A panopoly of Chinese amulets

This post has been derived from a tweetstorm I published on my twitter, @edwardW2, 

1/ A set of amulets for many purposes from the 2018 ed of the 繼成堂 (Hall of Continuing accomplishments)  almanac, published in China

Preface (Text marked A) in bottom left

符咒是我国几千年的民族传统文化之一，但并非每个人画符都能，应验，有绿者必须心清意静，意念高度集中才能达到画符的目的
Amulets are part one of the ancient culture of our country. But not every person is capable of drawing an effective amulet. Those who are fated to have this property, should with clear heart and still intent. Only through a high concentration of the will, may the amulet have the desired effect. 

There are 15 amulets on the page. Each of them resolves a particular evil. The work describes the various materials on which the amulets are to be written on: 

1. Makes business prosper; carry about the person. Write in black ink on red paper

2. Increases money luck; carry about the person. Write in Cinnabar ink 硃 on red paper. 

3. Use this this if children are hard to rear 難養. The central inscription has space for which to write the child's Year, Mth, day and Hour of birth on. 

4. For harmony between man & wife. Write this with Cinnabar ink on Yellow paper. Burn to ash and stir into the partie's drink, but do not let the two parties know of this.

5. Protects the foetus and the Mother. This amulet is especially valuable if mother has offended the foetal god;胎神, in which case, burn to ash, dissolve it in water and give it to the pregnant woman to drink. Mother and child will be safe.

6. for a rather distressing condition called 收惊 Shoujing,  baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%94%B6…, where the child grows ill after a fright (said to be of supernatural origin)

7. Amulet to dissolve bones; said bones are ones accidentally swallowed and stuck in the throat. It is to be written using black ink on a piece of flowered writing paper; 花笺. A spell is written besides it, namely" 

赫赫陽陽，奉請三山九候，此碗化為江洋大海咽喉化萬丈深潭，全力吞入變化無出
"Brightly, Brightly, Yang, Yang, I humbly ask the Nine Dukes of the Three Mountains, to transform the water into this dish into that of rivers in seas; to transform it into a sea, to transform the gullet into a lake a thousand fathoms deep, to swallow [the bone] with all effort, and transform it so it disappears"

( I presume you burn the paper, recite the spell , stir ashes into water, & swallow the water.) 

8. To dispel evil forces that one has offended 退煞冲丧犯. Write using Cinnabar ink on yellow paper; burn and drink the ashes in water 

9. To resolve quarrels between father & son (make 2 copies of the amulet, one to be carried by each party)

10. To suppress bad dreams. Write with red ink on yellow paper, and carry on body

11. To stop bleeding and cure small wounds. The text adds the following instructions. 

注：轻微皮肤擦伤或刀伤、在条件不便时可用绿色树叶（无毒）一片，用指箭画一直，边念；一二三四五，金木水火土、余仿此，正面朝外贴于伤处。 
Note: For a gentle cut or scratch, when nothing else can be had, take a green, leaf of a tree (so long as the leaf is not toxic) and trace out the amulet [shown above] with the fingers; whilst doing so say one, two, three, four five, Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth,  Then paste it, with the writing side towards the wound.

12. To avoid quarrels and contentions. Write using red ink on red paper; carry on body. 

13. Amulet to repay debts. Write it in black ink on yellow paper; write the reason for the debt on the back. 

You are to write your name in the place of the crosses on the right and the date and time of birth on the dots below. The line on the left is for you to write your address; the Chinese  words there translate to "Address: People's republic of China, ____ Province, ___ " I presume if you are not in the PRC, you replace this line with your own address and country.

14. For “protecting the body" 保身. To be written in Cinnabar red ink on yellow paper, and carried about the person

15. For  protecting the body whilst travelling.To be written in red ink on yellow paper, and carried about the person.

The Sutra of the five lords.

We present a rather remarkable Chinese religious text, the wu Gong Jing  or the "Sutra of the Five Lords" It is an eschatological work. The leading article in English is Barend J Te Haar's "the Sutra of the five lords: Manuscript & oral tradition"  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23729988.2015.1044323?journalCode=rstu20 . As the article is unfortunately behind a paywall, here is my precis of it, which will serve as good an introduction to the sutra as any :

• The sutra has a number of variant texts, but all of them are in a moxture of verse and prose [174]
• The eponymous "five lords" are human incarnations of Five major buddhisatvas, viz"

1. Maitreya 彌勒 (incarnated as Lord Tang or Tanggong 唐公),
2. Samantabhadra or Puxian 普賢 (incarnated as Lord Lang or Langgong 朗公), 
3. the Great Saint of Sizhou 泗州 (incarnated as Lord Bao or Baogong 寶公), 
4. Akshayamati or Inexhaustible Intention 無盡意 (incarnated as Lord Hua or Huagong 化公), 
5. Avalokiteśvara or Guanyin 觀音 (incarnated as Lord Zhi or Zhigong 誌公). 

• Some time in the future- there will be a complete degeneration of the social order; disaster after disaster will strike the land. heaven will send a "Dark wind to inspect the cities and suburbs", which will judge the wicked and destroy them. Evil people will be destroyed mercilessly
• All these disasters can be avoided if by possessing the sutra, and the amulets the Five Lords have revealed, carrying the amulets about the body and pasting them on the house [175]
  
  "You make ready a yellow banner and one bushel of millet (shu 黍).You write the two characters for Peace (ping’an 平安) with cinnabar on the yellow banner. The yellow banner must be stuck in the middle [of the bushel] to press down the house, after which you install[another] four [flags] and hang them in the four corners in the East, West, South and North.You burn incense and worship, reciting this Sutra for seven days and seven nights again and again. If you do this, then you can eliminate all disasters and annihilate one’s crimes. Whenthe heavenly deities inspect all households, the demon kings that spread diseases will not passby your gate. Evil winds and violent rains will not dare to intrude or to harm you. One mayescape the catastrophes of the final age. 若有置造黃幡一首，黍一斗. 黃幡上用硃書「平安」二字. 黃幡插在中央鎮宅. 后[sic]置四首, 懸掛四角, 以東西南北, 焚香供養. 七日七夜, 轉誦此經, 可以消災滅罪. 天神家家糾察. 行病鬼王, 不過其門. 惡風暴雨, 不敢侵害 可逃末劫之災" (Te haars translation, 175)

• After all these disasters, in the year of the Tiger or Rabbit, the Luminous King 明王 will appear, and rescue everyone that has a copy of the book. Everyone else will die. The new cosmic order will be characterised by an absence  of poverty; this heavenly kingdom will be called  Luoping"羅平", or "All-encompassing peace" 

The sutra existed in some form or another since the Tang dynasty. It was clandestinely circulated through China across the ages; this secrecy was paramount, as it was the inspiration for more than one rebel movement. Interest in the sutra peaked whenever there was political instability in china.

In recent years, the situation has cooled down somewhat, and old copies of the sutra are available on the great 2nd hand book market place called Kongfuzi. indeed, the text has also been placed on the baidu webpage-- but alas, without the all-important talismans.


***

This present book is the author's copy of the work. he got it off taobao, a Chinese online retailer. If his memory serves him correctly, this particular book was purchased form a retailer based in Sichuan, but it was also available from many other sellers. The seller offered many more of these small chapbooks on occult subjects like fengshui and horoscopy. Alas, owing to what seems to be a crackdown on all forms of religious books in taobao, such books are now hard to come by. The whole pamphlet is scanned here, including the all-important talismans. the author hopes someone can translate the text from Chinese to English; this would doubtless increase our knowledge of Chinese folk customs, as well, perhaps, of saving us from the impending apocalypse.

***

Note, the book can also be found on internet archive: https://archive.org/details/wugongjing_images/page/n2/mode/2up 

Readers should note that this book reads Right-to-left, like all old Chinese books.

1. A preface of sorts , followed by an Incesnse praise 舉香贊, and a "Mantra to cleanse the mouth: 淨口咒. These are standard in almost all sutras, Taoist and Buddhist alike,

p2: Two more mantras, one to cleanse the Heart 淨心咒 and another to cleanse the body. 淨身咒. The large diagram on p. 2 is an amulet of Guanyin; pasting it on the front door makes the house safe and peaceful. T

p. 3: A mantra to stabilize the earth 安土地咒. 

It should be noted, that reciting such mantras before reciting the scripture proper is a common practice in Chinese buddhism. 

Page 4 opens with a short text to be recited when the sutra is opnened.

It seems The sutra starts on the 3rd line of page 4: