S925 Silver Nine Palace Bagua Three Purities Pendant

No one in Taoist circles needs the names of the Three Purities explained: Yuqing Yuanshi Tianzun, Shangqing Lingbao Tianzun, Taiqing Daode Tianzun. In a Three Purities image the arrangement is Yuanshi in the centre, Lingbao on the left, Daode on the right, and the positions cannot be shuffled. The order is common knowledge in Taoism, written into the liturgy of the repentance texts and into the rules for making images. In the names, Yuanshi stands for the first beginning, Lingbao for teaching, Daode for practice. Taoist images of the Three Purities usually show them wearing crowns, and the forms of the crowns differ.

The nine-grid arrangement comes from the Luoshu: nine at the top, one at the bottom, three on the left, seven on the right, two and four for the shoulders, six and eight for the feet, five in the middle. Each of the numbers one to nine occupies a cell, and the three numbers in any row, column or diagonal add to fifteen. The bagua wraps around the outside — qian, kan, gen, zhen, xun, li, kun, dui — the eight directions set in a ring, and laid over the nine-grid it becomes the most familiar layer of a compass. Engraved on a plaque the grid lines have to be fine; coarse, they cover the numbers. In the grid, five is the central palace, the truest position.

Putting the Three Purities together with the nine-grid and bagua places a divine order beside a system of directions. Above is the order of belief, below the tool of calculation, and in Taoism the two were never separate. The pendant presses both layers onto one plaque, and people take from it what they take: some read the gods, some read the trigrams. The face is only so large; carve too much and it blurs, so something has to be given up. Leave enough open space and the outline of the figures can surface.

A pendant only, so you choose the cord. Dark is better — black or deep blue both hold, pale colours cannot. The edges of the plaque are chamfered so it does not rub against clothing at the chest. With a round neck in summer it sits at the centre of the collarbone; under a high collar, take it off, since silver against a sweaty neck dulls quickly. The face is narrow and the cord passes through the hole at the top, so keep the knot small.

A silver plaque suffers most from pressure. Store it flat, and do not throw it in a bag with keys or coins. When it blackens, polish along one direction with a silver cloth and leave the black in the characters and trigram lines — that is the ground the pattern stands on; cleaned out, it goes flat. Damp makes a silver plaque mist over; one pass with a dry cloth clears it. It needs no oil: oil attracts dust and the more you apply, the duller it gets.