White Copper Mountain Ghost Totem Three-hole Bead Charm

The face of a three-hole bead (guru bead) is small to begin with, and arranging the mountain spirit talisman on it leaves only the front patch to work with. The approach is to flatten and stretch the talisman lines along the curve of the bead, dropping whatever can be dropped and keeping only the strokes that identify it. The holes on the other two faces cannot be moved, so the pattern works around them, and going around they turn into a border. That suits the piece well enough: the border takes the hole openings inside it and looks like deliberate ornament.

The mountain spirit as a subject comes out of Daoist charm coins, which carry a spell on one face and the eight trigrams or a thunder pattern on the other, hung on the body or sewn into the corner of a bed curtain to press down on evil. Borrowing the subject for a three-hole bead means moving the talisman lines from a coin onto a strung component: the position changes, the meaning does not, and the old words are still the old words. The same two characters appear in the Songs of Chu with another sense, meaning a deity of the mountains, which is not how the charm coins use them. In cutting talisman lines the path of the graver should run unbroken; break it once and the force disperses. That is the discipline of the form.

The channel decides whether the bead is usable at all. Three holes have to meet inside the belly, and if the meeting point is off, the strand hangs crooked. Here the holes are drilled from either side first and then connected from the top, and the seams inside are dressed so the cord does not catch. The diameter leaves room for ordinary cord: two strands pass together without crowding and without rattling. The chamfer at the mouth is cut on the inside where it cannot be seen, which saves the cord from wear.

The set and the single piece differ in how much comes with them. The set includes, besides the three-hole bead, the tower bead and spacers needed to string it, in matching colour, so there is no hunting for each part. The single piece is the bead alone, which suits anyone who already has the fittings or who wants to match their own beads. Check bead diameter before ordering a set: if the tower bead's bore is far off the beads, the join will look disjointed.

Clamped among beads, a white copper three-hole bead is rubbed on four sides and outlasts a pendant. What needs watching is the channel. Cord drawn back and forth widens the hole into a groove over time, and once the groove is deep the cord tends to break inside it. Check twice a year: pull the cord out and look for furring, and replace it if you find any. Do not worry about the metal dimming; it should age along with the beads, and that is what looks right.