The Geomancer's Talisman

(2007) 5"x 3" for the silver panel, 18" for overall length of the necklace.

Art Clay Silver (cut, sculpted, fired and patinaed), enamel colors, carnelian coin bead, peridot bead, faceted iolite bead, aquamarine bead and faceted aquamarine beads, faceted drop garnet beads, faceted spessartite garnet beads, Bali silver, silver finding for the clasp, Fireline.

Okay, okay, call me crazy, but this started out all very sane as an attempt to finally test-fire all my Thompson transparent enamel colors and stop having what I tend to call "enamel surprises" like why is "woodrow red" always garnet red or actually black, "opalescent" just plain-Jane transparent amber and "periwinkle blue" more like "booger green".

Then I decided that if I was wasting 20 grams of silver clay on this I might as well go all out and do something more with it. So I ended up with a fan shape that has some geomantic symbols carved into it. Geomancy is kind of the western divination system that's closest to the Chinese I'Ching, and the symbols represent the tetragrams of the western system as opposed to the hexagrams of the eastern system. Its a powerful divination tool that aligns closely with astrology and draws a lot of its power and meaning from it, but that has been quite neglected in modern magical literature. In fact the best source to go back to is still good old Cornelius Agrippa.

I know this is way too gaudy and crazy for my usual stuff, but ya know what, it has a wonderful Romany vibe, and the next time I go out reading the Tarot for someone I will wear this for inspiration. It's Yin-Yang Occident-style, baby!