White Copper Yellow Jambhala Red Enamel Spacer

Yellow Jambhala sits in the middle of the five Jambhalas, his body golden, a mongoose in his left hand, and out of the mongoose's mouth comes a wish-fulfilling jewel. That is the key to recognizing him: mongoose in hand, and you won't confuse him with White or Black Jambhala. That one point is enough; the rest of the detail is painted differently from temple to temple. His ornaments are drawn crowded, and on a small casting they have to be cut back. Leave them all in and the face stops reading.

His heart mantra is short, a few syllables repeated, and on a cylindrical bead it goes around the face in one turn. Sanskrit transliteration and Tibetan transliteration lay out differently: the first carries a line across the top of each letter, the second packs tighter. This one follows the Tibetan line, with space left between the letters, so it doesn't look crowded. The bead is small and the letters are small. The hand has to be steady, and one bead is cut in a single pass.

Red enamel is hard to fire on white copper. Red glaze is difficult to bring to color: thin and it turns orange, thick and it goes dark, and it takes two firings to even out. The red in the lettering sits bright against the matte white copper, so from a distance it is a fleck of vermilion, and only up close do the characters appear. That reticence is why it keeps the eye. Gold goes into red glaze to bring the color true — an old rule of the craft. How much depends on the fire in the kiln. The second firing has to be held low; too high and it burns off the color laid down by the first.

Spacers usually come in sets of three, placed at the twenty-seventh positions. The hole is on the small side, so heavy cord means reaming, and reaming is risky: crack the copper and the piece is scrap. Measure your cord diameter before you buy. Half a millimeter too much and it won't go through; I have learned that the hard way. A set of three costs less than three singles and covers the positions — twenty-seven, fifty-four, eighty-one. If it truly has to be reamed, find a shop with a drill press. A hand drill wanders.

About wealth deities, plainly: in folk practice people make offerings for peace of mind, and actual business still comes down to goods, price and people. Say that before the sale and the customer comes back; oversell it and there is no second visit. People ask whether wearing it will make them rich, and that is a claim I won't take on. I say it is for an easy mind, and the business still has to be run. After all that, liking the color and the work is the real reason to buy.