crystal on top of the prayer wheel? or no crystal on top?

our classic Tibetan prayer wheel with crystal on top

let me give you a bit of a background story about the crystal on top of the prayer wheel question...

many MANY years ago, my late brother Lior E. Strauss wanted to buy his beloved a prayer wheel made from wood, this was after we both saw H.E. Garchen Rinpoche back in 2008 in Israel. since me and Ayelet just got "hooked" on the idea of prayer wheels and we did not have any experience yet in making them, but my brother wanted one now... He looked up all the prayer wheel makers at the time and there were only two of them online who made wooden prayer wheels.

one of them had a 6 month waiting list (and you think that our 10 to 12 weeks is long!) once paid for and the other one would craft the prayer wheel now and ship it.

even though my brother wanted a prayer wheel made from the first maker, he had no patience to wait 6 months, so he ordered the other prayer wheel from the second maker.

our classic Tibetan prayer wheel without crystal on top

when the prayer wheel he ordered arrived we were all so amazed by how good it spins! it looked amazing too!

and yes, it had a crystal on top.

with all these prayer wheels with crystals on top we felt that "a crystal on top of our prayer wheels" would be best since this is the common ground for all prayer wheels made from wood at that time, so when we started crafting prayer wheels we went with the crystal on top version.

this stayed our design for many years and over 2500 prayer wheels made in that style.

at a certain point in time H.E. Garchen Rinpoche gave teachings about prayer wheels as he does from time to time and one thing that was noted was his advice on size of prayer wheel and the crystal on top issue.

H.E. Garchen Rinpoche and his prayer wheel (no crystal on top)

Rinpoche went on to say that it is much better to have a small size or medium size prayer wheel more than the large one and that is because for Rinpoche it was more important the spinning time and not the amount of mantras inside the prayer wheels... for Rinpoche it was the practice that was of importance... so he suggested to his students who wish to have a prayer wheel to go with the small or medium size.

the second issue was the crystal on top.

Rinpoche went on explaining how the crystal is just a fashionable accessory to the prayer wheel and although it looks amazing, the problem will arise when the crystal falls off (which happens from time to time as it is very hard to glue glass to wood and have them never separate...)

the problem is not crystal falling off - said Rinpoche, it is the fact that now that it HAS fallen off you can start to create negative thoughts and emotions toward your prayer wheel and that is not so good.

better to have no crystal on top.

when Rinpoche created his prayer wheel design, it had no crystal on top.

H.E. Garchen Rinpoche's prayer wheel design or as it is called on our website: HEGR prayer wheel

we wish to follow Rinpoche and his advice to the best of our ability so we started to faze out the crystal on top on our classic design prayer wheels but this takes time because of all the different designs we made over the years and the fact that for us to switch them to no-crystal on top would mean to craft them all, take perfect photos of them all and upload them to our website...

this is a long process and we are still in it ;-)

but, our plan and goal is to have NO CRYSTAL on top of any of our prayer wheels eventually so to follow Rinpoche's advice to the dot.

just letting y'all know :-)

and, if you wish to order a prayer wheel and in the photo it has a crystal on top? you can ask it to be without.

much love to all of you out there!

Micha