TAOIST ADEPTS

Thomas Cleary, trans. & ed., Alchemists, Mediums and Magicians: Stories of Taoist Mystics (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2009) (This book "is a collection of sketches from Chinese history portraying more than one hundred of the remarkable individuals associated with exceptional knowledge, uncommon artistry, an spiritual leadership over a period of more than two millennia. Complied under the title Mystic History by Zhang Tianyu, a Taoist priest in the fourteenth century, this collection introduces a broad range of personalities, professions, and pastimes of China;s esoteric elite, from the most illustrious to the utterly obscure. Among them are people who appear to the world as philosophers and scholars, strategists and statemen, recluses and courtiers, magicians and mediums, philanthropists and educators, alchemists and physicians, seers and soothsayers, priest and paupers, artists and poets."  Id. at vii.).