I ponder Golden Arches as talisman. It is one. Heavenly gates? Streets of gold?

I will never again look at McDonalds quite the same way. It is perhaps why people think McDonald’s food equals death.

You cannot create a pattern and have it make no impact on the world. Patterns created by humans shape the human mind, which shapes human behaviour, which impacts even the natural world, usually poorly these days. If human talisman making continued to reflect an attempt to understand nature and work with it, the impact would be much less toxic. The oldest talismans, even in Europe, still did this. A lot of the feudal symbolism lead to a general attitude of stewardship of the land, and although this had a serious element of hubris in it, it still wasn’t as toxic as it is now. Nobles took great pride in their nice forests and their large deer herds. What does Donald Trump take pride in?

Hair? Tall buildings? Indeed, which require a measure of ignorance of the world as a whole, at least at this point they do. Regarding the hair thing, I saw a video on the internet showing an incident that happened for a young Sikh woman. Their faith forbids alteration of their natural appearance because it’s believed that the intention of the divine for them is reflected in their total being.

No shaving legs, no plucking eyebrows? None of that. Men not shaving beards. They are not forbidden to seek health care, and if that alters their appearance than that is ok, but they are supposed to keep their mind off of cosmetic considerations. If their face has to have reconstructive surgery so they can eat that is acceptable, but make-up is not.

Well, this young woman had the misfortune of having a genetic condition that made her grow masculine looking facial hair, and she kept to the teachings of her faith. She is a very principled young woman and very accomplished. The incident took place on a university campus, but my point is, not all of these teachings are just backward notions. As strange as they seem to modern sensibilities, if we took our attention off of the world as we believe it should be, making pictures of the world as we believe it is, and tried to attune to how it is, we would recover a lot of the spiritual strength and insight we previously lost. She had a great deal of social power, because she used her natural physical appearance to reflect the underlying natural reality we have come to ignore.

As for how this relates to written language, every physical change we make is writing. Every mental change we make is speech. Does this sound nonsensical? We write things on our bodies, on our faces. The patterns in Native American face paint were “writing.” War paint. We write things without habitual behavior. The book of life is our own flesh and blood, as well as the living world itself. When do we not write on these things?

Some of the world’s biggest talismans are roads written with the belief that they create unity, and to a degree they do.

Route 66!

The roads in Washington DC are laid out like a talisman.

My reason for talking about all this is related to the actual meaning of the word talisman. Grids are magick squares like enochian magick uses. We even put numbers on our road grids following a pattern of “reason.”

Talismans are literally consecrated patterns, consecrated by spirit, our souls purity of intention. Amulets differ in that they need no consecration, are possessed of the innate virtue they had in nature before we began using them. Talismans are amulets we make. Nothing has any more virtue then we intended for it to have. So in all this talisman making we have been up to, what good did we plan for it to have?

An invocation of Natural Order? They reflected that at first, the early roads did, but then the railroads came, with really only one simple message. Anyone know what that was?

Go west. Take west. Manifest destiny. The railroads wrote a really big message of “MINE!”

The paved roads we use now still write the same message. The only reason we pave roads today is it’s financially good for us, expedient, have dollar signs all over them, at least spiritually, and we are bombarded by talismans that feed that same spirit in us. Show us food or possession hoping to make us on some level say “MINE!”

This explains the love affair with cars. They evoke a feeling of the world is mine, roads going everywhere. Which are their own talismans. The old Norse tools and constructions bore runes on them also. The old runes made the marked items into talismans also, no matter if it was a sword or a bow or a box to keep your clothes in, but the runes still reflected patterns in nature. Do our runes do this now?

I try to make Golden Arches look like rainbow… Doesn’t work very easily does it? Nope! The spirit of that symbol is strong. It won’t let you change it.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~