WHAT IS A TALISMAN?

Humans have always given power to objects. 

We have carried stones in our pockets, worn symbols around our necks, slipped rings onto our fingers, buried objects with our dead, passed jewels from one generation to the next. 

For protection. For luck. For love. For remembrance. For power. 

Sometimes simply because something called to us. 

Long before I knew the word talisman, I understood the feeling of one. 

There are objects that somehow become different from all the other objects we own. We would notice immediately if they were missing. 

We reach for them at particular moments. We wear them when we need courage. We touch them without realizing we're doing it. We keep things that make absolutely no sense to anyone else because throwing them away would feel almost unthinkable. 

Their material value may have very little to do with their importance. 

So what changes? 

At its simplest, a talisman is an object believed to carry a particular power, quality, or intention. But I have never found the simplest definition particularly satisfying. 

Because I believe there is more to it. 

I believe in the mystical. 

I believe there are things we experience that cannot always be neatly measured or explained. I believe intention matters. I believe materials have qualities of their own, and that our relationship with the natural world is far more mysterious than we often allow it to be. 

I am particularly fascinated by stones. 

Perhaps because they existed long before us. 

They are born through pressure, heat, water, minerals, movement, and enormous stretches of time. We pull them from the earth, hold them in our hands, give them names and meanings, set them into precious metals, and carry them into our human lives.

That alone feels extraordinary to me. 

But when I make a piece of jewelry, something else enters the equation. The hand of the maker. 

The person for whom it is being made. 

The reason it is being made. 

The materials themselves. 

The intention. 

And eventually, the life that happens while the object is being worn. 

This is where adornment begins to move into the territory of talisman. 

I don't think every piece of jewelry automatically becomes one. 

Beauty alone isn't enough. 

A talisman develops a relationship with its keeper. 

Perhaps it was made to mark a threshold. Perhaps it belonged to someone you loved. Perhaps you bought it during a time when you were becoming someone different. Perhaps you put it on before doing something that frightened you, and over time it became associated with your own courage. 

Or perhaps there is no story you can explain. 

You simply know that this is the one you reach for. 

I find that possibility just as interesting. 

Because then we arrive at the question I return to again and again: 

Where does the power of a talisman live? 

Is it already present in the stone? 

Is something imparted by the hands that make it? 

Does intention enter into the object? 

Does ritual change our relationship to it?

Is its power created by the person who wears it? 

Can an object gather memory? 

Can something passed from one generation to another carry more than its physical materials? Or is a talisman created somewhere in the mysterious exchange between all of these things? I have my beliefs. 

But I don't think I want to answer the question completely. 

The mystery is part of what draws me to it. 

I make objects from substances that have come out of the earth. I work them with my hands. I use fire to transform metal. I bring together things that existed separately and watch as, at some point, they become something else. 

Then I let them go. 

What happens between the object and the person who eventually carries it belongs to them. Maybe that is when a piece of jewelry truly becomes a talisman. 

Or maybe it began long before either of us arrived. 

Where does the power of a talisman live? 

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this. 

I suspect I will spend a great deal more.