Last weekend, I acquired a new phurba. As I noted on my previous blog entry, it was one of the largest I’ve ever seen. While I would have liked to have gone out for another walk today, gas prices are simply too high so i decided to stay home and do a bit a Spring cleaning (that’s almost as much fun as doing taxes). As I was straightening things up, I came across my other phurbas – two that I acquired from classes I’ve taken on sacred sound healing (a very strange but wonderful set of two week-long classes I took a couple of years ago), as well as a couple of others I’ve acquired since then and was rather amazed at the tremendous sizes differences between them.

The photo on the left (click on it to see a larger image) shows my current collection and are as follows (from left to right), my latest and obviously huge phurba, one I acquired elsewhere (I can remember where I bought it), a very old and beautiful wood phurba which my teacher claimed was a very “powerful” one, another one I acquired during my studies, and a very small one which I also don’t remember where it came from. I would also like to mention that the wood phurba has a coin sewn into one of the pieces of cloth that is tied to it – this considered to be very sacred and increases the phurba’s value as a powerful shamanic tool. All in all, it’s a rather interesting set. In writing this entry, I also came across a rather interesting article on phurba’s and their use; that article may be found here. While I won’t reprint that article here, a sidebar gives a very good description of what phurbas are used for; specifically as a:

• “weapon for subduing and exorcising spirits and demons.
• meditative tool to pin down the distractions of greed, desire, and envy.
• means to banish, neutralize, or transform negativity.
• ritual object to symbolically slay enemies and remove obstacles.
• therapeutic process for healing physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual dis-ease.
• vehicle for pinning down the ego, one of the main obstacles to enlightenment.”

Obviously, Tibetan shamans place a great deal of importance on phurbas.

I’ve just finished reading the above mentioned article and also took a look at the rest of the site where it is located: as it turns out, it’s a fascinating site with lots of other interesting articles and photographs. Perhaps I’ll comment more on it later.