Richard Wilhelm, while a missionary in China, obtained a reprinted copy in Beijing in the 1920s from members said to be an "esoteric group". According to Wilhelm, the Chinese publisher (Zhanran Huizhenzi) relied on an incomplete 17th-century version of a woodblock he had discovered in a bookstore, which he later completed with a friend's book. The Beijing bookseller only printed a few thousand copies of the work for a select audience, which included Wilhelm. Wilhelm translated the text into German in 1929, which was read by his friend Carl Gustav Jung. The English version, translated from the German by Cary Baynes, was published in 1931 with comments by Jung.
Richard Wilhelm had raised the hypothesis (now considered erroneous due to newer academic researches, as seen above) that the text expounded an orally transmitted philosophy found in early esoteric circles of China in the eighth century during the Tang dynasty. According to him, the arrival of Nestorian Christianity to China in 635 AD in the Tang dynasty and its persecution by Confucius Sects in 840 AD supported the notion that the Secret of the Golden flower could very well be encrypted Christian teachings used by the Chinese Nestorian Priests of the Luminous Religion (Chin-tan-Chiao). "Chin-Tan-Chaio" when translated can be read as the Religion of the Golden Elixir of Life which was also called the Luminous religion whose practices and philosophies were included in the Secret of the Golden Flower. According to him, the arrival of a Nestorian Christian Bishop in 635 AD and the incorporation of Eastern Christianity into China by Emperor Taizong of Tang caused the establishment of the so-called Luminous Religion in China in 635 AD. The priests of which after facing persecution in 840 AD by Emperor Wuzong of Tang, were supposedly forced to encrypt their teachings and hide them in caves. Richard Wilhelm elaborates on these speculations:Wilhelm suggested that the alleged author of the book, Lü Dongbin, who was previously referred to as Lü Yen, could have been of the Nestorian Christian Faith.