White Copper Golden Light Mantra Open Ring, Gold

The Golden Light Spell is a text commonly recited in the Daoist morning office. Going up to the hall at dawn, washing the hands, reciting from the purification of the heart and the mouth onward, by the time you reach this piece the breath has settled. It is one of the eight great spells of the morning altar service, placed after the purification of heaven and earth and the offering of incense. The spell is not long, four characters to a line, even in rhythm, reciting like striking a wooden fish, line by line pressing down. The voice is not raised; steadiness is the point, and it cannot be hurried.

The opening lines run: heaven and earth are the mysterious source, the ten thousand qi are the root, then widely cultivated through a billion kalpas, witnessing my divine power. The character qi here is Daoist technical vocabulary for the primordial breath and is not the same thing as air. The sense of the whole spell is roughly this: heaven and earth as the source, the ten thousand qi as the root, and after long practice the divine power is witnessed for oneself. Reciters insist that every character be distinct and nothing hurried; only when the mind settles has it been recited at all. In the phrase ten thousand qi some editions write the ordinary word for air, a difference that comes from manuscript transmission.

Engraving the text around a ring band, the characters have to be small enough to fit and not so small that they cannot be read. The spacing matters more than the characters themselves: crammed together, the eye of a reciter breaks off at a glance. A wider face takes more characters, which is why wide rings suit scripture better. The strokes are cut intaglio and filled dark, and the pale white copper ground sets them off. Both the opening and the end need a little blank space, or the characters run into the rim.

Sweat collects first in the narrow gaps between characters, so brush the ring dry with a soft brush once a week. Do not be in a hurry to wipe a dulled copper face: the dark in the strokes and the dark on the surface belong together, and polishing too bright makes the characters look as though they float on top. Both the gold and the silver version carry a surface treatment, so keep the cloth away from the edges, where the base shows first. For people whose fingers are oily the strokes go black; that is not dirt but oxidation.

The open band can be adjusted, so it accommodates fingers from slim to thick, which is where it beats a closed ring. Adjust it by pinching both sides of the band and adding pressure slowly, not by springing it open in one go. Copper springs back; overbend it and it loosens, and once loose it can only be closed again, and repeated closing fatigues the metal. The gap is worn facing the palm so that it does not catch on clothing. Over time the ring also turns on the finger, and if the inscribed face rotates to the palm the engraving has been wasted.