Small Things, Big Meaning: The Enduring Story of the Amulet
There is always something you own that you just can’t bring yourself to get rid of. Could be a coin, a pebble, or a charm that your grandmother forced into your hand before an exam. It is most likely not an item that you consider to be lucky, and if someone asked you about it, you would laugh. Yet you would definitely notice if it suddenly went missing. That quiet attachment is as old as humanity itself. It is the instinctbehind the amulet. What is an amulet? The word is believed to derive from the Latin word amuletum, a term which Pliny the Elder employed in his Natural History nearly two thousand years ago, although the origin of the Latin word itself is uncertain. The practice is far older, so it comes as no surprise that the amulet has been part of human culture for a long time. In simple terms, an amulet is an item worn as a charm to protect the wearer from misfortune or illness. It is frequently mixed up with the term related to it - the talisman. A good distincti...