Working With Amulets

The first thing that should be done when a new amulet has been adopted, aside from following any specific instructions from the maker, is a few meditation sessions.

On a very basic level it’s important to understand if the amulet is more of a field-effect, or if it houses an actual spirit intelligence(s). It’s also important to know of any tradition-specific guidelines or taboos of importance relating to conduct and handling, but these are very basic bits of information that should be rather easily intuited if not directly expressed in any literature or listing for the item. Beyond these though, the best way to get to know a magical item is through direct experience.

Holding or wearing a magical item and gently allowing the attention to relax, then come to rest upon the it is the best way to allow it space to unfold into the revealing of how it feels, flows, and works.

While on one hand simply following the instructions given may be enough to achieve results, at least if the item is made well and instructions well-given, on the other hand it seems as if it should be the prerogative of the magician to cultivate a more intimate understanding and knowledge of their item.

Does it project outward, or does it drawn the attention inward?

Some amulets are geared more towards observable outcomes such as for instance good fortune, however this alone says nothing of the actual mechanics occurring within. Good fortune might be attained by swaying the way others perceive us through gentle nudges to give us the benefit of the doubt at pivotal moments in time, or by clearing external obstacles before they manifest (or finding a way around them), or by generating an aura of trustworthiness and competence, but all of these are outward-facing efforts. Good fortune might also have something to do with our internal mechanisms as people. Our position in life can dramatically improve when we are properly aligned with our own nuanced desires and some inward-facing amulets will focus on ironing out these aspects more than outward-causative change.

Personal wounds left unhealed, false or unrealistic expectations, and pattern-based habitual self-sabotage are just a few ways in which we expertly get in our own way and without these issues being properly tackled first we might still be able to get outward-facing results to happen, but the quality of the aims might be rushing us headlong in the wrong direction, only to be discovered later once the internal resistances and obstacles have been resolved.

If people have given us the benefit of the doubt due to our magical efforts nudging them but we then fail to follow through and live up to that optimism, well that’s on us. The same could be said for clearing away obstacles that were meant to prevent us from wasting our time down a dead end road, for our benefit. And an aura of competence can lead to what feels to others like a breach of trust if we have projected that aura falsely, because hyperstitions are not stable and people will eventually figure out what you truly stand for. The inward-facing good fortune magic is almost a per-requisite for utilizing outward-facing magic you can be sure you won’t regret. Both are useful and valid, but it’s good to understand the difference. Not everything falls into one category or another, too. Some items can swing both ways.

(This Exalted Jupiter Conjunct Venus talisman I made acts both outward and inward, and is more of a field effect, though it can be harnessed for individual workings too, or even placed under the governance of another spirit. Click for full description.)

What kind of change can you feel in your awareness?

Is it sharpened into focus, or does it expand and relax? This key point can inform something about the way the item works in relation to the above in/out-facing factor, though not all calming amulets are inward-facing and not all focusing amulets project outward. If the amulet focuses the mind, then it’s probably meant to be worked with for doing things. It might be intended for focus in studying, or it might be meant to enhance one’s ritual prowess and the ability to charge other workings, but if it focuses the mind into a sharper stream then it is probably designed with the idea of mental action in mind. If it expands, relaxes, and calms, then it can usually be assumed that it is meant for things like contemplation, journeying, inner work, receiving messages, or simply providing a strong field of something-or-other around the bearer which has a proximity effect upon the surrounding space and the people within it.

How does it feel?

I mean specifically, what does it feel like? Use descriptors. Is it heavy or light? Wet or dry? Soft or hard? Kind and gentle or stern and hard? Maybe kind and hard, or stern and gentle? Maybe it feels like old worn leather splashed with cologne, or the bristling blooms of spring flowers yearning to pollinate, or the swell of a rogue wave. Don’t try to explain what it’s doing for this question, but exclusively how it feels. Adjectives and textures and colors and smells, it’s good to get poetic with it here as long as the poetics don’t ontologically drift into mythologizing or trying to define. Do not define, only notice. Ask yourself where you feel it most in your body. Is it a head thing, or maybe more of a heart thing? Perhaps it’s a root thing. The sensual awareness can also greatly inform our broader understanding of what it is, and how it works.

How does it move?

Once resting your attention on the item in meditation it should come alive a bit within your mind. This might mean it gradually moves outward from the epicenter to create a bubble, or it might shoot streaming arrows in one direction, or it might undulate like a serpent, or it might rise up like a protective wall. Listen with your mind and attention to what it does in this way, how the energy coming from the item likes to move naturally without any instructions given or impositions from our own mind.

(The Fifth Pentacle of Jupiter in Exalted Jupiter Conj Venus Oil acts as both a conduit for receptiveness when it comes to spirit contact, dreams, visions, and messages from the Other, as well as a filtration system to ensure the messages that come through can be trusted and are in-line with one’s personal path. This means it is mostly airy, with some water element, and acts as connective tissue in the field and upon our own ability to perceive, categorizing it as mostly inward-facing with spirit intelligences attached.)

What’s it made of?

Not the actual materials necessarily, though that is also great to know, but I mean elementally. Looking back through the answers to the above questions, you can probably intuit something about the amount of elemental forces present in the item. You might have come up with hot or aggressive descriptors which would lean towards fire. You might have found the item to be light and expansive which is akin to more air within. Perhaps it feels cool, reflective, and kind, which is more watery. Or perhaps grounded and stable for more earth. Maybe it feels very alive but doesn’t seem to lean towards any of these in particular, in which case it may have a balance of them all, the way a human body does. This can be incredibly useful to know when it comes to placement upon a shrine or within a home. You might put feminine presences on the left side of your shrine and masculine ones on the right, in which case watery amulets would probably feel better on the left and fiery ones on the right, maybe with the earthy and airy ones somewhere between for stability and to act as connective tissue, respectively. It’s also worth considering your own birth chart to assess what quantity of elemental forces are present therein so that the choice to work with one element more heavily than another can be an informed one which leans towards balance rather than further excess.

Fly solo for the maiden voyage.

A great sense of FOMO can often be found when considering which amulets or talismans to wear at once. Often it’s tempting to add another and another, wishing for them to stack neatly and orderly into a coherent functioning mechanism. Usually this does not play out as hoped and currents can become too muddled, cancel out the effects of other amulets, or even create pressure headaches. It is totally possible to wear and stack the effects of multiple amulets at once, but it takes a lot of consideration and attention to detail. It is, in my experience, a misnomer that wearing a single amulet is somehow less effective than wearing many. A single item has no potential conflicts in flow, enabling the one chosen to beam more brightly and fill the whole aura of the wearer. This has the added benefit, for the purposes of this post, in enabling a more accurate relational understanding to develop. Taking an item for a few solo spins around the block eliminates any confusion regarding whether it was one item or another that caused a specific outcome or change in thinking and can often bring some surprises that weren’t mentioned by the maker. That intimacy, once established, can then hold coherence when stacked with other items far more easily and coherently within our own minds, especially if we’re taking all the data from the mediation sessions into account and stacking with care and consideration to these factors.

(These amulets to St. Cyprian of Antioch are decidedly masculine in their feel and are meant to act as a portable locus for your Cyprian shrine, enabling a mobile node to the command center, along with all the spirits inducted into his court within your practice. It’s elements are balanced evenly to simulate a human body and it is meant for wearing when doing magic which makes it firmly outward-facing, regulatory, and magisterial, but with the ability to aim that active nature within for theurgistic operations when desired.

These considerations exist on a very basic level and we have not even touched upon the various specific types of amulets out there, or the vast possibilities therein (including various beings and their unique needs and protocols) however I feel these basic considerations are often under-expressed as important and can offer a much more solid confidence in knowing the items with which we are working.

I hope this was helpful in some way. If you got something out of this you might also like my post on Petition Logic. And if getting to know local spirits of Place and healing your ancestors happens to be work you feel called to, all paid subscribers get full access to my course; Magical Fortitude: Ancestors & Place in which you will learn practical, no-nonsense methods to begin working in these areas.

Cheers.