by Llewellyn
The selection of the sentence or phrase is the most important part of the making of the charm. It is vital that you meditate on which words to choose and find the brief expression of meaning that most powerfully expresses your purpose for making the charm. If you have more than nine significant words, you must reduce the sentence until there are nine or fewer key words. It is best not to use less than five because otherwise the necklace will have a colorless appearance. If possible, avoid having the same key letter appear more than once. (If the same key letter does appear twice, both are represented by the same bead.)
The beads are knotted onto the necklace thread in order from left to right. In the above example, the letter S occupies the third place in the first segment. Tie a knot on the left side of the thread to act as a stop for the beads, and drop two white beads down on it as placeholders, then a single green bead to represent the S. It is green because the S is in third place in the segment. Tie a knot to end this first segment of the necklace. There are no letters in our charm from the second column, so drop three white beads down the thread to make the second segment, and tie a knot to end it. The letter L occupies the middle of the third segment so drop down a white bead, a blue bead, and a white bead. The key letter D is at the beginning and the key letter M is in the middle of the fourth segment, so the beads are red, blue, white. There are no key letters of the charm’s purpose in the fifth segment, which receives three white beads. The six segment also gets three white beads, as does the seventh segment, and the eighth segment. The key letter I occurs in first place of the ninth segment, so the order of the beads is red, white, black (the final place of the ninth segment is always a black bead).
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
[contents]
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. It’s too cold for the kids to play outside, and there’s no cable. 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. It may have been during those long Pleistocene winters that the kernels of our most powerful stories were born, if only because we needed their distraction so badly.
For many of the Native Americans inhabiting the temperate zone, winter was the only time for telling stories. There were serious repercussions for breaking out the tales before the ground was frozen, not the least of which was the possibility that snakes and other creepy crawlies might sneak into bed with you. In Japan, on the other hand, the hot, humid summer is the time for telling snowy ghost stories. Why? To create shivers, of course! The Yuki Onna, or Snow Woman, is one such ghost. In some versions, she is a chaste young wife; in others, a supernaturally empowered harridan, but she is always terrifying enough to send a chill down the spine.
Let’s take a tour around the world of snow creature tales of old…
The Snow Maiden (Russia)
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Many readers will already be familiar with the tale of the Snow Maiden. It comes to us from Old Russia, a land of sparkling forests and frozen palaces. The tale begins, as do so many folktales the world over, with an old, childless couple. They are poor and devoutly religious (poverty and piety being de riguer for old childless couples in folktales). While cutting wood in the forest, they take a break to build a snegourochka, a little girl made of snowballs. Lo and behold, the snegourochka comes to life, and she is everything the old couple ever dreamed of in a daughter. She is pretty, respectful, and well dressed in fancy boots, cloak, and diamond tiara. She helps out around the house and, conveniently for her elderly parents, she’s bypassed the diaper stage.
The storyteller would have us believe that this Snow Maiden is a gift from God, a reward for the old couple’s unwavering faith. Given the outcome of the story, however, the exercise seems cruel and pointless on God’s part. For Snegourochka is not a child of flesh but of snow. In some versions of the story, she crumples at the first sign of spring. In others, she lasts until Midsummer, only to be vaporized by the St. John’s Day fires. A few writers hint at the possibility that, like Frosty, she’ll be back again someday, but this is a modern gloss. When the girl is gone, she’s gone, and the old couple is left with nothing but a soggy patch of forest floor.
No doubt it was a witch and not an angel hiding behind one of the snow-clad fir trees in the forest that day—perhaps Baba Yaga or one of those pesky German witches flown over from the west. “Be careful what you wish for,” she might have cackled to herself as she worked her magic over the doomed little snegourochka.
Yuki Onna (Japan)
Another woodcutting foray brings us face to face with the Yuki Onna, the Japanese Woman of the Snows. No shrinking snowdrop here, the Yuki Onna is as ferocious as the Snow Maiden is sweet. In Lafcadio Hearn’s retelling of the tale, it is man who invades the wild realm of the Yuki Onna and suffers the consequences.
On their way home with their loads of wood, teenage Minokichi and the elderly Mosaku are stranded on the wrong side of the river by a snow storm. They find shelter in a tiny boathouse but have no means of lighting a fire. Old Mosaku soon falls asleep. Losing his battle against the cold, Minikichi also sleeps, but only for an instant. He wakes to see a white-clad woman breathing cold white smoke over the sleeping Mosaku. To the younger man’s horror, the spirit is about to do the same to Minokichi, but she pauses and he is able to look up into her starkly beautiful face. The Yuki Onna spares him on account of his youth and because she has taken a shine to him. But she warns him to tell no one what he has seen; if he does, she will kill him.
Minokichi survives the night, just barely, while Mosaku is frozen to death. Minokichi tells himself this Woman of the Snows was probably just a hallucination. He goes on with his life as a woodcutter and thinks no more of the strange apparition.
The next winter, he meets a pretty girl on the forest path. Her name is O-Yuki. Long story short, they become husband and wife. O-Yuki bears her woodcutter ten children, but mysteriously does not age a day.
At last, in the candlelight one evening, thick-as-a-brick Minokichi notices a resemblance between the ageless O-Yuki and the spirit he thought he saw all those years ago. He tells O-Yuki everything, thus breaking his promise to the Yuki Onna. Never mind that they’re one and the same—O-Yuki/Yuki Onna is livid. This time, it is for the sake of the children that she spares Minokichi’s life. She threatens the bewildered woodcutter once more with death if he does not take proper care of the little ones, then she disappears.
This is, thanks to Hearn, the most famous version of the Yuki Onna story, but it is not the only one. In another variation set down by Victorian world-traveler and collector of tales, Richard Gordon Smith, the Yuki Onna is a ghost in the more usual sense: she is the spirit of a young woman named Oyasu who died in a snowstorm. On the eve of the anniversary of her death, Oyasu presents herself not to her own family but to an old widower named Kyuzaemon.
Poor Kyuzaemon bars the door against the unearthly stranger only to turn around and see her standing next to his bed. She has long hair, a pretty face, and the signature white kimono. She explains to Kyuzaemon that she wishes to stay only until the wind dies down. As a spirit, she’s able to fly, so presumably the storm has only blown her off course. She was, in fact, on her way to visit her husband-in-life, Isaburo, who was also her father’s adopted son. She is going to persuade him to return to her father’s house to care for the old man in his dotage.
In the northwest of Japan … those who met their deaths in snow were believed to persist as snow ghosts, flying silently over the frozen landscape, haunting those left behind.
Oyasu is a polite house guest, as far as ghosts go. She pays her respects at Kyuzaemon’s ancestral altar. Then, as soon as the storm abates, she goes on her way. The next morning, Kyuzaemon heads to the neighboring village to confirm her story. Yes, Oyasu did indeed appear to Isaburo in the night and convince him to return to his adoptive father’s house. To lend an air of truth to the event, Smith informs us that it took place on January 19, 1833.
In the northwest of Japan, where this story was collected, those who met their deaths in snow were believed to persist as snow ghosts, flying silently over the frozen landscape, haunting those left behind. For some reason, it is only women, like Oyasu, who live on in legend.
Snow Boy (Lenape)
To meet a male snow spirit, we travel to the mid-Atlantic. New Jersey (along with parts of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York) is Snow Boy territory, for this is the ancestral home of the peoples now known as the Lenape or Delaware. The tale of Snow Boy is unique to them.
According to the story, Snow Boy’s mother was very young when he was born, and her child’s paternity was a mystery. When other children upset him, the little boy had the habit of putting their fingers in his mouth and sucking them until they turned black from frostbite. By his own account, his name was “Snow and Ice.”
Then, one day in early spring, Snow Boy announced to his fellow villagers that he had to be moving on. Though he never named his father, he said he had been sent from the sky in order to show his mother’s people how to track both game and enemies. When the winter came, he told them, he would return in the form of the falling snowflakes.
Down by the river, he asked to be placed on an ice floe. The people obliged him, placing beside him a birch bark container full of kahamakun (see below) and off he went. He returns every year, just as promised. Lenape Indians living in Oklahoma re-enacted this ritual into the twentieth century, though presumably with smaller chunks of ice. Snow Boy never again appeared to his people as a human child, but he was still given his portion of kahamakun and bid a fond farewell.
Kahamakun is parched, or dried, white corn that has been toasted over the embers of a fire or in a cast iron skillet. The corn is then pounded, sifted and mixed with maple sugar. This was the favorite snack of hunters on the go because it was easy to carry and packed with carbohydrates. Because the corn had already been toasted, it could be prepared with either hot or cold water. That way, the hunters could eat quickly, devoting all their energy and attention to tracking the deer over the white blanket Snow Boy had laid upon the ground.
Resources
Bierhorst, John, ed. The White Deer and Other Stories Told by the Lenape. New York: William Morrow, 1995.
Harrington, M. R. The Indians of New Jersey: Dickon among the Lenapes. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966.
Haviland, Virginia. Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Russia. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
Hearn, Lafcadio. Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. New York: Dover, 1968.
Seiki, Keigo, ed., translated by Richard J. Adams. Folktales of Japan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Smith, Richard Gordon. Ancient Tales and Folklore of Japan. London: A & C Black, 1
908.
Zvorykin, Boris. The Firebird and Other Russian Fairy Tales. New York: The Viking Press, 1978.
When not concocting recipes, Linda Raedisch writes about holidays, obscure traditions, and witches of all sorts. She continues to live in northern New Jersey, despite the long winters.
Illustrator: Bri Hermanson
Being the Change
Tess Whitehurst
The year 2012 is finally here, and it’s lived up to its promise of marking an uncommonly interesting moment in the history of our species. To many of us, it appears that we’re at a critical juncture, which may very soon culminate in one of two main outcomes: we humans might destroy or decimate ourselves by blowing ourselves up or making our environment unlivable, or we might find a way to harmoniously evolve into a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with our planet and each other.
You must be the
change you want to
see in the world. —Mahatma Gandhi
While it remains to be seen whether or not this big change is true, it is nonetheless significant that so many people, regardless of their spiritual and/or scientific persuasion, have a strong feeling that it is. Furthermore, no matter what the future may or may not hold, moving toward greater harmony is never a bad thing, and there has never been a better time for it than now.
As shapers of reality, our role during this time is extremely vital: our thoughts, words, rituals, and visualizations, when directed toward universal healing and harmonization, have the potential to be a precious contribution to the future of the human race, wildlife, and the environment as we know it. In addition to our work in the ethereal or spiritual realm, working in the physical realm—as activists, disseminators of information, artists, healers, teachers, volunteers, etc.—can fortify our efforts, empower our intentions, and generally help heal the world in a concrete, tangible way. And, as we know from the Law of Returns, each of our positive intentions and generous actions will return to us multiplied, so our global healing efforts will also allow us to steep ourselves in positivity, harmony, and good fortune.