{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "european-folk-apotropaic",
 "type": "tradition",
 "names": {
  "name": "European folk apotropaic craft",
  "said": "ap-oh-TROH-pay-ik, from Greek apotrepo, 'to turn away'",
  "aliases": [
   "European protective folk practice",
   "household charms of Europe",
   "cold-iron and threshold craft"
  ]
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "The label is Greek — apotrepo, 'to turn away' — and it is a scholar's word, not a carrier's. English speakers inside the practice said ward, charm, luck.",
  "note": "Nobody nailing a horseshoe to a barn in Somerset called it apotropaic. The word arrives with the collectors in the 1890s and is applied backwards.",
  "tier": "inference"
 },
 "region": [
  "britain-ireland",
  "western-europe",
  "rome-italy",
  "iberia",
  "nordic",
  "balkans",
  "baltic-slavic"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "GB",
  "IE",
  "IT",
  "ES",
  "DE",
  "BG",
  "DK",
  "LT",
  "EE",
  "RU"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "era": "modern",
  "status": "living",
  "restricted": "open",
  "language": "many",
  "hemisphere": [
   "N",
   "E",
   "W"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Protective objects made and kept by European households outside the church's list: iron over a door, a bottle in a hearth, a shoe in a wall, rowan bound with red thread, a cross of rushes in the rafters, a bead against a look. No priesthood, no manual, no initiation. The maker is whoever needs the thing — a farmer, a mother, a blacksmith, a child gathering rushes on 31 January — and most of it is made at home from what the house already holds.",
  "story": "Start at the threshold, because the tradition does. Doorways and windows were held to be where harm gets in, and the answer went on them: grotesque faces cut over oven and kiln doors, gargoyles and sheela na gigs and hunky punks on churches and castles, a horseshoe nailed above a door, an iron knife buried under the entrance, a lantern cut from a turnip or a swede at Samhain. Everything else in this record is a variation on a guarded opening.\n\nIron carries most of the load. Cold iron is recorded across Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia as repelling, containing or harming ghosts, fairies and witches — hence the horseshoe on the door, hence the iron fence round a graveyard, said to hold the dead in rather than keep anything out. The horseshoe is where the tradition's internal disagreements become visible. Points up so the luck does not fall out; points down so it pours onto whoever stands beneath; in some tellings either is fine so long as the shoe was used, was found rather than bought, and can be touched. Where luck attaches to the owner and not the hanger, a stolen or borrowed shoe carries it back to the owner. One reputed origin is the story of St Dunstan, a blacksmith who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 959, nailing a shoe to the Devil's hoof and removing it only on a promise never to enter a house with one over the door.\n\nThe calendar does the rest. On 31 January Irish families gathered rushes; that night the head of the household supervised the weaving of Brigid's crosses; on 1 February they went up in the dwelling, the outhouses and the stables, and a year later they were taken down and burnt or buried, burial preferred because of Brigid's link to agriculture. The practice is first attested in the 17th century and was in decline by the 20th, partly because house renovations left nowhere to hang them. That is an unusually complete account of a folk object: a start date, a decline, and a building-trade reason for it.\n\n*Inference —* the thing that makes this a tradition rather than a pile of customs is the absence of a gate. Every other tradition in this atlas restricts something — a script, a lineage, an initiation, a clan. This one's objects are made by the person who needs them, from rushes, rowan, a worn shoe, a bottle from the kitchen, a stone with a hole in it. That is why its evidence is so lopsided: what survives is what got walled in or thrown down a well, and what was said over it was almost never written.\n\nIt was assembled as a subject late, and by three men buying. Frederick Elworthy published The Evil Eye in 1895 and Horns of Honour in 1900, buying in Spain and Italy as he wrote. Siegfried Seligmann, a German ophthalmologist, put out the two volumes of Der böse Blick und Verwandtes in 1910 and gathered more than 1,500 amulets doing it. Edward Lovett, a bank cashier in the City of London, collected what Londoners were carrying in their pockets — a mole's foot, a dried frog, a blue bead, a caul — and published Magic in Modern London in 1925. *Inference —* the shape of every museum case of European charms follows the shape of those three men's buying, and so, to a degree this atlas cannot measure, does the shape of this record.",
  "how": "Made at home, from the house's own materials, usually at a fixed point in the year or at a moment of threat. Rushes woven on the eve of a feast; rowan cut and bound with red thread; a bottle filled and put under the hearth when the house was built or when somebody suspected a neighbour; a worn shoe pushed into a chimney breast during building work; a horseshoe found in a lane and nailed up. Renewal is annual where the object is vegetable and never where it is iron. Retirement is by fire or by burial, and the choice between them is itself traditional — Irish practice preferred burying a year-old Brigid's cross to burning it.",
  "today": "Alive and mostly unremarked. Horseshoes still go over doors, four-leaf clovers are still looked for, amber necklaces are still sold for teething in Europe and warned against by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the FDA, and Bulgarian martenitsi still go up on 1 March. The objects have largely left the farm for the souvenir shelf, and workshops like those on Via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples supply both at once. Whether a cornicello bought in a Naples lane by a visitor is the same object as one worn by the seller is a live argument with named people on both sides, and this atlas reports it on the object records rather than settling it here."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "Late medieval to the present",
  "from_year": 1308,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "1308 to now, on dated objects",
  "method": "excavated",
  "circa": false,
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-concealed-shoes",
  "note": "1308 is the earliest dated object any European record in this atlas carries — the shoes behind choir stalls installed at Winchester Cathedral that year. It is a floor, not an origin: the practice is plainly older, and Europe's ancient layer is filed under greco-roman-apotropaic rather than here. Written attestation clusters much later — St Brigid's crosses first attested in the 17th century, witch bottles from the 16th, hex signs from the early 19th."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "door-piece",
  "materials": [
   "iron",
   "wood",
   "thread",
   "glass",
   "herb",
   "amber",
   "leather",
   "cloth",
   "silver"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "door",
   "lintel",
   "hearth",
   "wall",
   "roof",
   "neck",
   "pocket",
   "cradle",
   "foundation"
  ],
  "made_by": "anybody. This is the tradition's defining fact and the reason it has no restricted block: the sources describe householders, farmers, blacksmiths and children making these things, and name no gate.",
  "colour": [
   "red",
   "iron-grey",
   "silver"
  ],
  "single_use": false,
  "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
  "note": "There is no single object. Form and materials here are the commonest cases across the European records in this atlas."
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "witchcraft",
   "who": "English and Irish households, per the cited survey — grotesque faces cut on churches and castles to frighten off witches, rowan chosen for a chimney post or mantel to discourage it, an iron knife buried under a threshold to keep witches out",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "spirits",
   "who": "the cold-iron rule, recorded across Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia: iron repels, contains or harms ghosts, fairies and witches",
   "source": "s:wp-iron-in-folklore",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "fire",
   "who": "Irish households at Imbolc — a Brigid's cross hung in the rafters to bring the saint's blessing and protection for the rest of the year",
   "source": "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "Irish households at Samhain, who fixed a 'parshell' of sticks and straw over the doorway against bad luck, illness and witchcraft",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "evil-eye",
   "who": "carriers across the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Eastern Europe; Frederick Elworthy assembled the European half of it into one subject in 1895",
   "source": "s:wp-evil-eye",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "child-harm",
   "who": "European households, for whom an amber necklace is a traditional remedy for colic or teething pain — the American Academy of Pediatrics and the FDA have warned strongly against them as a choking and strangulation hazard",
   "source": "s:wp-amber",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "livestock",
   "who": "Irish families, who mounted the crosses in outhouses and stables as well as in the dwelling",
   "source": "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "holdings": [
  {
   "museum": "pitt-rivers",
   "what": "the English amulet cases, built largely on Edward Lovett's street collecting",
   "source": "s:web-prm-amulets-guide"
  },
  {
   "museum": "wellcome",
   "what": "Lovett material in the Wellcome collection",
   "source": "s:wp-wellcome-collection"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "iron",
   "as": "the tradition's one near-universal rule: cold iron turns the thing away, and a horseshoe is the cheapest piece of it a house could get",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "horseshoe",
   "as": "its most-copied object, and the one whose own carriers argue about which way up it goes",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "witch-bottle",
   "as": "its best-documented recipe, and the only one it writes down",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "concealed-shoe",
   "as": "its most thoroughly counted object — a worn shoe walled into a chimney or a roof, by the thousand, and never explained in writing by anyone who did it",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "brigids-cross",
   "as": "the calendar half of it: rushes gathered on 31 January, woven that night, hung on 1 February, taken down and burnt or buried a year later",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "hagstone",
   "as": "the object that shows what the tradition costs — a stone with a hole, found not bought, made by nobody",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "rowan-cross",
   "as": "its clearest case of a plant used the way iron is used, bound with red thread and kept at a door",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "caul",
   "as": "its one charm nobody can choose to acquire, and the one with a documented resale market",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "catholic-sacramentals",
   "as": "the neighbouring tradition, which this one has spent a thousand years borrowing from and being disowned by; a Brigid's cross sits on the line",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "greco-roman-apotropaic",
   "as": "the ancient layer underneath, which supplied the word and some of the shapes and none of the households",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "to": "frederick-elworthy",
   "as": "the man who made this a single subject in English, in 1895, by buying the objects while he wrote about them",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "edward-lovett",
   "as": "the collector who proved it was still alive, by taking a mole's foot and a blue bead off London streets in the 1900s rather than reading about the countryside",
   "rel": "person"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Apotropaic magic — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotropaic_magic"
  },
  {
   "label": "Iron in folklore — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_in_folklore"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
  "s:wp-iron-in-folklore",
  "s:wp-horseshoe",
  "s:wp-concealed-shoes",
  "s:wp-witch-bottle",
  "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
  "s:wp-rowan",
  "s:wp-corn-dolly",
  "s:wp-cimaruta",
  "s:wp-cornicello",
  "s:wp-hex-sign",
  "s:wp-amber",
  "s:wp-four-leaf-clover",
  "s:wp-martenitsa",
  "s:web-unesco-march-1",
  "s:wp-via-san-gregorio-armeno",
  "s:wp-evil-eye",
  "s:wp-frederick-thomas-elworthy",
  "s:wp-edward-lovett",
  "s:web-siegfried-seligmann-dewiki",
  "s:wp-pitt-rivers-museum",
  "s:web-prm-amulets-guide",
  "s:wp-wellcome-collection",
  "s:wp-british-folklore"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic"
  },
  "fields": {
   "etymology": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "the point that the word is the collectors' and not the carriers' is this project's, reasoned from the dates of the sources"
   },
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
    "note": "two stretches are marked inference where they appear: the argument about the missing gate, and the point about collector-shaped evidence"
   },
   "text.today": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-amber",
    "note": "the present-tense claims here are each carried by a named source — amber and the FDA warning, the martenitsa date, the Naples workshops; no market survey stands behind the word 'unremarked', which is this project's"
   },
   "dating": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-concealed-shoes",
    "note": "the start is the earliest dated object in this atlas's European records, stated as a floor in the note"
   },
   "object": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "no single object; the fields are the commonest cases across the European records, not a published composite"
   },
   "countries": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "note": "each is named in a source read here: Britain and Ireland throughout, Italy for the cimaruta and cornicello, Spain for Elworthy's buying, Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia for the horseshoe, Bulgaria for the martenitsa, Germany for Seligmann's survey, Russia for the ladanka"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Horseshoe on a door.jpg",
  "File:Brigid's cross.jpg",
  "File:Witch bottle Museum of London.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "blurb": "Protective objects made and kept by European households outside the church's list: iron over a door, a bottle in a hearth, a shoe in a wall, rowan bound with red thread, a cross of rushes in the rafters, a bead against…",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "britain-ireland",
   "name": "Britain and Ireland",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "western-europe",
   "name": "Western Europe",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "rome-italy",
   "name": "Rome and Italy",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "iberia",
   "name": "Iberia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "nordic",
   "name": "Scandinavia and the North",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "balkans",
   "name": "The Balkans",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "baltic-slavic",
   "name": "The Baltic and the Slavic lands",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "iron",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Iron",
   "as": "the tradition's one near-universal rule: cold iron turns the thing away, and a horseshoe is the cheapest piece of it a house could get",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "horseshoe",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Horseshoe",
   "as": "its most-copied object, and the one whose own carriers argue about which way up it goes",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "witch-bottle",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Witch bottle",
   "as": "its best-documented recipe, and the only one it writes down",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "concealed-shoe",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Concealed shoe",
   "as": "its most thoroughly counted object — a worn shoe walled into a chimney or a roof, by the thousand, and never explained in writing by anyone who did it",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "brigids-cross",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Brigid's cross",
   "as": "the calendar half of it: rushes gathered on 31 January, woven that night, hung on 1 February, taken down and burnt or buried a year later",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "hagstone",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Hagstone",
   "as": "the object that shows what the tradition costs — a stone with a hole, found not bought, made by nobody",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "rowan-cross",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Rowan cross",
   "as": "its clearest case of a plant used the way iron is used, bound with red thread and kept at a door",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "caul",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Caul",
   "as": "its one charm nobody can choose to acquire, and the one with a documented resale market",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "to": "catholic-sacramentals",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Catholic sacramentals",
   "as": "the neighbouring tradition, which this one has spent a thousand years borrowing from and being disowned by; a Brigid's cross sits on the line",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "greco-roman-apotropaic",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Greek and Roman protective magic",
   "as": "the ancient layer underneath, which supplied the word and some of the shapes and none of the households",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "to": "frederick-elworthy",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Frederick Thomas Elworthy",
   "as": "the man who made this a single subject in English, in 1895, by buying the objects while he wrote about them",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "edward-lovett",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Edward Lovett",
   "as": "the collector who proved it was still alive, by taking a mole's foot and a blue bead off London streets in the 1900s rather than reading about the countryside",
   "rel": "person"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Apotropaic magic",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotropaic_magic",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-iron-in-folklore",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Iron in folklore",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_in_folklore",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-horseshoe",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Horseshoe",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-concealed-shoes",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Concealed shoes",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_shoes",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-witch-bottle",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Witch bottle",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_bottle",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Brigid's cross",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid%27s_cross",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-rowan",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Rowan",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-corn-dolly",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Corn dolly",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_dolly",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-cimaruta",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Cimaruta",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimaruta",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-cornicello",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Cornicello",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornicello",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-hex-sign",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Hex sign",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_sign",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-amber",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Amber",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-four-leaf-clover",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Four-leaf clover",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-leaf_clover",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-martenitsa",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Martenitsa",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martenitsa",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-unesco-march-1",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Cultural practices associated to the 1st of March",
   "publisher": "UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage",
   "url": "https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/cultural-practices-associated-to-the-1st-of-march-01287",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-via-san-gregorio-armeno",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Via San Gregorio Armeno",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_San_Gregorio_Armeno",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-evil-eye",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Evil eye",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_eye",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-frederick-thomas-elworthy",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Frederick Thomas Elworthy",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Thomas_Elworthy",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-edward-lovett",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Edward Lovett",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lovett",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-siegfried-seligmann-dewiki",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Siegfried Seligmann (German Wikipedia)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Seligmann",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-pitt-rivers-museum",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Pitt Rivers Museum",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitt_Rivers_Museum",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-prm-amulets-guide",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Amulets and Charms Introductory Guide",
   "publisher": "Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford",
   "url": "https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/amulets/index.php/introductory-guide/index.html",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-wellcome-collection",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Wellcome Collection",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellcome_Collection",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-british-folklore",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "British folklore",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_folklore",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "note": "two stretches are marked inference where they appear: the argument about the missing gate, and the point about collector-shaped evidence"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-amber",
   "note": "the present-tense claims here are each carried by a named source — amber and the FDA warning, the martenitsa date, the Naples workshops; no market survey stands behind the word 'unremarked', which is this project's"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "note": "the point that the word is the collectors' and not the carriers' is this project's, reasoned from the dates of the sources"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-concealed-shoes",
   "note": "the start is the earliest dated object in this atlas's European records, stated as a floor in the note"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "note": "no single object; the fields are the commonest cases across the European records, not a published composite"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "witchcraft",
   "label": "Another person's sorcery",
   "who": "English and Irish households, per the cited survey — grotesque faces cut on churches and castles to frighten off witches, rowan chosen for a chimney post or mantel to discourage it, an iron knife buried under a threshold to keep witches out",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "spirits",
   "label": "Ghosts and hungry spirits",
   "who": "the cold-iron rule, recorded across Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia: iron repels, contains or harms ghosts, fairies and witches",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-iron-in-folklore",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "fire",
   "label": "Fire",
   "who": "Irish households at Imbolc — a Brigid's cross hung in the rafters to bring the saint's blessing and protection for the rest of the year",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "Irish households at Samhain, who fixed a 'parshell' of sticks and straw over the doorway against bad luck, illness and witchcraft",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-apotropaic-magic",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "evil-eye",
   "label": "The evil eye",
   "gloss": "harm carried by a look, often an admiring one",
   "who": "carriers across the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Eastern Europe; Frederick Elworthy assembled the European half of it into one subject in 1895",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-evil-eye",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "child-harm",
   "label": "Harm to a child",
   "gloss": "harm to an infant or a small child; common across the atlas, though not the largest class in it — see /story/most-of-them-are-for-children/",
   "who": "European households, for whom an amber necklace is a traditional remedy for colic or teething pain — the American Academy of Pediatrics and the FDA have warned strongly against them as a choking and strangulation hazard",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-amber",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "livestock",
   "label": "Harm to livestock",
   "who": "Irish families, who mounted the crosses in outhouses and stables as well as in the dwelling",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "iron",
   "label": "Iron",
   "kind": "metal",
   "note": "iron itself is the charm in a great many places"
  },
  {
   "key": "wood",
   "label": "Wood",
   "kind": "plant"
  },
  {
   "key": "thread",
   "label": "Thread and cord",
   "kind": "textile",
   "note": "red thread runs from the Mediterranean to Mongolia"
  },
  {
   "key": "glass",
   "label": "Glass",
   "kind": "fired"
  },
  {
   "key": "herb",
   "label": "Herb and root",
   "kind": "plant"
  },
  {
   "key": "amber",
   "label": "Amber",
   "kind": "organic"
  },
  {
   "key": "leather",
   "label": "Leather and hide",
   "kind": "organic"
  },
  {
   "key": "cloth",
   "label": "Cloth",
   "kind": "textile"
  },
  {
   "key": "silver",
   "label": "Silver",
   "kind": "metal"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "door",
   "label": "At the door",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "lintel",
   "label": "Above the lintel",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "hearth",
   "label": "At the hearth",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "wall",
   "label": "On a wall",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "roof",
   "label": "On the roof",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  },
  {
   "key": "pocket",
   "label": "In a pocket or a bag",
   "group": "carried"
  },
  {
   "key": "cradle",
   "label": "On a cradle",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "foundation",
   "label": "In the foundations",
   "group": "placed"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "door-piece",
  "label": "Door or lintel piece"
 },
 "holding_facts": [
  {
   "key": "pitt-rivers",
   "label": "The Pitt Rivers Museum",
   "city": "Oxford",
   "country": "GB",
   "url": "",
   "what": "the English amulet cases, built largely on Edward Lovett's street collecting",
   "accession": "",
   "source": "s:web-prm-amulets-guide"
  },
  {
   "key": "wellcome",
   "label": "Wellcome Collection",
   "city": "London",
   "country": "GB",
   "url": "",
   "open": true,
   "what": "Lovett material in the Wellcome collection",
   "accession": "",
   "source": "s:wp-wellcome-collection"
  }
 ],
 "span": "1308 CE to now",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "GB",
   "name": "United Kingdom"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IE",
   "name": "Ireland"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IT",
   "name": "Italy"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ES",
   "name": "Spain"
  },
  {
   "iso": "DE",
   "name": "Germany"
  },
  {
   "iso": "BG",
   "name": "Bulgaria"
  },
  {
   "iso": "DK",
   "name": "Denmark"
  },
  {
   "iso": "LT",
   "name": "Lithuania"
  },
  {
   "iso": "EE",
   "name": "Estonia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "RU",
   "name": "Russia"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "brigids-cross",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Brigid's cross",
   "as": "the tradition it sits inside, and the clearest case of a Christian saint's day carrying an older calendar date",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "caul",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Caul",
   "as": "the tradition it belongs to, and its one charm nobody can choose to acquire",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "concealed-shoe",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Concealed shoe",
   "as": "the tradition it belongs to, and its most thoroughly counted object",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "corn-dolly",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Corn dolly",
   "as": "the tradition it belongs to, and its clearest case of an object made from the thing it is meant to protect",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "four-leaf-clover",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Four-leaf clover",
   "as": "the tradition it came out of, and its least protective object",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "hagstone",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Hagstone",
   "as": "the tradition this belongs to, and one of its few objects that costs nothing and is made by nobody",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "hex-sign",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Hex sign",
   "as": "the tradition the emigrants brought, and the one this object may or may not still belong to — that is the argument",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "horseshoe",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Horseshoe",
   "as": "the tradition it belongs to, and its most-copied object",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "martenitsa",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Martenitsa",
   "as": "the tradition it sits in, at its most calendar-bound",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "mjolnir-pendant",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Mjölnir pendant",
   "as": "the wider northern European habit of wearing metal against harm that this pendant is the oldest dated member of in Scandinavia",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "rabbits-foot",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Rabbit's foot",
   "as": "the tradition it gets shelved under, which this record's sources do not support for its American form",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "rowan-cross",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Rowan cross",
   "as": "the tradition it belongs to, and its clearest case of a plant used as a metal would be",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "witch-bottle",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Witch bottle",
   "as": "the tradition it belongs to, and the object of that tradition with the best-documented recipe",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "catholic-sacramentals",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Catholic sacramentals",
   "as": "the neighbouring tradition, which this one has spent a thousand years defining itself against and borrowing from",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "palindrome-word",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The word that reads both ways",
   "as": "the tradition that carried the Sator square from a Pompeian gymnasium wall to a Pennsylvania farmhouse",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "serpent",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The serpent",
   "as": "the tradition the German house snake and the Neapolitan silver snake both belong to",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "amber",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Amber",
   "as": "the tradition the teething necklace belongs to, and still sells into",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "iron",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Iron",
   "as": "the tradition where cold iron is a rule rather than an object",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "burying",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Burying",
   "as": "the tradition that filled English hearths and thresholds with this material",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "hanging-at-door",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Hanging at the door",
   "as": "the tradition that put iron over the doors of houses, barns and stables",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "pitt-rivers-charms",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "The amulet and charm cases, Pitt Rivers Museum",
   "as": "the tradition these cases document most densely, because Lovett walked London",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "san-gregorio-armeno",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Via San Gregorio Armeno",
   "as": "the tradition these workshops supply",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "wellcome-lovett",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "The Lovett charms at Wellcome Collection",
   "as": "the living tradition he recorded on the street while other collectors read about its past",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "edward-lovett",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Edward Lovett",
   "as": "the living tradition he recorded on the street while other collectors were reading about its past",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "frederick-elworthy",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Frederick Thomas Elworthy",
   "as": "the tradition his two books first assembled as a single subject in English",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "siegfried-seligmann",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Siegfried Seligmann",
   "as": "the tradition his survey covers most densely, though he reached well past Europe",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "pitt-rivers-museum",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "The Pitt Rivers Museum",
   "as": "the tradition its English cases document most densely, thanks to Lovett",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "apotropaic-word",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "apotropaic",
   "as": "the practices that never used the word and get filed under it anyway",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "ward-word",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "ward",
   "as": "the tradition that thinks in this word rather than in the Greek one",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "lovett-collection",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "The Lovett collection",
   "as": "the tradition he was documenting, at the point where it was moving from countryside to city",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-charm-in-the-wall",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The charm in the wall",
   "as": "the tradition both British classes belong to",
   "rel": "tradition"
  }
 ]
}