Stamp seals, both as physical objects and especially as metaphors, are nearly everywhere in Buddhism. This is easy to understand: seals had long been central to the practices of the civilizations, Indian and Chinese most prominently, in which Buddhism took on its most powerfully influential cultural forms. In this talk I will explore the broad history of religious seal practice in which ninth and tenth century Chinese Buddhist ritualists compiled versions of a manual for the making and use of Buddhist talismanic seals found among the Dunhuang manuscripts.