# Amulet Atlas

> A structured atlas of amulets, charms and talismans worldwide: the objects, the traditions they belong to, the signs cut into them, the materials, the practices that make and retire them, plus places, people, organizations and vocabulary. One JSON record per node. Every field carries a provenance tier (cited / harvested / tradition / inference / field). Records say what their neighbours are to them, in both directions. Claims about what a charm does are always attributed to a named claimant and are never asserted or denied by this project.

Records are CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Country outlines are Natural Earth, public domain. Pictures carry their own licences, stated per file. Scope and gaps: https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/coverage.json

Note for machines: where a tradition restricts what may be published, the record carries a `restricted` block and the detail is absent by design. Absence there is a deliberate editorial act, not missing data to be filled in from elsewhere.

## Data
- [All records, JSON](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/nodes.json)
- [Directory index, JSON](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/index.json)
- [The map table, one row per country](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/atlas.json)
- [The timeline table, astronomical years](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/timeline.json)
- [What each charm is said to stop, with claimants](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/against.json)
- [Materials, forms and where on the body](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/matter.json)
- [Places](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/places.json) · [Kin edges](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/kin.json)
- [JSONL](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/nodes.jsonl) · [CSV](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/nodes.csv)
- [Record schema](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/schema/node.schema.json)
- [Vocabularies](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/vocab/against.json)
- [Sources registry](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/api/sources.json)
- [Full text of every record](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/llms-full.txt)

## Amulets
- [Agadez cross](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/tuareg-cross/): A cast pendant, usually silver, with a ring or loop at the top and a flared, spreading body below — sometimes a cross, more often a shape between a cross and a shield.
- [Agnus Dei](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/agnus-dei/): A disc of wax, round or oval, with a lamb pressed into one face. The lamb carries a cross or a flag; the reverse usually takes a saint, or the name and arms of the reigning pope.
- [Akua'ba](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/akuaba-figure/): A small wooden figure with a large flat disc for a head, a ringed neck and a short body, usually with arms out to the sides.
- [Ankh amulet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ankh-amulet/): A T with a loop on top, the loop shaped like a droplet. As an amulet it is small and strung at the neck; the earliest ones are gold or electrum, the alloy of gold and silver, and later ones are mostly faience — quartz…
- [Anting-anting](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/anting-anting/): Most often a flat pendant on a necklace — round, triangular or cross-shaped, in gold-coloured metal, its face crowded with figures and Latin words. But the class is wider than the pendant.
- [Azabache](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/azabache/): A piece of jet — fossil wood, black, warm to the touch, light in the hand — cut either as a small clenched fist with the thumb pushed between the first two fingers, or as a faceted black bead.
- [Bagua mirror](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/bagua-mirror/): An octagonal or circular plaque with the eight trigrams set around a mirror at its centre. The mirror is flat, convex or concave, and which one it is decides what the object claims to do.
- [Bes amulet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/bes-amulet/): A squat bearded figure with a lion's face, a feathered crown, a protruding tongue and bandy legs, shown full-face when every other Egyptian god is shown in profile.
- [Brigid's cross](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/brigids-cross/): A small cross woven from straw or rushes, defined by its material rather than its shape.
- [Brown Scapular](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/brown-scapular/): Two small rectangles of brown wool, a few inches across, joined by two cloth bands. One rectangle sits on the chest, the bands run over the shoulders, the other rectangle hangs down the back.
- [Bujeok](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/bujeok/): A paper talisman drawn by a mudang, the ritual specialist of Korean vernacular religion. The figures on it are built out of Hanja, the Korean forms of Chinese logograms, worked into shapes that are not ordinary writing.
- [Bulla](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/bulla/): A locket on a neckchain: a round hollow pouch with something shut inside it, usually a phallus. What it was made of tracked the family's money — gold or gold foil at the top, lead, leather or cloth further down.
- [Car saint](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/car-saint/): A stamped metal medal clipped to a sun visor or glued to a dashboard, or a miniature statue standing on it, showing a giant wading a river with a child on his shoulder.
- [Caul](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/caul/): A piece of birth membrane that comes away with a newborn and clings to the head and face — usually the thin translucent inner lining, the amnion.
- [Challenge coin](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/challenge-coin/): A struck metal disc the size of a large coin, bearing a unit's insignia or an organization's emblem, carried in a pocket.
- [Chinese charm coin](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/charm-coin/): A cast bronze disc with a hole through it, shaped like a Chinese cash coin and never spendable as one.
- [Cimaruta](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/cimaruta/): A silver sprig of rue with charms on the ends of its branches.
- [Cippus of Horus](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/cippus-of-horus/): A slab of stone carved with the child Horus standing on two crocodiles, gripping snakes and scorpions in his fists, and often an antelope by the horns and a lion by the tail. Rows of hieroglyphs cover the rest of it.
- [Concealed shoe](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/concealed-shoe/): An ordinary worn shoe, walled into a building where nobody will see it: up a chimney, under a floor, above a ceiling, in the roof, beside a door or window frame, occasionally in the foundations.
- [Coptic cross tattoo](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/coptic-cross-tattoo/): A small cross tattooed on the inside of the right wrist. The usual design is the Coptic cross: two bold lines of equal length crossing at right angles, each arm ending in three points — twelve points in all. Often blue.
- [Corn dolly](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/corn-dolly/): A hollow shape plaited from the last sheaf of a harvest: a figure, a knot, a lantern, a crown, a fan, a horseshoe.
- [Cornicello](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/cornicello/): A single twisted horn, a few centimetres long, tapering to a point and pierced at the wide end for a chain. Gold, silver, plastic, bone, terracotta or red coral.
- [Cowrie strand](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/cowrie-strand/): Small sea-snail shells, egg-shaped, glossy, with a long toothed slit down the flat underside. Strung on cord, sewn onto cloth, hung at the neck, or thrown in handfuls.
- [Crystal pendant](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/crystal-pendant/): A cut or tumbled stone hung at the neck, usually in a wire cage or a silver bezel: a six-sided quartz point, a rose quartz lozenge, a lump of amethyst, a polished bead of agate or turquoise.
- [Curse tablet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/curse-tablet/): A very thin sheet of lead with tiny letters scratched into it, then rolled, folded, or pierced through with a nail.
- [Daruma](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/daruma/): A hollow papier-mâché figure, round, weighted at the base so it rights itself when knocked over, usually red, with a bearded scowling face and two oversized white eyes left blank. Sold with no pupils.
- [Djed pillar](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/djed-pillar/): A column with four flat bars stacked across its top, like a capital with too many collars. As an amulet it is small and hung at the neck; the Book of the Dead specifies a gold one for a mummy.
- [Dol hareubang](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/dolhareubang/): A standing figure cut from Jeju's volcanic rock, wearing a round hat, with large eyes, a closed mouth, and one shoulder set higher than the other.
- [Dreamcatcher](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/dreamcatcher/): A willow hoop with a net woven across it in sinew or plant cordage, tied off at a centre point, sometimes with feathers or beads added. Hung over a cradleboard or a bed.
- [Dzi bead](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/dzi-bead/): A tube of agate, brown to black, carrying pale ivory-white patterns that were etched into the stone rather than cut: circles, ovals, squares, waves, zigzags, stripes, lines, diamonds, dots.
- [Ekeko](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ekeko/): A short, moustached man in Andean dress, above all a poncho, loaded to the shoulders with everything a household could want: bags and baskets of grain, food, pots, tools, banknotes.
- [Ethiopian talismanic scroll](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ethiopian-magic-scroll/): A long strip of parchment — goat or sheep hide, soaked, dried, stretched, scraped and washed until it takes ink — painted with prayers in Ge'ez and with talismanic drawings, then rolled.
- [Evil eye bracelet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/evil-eye-bracelet/): One or more blue-and-white eye beads on an elastic cord, a chain or a red string, sized for a wrist.
- [Exam charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/exam-charm/): Four different objects doing one job. A brocade pouch a few centimetres long, the shrine's name woven into it, a paper or wooden prayer sealed inside and not to be opened.
- [Fascinum](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/fascinum/): A phallus, worn. Usually cast in bronze, often winged, pierced or looped for a cord; also cut as finger rings, carved in relief on walls, made into lamps and into wind chimes called tintinnabula.
- [Figa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/figa/): A closed fist with the thumb pushed up between the index and middle fingers, carved small and drilled for a cord. In Asturias it is cut from jet; elsewhere from coral, silver, gold, bone or moulded resin.
- [Four-leaf clover](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/four-leaf-clover/): A clover leaf with four leaflets instead of three, usually white clover, Trifolium repens. It is a mutation, not a species. Found ones are pressed flat in a book or sealed in plastic; grown ones are sold the same way.
- [Fu talisman](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/fu-talisman/): A sheet — usually paper, sometimes cloth, sometimes a coin's face — written over in a script nobody is meant to read.
- [Game-day charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/game-day-charm/): Whatever was in the room the last time it went well. A pair of borrowed baseball shoes. A round rock picked up off a field. A uniform number. A cap turned inside out and worn backwards.
- [Gau](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/gau-box/): A metal box worn shut. Himalayan Art Resources calls the type a portable shrine, generally made from metal worked in repoussé — hammered from the back so the design stands out at the front.
- [Gorgoneion](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/gorgoneion/): A face, not a body: wild eyes, tusks, tongue out, snakes for hair.
- [Gris-gris](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/gris-gris/): A small cloth pouch, worn on the body, usually at the neck. Inside: verses of the Qur'an written on pieces of paper, herbs, and a set number of small objects.
- [Hagstone](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/hagstone/): A stone with a hole worn right through it by water, usually flint, usually glassy. Nobody makes one: a hagstone is found, on a beach or in a field, and a stone holed by human hand does not count.
- [Hamsa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/hamsa/): An open palm, usually made symmetrical so it has a thumb on both sides, in silver more often than anything else, historically also carved in jet. An eye is often set in the palm.
- [Heart scarab](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/heart-scarab/): An oval beetle, larger and heavier than the scarabs of the living, cut from a dark green or black stone — green jasper, serpentine, basalt — and usually not drilled for suspension.
- [Hei matau](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/hei-matau/): A heavily stylised fish hook, carved in bone or pounamu — the Māori term for the hard green stones, chiefly nephrite jade, found only in the South Island — and worn at the neck on a cord.
- [Hei-tiki](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/hei-tiki/): A pendant of a human figure, head tilted, hands on thigh and chest or both on the thighs, carved from pounamu and suspended on a plaited cord fastened with a loop and toggle.
- [Hex sign](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/hex-sign/): A painted disc on the side of a barn: usually a star inside a circular border, in bright colour on white.
- [Hirz](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/hirz-pouch/): A small case on a chain, rectangular or cylindrical, holding verses of the Qur'an written on paper inside. Usually silver.
- [Holy rider pendant](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/holy-rider-pendant/): A small disc or pendant, bronze on the early Byzantine examples and lead on the medieval ones.
- [Horseshoe](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/horseshoe/): A U of iron, drilled with nail holes, that spent its first life nailed to a hoof. As a charm it is the used one: worn thin at the toe, still carrying nail stubs, fixed over a doorway.
- [Illa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/illa/): A small carved animal, usually a llama or alpaca, cut from hard stone — the Dallas Museum of Art's Inca example is green and black — with a cylindrical hole sunk into the back between the shoulders. It sits in the hand.
- [Incantation bowl](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/incantation-bowl/): A plain earthenware bowl with writing inside it. The text is inked in a spiral that starts at the rim and winds inward to the centre, most often in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, sometimes Mandaic, Syriac, Arabic or…
- [Inuit amulet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/inuit-amulet/): Small worked or unworked pieces of animal and bird — bone, claw, tooth, skin, feather — sewn to clothing or carried, one amulet to one spirit. There is no single form.
- [Jimat](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/jimat/): A class rather than a shape. Jimat covers any object or piece of writing hung on a body, a vehicle or a building to keep its owner from harm.
- [Kamea](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/kamea/): A written amulet: a small sheet of parchment, paper or thin metal, inscribed in Hebrew with divine and angelic names, sometimes laid out as a grid of letters or numbers, then folded or rolled and carried, hung at a bed…
- [Keris pusaka](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/keris-pusaka/): An asymmetrical dagger in three parts: blade (bilah), hilt (hulu) and sheath (warangka).
- [Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ketef-hinnom-scrolls/): Two sheets of silver, tiny, rolled tight, each scratched with a passage of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers.
- [Ladanka](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ladanka/): A small pouch or a small hinged case hung at the neck on the same cord or chain as a baptismal cross. Cloth for the old kind, stamped or cast metal for the kind sold now, often with an icon on the lid.
- [Lamashtu plaque](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/lamashtu-plaque/): A small plaque, pierced or looped so it can hang, carrying the figure of the demon it is aimed at.
- [Lung ta prayer flag](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/lungta-flag/): A square or oblong of coloured cloth, printed from a woodblock, sewn along its top edge to a long string with others.
- [Lunula](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/lunula/): A crescent moon on a chain, usually gold, worn by girls in ancient Rome.
- [Magical gem](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/magical-gem/): A cut stone between one and three centimetres across, engraved on both faces and often round the edge as well.
- [Maneki-neko](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/maneki-neko/): A seated cat, one forepaw raised palm-down in a beckoning fold, usually holding an oval koban coin in the other. The classic figure is a calico Japanese Bobtail.
- [Martenitsa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/martenitsa/): Twisted white and red yarn, most often made into two small wool dolls: Pizho, the male one, mostly white; Penda, the female one, mostly red and wearing a skirt.
- [Mezuzah](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/mezuzah/): A strip of parchment, handwritten by a trained scribe in indelible black ink with a quill, carrying Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21.
- [Milagro](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/milagro/): A small flat metal shape of the thing you are praying about — a leg, an eye, a heart, a lung, a kneeling man, a cow, a house, a car.
- [Miraculous Medal](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/miraculous-medal/): An oval stamped medal, worn at the neck on a chain. The front shows a woman standing on a globe, crushing a serpent's head, rays coming from rings on her hands, inside an oval of words that reads "O Mary, conceived…
- [Mjölnir pendant](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/mjolnir-pendant/): A small hammer worn head-down at the throat: short haft, wide splayed head, a suspension loop or ring where the handle should end.
- [Navaratna ring](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/navaratna-ring/): Nine stones set together in gold or silver, one for each of the nine bodies of Hindu astrology, with a ruby at the centre for the Sun.
- [Nazar](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/nazar/): A handmade glass bead: concentric circles, or a teardrop, in dark blue, white, light blue and black, sometimes rimmed in yellow or gold.
- [Nimbu mirchi](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/nimbu-mirchi/): A lime and seven green chillies threaded on a string and hung at a doorstep, over a shop counter or from the back of a vehicle. Nothing is worn and nothing is written. The thing rots in the sun, browns, and is replaced.
- [Nkisi](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/nkisi/): A container with a spirit in it. The container can be a ceramic vessel, a gourd, an animal horn, a shell, a cloth bundle — anything that will hold spiritually charged substances — and it can also be a carved wooden…
- [Ofuda](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ofuda/): A flat talisman issued by a shrine or a temple: a sheet of paper, a thin rectangular plaque in a paper sleeve, or a wooden tablet, carrying the name of the shrine or of the deity enshrined there and stamped with the…
- [Ojo de venado](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ojo-de-venado/): A hard round seed of a Mucuna vine, dark and glossy with a broad black band across it, which is why it reads as an eye at arm's length.
- [Omamori](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/omamori/): A small brocade pouch, a few centimetres tall, drawn shut at the top with a cord and printed with the name of the shrine or temple that issued it.
- [Omikuji](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/omikuji/): A narrow strip of printed paper drawn at random from a box at a shrine or temple, for a small offering.
- [Ongon](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ongon/): Two things under one word. An ongon is a spirit in the shamanic belief of Mongolia — after death, shamans become shamanic souls, ongod — and it is also the made object that stands for that spirit in the physical world…
- [Palad khik](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/palad-khik/): A carved phallus, from a couple of inches to several feet long, in wood, metal, bone, horn or ivory, usually with sacred inscriptions cut into it.
- [Patuá](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/patua/): A small sewn packet, worn at the neck or carried, closed over whatever was put inside it.
- [Pazuzu head](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/pazuzu-head/): A head, cast or carved, with a hole or a loop through the top for a cord. The face is the point: gazelle horns, human ears, a dog's muzzle, bulging eyes, wrinkled cheeks.
- [Phone charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/phone-charm/): A small figure, bead, tassel or brocade pouch on a thin cord, knotted with a lark's head through a hole in a phone or a case.
- [Phra khrueang](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/phra-khrueang/): A small pressed image of the Buddha, a revered monk, a bodhisattva or a deva — a tablet a couple of centimetres across, in plaster, metal, wood or bone, often with ash, a monk's hair or temple relics in the mix.
- [Ping'an fu](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/ping-an-fu/): A sheet of yellow paper inscribed with sacred symbols, folded into a bagua shape or a rectangle and slipped into a red cloth sleeve.
- [Qur'an pendant](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/quran-pendant/): A metal case at the throat with scripture inside it. Sometimes a whole miniature Qur'an, protected by an illuminated metal cover; sometimes a single verse on paper or engraved on the metal itself.
- [Rabbit's foot](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/rabbits-foot/): A rabbit's hind foot, dried, carried in a pocket. Grander ones are capped in metal and hung from a chain; Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography that the boxer John L. Sullivan gave him a gold-mounted one.
- [Red string](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/red-string/): A thin scarlet or crimson thread, usually wool, tied round the wrist as a bracelet or band. That is the whole object.
- [Rowan cross](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/rowan-cross/): Two rowan twigs laid across each other and bound at the crossing with red thread or wool, a few inches across. A variant is a loop rather than a cross: a single withy bent round and tied.
- [Rudraksha](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/rudraksha/): A hard brown seed-stone, ridged from top to bottom, drilled and strung at the throat.
- [Sak yant](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/sak-yant/): A tattoo. Geometric yantra, animals and deities, set about with phrases in Pali, Khmer or Northern Thai, pricked into the skin with a long needle — traditionally a metal rod sharpened to a point, the khem sak.
- [Scarab](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/scarab/): A beetle, carved or moulded, with a flat underside cut as a seal. The back shows the head, the wing case and the legs; the base carries hieroglyphs — a king's name, an official's title, a short prayer, a hunting scene.
- [Senninbari](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/senninbari/): A strip of cloth, usually white, about 15 centimetres wide and 90 to 120 centimetres or more long, carrying a thousand stitches or knots — commonly red, because white and red together were held to be auspicious.
- [St Christopher medal](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/st-christopher-medal/): A stamped metal disc, 15 to 30 mm across, showing a bearded giant wading a river with a staff in one hand and a child on his shoulder. Aluminium, tin, brass, silver and gold all get struck.
- [Sungkhor](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/sungkhor/): A diagram on paper, folded down to a small packet and bound in coloured thread.
- [Ta'wiz](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/taweez/): Writing, folded up and worn. A ta'wiz can be a paper packet in a black pouch, a scroll in a tubular pendant case, letters carved into metal, or a framed dua on a wall.
- [Tabiz](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/tabiz/): A written prayer, folded small and shut inside something. In South Asia the container is usually a flat or tubular metal case on a black cord at the neck or tied to the upper arm; the paper inside carries Qur'anic…
- [Takrut](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/takrut/): A tube. A thin sheet of metal or a strip of palm leaf is inscribed with yant — sacred geometry and Pali phrases — then rolled tight into an elongated scroll and bound with cord, or sealed in a case.
- [Talismanic shirt](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/talismanic-shirt/): A shirt covered in writing. Verses from the Qur'an, the names of God, the names of prophets, or numbers, laid across the cloth in blocks and grids and roundels, sometimes with astrological images or magic squares among…
- [Tama](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/tama-votive/): A small metal plaque, base metal or precious, with an image embossed on it: a heart, an eye, a hand, a leg, a whole kneeling figure, a house, a baby, a ship. A ribbon runs through it.
- [Taweret amulet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/taweret-amulet/): A hippopotamus standing upright on two legs, with a lion's limbs and paws, a Nile crocodile down her back and tail, human breasts and a pregnant belly.
- [Tefillin](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/tefillin/): Two small black leather boxes with long black straps. The arm box goes on the upper non-dominant arm and its strap winds down the forearm, round the hand and round the middle finger; the head box sits between the eyes…
- [Teru teru bōzu](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/teru-teru-bozu/): A small handmade doll of tissue paper or cloth, white, a ball of stuffing for a head with the cloth falling loose below it and a string tied round the neck.
- [Toli](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/toli-mirror/): A metal disc, brass, copper or bronze, ornamented on one face and polished on the other, worn on a shaman's body.
- [Tupilaq](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/tupilaq/): Two different things share this name, and a reader should hold them apart.
- [Tyet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/tyet-knot/): A looped knot with two arms hanging down and a tail below — an ankh whose crossbar has drooped. Cut small and laid in the wrappings, usually on the upper torso.
- [Wedjat eye](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/wedjat-eye/): A stylised human eye with a falcon's cheek-mark curling below it, cut or moulded small enough to string at the throat.
- [Witch bottle](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/witch-bottle/): A stoppered vessel filled with the afflicted person's urine and with sharp iron — pins, needles, nails — then hidden.
- [Worry stone](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/worry-stone/): A smooth polished gemstone, usually an oval with a thumb-sized dish worn into one face, about 3 centimetres across. It is held between index finger and thumb, and the thumb is moved back and forth across the dish.
- [Yantra plate](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/amulet/yantra-plate/): A geometric diagram, drawn on paper, painted, or engraved into a sheet of metal, and usually smaller and less coloured than a mandala.

## Traditions
- [Bakongo nkisi craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/bakongo-nkisi-craft/): The practice, among the Bakongo of the Congo Basin and the Songye of Kasai, of assembling containers that a spirit inhabits. The maker is an nganga: a healer, diviner and mediator.
- [Bujeok craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/korean-bujeok-craft/): Talismans drawn by a mudang, the ritual specialists at the centre of Musok, Korean vernacular religion.
- [Catholic sacramentals](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/catholic-sacramentals/): The class of blessed objects and rites the Catholic Church puts around the sacraments: holy water, blessed candles given out at Candlemas, blessed palms, blessed ashes, blessed salt, a crucifix, a cross necklace, a…
- [Egyptian amulet craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/egyptian-amulet-craft/): The practice of making, wearing and burying small protective objects in ancient Egypt: shapes cut from stone or moulded in faience — quartz paste glazed blue or green in a kiln — pierced and strung, worn in life and…
- [Engimono](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/japanese-engimono/): Objects bought at a shrine, a temple or a fair to bring a named good thing: a brocade pouch for traffic safety, a paper or wooden tablet for the household altar, a red papier-mâché doll with blank eyes, a ceramic cat…
- [Ethiopian scroll craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/ethiopian-scroll-craft/): The making of painted parchment scrolls by dabtaras — unordained clerics of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — for named people, cut to their height, written in Ge'ez, and read aloud to them by someone who can read it.
- [European folk apotropaic craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/european-folk-apotropaic/): 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…
- [Fulu — Taoist talismanic craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/chinese-fu-craft/): Writing that is not meant to be read. Fulu are Taoist talismanic characters — strokes that resemble Chinese characters, often an existing word elongated, with non-character symbols worked in, sometimes two characters…
- [Greek and Roman protective magic](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/greco-roman-apotropaic/): A practice organised around one idea: harm arrives through a look, so the answer is to catch the look. The Greek word for it is apotrépō, to turn away.
- [Illa practice](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/andean-illa-practice/): A practice of making the small thing stand for the large one. Its oldest form is the illa: a carved stone llama or alpaca, palm-sized, with a cylindrical hole sunk into the back between the shoulders — a container, fed…
- [Islamic talismanic craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/islamic-talismanic/): Writing, worn. The tradition makes protective objects out of text — Qur'anic verses, the ninety-nine names of God, names of angels and prophets, pious phrases, invocations — set on paper, parchment, metal, cloth or a…
- [Kavacha — the Hindu armour tradition](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/hindu-kavacha/): A family of practice in which protection is armour, said or worn.
- [Latin American folk Catholic charm practice](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/latin-american-folk-catholic/): Catholic forms in lay hands, worked past the point the clergy sanctions.
- [Mesopotamian household protection](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/mesopotamian-apotropaic/): A craft with four moving parts: a demon with a name, a counter-power with a name, an incantation that addresses the demon directly, and a physical object — a plaque, a cast head, a figurine — placed where the danger…
- [Practical Kabbalah](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/jewish-practical-kabbalah/): The branch of Jewish mysticism that makes things: amulets and incantations built from divine and angelic names, written on parchment or cut into silver, and carried, hung or worn.
- [Taonga Māori](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/maori-taonga/): Treasures with whakapapa. A hei-tiki, a hei matau, an adze reworked into a pendant, a cloak, a carving: Te Papa's own description of taonga Māori covers ancestral carvings, personal ornaments, garments and weaponry…
- [Thai wicha](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/thai-wicha/): The taught craft behind Thailand's protective objects: the designs, the scripts, the incantations and the rules that go with them.
- [Tibetan protection craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/tibetan-protection/): The protective end of Tibetan Buddhism: printed and drawn amulets consecrated by lamas, folded and bound in five-coloured cord, carried in worked-metal boxes at the neck or over the chest, hung on strings across passes…
- [West African charm craft](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/tradition/west-african-charm-craft/): Not one practice but a shelf of them, made by different specialists for different clients across Benin, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Niger and Cameroon: written Qur'anic charms sewn into cloth sacks; assembled…

## Signs
- [The beetle](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/scarab-sign/): A dung beetle seen from above — head, wing case and legs indicated, the underside left flat so it can be engraved. Usually identified as Scarabaeus sacer.
- [The bell](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/bell/): A small bell, hung or carried, that sounds when the air or the body it is attached to moves.
- [The crescent](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/crescent/): A moon with its middle cut out, two horns and a curved back, hung point-up at the neck. Roman ones are gold. Isidore of Seville defines them as female ornaments in the likeness of the moon, little hanging gold bullae.
- [The cross](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/cross/): Two lines crossing, usually at right angles. The variations are named and they matter: the †-shaped crux immissa, the T-shaped crux commissa or tau, the X-shaped crux decussata or saltire, the crux ansata with a loop on…
- [The eye](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/eye/): An eye, drawn or moulded, worn where another person will see it.
- [The fig fist](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/fist/): A closed fist with the thumb pushed up between the index and middle fingers, carved or cast small and hung at the neck. In jet it is black and matte; in coral it is red; in silver it is the size of a thumb joint.
- [The fish](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/fish/): A fish in outline, usually two curved strokes crossing at the tail. In Christian use the Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ are sometimes written inside it. In China it is cast as a coin charm shaped like a fish and hung on a child.
- [The footprint](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/footprint/): The print of a foot, or of two feet side by side, cut in stone or wood or painted.
- [The hand](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/hand/): A human hand, cast or cut flat and hung where it can be seen. It comes in three postures this atlas keeps apart: the palm open with five fingers spread, the fist with the thumb pushed between two fingers, and two…
- [The horn](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/horn/): A single twisted horn, tapering to a point, hung at a neck or a rear-view mirror. Gold, silver, plastic, bone, terracotta, or the red coral that is the version Naples is known for. A few centimetres long.
- [The key](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/key/): A key, drawn or hung. Nobody in this record carries one to open anything.
- [The knot](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/knot/): A tie, either made in cloth and thread or copied in stone and metal.
- [The lion](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/lion/): A lion's head on a human body, a lioness's paws on a hippopotamus, or a lion reared up on its hind legs.
- [The mirror](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/mirror-sign/): A disc of polished metal, worn or hung so it faces outward. Two well-documented kinds: the Chinese bagua mirror, octagonal or circular, with the eight trigrams ringed around a flat, convex or concave glass, fixed above…
- [The name](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/divine-name/): A name of God, or of an angel, or a string of characters that stands in for one, written on the object and doing the work. Sometimes it is legible and sometimes it is deliberately not.
- [The number square](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/magic-square/): A grid of numbers in which every row, every column and both diagonals add to the same total. The order is the number of cells along a side; the total is the magic constant.
- [The open palm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/open-palm/): A flat hand, palm forward, five fingers spread and usually symmetrical — the two outer fingers drawn as thumbs so the sign reads the same either way up. Cast in silver or brass, cut in gold, pressed in glass.
- [The phallus](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/phallic-sign/): An erect phallus, modelled in bronze, bone or wood and worn, hung or fixed. Roman versions are frequently winged, and turn up as pendants, finger rings, relief carvings, lamps and wind chimes.
- [The red thread](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/red-thread/): A length of red wool or silk tied round a wrist. In the Jewish folk custom it is thin scarlet wool worn as a bracelet or band.
- [The serpent](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/serpent/): A snake, drawn coiled, reared, entwined in pairs, or hooded above a head.
- [The spiral](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/spiral/): A line that winds in on itself. It is cut into stone, painted on pottery, blazoned on a shield, and — once, and importantly — used as the direction in which to write, so that the words themselves coil inward.
- [The square hole](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/coin-square/): A round disc of copper alloy, brass or bronze with a square hole punched through the middle, the four sides of the hole framed by characters.
- [The swastika](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/swastika-sign/): An equilateral cross with each arm bent at a right angle, so the figure has four-fold rotational symmetry and no mirror symmetry. It comes in two mirror forms: right-facing 卐 and left-facing 卍.
- [The tooth and the claw](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/tooth-and-claw/): A tooth, a tusk or a claw, pierced or mounted and hung. Sometimes the animal part is left as it came off the animal; sometimes it is carved past recognition.
- [The tree](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/tree/): A tree standing where it stands. This is the one sign in the atlas that is often not drawn at all: the mark is the tree, and what a reader would notice is not a carving but the things tied to it, planted beside it, or…
- [The word that reads both ways](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sign/palindrome-word/): Writing arranged so its shape is part of the instruction. Two forms carry most of it. ABRACADABRA is written as a triangle, a letter dropped from each line, worn on parchment at the neck.

## Materials
- [Amber](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/amber/): Fossilised tree resin. Baltic amber, succinite, is found as irregular nodules in a marine glauconitic sand called blue earth, in Upper Eocene strata of Sambia, and comes from conifers of the family Sciadopityaceae.
- [Bone and ivory](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/bone-ivory/): Two related things a charm gets cut from: bone, from any animal including a human one, and ivory, meaning tusk — from African and Asian elephants above all, and also from hippopotamus, walrus, narwhal and mammoth.
- [Carnelian](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/carnelian/): A brownish-red to orange chalcedony — silica, coloured by impurities of iron oxide — hard enough to take a polish and to hold a cut line.
- [Cloth](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/cloth/): Woven fibre doing three different jobs: a bag that holds a charm, a garment that is one, and a strip that records how many people worked on it.
- [Copper and bronze](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/copper/): Copper and its alloys: bronze with tin, brass with zinc. It casts, it takes an inscription, it corrodes to a green skin and then stops, and it was cheap enough to make a charm by the thousand in places where silver was…
- [Cowrie](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/cowrie/): The shell of a sea snail of the family Cypraeidae: egg-shaped, glossy as glazed porcelain, with a long toothed slit down the flat underside. Species run from 5 mm to 19 cm.
- [Faience](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/faience/): Crushed quartz or sand, a little lime and a mixture of alkalis, shaped and fired until a soda-lime-silica glaze forms on the surface, usually blue or green from copper.
- [Fired clay](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/terracotta/): Clay pressed into a mould or worked by hand, then fired until it stops being clay.
- [Glass](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/glass/): Silica melted, coloured through and worked hot. Glass does two things no other material in this atlas does at once: it holds a colour all the way through a bead the size of a fingernail, and it comes out of the ground…
- [Gold](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/gold/): A bright yellow metal, dense at 19.3 grams per cubic centimetre, soft, and so malleable that a single gram beats out into a sheet a metre square. It occurs native, usually in solid solution with silver.
- [Hair](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/hair/): Hair cut from a named person and put inside something else. It is almost never the charm on its own.
- [Herb and root](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/herb/): Leaves, roots, bark, bulbs and dried fruit, used either as the charm itself or as the filling of one.
- [Ink](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/ink/): Pigment suspended in a liquid: charcoal and water in West Africa, sometimes with saffron added, and driven under the skin elsewhere.
- [Iron](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/iron/): The commonest useful metal and the one that rusts. Because it corrodes so readily, ancient iron objects are far rarer in the ground than gold or silver ones — the survival order of the metals runs opposite to how common…
- [Jade](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/jade/): Two different rocks under one word. Nephrite is a felted mass of calcium-magnesium amphibole, slightly softer but very tough; jadeite is a sodium-aluminium pyroxene, harder, rarer, documented from fewer than a dozen…
- [Jet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/jet/): Fossil wood. Jet is lignite, the lowest rank of coal, formed from wood under pressure — commonly from trees of the family Araucariaceae — and it is a mineraloid, not a mineral.
- [Lead](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/lead/): A soft grey metal, cheap, heavy, and soft enough to scratch with a stylus and then fold in the hand. It is also poisonous, which is the whole of its modern story.
- [Palm leaf](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/palm-leaf/): Leaves of the Palmyra or talipot palm, cooked, dried and smoke-treated until they take a line.
- [Paper](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/paper/): The cheapest surface a charm can be written on, and the one that lets a charm be printed. Paper amulets are issued, folded, sealed into cases, pasted to doors, swallowed, and burnt at the end of a year.
- [Parchment](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/parchment/): Animal skin, scraped, limed and dried until it will take ink and keep it.
- [Red coral](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/coral/): The hard red skeleton of a colonial marine animal, cut and polished like a stone.
- [Salt](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/salt/): Sodium chloride, got by evaporating seawater in ponds, by mining rock salt, or from mineral springs. It preserves, it purifies, and it dissolves.
- [Seed and nut](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/seed/): The hard inner stone of a fruit, dried, drilled and strung, or carried whole.
- [Silver](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/silver/): A soft, white, very reflective metal that occurs native and is mostly recovered as a by-product of lead-zinc, copper and gold mining.
- [Skin](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/skin/): The only amulet material a person cannot put down. Pigment is driven into the dermis — the layer of skin under the surface — where macrophages engulf it and hold it in a band just below the boundary between the two…
- [Thread and cord](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/thread/): The cheapest amulet material there is, and the only one whose meaning is carried by an action rather than by a shape.
- [Tooth, tusk and claw](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/tooth/): A tooth worn as a charm is the one material that arrives already shaped, already pointed, and already the property of something that could bite.
- [Turquoise](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/turquoise/): A hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, opaque, sky-blue where copper dominates and green where iron replaces it.
- [Wood](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/material/wood/): Cut, carved, split or planed. Wood is probably the commonest amulet material in the world and one of the rarest in a museum tray older than a few centuries, because it burns, rots, and in a great many traditions is…

## Practices
- [Blessing at a shrine](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/blessing-at-a-shrine/): Taking an object to where the power is, rather than bringing the power to the object. The move has two directions and this record keeps them apart.
- [Burning at retirement](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/burning-retirement/): Ending a charm in fire, on purpose and in public. Old talismans go back to the place that issued them and are burnt together at a set ceremony; wish-plaques are burnt to release the wish; worn prayer flags are burnt…
- [Burying](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/burying/): Putting a charm in the ground and leaving it. Under a hearth, at the far corner of a property, in the threshold, in a well, in a wall.
- [Buying one in a market](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/buying-in-a-market/): Money changes hands and an object becomes yours. It is the ordinary route to a charm almost everywhere — a tray in a lane, a counter inside a temple gate, an aisle at the back of a municipal market, a stall in a…
- [Consecration](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/consecration/): The step that makes a made thing a charm. A clay tablet pressed in a temple yard is clay until somebody chants over it; a printed slip is paper until a shrine stamps and empowers it.
- [Counting beads](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/counting-beads/): A string of a fixed number of beads or knots, run through the fingers so that the hand keeps count while the mouth says something.
- [Feeding the charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/feeding-the-charm/): Giving the object something to consume. Liquor poured on a cloth bag, a lit cigarette in a plaster figure's mouth, rice and salt and water set out in front of a paper talisman, a nail driven into a carved figure…
- [Folding](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/folding/): The step after the writing: the sheet is rolled into a tube, folded into a packet, or creased into a shape, and then cased, sewn or sealed. From that point the text is inside and nobody reads it.
- [Foundation deposit](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/foundation-deposit/): Objects buried under a building, at the start of it, by people who did not expect anyone to see them again.
- [Grave deposit](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/grave-deposit/): Amulets put into a burial — on the body, in the wrappings, in the chest cavity, in the hand, around the coffin.
- [Hanging at the door](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/hanging-at-door/): Putting the charm on the way in. A parchment case screwed to a doorpost, a horseshoe nailed above a door, a woven cross in the rafters, a painted star on a barn, a paper talisman pasted at an entrance.
- [Inheriting](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/inheriting/): A charm that passes from one person to the next and gathers weight as it goes. The object is the same object; what changes is that it now carries a line of people.
- [Inscribing](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/inscribing/): Writing the words that do the work. Lead scratched with a stylus, parchment ruled and lettered with a quill, silver foil punched with a blessing, metal foil incised with Khom Pali, paper painted with strokes nobody is…
- [Knotting](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/knotting/): Tying, as the whole of the charm. A knot needs no words, no metal and no kiln — two colours of wool twisted together, a leather strap knotted into the shape of a letter, a thousand stitches pulled tight by a thousand…
- [Renewing yearly](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/renewing-yearly/): A charm with an expiry date. The old one is taken down, returned, burnt, buried or tied to a tree, and a new one takes its place on a fixed day.
- [Sewing in](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/sewing-in/): Putting the charm inside the cloth rather than on a cord. A pouch is stitched shut over what it holds; coins and hair are sewn into a belt; a charm is quilted into a bedcover; a shirt is itself the charm, worn under…
- [Tattooing](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/tattooing/): The charm put into the skin, where it cannot be dropped, stolen, sold or taken off.
- [Washing off the ink](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/washing-off-ink/): The charm written and then destroyed on purpose, so that a person can take it. Words are written inside a bowl, water is poured in, the writing comes off into the water, and the water is drunk.
- [Wearing hidden](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/practice/wearing-hidden/): The rule that a charm is not to be seen. Hoodoo mojo bags are made for one person and kept on that person, out of sight: men in a trouser pocket, women clipped to the bra, either pinned to clothing below the waist.

## Places
- [Akodessawa fetish market](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/akodessewa-market/): A supply market in the Akodessawa district of Lomé, Togo, for the materials used in Vodun practice. The stock is animal: monkey heads, skulls, dried birds, crocodiles, skins.
- [El Mercado de las Brujas](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/mercado-de-las-brujas-la-paz/): A run of stalls on Calle Linares in the El Rosario neighbourhood of La Paz, spilling into Jiménez, Santa Cruz and Illampu.
- [Fushimi Inari-taisha](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/fushimi-inari/): The head shrine of Inari, at the foot of a 233-metre mountain in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto.
- [Insa-dong](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/insadong/): A neighbourhood of Jongno District, Seoul, 12.7 hectares of galleries, antique shops, paper and brush shops and tea houses along Insadong-gil and the alleys off it.
- [Khan el-Khalili](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/khan-el-khalili/): Cairo's bazaar quarter, in the medieval city between al-Muizz Street, al-Muski Street and the mosque and shrine of al-Hussein.
- [Mana Whenua, Te Papa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/te-papa-taonga/): Te Papa's permanent Māori exhibition, on Level 4 of the Wellington waterfront building.
- [Mercado de Brujas de Gamarra](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/mercado-de-las-brujas-lima/): A row of esoteric stalls inside the Gamarra clothing district of La Victoria, Lima, along Avenida Aviación.
- [Mercado de Sonora](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/mercado-de-sonora/): A municipal covered market in Colonia Merced Balbuena, southeast of Mexico City's historic centre: one long metal nave, narrow aisles, traders grouped by what they sell.
- [Merkato](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/merkato-addis/): An open-air market covering several square miles of the Addis Ketema district of Addis Ababa, and the name of the neighbourhood it fills. An estimated 13,000 people work in about 7,100 business entities.
- [Monastiraki](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/monastiraki/): A flea-market neighbourhood in the old town of Athens, built round Monastiraki Square and running along Pandrossou and Adrianou streets.
- [Quiapo Church](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/quiapo-church/): A Catholic basilica in the Quiapo district of Manila, housing the Jesús Nazareno, a dark statue of Christ carrying the cross.
- [Room 1: Enlightenment, the British Museum](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/british-museum-room-1/): One long room off the Great Court, lined with tall wall presses and galleried in dark wood.
- [Sensō-ji](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/senso-ji/): Tokyo's oldest-established Buddhist temple, in Asakusa, dedicated to Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion.
- [Tha Phrachan amulet market](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/tha-phrachan/): Bangkok's main amulet market, running in the lanes beside Thammasat University and the Chao Phraya river pier of the same name.
- [Thamel](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/kathmandu-thamel/): A commercial neighbourhood of narrow alleys in Kathmandu, about 1.4 kilometres north of Durbar Square. Shops run wall to wall: trekking gear, handicrafts, woollens, music, groceries, guest houses.
- [The amulet and charm cases, Pitt Rivers Museum](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/pitt-rivers-charms/): Eight glass-topped cases on the Court, the ground floor of the museum, with deep drawers under them.
- [The Barkhor](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/barkhor-lhasa/): A ring of street about a kilometre round, circling the Jokhang temple in the old city of Lhasa. It is at once the city's commercial centre and a circuit walked as devotion.
- [The Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/met-egyptian-galleries/): A chain of rooms along the museum's north side, running from the predynastic material through to Roman Egypt and ending at the Temple of Dendur in its glass hall.
- [The Grand Bazaar](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/grand-bazaar/): A roofed market of 61 streets and more than 4,000 shops on 30,700 square metres in the walled city of Istanbul, between the Beyazit and Nuruosmaniye mosques.
- [The Lovett charms at Wellcome Collection](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/wellcome-lovett/): An address rather than a room. Walk into 183 Euston Road today and there is no case of Edward Lovett's London charms to look at: the permanent show of Henry Wellcome's own collecting, Medicine Man, closed for good on 27…
- [The Marrakesh souk](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/marrakesh-souk/): The market streets of the Marrakesh medina, running north from the square called Jemaa el-Fnaa into the old city.
- [Via San Gregorio Armeno](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/place/san-gregorio-armeno/): A narrow street in the old centre of Naples, lined with workshops that make figures for the presepe, the Neapolitan nativity scene.

## People
- [Alan Dundes](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/alan-dundes/): American folklorist, 1934–2005, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley for forty-two years.
- [Augustus Pitt Rivers](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/augustus-pitt-rivers/): English soldier and archaeologist, 1827–1900, who arranged objects by what they are for rather than by where they came from.
- [Campbell Bonner](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/campbell-bonner/): American classicist, 1876–1954, of the University of Michigan, who wrote the book that made carved magical gems a subject with a method.
- [Christopher A. Faraone](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/christopher-faraone/): American classicist, born 1955, Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor in Classics at the University of Chicago.
- [E. A. Wallis Budge](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/wallis-budge/): English Egyptologist and Orientalist, 1857–1934, Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum from 1894 to 1924.
- [Edward Lovett](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/edward-lovett/): English folklorist, July 1852 – 1933, who collected charms off London streets while working as a chief cashier at a bank in the City.
- [Flinders Petrie](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/flinders-petrie/): English Egyptologist, 1853–1942, who dug Egypt for half a century and sorted what came out of it.
- [Frederick Thomas Elworthy](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/frederick-elworthy/): English philologist and antiquary, 1830–1907, of Wellington in Somerset.
- [Joseph Naveh](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/joseph-naveh/): Israeli epigrapher and palaeographer, 1928–2011, who read the writing on the amulets.
- [Shaul Shaked](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/shaul-shaked/): Israeli Iranist and philologist, 1933–2021, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- [Siegfried Seligmann](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/siegfried-seligmann/): German ophthalmologist and independent scholar, 1870–1926, who wrote the largest survey of the evil eye anybody has attempted.
- [Walter Leo Hildburgh](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/person/walter-hildburgh/): American collector and art historian, 1876–1955, who bought amulets in vast numbers across Europe, Asia and the Middle East and then wrote about them.

## Organizations
- [Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/aiatsis/): Australian Government statutory authority in Canberra, founded in 1964 as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and renamed under the AIATSIS Act 1989.
- [Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/te-papa/): New Zealand's national museum, in Wellington, established by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Act 1992 and opened on 14 February 1998. Te Papa is Māori for 'the treasure box'.
- [Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/quai-branly/): Paris museum of the arts and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, opened to the public on 23 June 2006 in a Jean Nouvel building beside the Seine.
- [The British Museum](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/british-museum/): London museum of human history, founded by act of parliament in 1753 and open to the public since 15 January 1759. It was the world's first public national museum and charges no admission except for loan exhibitions.
- [The Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/metropolitan-museum/): New York museum founded in 1870, holding about 1.5 million works across seventeen curatorial departments.
- [The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/nagpra/): United States federal law, Pub. L. 101–601, enacted on 16 November 1990.
- [The Pitt Rivers Museum](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/pitt-rivers-museum/): Oxford museum of archaeology and anthropology, founded in 1884 on Augustus Pitt Rivers' gift of about 22,000 objects and now holding more than 600,000.
- [UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/unesco-ich/): The UNESCO programme run under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It lists practices, not objects.
- [Wellcome Collection](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/wellcome-collection/): London museum and library at 183 Euston Road, opened to the public in June 2007 and part of the Wellcome Trust.
- [Wikimedia Commons](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/org/wikimedia-commons/): Media repository run by the Wikimedia Foundation, launched on 7 September 2004, holding over 147 million free-to-use files as of September 2026.

## Words
- [abracadabra](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/abracadabra/): A word that was an object. Written out as a shrinking triangle on a piece of parchment and hung at the neck, it was a prescription — the earliest surviving instruction for it is a doctor's, for fever.
- [amulet](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/amulet-word/): The English cover-word for a protective object, and the word this atlas is written in.
- [apotropaic](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/apotropaic-word/): The scholar's adjective, and nobody's own. No wearer calls a bead apotropaic.
- [charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/charm-word/): A word that has been three things in sequence and is still all three. A charm is a said or sung formula; a charm is a small object worn against harm or for luck; charm is what a person has who is pleasant to be near.
- [fetish](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/fetish-word/): A European word, applied from outside, to objects Europeans met on the West African coast and could not file.
- [fu](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/fu-word/): One character, printed on a square of red paper and pasted at the entrance, usually turned upside down.
- [gris-gris](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/gris-gris-word/): A word that names a small cloth sack worn on the person, holding Qur'anic verses written on paper and a set number of small objects.
- [hamsa](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/hamsa-word/): A word that is a number. Five — for the fingers — is what the object is called in Arabic, and hamesh, also five, in Hebrew usage.
- [juju](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/juju-word/): In central West Africa — Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana — juju names a body of practice and the objects and spells inside it. In looser English it means magical properties dealing with luck, good or bad.
- [luck](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/luck-word/): The word the whole 'good luck charm' category hangs on in English, and a late arrival that came in through a card game.
- [mascot](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/mascot-word/): The only word in this batch whose modern sense is a job. A mascot is a human, an animal or an object thought to bring luck, or anything that stands for a group with a common public identity — a school, a team, a…
- [mojo](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/mojo-word/): In Hoodoo, the African American spiritual tradition, mojo is both the conjure work and the bag that holds it — Wikipedia's article calls a mojo bag a prayer in a bag, a spell that can be carried on the body.
- [nazar](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/nazar-word/): A word for a glance that has ended up as the name of a glass disc. Naẓar in Arabic is sight, surveillance, attention.
- [omamori](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/omamori-word/): The Japanese word for a shrine or temple charm, and a rare case of a name that says who is doing the protecting rather than what the thing is made of.
- [periapt](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/periapt/): An English word for an amulet worn hung round the neck, defined by the hanging rather than by the shape or the material. It is close to dead.
- [phylactery](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/phylactery-word/): Three words wearing one spelling, and a reader has to know which is meant.
- [talisman](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/talisman-word/): The word for a made object whose power the maker claims to have put in it.
- [taweez](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/taweez-word/): The word across the Muslim world for a worn written charm and, by extension, for the object it is folded into: a pendant, letters carved on metal, a framed prayer.
- [Vodou and Vodún — and the spelling this atlas does not use](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/vodou-not-voodoo/): Two religions and one misspelling. Vodún is the religion of Aja, Ewe and Fon people in Benin, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria, with priesthoods, initiatory societies and the divination system Fá.
- [ward](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/ward-word/): The English verb for what the carriers of every object in this atlas say it does. Ward off: fend off, repel, turn aside.
- [yantra](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/word/yantra-word/): A machine. That is the word's plain sense and it has never gone away: yantra is an instrument, a thing built to hold and to do work.

## Art
- [Budge's amulet plates](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/budge-plates/): Twenty-two plates and three hundred in-text illustrations bound into a 543-page book: E. A. Wallis Budge's "Amulets and superstitions", published in London and New York by Oxford University Press and H. Milford in 1930.
- [Petrie's amulet plates](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/petrie-amulet-plates/): Plates of small Egyptian amulets, photographed in rows against a plain ground, printed at the back of a slim book: W. M.
- [The drawn signs](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/the-drawn-signs/): Twenty-six line drawings, one per sign in this atlas: an eye, a hand, an open palm, a horn, a knot, a serpent, a scarab, a fish, a tooth and claw, a crescent, a cross, a coin with a square hole, a mirror, a red thread…
- [The ex-voto wall](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/ex-voto-wall/): Small painted panels hung in ranks inside a church, each showing one bad moment — a cart going over, a fever bed, a boat under a wave — with the saint who intervened floating in the top corner and a line of handwriting…
- [The Lovett collection](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/lovett-collection/): Trays and cases of small, worn, mostly cheap charms picked up in London streets between the 1890s and the 1920s by Edward Lovett, and the pictures made of them since: objects laid out in rows on plain grounds, each with…
- [The market stall sign](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/market-stall-sign/): Whatever tells a buyer, before they reach the tray, what is on it: a painted board, a hand-lettered product name on a jar, a certificate propped against a case, or — in the oldest arrangement — the name of the street…
- [The votive wall](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/votive-wall/): A surface at a shrine covered edge to edge in small identical-format objects left by strangers: hammered metal plaques the size of a playing card, wooden tablets on hooks, crutches wired to a grille.
- [Yant flash](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/art/yant-flash/): Sheets of ready-made designs a customer chooses from: geometric grids, tigers, hanuman, rows of script running round a frame.

## Stories
- [Amulet or talisman?](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/amulet-or-talisman/): Two words, one tray of objects, and no agreement about which word goes on which object. Some writers cut the pair by direction — an amulet turns harm away, a talisman pulls fortune in.
- [Dating a charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/dating-a-charm/): The timeline on this site is drawn from one field. Every record may carry a `dating` block with a start year, an end year, a flag saying whether people still carry the thing, and a word saying how the date is known.
- [Free to use](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/free-to-use/): This is the licence explained to the person who wants to take something. The records and the pages built from them are under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. The code that builds them is MIT.
- [Most of them are for children](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/most-of-them-are-for-children/): Somewhere in every general account of amulets sits a sentence saying that the largest single class of them, anywhere in the world, is protection for infants: the cradle charm, the jet fist pinned inside a Puerto Rican…
- [The charm goes digital](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/the-charm-goes-digital/): A charm you cannot hold raises every question this atlas asks of a bead, and a few the bead never had to answer.
- [The charm in the wall](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/the-charm-in-the-wall/): A whole class of amulet was never meant to be seen again. It goes up a chimney, under a floor, above a ceiling, into a roof void, beside a door frame, or into a pit cut before the first course of brick.
- [The eye everywhere](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/the-eye-everywhere/): An eye is drawn, moulded, beaded or painted on protective objects from the Tigris to Tijuana, and the temptation is to call that a single human idea. It is not one thing.
- [The fake market](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/the-fake-market/): Buyers at an amulet stall arrive with jeweller's loupes. They are not checking whether the clay is old — the clay is usually old enough.
- [The swastika problem](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/the-swastika-problem/): One shape carries two meanings that cannot be blended and must not be confused.
- [What this atlas does not print](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/what-this-atlas-does-not-print/): Open the map and one continent is close to empty. Australia has one of the longest continuous records of protective objects anywhere, and this atlas prints almost none of it.
- [Who owns a charm](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/story/who-owns-a-charm/): A museum drawer of amulets is the hardest kind of collection to hand back and the easiest kind to have taken.

## Optional
- [The world map](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/map/)
- [The timeline](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/time/)
- [What it stops](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/against/)
- [Where it goes](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/wear/)
- [Search](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/search/)
- [Atom feed](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/feed.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://nanobotco.github.io/amulet-atlas/sitemap.xml)

# — roster of sibling sites, generated from data/fleet.json —
## Elsewhere from the same publisher

- [Mot Dang](https://motdang.net/): city directory for Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai
- [wichaa](https://wichaa.net/): Lanna manuscripts, the amulet market, and the traditions around them
- [Carolina Barbecue](https://nanobotco.github.io/carolina-barbecue/): barbecue in North and South Carolina
- [Wing Country](https://nanobotco.github.io/buffalo-wings/): the American chicken wing
- [Pink Box](https://nanobotco.github.io/pink-box/): the American mom-and-pop donut shop
- [Basque Tables](https://nanobotco.github.io/basque-tables/): Basque dining rooms of California, Nevada and Idaho
- [Pinot Country](https://nanobotco.github.io/pinot-noir/): pinot noir: the vine, the regions, the cellars
- [Care Abroad](https://nanobotco.github.io/care-abroad/): treatment across borders, with published prices and their dates
- [Thai Roots](https://nanobotco.github.io/thairoots/): a root dictionary of Thai, with a word decomposer
- [The index](https://nanobotco.github.io/index/): every corpus, site and repository, counted
- [Uptake](https://nanobotco.github.io/uptake/): a field manual on publishing for machines that copy
- [NaNoBotCo](https://nanobotco.github.io/): the portal
- [Ask Mot Dang](https://ask.motdang.net/): reader assistant over the directory
- [ai.motdang.net](https://ai.motdang.net/): white-label assistants, by seat
- [Defiant](https://defiant.to/): medical and dental care in Chiang Mai, with a translator at the appointment
- [Hongdam](https://hongdam.net/): bilingual web development, Chiang Rai
- [ฮักฝรั่ง](https://hakfarang.net/): เรื่องเงิน วีซ่า และชีวิตกับแฟนฝรั่ง
- [Offrampt](https://offrampt.net/): turning crypto into spendable local money, Thailand first

- [The roster as JSON](https://nanobotco.github.io/index/fleet.json)