White Copper Heavenly Master Square Block Pendant

Heaven, earth and humanity: the ancients gave the three a collective name, the three powers. The Xici commentary on the Book of Changes says to combine the three powers and double them, and in a hexagram of six lines the top two belong to heaven, the middle two to humanity and the bottom two to earth. The scheme sets people inside one structure with heaven and earth rather than alongside them, each holding its own place. Applied to an object it becomes a three-part layout, heaven above, humanity in the middle, earth below, and the characters on a plaque follow the same division. Three things sound simple enough, but arranging them is all a question of position.

Celestial Master is a title. In Daoism it first meant Zhang Daoling, founder of the Way of the Celestial Masters, and the generations after him inherited it and lived at Longhu Mountain. The two characters on a plaque mostly carry the sense of guarding and do not necessarily name a particular master. Longhu Mountain stands in Guixi, Jiangxi, with the Celestial Master's residence at its foot, and the line of inheritance is on record. Down the centuries only the Zhang family could use the title, and other schools did not dare to claim it. The Way of the Celestial Masters later became the Zhengyi school, and that line of talisman work has come down to the present day.

A cube, with six faces. Not many pendants are cubes, because the edges dig into the skin. On this one every edge has been taken down until it feels round while still looking square, which the trade calls chamfered edges without losing the form. The chamfering is done by hand with a file, and the rounding has to be even; round in one place and square in another and the hand knows at once that it was not done carefully. A machine chamfer is a single cut and the round looks unnatural. A cube carries its center of gravity dead center, so it hangs without leaning.

White copper and brass. A white copper cube looks cold, like a small stone stele; brass is warm and looks like a seal from an earlier age. On a chain the cube turns, and the six faces take their turn facing out. Pieces cut on all six faces are rare; most have a design on two and plain faces on the rest, and it is the plain faces that show the work. Best to leave one face blank, because cut everything and the piece has no room to breathe. White copper cube with a dark cord, brass with a light one, and the reverse works just as well.

The edges of a cube take knocks first, and a knock leaves a white spot where the copper shows through, different from the aged surface and very conspicuous, with no repair possible. Bag it separately when you put it away. Press the copper with a dry cloth and take the dust out of the cuts with a soft brush. Copper darkens as it sits, and when it does, press it with cloth; keep silver dip away, because copper turns red from it. Lay a cloth in the box and do not stack other metal pieces on top.