A few years back, I wrote a post about about a matrix of herbs and powders that came together to better presence St. Expedite and those spirits that dance in his blazing footfalls in a particular loci of devotion. The everlasting quest to help my spirits meet me somewhere in between this world and the next by finding ways to ensoul, manifest, and anchor them in this world that they may have more ingress and presence, and resulting experiments, lead me to making this new set of charms. In technique a spiritual companion piece to the charm bundles affixed to Christopher’s Protection Chaplets for Travelers, these bundles draw from the life of our beloved dog-saint, in which he bore the entire world upon his shoulder (in the form of the Christ-Child). It follows that if he can uplift, make safe, and most importantly make manifest the world, he can do so with anything therein. In lifting up spirits all the same, he provides both a gentle hand elevating and aiding the manifestation of our allied spirits, bringing closer those distant and forgotten, and, as needed, a mechanism of control against unruly, wild spirits.

Like most of my charms made at the foot of St. Christopher (and one might argue like the saint himself!), they are simple in construction, but blessed through labour and repetition. Each bag contains an herbal blend, with plants selected to share breath with spirits to rouse their presence and increase their strength, pacify disagreements among those they encounter, send roots and stems and seeds into other worlds to secure and germinate the means of ingress, and to mediate and nullify imbalances that need to be navigated in the environs of the spirit. Like following a long and desolate path, each component was selected to navigate obstacles and hindrances without being so heavy or distracting as to over-encumber the bearer. Tobacco, Sage, and Dittany of Crete feature heavily, with celandine, mullein, and many members of the mint family mediating.
Each plant was called forth to the table of his catholic feast, and united under the celebratory banner of the dog-saint, with an exhortation of his virtuous qualities delivered over corresponding herbs. Candles lit for the saint and each of these allies were used to apply a small drop of beeswax on the reverse of each metal, to deliver their fire and seal the initial enchantment. Following their initial consecration, they were continuously prayed over, offered to, and further empowered through charm and incantation, until they satisfactorily eased the production of spirit phenomena (being sustained and visual or auditory, beyond the usual capabilities of the distant and forgotten spirits contracted to test the charms).
I suggest affixing this charm to the leg of an altar table or shrine, or keeping it beneath a table of practice during use, that they may participate in, and themselves osmose the virtues to bear up spirits. The bundles can also be given to spirits to use as toolboxes, with each component potentially easing the burdens to travel between their world and ours. I encourage communion with your own spirits at the locus of the charm to determine further idiosyncratic uses, as the composition is meant to be a kaleidoscope through which these encounters are had.

10 charm bundles from this set are available for sale, with shipping included.

