Tablet

Definition and stakes

James Hutson,  Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills (1921)

“ The writing of a family altar tablet is an important matter with many people. The wisest and most learned man available is asked to write it; he puts on his best official robes and breathes upon his pencil to give life to it and to the tablet.
The ancient ancestral tablet 門中歷代高曾遠祖位 mên chung li tai kao tsêng yüan tsu wei, has largely been ousted by the Heaven and Earth tablet; but some scholars still use it because they consider Heaven and Earth are only to be worshipped by the emperor.
”
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston,  Lion and Dragon in Northern China

“ As a rule the tablet bears two names—those of husband and wife—so that each human soul is not necessarily supposed to have a tablet to itself. Just as the bodies of husband and wife share a single grave, so do their spirits (according to the theory accepted in Weihaiwei) share a single tablet, and the prayers and sacrifices that are offered to the one are intended in equal measure for the other. ”
Source: Gutenberg

Various,  The scrap book, Volume 2, No. 2 (1906)

“ Meanwhile I had opened the tablet; it was bound in plain red leather, with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus:
On all that it can reach within these walls, sentient or inanimate, living or dead, as moves the needle, so works my will! Accursed be the house, and restless the dwellers therein.
We found no more. Mr. J—— burned the tablet and its anathema.
”
Source: Gutenberg

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