Purple is the color I avoided for the first two years of drawing FORÊ. The reason is that purple is the color the internet associates with new-age spirituality, and I did not want to be on that shelf. Then a friend — a hospice nurse in Chengdu — sent me a photograph of a Tang-dynasty funerary banner with a single character in deep violet ink on indigo paper, and the character was 覺, awareness. The color was not new age. The color was old grief. I started drawing the amethyst line that week.
Why the amethyst seals are all 25 in the blind pool
The 12 vermillion and 12 gold seals are a fixed library. The amethyst seals are not. The reason is that wisdom is not a thing you collect. Wisdom is a thing you encounter. You do not pick the lesson. The lesson arrives. So there is no fixed amethyst library. There are only 25 amethyst pulls, and you meet them one at a time, when you are ready, and not always when you want to be.
The 25 amethyst characters (and what they are for)
I will not list all 25. That would defeat the practice. I will list the 5 most often pulled in the first six months, with the context in which they tend to show up.
- 覺 (Jué) — Awareness. The character is 見 (to see) over 學 (to learn). It tends to arrive on the day you realize you have been narrating your own life to yourself and the narration is no longer accurate.
- 觀 (Guān) — To observe. The character is 雚 (a kind of bird) on the left, 又 (again) on the right. It tends to arrive on the day you need to stop deciding and start watching.
- 問 (Wèn) — To ask. The character is 門 (gate) with a mouth (口) inside. It tends to arrive on the day you have been assuming and need to be humble enough to ask.
- 止 (Zhǐ) — To stop. The single most difficult character to draw correctly, because the four strokes have to land in a precise proportion. It tends to arrive on the day you are about to do the next thing and you should not.
- 捨 (Shě) — To release. The character is 舎 (a small house) with 舍 (to give up) underneath. It tends to arrive on the day you have been carrying something for six months longer than it wanted to be carried.
The other 20
The other 20 amethyst seals include 痛 (pain), 慢 (slow), 退 (retreat), 獨 (alone), 夢 (dream), 醒 (awake), 悔 (regret), 改 (change), 寬 (wide, as in spacious), 諾 (promise), 失 (loss), 捨 (release, different from 捨), 過 (pass through), 知 (to know), 懂 (to understand), 認 (to recognize), 醒 (awake, different character), 默 (silence), 深 (deep), 遠 (far). Each one is drawn from a specific Hunan folk context. Each one arrives only in the blind pull.
How to use an amethyst seal
- Pull one. Close your eyes. The blind pull is the entire point. Do not look at the others.
- Read the character. Read the English gloss. Read the single sentence that comes with the seal. Do not interpret it yet.
- Carry the character in your wallet for seven days. Not on your phone. In the wallet, in the place you keep a receipt you do not need. The wallet matters — the phone is too visible, the seal will be ignored.
- On day eight, write the character by hand, in the same proportion as the original. You do not need to be good at drawing. The drawing is the practice, not the result.
- On day nine, decide. The seal has done what it came to do, or it has not. Either is a correct answer.
What an amethyst seal is not
It is not therapy. It is not a substitute for a therapist, a friend, or a long walk. It is a sentence in purple ink that you carry in your wallet for a week, and the sentence is the one you needed to be reminded of while you were deciding. That is the entire practice. The drawing is a thousand years old. The decision is yours.
The 25 amethyst seals are in the blind pool at /products. From $6.99 a pull, 3-pull bundle at $16.99. $5 off with code FORERUI-LAUNCH.