Lightning-struck Wood Treasure Vase Pendant

This one listing carries six designs: treasure vase, nine-tailed fox, blank plaque, dragon-head gourd, ziwei blank plaque, and mountain ghost coin. The name says vase, but you can choose another inside, and first-time buyers misread that easily. Match the option before you order and do not take the title for the whole story. These six are not one cord with a different drop on the end: the wood, the subject and the workmanship all differ. Wrong-variant orders happen often, and a return trip costs more than a second look before buying.

The treasure vase is one of the eight auspicious symbols, a set that comes from Tibetan Buddhism: wheel, parasol, golden fish, vase, lotus, right-turning conch, endless knot, victory banner, eight objects each with its own meaning. The vase holds pure water and treasure and stands for completeness, for gathering without spilling. The pure-water bottle in Guanyin’s hand is a different line of imagery; do not mix the two. The eight symbols are used in China too, mostly on porcelain and brocade, and more heavily in Tibet. The mouth of the vase must draw in and the belly be round — fail to close the mouth and it reads as a jar.

Lightning-struck wood is a folk term for a tree that has been hit by lightning. Older people say such wood carries yang energy and that a plaque made from it suppresses evil — that is a saying, not a finding. A struck tree usually dies back from the wound downward, and the piece taken is the heartwood near the wound; the grain is unstable and splits easily, so it is cut along the grain and not made too thin. A plaque cut with the grain keeps a pale sawn edge, and that has to be sanded off before it feels right.

Wood fears water, sun and dryness. In a northern winter with the heating on it loses moisture fast and can open a crack in days; in a southern plum rainy season it spots with mould. Worn against the skin, sweat sinks into the grain and darkens it over time until the colour goes dead. To keep it looking well, rub it with a dry cloth and do not oil it — oil fills the grain and the figure goes muddy. In damp weather put it in a cloth bag with a packet of desiccant rather than leaving it on a table.

How to choose among the six: the vase is the safe one, no mistakes giving it to an elder; the nine-tailed fox leans toward women buyers — the fox of Qingqiu in the Classic of Mountains and Seas originally carried auspicious meaning and only later became a demon in fiction; the blank plaque is barest of all, nothing carved on it, and the hardest to pick out precisely because there is nowhere to hide a flaw. Choose by the person’s temperament rather than by any claimed effect. The mountain ghost coin has coin legends on the face and an incantation on the back — a completely different register from the vase.