A Skull Turned Into a Vessel

The kapala, or skull cup, is a ritual vessel used in Tibetan and wider Vajrayana Buddhist tantric practice and in Shaiva tantric traditions of Hinduism, traditionally fashioned from a human cranium, though the great majority of examples encountered in contemporary practice and in museum and private collections are made from other materials, including metal cast or worked to resemble a skull's form, rather than from actual human remains.

Beer's handbook of Tibetan Buddhist symbols describes the kapala's meaning as centred on confronting rather than concealing impermanence and death, since the skull, an object most cultures treat as something to avoid or fear, is here deliberately incorporated into worship as a direct, unflinching reminder of mortality that a practitioner is meant to sit with rather than turn away from. In ritual use the kapala serves as a container, sometimes for offerings that symbolically represent the transformation of poison or negative substance into liberating wisdom nectar, a symbolic use of striking or transgressive imagery, alcohol or other substances standing in for something normally rejected, that is characteristic of a specific current within Vajrayana ritual practice generally.