How do you use a copper pyramid? Placement, alignment and ritual

There is nothing to switch on

A copper pyramid has no plug, no battery and no button. What you do with it comes down to three things: where you put it, which way you turn it, and what you place underneath. Here is how that works in this tradition.

In short

• Put it somewhere flat where it can stay: a desk, an altar, a windowsill.
• Align one side to the north-south axis with a compass.
• Place the object in the open space, ideally around a third of the height.
• For small things a night is the usual span; for seeds, one to five days.
• Always lift it by the base, never by the apex.

Step 1: pick a fixed spot

The pyramid is meant to stay put, not to be moved every day. Choose a flat surface where it will not topple easily and where you are not constantly brushing past it. The small size of 14.56 centimetres fits a desk or a bedside table; the large one of 23.56 centimetres wants a table or a wide windowsill.

Indoors beats outdoors. Copper itself stands up to weather, but the open construction of thin edges is more vulnerable than a solid object, and in the rain the copper takes on colour far faster.

Step 2: align one side to north

Take a compass or the compass app on your phone and turn the pyramid until one side lies on the north-south axis. That is not an arbitrary rule: it is exactly the alignment the tradition always prescribed, and it is also the alignment the Manipal university follow-up study of 2007 used for its measurements. What was looked at there is in pyramid energy.

Step 3: put something underneath

Water, a crystal, herbs, fruit, a piece of jewellery or a written intention. The large size takes a whole glass of water; with the small one you are thinking of a single stone or a note.

Do not lay the object flat on the surface under the pyramid, but so that it sits around a third of the height. In this tradition that point counts as the strongest, by analogy with the position of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid. Why form and measure matter in this tradition is in Shape Power.

Step 4: leave it

For water, crystals and small objects a night is the usual span. For seeds the tradition names one to five days. If you use the pyramid mainly as an object on your desk or beside your meditation seat, nothing needs to go underneath at all and it can simply stay where it is.

Which size and which finish

The two sizes relate to one another almost exactly as the golden ratio: 23.56 divided by 14.56 is 1.61813. The large one is not an inflated version of the small one but the next step in the same series. In practice you choose by what you want to put underneath.

Smooth or twisted changes nothing about the dimensions or the angles. On the twisted version a visible spiral runs along each edge to the top; on the smooth one the edges stay calm and continuous.

Care

Dust it with a dry, soft cloth. If you want the shine back, polish it with lemon and salt, rinse and dry straight away, including in the grooves. Tarnishing is normal and not harmful; what it does and does not mean is in why copper turns green or black.

Have a look at the smooth pyramid and the twisted pyramid, or browse the full range.