White Copper Big Dipper Talisman Rectangular Pendant

In the Soushenji there is a story: Guan Lu sees a young man ploughing in a field and tells him he has only nineteen years to live. The boy weeps and begs for help, and Guan Lu tells him to take wine and meat to the trees south of the field and wait on the two men he finds playing chess there. When they have eaten, they alter the register, and nineteen becomes ninety. That is where “the Southern Dipper records birth, the Northern Dipper records death” comes from. Guan Lu has a biography in the Records of the Three Kingdoms as a man who read faces, so the story sits on his name without strain.

The seven stars of the Northern Dipper, from bowl to handle, are Tianshu, Tianxuan, Tianji, Tianquan, Yuheng, Kaiyang and Yaoguang. The four at the bowl make a square, and the three of the handle bend into an arc. Set the seven on a plaque and that bend cannot be dropped: laid out in a straight line it is no longer the Northern Dipper, and anyone who knows the sky sees it at once. Beside Kaiyang there is a companion star, visible only to good eyes, which in old times was used to test eyesight.

A rectangular charm plaque is more formal than a round one. Hole at the top, edge closed at the bottom, corners rounded so they do not cut. The seven stars usually sit in the upper part of the face with the talisman script or cloud pattern below. Get the proportion of blank space slightly wrong and the whole piece looks top-heavy. Thickness should be even too; thick in the middle and thin at the ends and it tilts forward when hung. If the back is blank, a ring of cloud can be cut there so the reverse is not bare.

In Daoism the worship of the Dipper is a major affair: in your own zodiac year you light seven star lamps, one for each star, and they must not go out. Not every household can manage that, and a plaque keeps the thought for them. Telling a customer this carries more weight than gesturing at “warding off evil”, and sounds more like a person talking. The seven lamps are widely known in folk custom, and anyone who has read the Three Kingdoms knows the passage about Zhuge Liang.

Men buy most of these, and older men at that. A younger person can wear one on a black cord with plain clothes and it does not look old. For an elder, the Dipper governing longevity is a more fitting line than wealth. When someone asks why seven stars and not nine, “the Dipper has seven; the rest are other stars” is enough. Hung in a car it works too — the Dipper points the way, which fits the subject better than a gourd. The copper on the face shifts with sweat and goes warmer with wearing, unlike when it was new; that is copper being copper. If that bothers you, keep it in a bag and handle it less.