As one of the eight symbols of the Ashtamangala the Endless Knot is offered and displayed in Tibetan Buddhist practice alongside the parasol, golden fish, treasure vase, lotus, conch, victory banner and dharma wheel, but Powers notes it is also the member of the set most often used entirely on its own, appearing independently on textiles, jewellery, architecture and ritual objects across the Tibetan Buddhist world in a way none of the other seven symbols matches for standalone popularity. This double life, inside a fixed devotional set and outside it as a free-standing decorative and protective device, mirrors the double reading Powers gives the knot itself: read theologically it names interdependence and the beginningless cycle of rebirth, and read popularly across Tibetan, Mongolian and other Buddhist communities it functions more broadly as a mark of good fortune and protection, the two readings coexisting rather than one displacing the other in ordinary use.
Outside Tibet the knot pattern has also been adopted, generally without its specific Buddhist theological gloss attached, as a popular decorative motif in jewellery and design worldwide, a secular afterlife similar to the modern decorative use of Yggdrasil or the ankh recorded elsewhere in this atlas, where a symbol's visual appeal outruns its original doctrinal content in broad popular reproduction.