White Copper Ziwei Talisman Round Pendant

The rim of the round plaque is plain: no teeth, no rope pattern, just a clean circle. The face is slightly convex, high at the centre and low at the edge, like an enlarged old copper coin. It is pressed thin, so it does not show against the body and will hide under a button-down shirt, with only the edge visible when you look down. The rim is rounded over, so it does not cut and does not snag thread.

On the face is a hui character. A hui is a particular Daoist way of writing, several characters compounded into one, with a reading of its own. The Ziwei hui is built from the rain radical, jian and er stacked together; it has many strokes and has to be written in one breath. It stands for the Emperor of the Purple Star, ruler of the sky around the pole star, high in the Daoist hierarchy of star deities and first among the Four Sovereigns. Daoist scripture says the Dipper governs the stars and Ziwei sits at their centre, which is why the hui is often written at the head of a talisman.

In transmission the hui was not written consistently, and one character has several variants; Ziwei is also often written with a different second character. This is not simply error. Folk copying passed from hand to hand, and after enough copies it drifts. This piece uses the common form, the strokes clearly accounted for, with nothing dropped to make it prettier. The characters are cut intaglio, the knife following the stroke, and at the turns you can see where the blade stopped. That is what handwork leaves. The spaces between strokes are even, dense without stuffiness and open without falling apart, and that is harder than the character itself.

Two versions, pendant and necklace. The pendant is the plaque alone, the hole at the top centre, and once strung it finds its own level because the weight is in the middle. The necklace uses a fine chain with a spring clasp that closes one-handed. A round plaque suits a crew neck or a V neck; with a high collar half of it disappears, which looks worse than not wearing it, since half a circle showing is not a good look. The chain has an extension, so the length can move two or three notches and covers most necks.

A thin plaque fears pressure above all. Do not store it in a box with keys or coins; lay it flat with nothing stacked on top. Fingerprints on the copper come off with a glasses cloth, and the cloth must be clean, since a cloth with grit in it is sandpaper. For long storage, a thin coat of colourless wax will block sulphur in the air and keep the face from clouding, and it wipes off before wearing. Do not put the wax on thick: it lodges in the rim seam, will not wipe out clean, and looks like oil.