A GROUP OF THIRTY-FOUR NYINGMA INITIATION CARDS (TSAKALI) EASTERN TIBET, CIRCA 18TH CENTURYA GROUP OF THIRTY-FOUR NYINGMA INITIATION CARDS (TSAKALI)EASTERN TIBET, CIRCA 18TH CENTURY Distemper on cloth.Himalayan Art Resources item no. 4746 Set of 25: 7.5 x 6.8 cm (2 7/8 x 2 3/4 in.), each; Set of 9: 12 x 9 cm (4 3/4 x 3 1/2 in.), each藏東 約十八世紀 寧瑪派微型佛畫三十四幅Originally bound within silk borders and likely joined as a part of a long banner to decorate a meditation hall, the initiation cards depict various wrathful deities, attributes, and some animal-headed deities primarily from the Bardo and Guhyagarbha cycles of meditational deities. A group of 25 show deities emerging from dense billowing clouds, and another group of nine feature figures or single attributed suspended on graduated backgrounds, both groups rendered in a Kham painting style of Eastern Tibet. Inscriptions on the back of each card indicate their initial function in tantric initiation rites.For a set of cards with multiple deities on each, see Lauf, Eine Ikonographie des tibetischen Buddhismus, Graz, 1979, pp. 166-72, nos. 74-7. For a similar assembly of wrathful deities found on the North Wall of the Lukhang chapel in Lhasa photographed by Thomas Laird, see Luczanits, 'Locating the Great Perfection', in Orientations, Vol. 42, no. 2, March 2011, p. 111, fig. 9.Provenance:Private California Collection, acquired in Hong Kong in the 1980s