The amulet is a worn or carried object for protection, against harm in general or against a specific danger, and it is one of the most nearly universal of all religious objects.
Defence, not attraction
An amulet is carried or worn to protect its bearer, against the evil eye, illness, misfortune in childbirth, drowning, the spirits of a place, or harm at large, and this protective, defensive direction is what distinguishes it from the talisman, which is made to attract good rather than to fend off ill. The amulet may be almost anything credited with protective power, a stone, a written charm, a bead, a piece of coral, a hand or an eye figure, and it is often worn at the neck or fixed where the danger is feared. Its use is old beyond record and spread across virtually every culture.
A shared human practice
Because the wish to be protected from unseen harm is so widespread, the amulet appears in nearly every tradition, from the protective eye and hand of the Mediterranean and the Middle East to written charms drawing on scripture in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to the countless local objects of folk practice, so it is less the property of any one religion than a common feature of human religious life. Official theologies have often regarded amulets with suspicion, drawing a line between legitimate blessing and mere superstition or magic, yet the objects persist across and beneath the formal traditions. The amulet is thus both ubiquitous and perennially contested, an object the great traditions neither fully endorse nor manage to suppress.