Tsakli (tsakali) are palm-sized Tibetan Vajrayana initiation cards, typically no larger than 15 centimetres square, painted in matched sets like miniature thangkas. Each card centres a single yidam deity in gold and lapis blue against a deep maroon-red ground, ringed by an orange-red flame aureole, so a disciple can be visually aligned with one deity during a monastic empowerment.

Painted with the same mineral pigments as full-scale thangkas — azurite and lapis blue, cinnabar vermilion, malachite green, orpiment yellow, and real gold — tsakli compress the entire thangka vocabulary into a single miniature icon panel. The result is a small, intensely saturated ritual object: one figure, one ground, one gold-lined halo of fire.