Charms, Amulets and Talismans Across Traditions

Begin with the general category: an object worn or carried against harm, from the evil eye to illness. The entry notes that clergy in several traditions condemned amulets while their congregations kept wearing them, so official religion and household practice often part ways here.

The counterpart to the amulet. A talisman is active and draws something toward the bearer, where an amulet keeps something away. The entry describes astrological talismans made under a specific planetary hour, and Islamic and Jewish folk talismans built on divine names and squares of letters.

A Scandinavian case from the fifth and sixth centuries: thin gold discs stamped from a single die, with a suspension loop. Around a thousand are known, many carry early runic inscriptions, and they were both worn as pendants and deposited in hoards.

A Daoist paper charm brushed in red cinnabar ink on yellow paper, written as a command in the idiom of a bureaucratic order from the unseen administration. It may be pasted over a doorway, carried, or burned so the ash can be swallowed in water as a cure.

A portable Japanese charm sold at shrines and temples, usually a small brocade bag with an inscribed slip inside that is not meant to be opened. Omamori are made for specific purposes such as traffic safety or success in study, and are returned to a shrine after a year to be burned.

The household counterpart of the omamori. An ofuda is a strip or tablet inscribed with the name of a kami and placed in the home kamidana, with the Ise Jingu taima bearing the name of Amaterasu the best known. Like the omamori, it is renewed each year.

A West African protective packet holding a written Quranic verse or other words of power, carried across the Atlantic to Louisiana, where the word came to mean a conjure charm in Voodoo and Hoodoo. The entry stresses that it is a charm, not a consecrated religious object.

The characteristic charm of Hoodoo: a small, usually red flannel bag of roots, herbs, minerals and coins made for a specific purpose. The entry says it works through its ingredients and prayer rather than through any deity, and that it is folk magic, not an initiatory religion.