it captures, is also a microcosm for the macrocosm of human-Earth interactions.

In the state of Qi-Dao unification, a resonance between humans and the cosmos (and all beings within) is amplified. In a state of non-thinking and non-doing, one feels connected to the whole universe. This experience of resonance, in the words of the 20th-century philosopher Mou Zongsan, is equivalent to Kant’s intellectual intuition: it’s an intuition beyond phenomena and such a way of knowing leads to the path of becoming a sage.¹³

Technics alone are incomplete without the “spirit,” and objectification of an ontologically isolated “nature” in turn erodes our own livelihood. The great problem we face today is fundamentally spiritual.

How do we ask technology to help us reach resonance? How might an alternative form of geoengineering restore, perhaps even improve, our original senses?

If the Daoist adept strives to return to the state of “sacred embryo”, could our epistemic self, one day, return to the original intuition, while maintaining a higher level of resonance with the cosmos?

1. Catherine Despeux, Taoism and self knowledge: the chart for the cultivation of perfection (Xiuzhen tu) (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2018), 36.
2. Yuk Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics (New York: E-flux, 2021), 226.
3. Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 5.
4. James Miller, China’s Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), xxi.
5. Zhengyao Jin 金正耀，Daojiao yu liandanshu lun 道教与炼丹术论 [Taoism and Theory of Alchemy] (Beijing: Zongjioa wenhua chuban she 宗教文化出版社, 2001), 36-37.
6. Zezong Xi, Sheng Jiang and Weixia Tang (Editors), Zhongguo daojiao kexue jishu shi 中国道教科学技术史 [The History of Science and Technology in Taoism] (Beijing: Science Press, 2002), 30.
7. Robert Ford Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 19.
8. Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China (Falmouth, United Kingdom: Urbanomic Media Ltd, 2016), 67.
9. Catherine Despeux, “Picturing the Body in Chinese Medical and Daoist Texts from the Song to the Qing Period (10th to 19th Centuries)” in Imagining Chinese Medicine, ed. Viviennne Lo et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 63.
10. Francesca Bray, “Introduction: The Powers of Tu,” in Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China, ed. Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann and Georges Métailié (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 2.
11. “诚者天之道也，诚之者，人之道也。” Zhong Yong (Doctrine of the Mean), trans. James Legge, translation modified and quoted in Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics, 202.
12. “大方无隅，大器晚成，大音希声.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001), trans. D.C. Lau, quoted in Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics, 153.
13. Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics, 203-204.