You may make this necklace charm as simply or as elaborately as you desire or as your craft skills permit. Instead of knots between the nine segments of the charm, you might prefer to use spacer beads or disks. This is fine, as long as the nine segments of three beads each are clearly distinguished. You may, if you wish, also add decorative beads on either side of the nine segments. Or you may string the beads on a fine chain of silver or gold rather than on a thread.
There is a redundancy in the construction of the necklace charm as described above. If twenty-seven beads are used in nine sets of three, it is possible to indicate each letter of the alphabet solely by position on the necklace—the colors red, blue, and green are not absolutely essential. Therefore, minimalists may prefer to construct the necklace charm using only white and black beads. A black bead is placed in each segment where a key letter of the phrase describing the purpose occurs. The final bead is always black and does not occupy the place of a letter, so no confusion arises from it. For example, the letter S in the first segment of the necklace could be indicated merely by a black bead in the third place in the segment—it is not really necessary to make this bead green, although using colored beads to indicate first, second, and third place in each segment livens up the appearance of the necklace, and makes its pattern a bit easier to distinguish.
It may be argued that the key letters of the sentence expressing the purpose of the charm are out of their proper order on the necklace. In the sentence they are ordered L, S, M, I, D; on the necklace they are ordered S, L, D, M, I. However, in making symbolic charms, it is not at all unusual for the key letters of a charm to be combined into a compound symbol composed of all the letters together that gives no indication of their correct order. The order of the letters is known to the person who has made the charm, and that is enough. No one else need know the order of the letters. This preserves the secrecy of the charm. Even if someone else understands the manner by which the necklace charm was constructed, and can identify the key letters of the purpose, it will be impossible for that person to determine the ordering of the key letters and/or the words that state the purpose of the charm.
To activate the charm, keep your purpose firmly in mind while making the necklace, and repeat to yourself the key phrase that expresses the purpose of the charm. After it has been completed, sit in a ritual circle and hold the necklace in your hands. Move your fingers over the beads from left to right, and identify in your mind the letters the colored beads stand for. Speak the letters aloud as you finger each colored bead in turn. Do not worry about the purpose at this point—it will already have been fixed into your subconscious mind during the making of the charm. Go over the beads on the necklace repeatedly from beginning to end, visualizing the letter each colored bead represents as you touch that bead with your fingers.
If the charm has been made for your own use, it is useful to repeat this telling of the beads on a regular basis. This will keep the charm charged and active. If it is made for someone else, you must infuse as much energy into the necklace as possible before giving it to the person for whom you have made it.
For more than three decades, Donald Tyson has presented traditional systems of Western magic in ways that make sense to modern readers. It is his conviction that magic can be understood and used without the need to turn off the rational mind. His books span the full spectrum of the arcane arts, from scrying and Tarot reading, to astral projection and ritual spirit evocation. He lives in an old farm house in Nova Scotia, Canada, with his wife, Jenny, and his Siamese cat, Hermes.
Illustrator: Rik Olson
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Magical Transformations
Everything Old Is New Again
The Snow People
Linda Raedisch
The ancient Celts, we are told, divided the year into two halves: summer and winter. In Europe, the night of April 30 was both the last gasp of winter and the witches’ last chance to party before the arrival of spring. And since witches were frightening to the medievals, I can’t blame them for equating witches with winter. I’m not too fond of the season myself! It looks alright through the kitchen window, but who wants to go out in it? Even worse is the day after the storm when the glare of sunlight on hardened snow and the rasp of shovel on concrete announces that it’s time to get up and out. It’s business as usual in the ice-covered world. Our civilization makes few allowances for this most unforgiving of seasons.
If you don’t love winter, it might give you courage to remember that modern humans were largely shaped by that most famous winter of all: the Ice Age. The Ice Age taught us to work together in quick-thinking groups to bring down woolly mammoths. And think of the organizational skills required to convert that mammoth into food, fuel, goods, and clothing.
The only way, in my opinion, those families huddled together in their tricked-out rock shelters could have survived was by telling some really good stories.
The Ice Age must also have taught us some social skills that we have since lost. Imagine your entire extended family coming together for Thanksgiving. But instead of sharing a roof for a day or even a few days, you’ll be enjoying one another’s company for six months.
