Wooden Mountain Ghost Bagua Gourd Charm

What these charms share is wood, and most of the options are described as lightning-struck timber — material taken from a tree that has been hit by lightning. Folk tradition regards it differently because fire from the sky has passed through it, though that is a claim rather than a property; the wood is still wood, and the grain, the smell and the weight in the hand are what you live with day to day. Some of it is new and some old, the colour runs from pale yellow to deep brown, and no two pieces in a batch match.

The six styles fall into two families. One is charms: a bell, a dragon-head gourd, a round red mountain-ghost piece. The other is plaques and necklaces — the Heavenly Official's blessing with Zhong Kui, a bagua plaque, and a rotating bagua necklace with a Ziwei talisman. The charms are decorative, they swing and they sound, and they sound all the way down the street; the plaques are about the subject, front for other people to see and back against the chest. Which family you want depends on use. The holes differ too: top centre on the charms, at both ends on the plaques.

The gourd sounds like fortune and rank in folk usage, and in Daoism it is a vessel for medicine or wine. The dragon-head gourd joins a dragon's head to the body, stacking two sets of symbols in one object, and the difficulty lies in the neck: taper too abruptly and it looks severed, too gently and it loses tension. When judging one, look at that section first and see whether the line runs clean. A waist carved too thin will be where it breaks after an ordinary knock.

The bagua plaque belongs to another system. The trigrams can be arranged in the Earlier Heaven or the Later Heaven sequence, and the two orders differ; it is worth asking which one the face uses, since some buyers mind about it. The Heavenly Official who bestows blessings comes from the Three Officials, while Zhong Kui the Celestial Master is a popular deity of a different line — putting both in one listing is the kind of pairing folk practice does all the time. The Ziwei talisman piece rotates, and its pivot dislikes grit as well.

Wood fears water and it fears dryness. Take it off to wash your hands or shower, and in winter keep it away from radiators and window glass, because wood that loses moisture splits. Lightning-struck timber has irregular grain to begin with, so hairline cracks are normal and not damage. The bell suits a bag better than a neck: it rings softly as you walk, and while some people like the sound, others find it noise. Worn long enough, wood takes up skin oil and darkens, and there is no hurrying that.