Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupuncture for Psychological and Spiritual Healing

Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupuncture for Psychological and Spiritual Healing was released in January 2006 by Chiron/Lantern Books. To order signed copies of Five Spirits, please send:

• Your name, telephone number or email, and physical shipping address (we will ship via UPS; no PO Box addresses),
• A check for $40.00 per copy made out to Lorie Dechar, and
• Appropriate shipping and handling fee ($6.00 for the first book and $2.00/book thereafter) to:

Benjamin Fox
Five Spirits
PO Box 82
East Blue Hill, ME 04629

About the Book

Learn more about the Five Spirits

At the core of Chinese medicine is a nearly forgotten wisdom tradition based on the ancient art of Taoist alchemy. According to this tradition, spirit — the invisible “yang” energy of the divine —is not waiting to be discovered after death, high up and far away in Heaven. Rather, this energy is present, here and now, in our lives on Earth! Spirit may be hidden, yet it can be known and worked with through its manifestation in the cycles, movements and forms of the natural world.

This belief led the ancient Chinese to a reverence for the yin — matter, the Earth, nature and the body. They called the natural world the Mysterious Feminine and referred to it as “the visible face of Tao.” Taoist alchemists believed that all transformation as well as all healing depended on the healer’s ability to understand and work with the divine energies that stream through matter. Only through our devotion to the ways of the Mysterious Feminine — the body, nature and the Earth — can we experience healing that brings us back to the wholeness, authenticity and spontaneity of “our own perfection.”

Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupuncture for Psychological and Spiritual Healing opens the doorway to this ancient tradition as it introduces a vision of acupuncture as an alchemical art. From this perspective, acupuncture is much more than an effective treatment for physical pain. At its best, this system supports profound and lasting changes at the level of behavior, awareness and subjective life experience. It offers tools that are effective for psychological and emotional problems as well as complex psychosomatic and psycho-spiritual symptoms that do not respond to modern Western medical or psychological approaches.

Acupuncturists, psychologists and healers as well as acupuncture patients and people in the midst of challenging life transitions can use the tools of Alchemical Acupuncture presented in Five Spirits. These tools will also be useful to people dissatisfied with our current dualistic way of viewing the world, for anyone who is longing to rediscover the sacred beauty, power, wisdom and healing potential of their own body and the natural world around us.

The Five Spirits can be viewed as the Taoist version of the Chakra System of Vedic India.  Like the Chakras, the Spirits exist as centers of consciousness in the subtle body rather than as structures in the physical body.  Like the Chakras, the Spirits function to balance the yang and yin aspects of our being.  Like the Indian Chakra System, the Taoist Five Spirits is based on the recognition of the inherent divinity of both feminine and masculine, Earth and Heaven.  However, unlike the Chakras, which are visualized as abstract wheels of swirling energy fields, the Five Spirits are thought of as psychic entities, animating deities who reside in us, each with its own nature and psychospiritual function. An understanding of the Five Spirits is the key that opens the doorway to the mysteries of Taoist psychospiritual alchemy.

Select any of the links below to learn more about each of the Five Spirits and their relationship to your health and your life.