The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life

The Secret of the Golden Flower, is a Chinese Taoist book about meditation, was translated by Richard Wilhelm (also translator, in the 1920s, of the Chinese philosophical classic the I Ching). Wilhelm, a friend of Carl Jung, was German, and his translations from Chinese to German were later translated to English by Cary F. Baynes. According to Wilhelm, Lü Dongbin was the main originator of the material presented in the book. More recently (1991), the same work has been translated by Thomas Cleary, a scholar of Eastern studies. The text has also been considered as written by the Quanzhen School founder Wang Chongyang, student of Lü Dongbin.