Celestial god(s)/spirit(s) of stories/legends, namely, the creator of the myriad things in heaven and earth and the supreme being a Supreme window on a cloud of hope to reached Chinese women alchemists. With the rise of alchemy in the Chinese civilization, it was seen as an art. Among many practitioners, there were a significant number of women who mastered this art. The earliest recorded woman alchemist had the family name of Fang (Chinese: 方), and she lived about around the first century B.C.[1] Being raised in a scholarly family who were skilled in the alchemical arts, she was able to have studied alchemy with one of the Emperor Han Wu Ti's spouses, and therefore had access to the highest levels of society. Fang was credited with the discovery of how to turn mercury into silver. It was believed that she may have used the technique of silver extraction from ores using mercury, the pure silver residue is left behind from the boiled mercury. Fang's husband, Chheng Wei (simplified Chinese: 程伟; traditional Chinese: 程偉), physically abused her, because he was trying to obtain the secret procedure from Fang, but she refused to give it to him. With the constant abuse and torture, Fang eventually went insane and killed herself. It was noted that there were detail of Fang's life through the writing of Ge Hong, an author and alchemist.Moving on to A.D. 975, Keng Hsien-Seng is another female figure who according to the science writing of Wu Shu "mastered the art of the yellow and white [alchemy] with many other strong transformations, mysterious and incomprehensible".The science writing of Wu Shu also described Keng as being acquainted with Taoist techniques and could control the spirits. Some of the chemical transformation skills that Keng was able to transformed was mercury to silver, mercury and "snow" into silver, probably using the technique of mercury for the extraction of silver from its ores.[1] As well as using a primitive type of Soxlet process to continuously extract camphor into alcohol.Some of the other women alchemists that have been recognized in Chinese literature are Pao Ku Ko (3rd century A.D.), Li Shao Yun (11th century),[3] Thai Hsuan Nu[4] (uncertain), Sun Pu-Eh (12th century), and Shen Yu Hsiu (15th century).The Chinese language has many compounds of shen. For instance, it is compounded with tian 天 "sky; heaven; nature; god" in tianshen 天神 "celestial spirits; heavenly gods; deities; (Buddhism) deva", with shan 山 "mountain" in shanshen 山神 "mountain spirit", and hua 話 "speech; talk; saying; story" in shenhua 神話 "mythology; myth; fairy tale". Several shen "spirit; god" compounds use names for other supernatural beings, for example, ling 靈 "spirit; soul" in shenling 神靈 "gods; spirits, various deities", qi 祇 "earth spirit" in shenqi 神祇 "celestial and terrestrial spirits", xian 仙 "Xian (Taoism), transcendent" in shenxian 神仙 "spirits and immortals; divine immortal", guai 怪 "spirit; devil; monster" in shenguai 神怪 "spirits and demons; gods and spirits", and gui 鬼 "ghost, goblin; demon, devil" in guishen 鬼神 "ghosts and spirits; supernatural beings".The primary meaning of shen is translatable as English "spirit, spirits, Spirit, spiritual beings; celestial spirits; ancestral spirits" or "god, gods, God; deity, deities, supernatural beings", etc. Shen is sometimes loosely translated as "soul", but Chinese hun and po distinguishes hun 魂 "spiritual soul" and po 魄 "physical soul". Instead of struggling to translate shen 神, it can be transliterated as a loanword. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) defines shen, "In Chinese philosophy: a god, person of supernatural power, or the spirit of a dead person."In acupuncture, shen is a pure spiritual energy devoid of memory and personality traits, whereas hun is the spiritual energy associated with the personality and po the energy tied to the sustenance of the physical body. In this system, shen resides in the heart and departs first at death, hun resides in the liver and departs second, and po resides in the lungs and departs last.
