Properties: Sweet, cold, toxic

Meridans Entered:
Primary: Heart

1. Sedates the Heart and calms the Spirit
   Restlessness, palpitations, anxiety, insomnia and convulsions associated with a disturbed Spirit
   Heart Fire (with appropriate herbs)
   Phlegm Fire Disturbs the Heart (with appropriate herbs)
   Heart Blood Deficiency (with appropriate herbs)
2. Expels Phlegm and sedates jitteriness and convulsions while stopping tremors
   Seizures, childhood convulsions and other problems due to Phlegm-Heat Blocking the Pericardium and Heart
   Wind-Phlegm dizziness
   Lung Heat
3. Clears Heat, relieves toxicity and prevents putrefaction
   Topically for carbuncles, mouth sores, sore throat and snakebite
4. Aids fasting
   Mentioned in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing as part of the superior class of minerals which can, with protracted taking, enable one to communicate with the spirit light (Shenming) and prevent senility. This may suggest it was part of supplementing the diet when engaging in an "avoiding grain" (Bigu 辟穀) fasting regime to cultivate life (Yangsheng 養生) and spiritual practice.

Suggested Daily Dosage: No dosage is permissible due to mercury toxicity. 0.1-0.5g in powder or pills is traditional.

Cautions: Prohibited from use today due to its mercury content, it is generally omitted or substituted with Hu Po. Historically it was sometimes confused with Xue Jie, so this could also make a potential substitute in the right circumstances.

Zhao, Li & Wang (2022) claim that grinding and washing was a traditional method of removing the toxicity but any amount of mercury toxicity is unacceptable today.

Traditional contraindications include overdose and taking for a long period of time, or calcinification.

Notes:

This substance was of great importance in early alchemy where cinnabar was equated with the trigram of Fire (☲ Li) representing Yang in the natural world. True mercury was the pure Yin line in the centre of ☲ Li which could be extracted with the correct firing process (Wong, 1997, Harmonising Yin and Yang: p 5-17).

This came from the observation that by placing cinnabar in the centre of an oven, it sublimes (turns directly from a solid to a gas without passing through a liquid phase) at 386.5°C. If heated further, to 600-700°C, the sulphur component separates to form sulphur dioxide and pure metallic mercury, a purely Yin substance being a heavy liquid, capable of bonding with almost any other metal to form an amalgam, including those with alchemical significance such as gold to form the "Golden Elixir" (金丹 Jindan). It can also be returned to cinnabar by mixing it with sulphur again, a potent Yang substance.

This was noted in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing which observes that cinnabar (Dan Sha) is capable of transforming into mercury.

The commentary to the Dragon-Tiger Classic also mentions cinnabar coming from True Lead (ibid: 33-4). This is a reference to them being mined together and after being soaked in water to remove dirt, they could have both been heated to remove their purified elements, lead melting at 327.5°C and mercury sublimating at 600-700°C, resulting in either two pure elements which can then be amalgamated.

Although this became largely metaphorical in internal alchemy, to represent experiences in deep meditation states, a tradition of using cinnabar in medicinal pills has continued to this day (Liu et al, 2008).

--------------------------------------

The name 朱 derives from the centre of a tree which are sometimes red in China. The name 砂 refers to a pellet from a mine.