Random Stuff #9: Daoist Elements and More in The Untamed/MDZS Part 1 - Concepts
(Part 2 Here) (Super-long post ahead!)
Though The Untamed is a Xianxia/仙侠 drama (kind of like fantasy genre), there are some elements in it that had clear roots in Chinese culture, especially religious/philosophical Daoism. So here are some Daoist elements within the world of The Untamed/MDZS:
In Chinese, the “cultivation method” is the “Dao”/“道”, which some of you may recognize as that character that sometimes stands for Daoism. Within Daoism however, that character has a deeper meaning than just a name; in fact it is one of the most important concepts of both philosophical and religious Daoism (it also has a few different meanings, but the world of The Untamed mostly focuses on one of them; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a very comprehensive article entry on Daoism that explains the concept of Dao in detail, for anyone who’s interested in more scholarly explanations). It actually translates best as “way” or “path” (note: when not referring to a specific “way”, it absolutely CANNOT be translated as “the way” or “the path”, and I will get to why that’s important), and basically means a “way” of doing something. For example, to make a salad you might rip the lettuce leaves or cut them with a knife. Both of these methods would be “ways”/道 of making a salad. And as you can see in this example, there are many different ways of arriving at a result or accomplishing a goal. Since Dao encompasses all of the different ways of doing all the different things, it cannot be translated as “the way”, since “the” would imply that “there is only one way”, or “only one right way”, of doing things.
(image credit: My Great Lakes)
This concept that there is more than one way to accomplish something is very important to the story of The Untamed/MDZS, especially in terms of Wei Wuxian. But we have to clarify the “goal” in The Untamed/MDZS first: what was it that these people were trying to accomplish with their different “ways”? Looking at the overall story, it appears that they were all generally trying to do good and uphold justice by warding off or neutralizing supernatural threats. Now that we’ve established the goal, let’s return to WWX. In the story, WWX was forced to give up the regular “cultivation”/ the “sword path”/剑道, instead founding the “demonic cultivation”/”dark path”/魔道 in order to survive the extreme environment of the Burial Mounds and acquire enough power to get revenge on the Wens. Since the Wens killed a lot of people, WWX would also be upholding justice by punishing them for their evil deeds. As the lyrics of the opening song of MDZS animated series puts it: “though his (WWX’s) ‘path’ was different, there was justice within his heart” (道不同义在心中). Conversely, this is also why the sects/clans were wrong to label different “cultivations”/“ways” as good or evil, as both WWX’s “demonic cultivation” and the regular “sword path” could be used as powerful forces for good and evil. Of course, the irony was that while the sects hailed their “sword path” as “the one right path”, they were using it to control each other, instead of using it to do good.
(The two “paths”/daos. How different are they?)
Well now that we’ve cleared up what “cultivation”/道 or Dao actually is in the context of the show and what the characters were trying to accomplish with their different “ways”, this “cultivation” or 修道 becomes easier to understand. It means the development (修) of one’s skill in regard to the “path” (道) one has chosen. For example, most characters chose to develop their skills in the “sword path”. In actual religious Daoism, however, since the ultimate end purpose is to become an immortal/仙, 修道 would mean doing something to work towards that immortal status.
In Daoism, the character “仙” can be translated as “immortal”, “sage”, or “celestial being”, and refers to the end goal of religious Daoists: to “metamorphose” into an immortal (羽化登仙) (also connotes transitioning into eternal afterlife through death). The characters “羽化” literally mean “to become feathery”, because at least in Western Han dynasty (202 BC-8 AD) figures and tomb murals, such immortals often appeared as humans with feathers or winged humans, and are capable of flight.
Over the next few hundred years, the appearance of immortals gradually morphed into humans that fly by floating, standing on platforms of clouds, or riding birds (often cranes)/mythical creatures.
In the drama and the animated series, 仙 is often used as a descriptor in different words (ex: 仙门, 仙家, 仙侣, 仙缘…etc), rather than a standalone noun. However, it is still a reference to this general idea of training/cultivating oneself to become something greater, and provides a strong connection to Daoism.
In Daoism, this term is used less than 道士, but it still means “cultivators of Dao” (修道之人), or simply, “Daoists”. In The Untamed/MDZS, of course, it means practitioners of a “cultivation”/“path”.
This one has roots in real life sects of religious Daoism. The translation “golden core” itself is quite literal. “Golden” from the descriptor 金, and “core” for 丹, presumably because it looks like a sort of core. In reality, 丹 is quite hard to translate. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy translates 丹 as “alchemy”, so I will use “alchemy” for 丹 from here on out. In religious Daoism, there are two types of this alchemy: external and internal, and both are supposed to help one towards immortality. People who practiced “external alchemy”/外丹 basically made “immortality elixirs” (in reality it wasn’t a drink like “elixir” implies, but a ball-shaped chewable) in the hopes that it would give immortality to whoever ate it. This is very much like alchemy in Europe, except instead of trying to turn things into gold, people were making things to eat for immortality. Some fun facts: these elixirs frequently contained heavy metals like mercury and lead, and ironically would shorten people’s lives instead of helping them live longer; also legend has it that an explosive attempt to make elixirs actually led to the invention of gunpowder.
(these appears to be actual products of external alchemy found in an Eastern Jin dynasty tomb, well-preserved due to its high mercury content)
This external alchemy obviously does not apply to “golden core” in The Untamed/MDZS, so let’s look at internal alchemy. “Internal alchemy”/內丹 is much more abstract than external alchemy, but in simple terms it is the practice of using meditation and similar strategies to return oneself to a state of emptiness (kind of like “one with nature”). This is probably what the show’s “golden core” was based on. Also another name for “internal alchemy”/內丹 is “golden alchemy”/金丹, literally the same characters as “golden core”/金丹 in the show.
There is one major difference though. While real practitioners of internal alchemy believe that everyone already possess a “golden alchemy” (“golden core”), in the show everyone has to “cultivate” themselves in order to have one in the first place.
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