I never expected to see this. Last year I blogged about the several Afroeurasian versions of the Seven Seals. Among other things I concluded that the several sets of seven are interrelated only here and there and with difficulty, but also that Tibetan sources never seem to correlate them with symbolic figures as the Arabic and Hebrew versions do.
Have a quick look at that earlier blog, entitled “Seven Seals, Times Several,” and then come back here before getting lost in it. The frontispiece you can see there is a fine example of an Arabic set of the symbolic figures.
Let me quote a passage from it:
“Observe that much of both the content and the context of the Islamo-Judaic seals is not findable in the Tibetan. You find no symbolic figures or ‘signs’ in the set of Seven Seals in Tibet. You find none of the symbolic correspondences with the seven then-recognized planets, or the seven days of the week. Perhaps most significantly of all, you never see the talismanic theme of personal protection in those same Tibetan accounts.”
We could add that the seven seals in Tibet are never representing a series of disastrous world-ending events like you find in the book of Revelations. To the contrary, they usually represent exclusivity, secrecy, occultation, and hidden knowledge.
So, Lo and behold! Here we have a set of five at the end of the next-to-last line. Let me clip it out for you to make it clearer, I hope.
First you see what look like three wavy lines one on top of each other. That’s a stack of Tibetan na-ros, or ‘o’ vowels. Then you see a three-fold stack of what I suppose could be number ‘4’s, although I read them as being three ‘l’ letters in their subscript forms (la-btags). Next is, obviously, a version of the wellknown swastika (in case you are curious, it is oriented in the normal Bon direction; the banned-in-Germany National Socialist swastika is not only oriented in the opposite direction, it is also standing precariously on one of its four corners). The fourth item you see is a stack of three triangles arranged to create one larger triangle. Finally we see something that could represent flames, I suppose, although in truth I am not at all sure how to read it. Just before the set of five symbolic figures, is a list of three types of seals: the secret seal (gsang rgya), the hidden seal (gab rgya), and the treasure seal (tyer rgya, i.e. gter rgya). Then, at the beginning of the next line it labels this, in case you had doubt, as Five Seals (rgya lnga).
Let me try clipping them out again, perhaps clearer this time.The sum of all the knowledge-bearing sages of India, Persia, Burusho, Orgyan, Zhangzhung, Tangut Land, Tibet and so on is found combined in this practice. It is the heart-of-hearts of the twenty-five aural transmissions. If you were to practice it without distractions in a secluded setting you would be bound to swiftly attain the superpowers. This particularly aural transmission was passed along by Dranpa Namkha to the triad of the Lord Monarch, Pakor Bairotsana, and the woman sky-goer Coza Bönmo. These three regarded it as especially profound and precious, so they hid it in a hardened leather chest, so that one day when due to karmic forces Bon would decline, it would transform lack of faith into faith [?unclear to me]. When they were at the treasure sites in order to conceal these texts, they hid them as first-fruits treasures and as profound treasures, and accompanied this by aspiration prayers that they would in the future be revealed.
