Je marche au cœur; ils marchent au pas. Je veux de la chaleur ; ils me donnent du froid. Action ! Moteur ! C'est enfin là ! Je vais savourer l'heure n'appartient qu'à moi!

I walk to [the beat of] my heart, they walk in step. I want the heat, they give me the cold. Action! Motor! It’s finally here! I’m gonna savor the time that’s mine alone!

Yelle, “Moteur action” (English mine)

In the summer of 2021 I found myself at a crossroads. I had been accepted to a competitive academic program with a generous scholarship earlier that year. That spring, I packed up everything and moved away from the town I was born in for the first time in my life. I had been experimenting with astrological magic for several years at that point and I suspected that I had reached the time to make my first Mercury talismans.

As the ruler of my 10th house, Mercury was a great planet to work with magically in pursuit of my academic and career goals. Perhaps unsurprisingly these goals are very mercurial in their essential nature: studying multiple languages themselves and linguistics as a science. I also often experience this planet in a very relational way; as a Sagittarius rising, Mercury rules my 7th too. I don’t have the kind of Mercury that sequesters itself in a tower to study obscure texts—my Mercury is more at home chatting the ears off of my friends (and enemies).

At this phase in my life, I was excitedly combing through charts months or even years in advance and arranging plans for experimentation, but I had long struggled to come by a Mercury election that I found suitable. Mercury just moves at the most obnoxious speed. The Moon is much, much faster but she’s so fast she almost comes all the way back around to being easy to elect for again. We get 12 to 13 chances for the Moon in every potential sign each year—lots to work with! A slow planet like Jupiter gives us a whole year to work with a given sign, so that’s easy in its own way too. Mercury on the other hand moves just fast enough that it’s very difficult to capture the ideal electional circumstances and just slow enough that its signs of dignity don’t occur more than once a year. In the 6 years that I’ve been making talismans, I’ve only really been able to come by two elections that felt truly ideal. Imagine my excitement when I found the first one I liked!!

Today I’d like to share the story of that first one with you all.

This will be an introduction to my more process-oriented astromagic writing. I’m looking forward to offering more writing that is focused on astromagic as a practice rather than just a collection of ideas. I’m putting this stuff out there because I think our world needs more magical writing with a longer scope. These talismans have been cherished companions for the last 4 years and have had dramatic effects on my life in than span of time. I look forward to collaborating with them more for years to come!

*My talisman, the mottled and translucent moss agate*

Mercury: the magician’s helper

Under the election which follows I made 3 talismans made out of oval cabochons which I set in sterling simple silver pendants. I’m not a jeweler or a silversmith by any means, so I kept them relatively simple. I’m lucky to live in a city with a ton of amazing brick and mortar jewelry suppliers so I was able to pick out my stones, settings and findings in person and ask a bunch of questions to my patient local jeweler and lapidarist.

I selected 3 small-ish oval cabochons: two moss agates (one with a very translucent greenish field and mottled filaments, the other more opaque white with striking dark green filaments) and a bumblebee jasper, roughly bisected with yellow on one side and black on the other. I engraved these stones with simple symbols: the glyphs for Mercury and Gemini. I used green tea as my incense of choice, both green tea leaves on charcoal along with a commercial tea leaf-scented incense from Shoyeido.

These were only the second stone talismans I had ever made and I was definitely working out the details a bit with them. All the difficulties with finding suitable Mercury elections aside, I do believe that a Mercury talisman is a great choice for anyone learning a new form of magic. I credit my success with honing my process with the help the spirit which resides in the talisman from this set that I kept for myself. Over the years I’ve learned how to carve much more intricate (and creative) symbols into stone and nowadays I tend to make all my incense by hand. Nonetheless, keeping it very direct and simple did the trick this time around. The spirits of Mercury are very friendly, playful and forgiving, wonderful traits in a magicians helper. Just don’t be surprised if they play some tricks on you (go along with them!)

When I made these talismans, I didn’t give the collection a name initially. In my notes I just called them “Mercury in Gemini III.” Within a few years of getting to know them, though, I pulled a name for them from the Orphic hymn to Mercury: Delighter in Tricks.

Along with all this, I let the Spotify algorithm give me a playlist for the ritual. I’m pretty open-minded about the sonic component of a ritual but for this playful side of Mercury I wanted to bring forward, I thought it would be fun to give the music up to chance. I picked one song that felt like the right vibe, SOPHIE and AG Cook’s remix of “Moteur action” by Yelle (quoted above). I like this song because it has an excited, bubbly, frenetic energy that I associate with Mercury in Gemini and I felt like the vibe really hit. From that, I let Spotify give me recommended tracks during the ritual and I was touched by what came out. I assembled the ones that came up into a playlist and realized after the fact that they were all songs produced by SOPHIE, an artist whose work I had deeply loved and who based away unexpectedly a few months previous.

If you’d like to listen to the playlist, it’s available below:

Delighter in tricks & friend to mortals

*My talisman resting in my palm, a body part indicated by the sign of Gemini*

I went into this working with a few distinct goals:

Fluency with language and rhetoric
Deepening my knowledge of obscure things
Friendship and playful contentment

As I mentioned above, I was starting my studies in a very language-focused academic program. I hoped that these talismans could be a tool for improving my linguistic fluency. In this program I would be studying two languages (in addition to my native language) with the goal of becoming a working interpreter upon graduation. I had some background with these languages but I knew I would need to grow my skills dramatically to be able to do the kind of work I wanted to do. A magic boost would be perfect!

I also wanted to use these talismans to increase my fluency with rhetoric. My wish wasn’t just to be a more persuasive person (I wanted that too) but to be someone who had greater skill with using language. Knowledge of languages would be necessary but I also needed to become someone who could deftly use my languages.

At the time I was a burgeoning student of astrology and had long been sharpening my skills with divination. This time in my life would also represent my first real foray into academia, something that I felt out of my depth in. My goal with these talismans was help in diving deep into my subject matter without drowning.

Perhaps the most important goal in retrospect was to make more friends. Surely many of us were feeling this in 2021 as the world began to open back up, right? It was doubly important for me at the time because I had also moved to a new town where I knew almost no one, on top of the required isolation in the previous year. With this election, I hoped to bring forward the most playful side of Mercury. Amid all the saturnine heaviness surrounding my life at the time, the thing I was most hungry for was playfulness.

Thoughts on my election

*A chart cast in Astrogold for 7 July 2021 at 11:35 AM in Albuquerque, NM, USA*

My intent in this essay today isn’t to teach you how to find astrological elections (you can seek that out yourself) but I certainly don’t want to blow past the election. I set my chart for 11:35 AM on 7 July 2021 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

The main things I look at in a planetary talisman are the significator, the Moon, the ruler of the ascendant and the planetary day/hour

The significator is just what I call the indicator for the magic being worked (in this case the significator of this talisman is Mercury). Here we’ve got Mercury direct, moving fast, in their domicile. They aren’t afflicted by either malefic (they are separating by a lot from beneficial aspects to both malefics). Angularity is very important to me—here we have Mercury culminating (crossing the degree of the midheaven). Since this chart has a Virgo rising, Mercury is also the ascendant ruler, so we can check that off our list. This working was performed on Mercury’s day but during Mars’s hour—I have been taught to work with the planetary day as well as the hour (not everyone else has) so this was acceptable to me.

The Moon is closely applying to conjoin Mercury and under Mercury’s rulership. I would class this Moon as just fine, nothing special. She is not being afflicted by either malefic, a primary consideration for me, but she is waning with very little light left (this is a couple days before the new Moon). She is also moving very slow.

Everyone factors these things in differently but I was satisfied enough. What I see here is a strong significator and ascendant ruler, which conveys an influential spirit and a talisman that wont produce a lot of undesirable side effects on its user. On the other hand, its action may be a bit more sluggish to manifest and perhaps have slightly less dramatic material effects caused by the slow, waning Moon.

After selecting the chart and preparing my materials I happened to come across Agrippa’s chapter in the Three Books of Occult Philosophy on the Behenian fixed stars which drew my eye to the presence of Capella on the midheaven, being activated by the Moon-Mercury conjunction. Picatrix 4:4 contains a list of aphorisms on astromagic, a couple of which deal with the fixed stars. Aphorisms 12, 13 and 14 tell us that the fixed stars are more enduring than the planets and that incorporating fixed stars into our planetary magic produces more complete and enduring effects. I didn’t know much about Capella at the time but its vibe (inquisitive, curious, musical) seemed both in line with Mercury and in line with the goals of my working. I’ve come to learn much more about Capella since (a story for another day) and much of it has been guided by these talismanic spirits.

When we’re looking at magical elections I think it’s best to focus our attentions on the significator, the Moon and the ascendant ruler, as I said, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the chart is void, especially anything else happening on the angles. One of the things I thought was fun about this chart is that it has the rulers of all 4 angles in their domiciles, with the ruler of the 7th and 4th being Jupiter in Pisces residing in the 7th sign (6th quadrant house). To me this chart looks like not only a tool to meet new friends but also a tool to meet good friends who would treat me well!

I ignored the Venus-Mars-Saturn situation across the 6th house-12th house axis. These harsh aspects are separating and tucked away into idle, cadent places where they do not have agency to act in this election. I also ignored the North Node in Gemini, even though it was kind of close to the Moon. To be honest this was out of ignorance, at the time I didn’t realize how seriously some magicians will take the presence of the eclipse point. The success of these talismans has led me not worry terribly about the nodes in elections as long as the important points are a healthy handful of degrees away from them.

Finally: what about Neptune setting? All this talk of the importance of angles I wasn’t really sure how to interpret Neptune. Even now after making and extensively experimenting with dozens of talismans, I’m not sure what to do with the outers when they show up. Perhaps we should treat them kind of like fixed stars? Sometimes their influence is subtly present if you squint, sometimes it seems to be imperceptible. I decided to just give a try and see what would happen!

What has happened after 4 (ish) years?

Eli and I smiling together; I have my talisman around my neck. This was at some picnic tables next to a coffee shop on a trip to see a bunch of our friends who live in the Pacific Northwest. All the friends are sitting in front of us which is probably why we’re smiling <3

As I mentioned, I made 3 talismans under this election. One of them immediately called to me and I set it aside for myself. The second went to Eli, my long term partner, and the third was gifted to my mom for Christmas that year.

I put mine on a black waxed linen cord that was just long enough to hang below my collarbone, neatly placed just between my lungs and my larynx and wore it obsessively for over 2 years. Even today I rarely go an entire week without wearing it at least once and it is hanging from my neck every single time I travel without fail.

First off, they were tremendous allies to my language acquisition. I don’t know how to quantify this without giving way too many details but these talismans helped me achieve near-native fluency in my second language and solid working knowledge in my third, definitely outperforming the standard expectations of students in my program. I’ve always been good at learning languages so this isn’t entirely shocking but the biggest shift for me was a radical reduction in the anxiety I felt when using other languages.

I think the greatest lesson these talismans have given me is the ability to lean into the clownishness that is inherent in trying to express yourself in a new language. The feeling of grasping at words and making mistakes used to send me into panic but now I think I’ve learned how to totally lean in to it. It’s been such a relief. Well-placed humor really is a masterful rhetorical tool!

I also cant speak highly enough of the way that it has opened doors to forming friendships with others, often in very unexpected ways.

On my first day of school the location for my first class was moved to a new building all the way across campus, which I found out when I showed up for class a few minutes early to find a completely empty classroom. Luckily, one single other student also made the same mistake and knew the campus well, which turned into an opportunity to be given a guided tour of campus during which we got to know each other and realized we actually had a lot in common. That person became my first friend and directed me toward a bunch of other queer people who eventually became my extended social circle in my new town. I cannot stress to you how out of my nature it was to connect so freely with new people like that!

My social circle here has actually been built by these kinds of organic connections exclusively. Everyone I know here I either met through random happenstance or I met through being introduced by another friend. To be able to say that I’ve built a large, thriving social circle in a new town in my late 20s without ever having downloaded an app feels basically miraculous at this point in time. Looking back it’s actually shocking how little I’ve had to work for these beautiful connections—and the entire time I was doing it I had a moss agate dangling from my neck!

For the two people who’ve been given talismans, I’m not at liberty to share a ton of their stories but I do have one. My mom got a job working for a facility maintaining a supercomputer with excellent pay and benefits (a huge step up from her previous line of employment). She was connected to the job by a friend she’d known since before I was born who said “when the posting came up, [my mom’s] name just popped into [her] head.”

These three talismans love each other and I have been surprised many times by random occurrences where me, my partner and my mom all found ourselves in the same place all wearing our talismans that day. It’s a lot to explain as I’m sure you can imagine but they’ve really done a lot to strengthen the friendship between us all.

Me (and my moss agate) with my girlfriend, River, after an unexpected rainstorm on a trip to the Dallas Botanical Garden. It scared everyone else out of the arboretum, giving us free rein to play to our heart’s content. I was also wearing this talisman when I met her :)

We may carefully elect a chart, assemble correspondences and write our prayers but talismans often have some sort of sideways effects as well. What kind of unexpected things did I experience?

One of the reasons I called this collection Delighter in Tricks is because they can be so squirrelly. Sometimes mine will go missing for weeks only to turn up in weirdest places that I could never imagine having placed it, or in places that I swear to god I’ve checked a dozen times. This isn’t something I ever experience with any of my other talismans and, in general, I’m usually quite good at keeping up with my things. The first time it happened I was so worried I’d lost it but now when I cant find it for weeks I just shrug and wait til it decides it’s ready to come along again. As I’ve gotten to know them I’ve even found myself unconsciously stowing them in strange places before stopping myself. When traveling recently I caught myself absent-mindedly taking the talisman off and zipping it into a random small pocket in my backpack that I rarely used. I honestly couldn’t tell you why I picked that random pocket instead of the pocket (in the same bag) that had all my other jewelry inside it. I’m always fascinated to notice experiences like this where we so directly perceive the spirit of an enchanted object.

Perhaps this squirrelliness is related to the Neptune influence? Or maybe it’s just the playful Mercury I specifically asked for? Either way I’m at peace with my trickster.

The other unexpected impact it has had on me is related to my physical voice, which is hard to describe. I’m not sure I can really tell a difference in the way I talk but it’s something that has come up many, many times at this point. Growing up my voice was a huge source of pain and belittlement for me and, after my transition, my voice became intensely scrutinized in the way that most trans women experience. I don’t think I ever had an especially gruff or harsh voice but it had been often mocked as shrill, screechy, or just literally faggy.

After the first year or so of wearing these talismans, my voice apparently changed noticeably. I had people I knew for years commenting on it as much as new people I was meeting. For my entire life no one had ever had a kind word to say about my voice but suddenly it became the first thing people complimented me on upon meeting me. My own grandmother reacted with disbelief once when I called her, asking me in shock if I had had some kind of surgery on my voice. I have no idea how to evaluate or describe the change but it was very apparent in the way others interacted with me. I believe these talismans made my physical voice more pleasant, sweeter and softer. I wonder if this subtle expression is related to the slow, waning Moon in the election?

There’s something smooth and sweetening about them. I’m always experimenting with which talismans combine well together and I’ve found that this one plays well with everyone. It harmonizes in a very gentle and subtle way with my energy body, never forceful or jarring. I’ve made a few other talismans who were a bit (or a lot) harsher to experience, especially some of the malefic talismans I’ve experimented with. I’ve come to learn that the Delighter in Tricks is a balm that smooths out any of the more challenging magical objects I own. I wonder if this could be related to that slow, waning Moon I observed in the election? These talismans have had a pronounced effect on me, but much of their work has been quite subtle, often only apparent much later.

These spirits do not act in a dramatic or quick fashion at all. On the contrary I find them to be gentle and careful. It makes me think back to the presence of Capella in the election—Greer & Warnock’s Picatrix tells us that bringing a fixed star into your planetary talismanic election offers “completeness.” I can see Capella’s influence in their playful curiosity and overall demeanor but I also wonder if the gentle way they interact with my energy body isn’t part of it too.

I hope I’ve made it clear to you why I consider a high quality Mercury talisman to be an excellent ally for any magical practitioner. I’m not sure all my talisman write-ups will have this much detail but this spirit is very precious to me and has been one of my main collaborators for years so I had a lot to say. I’m so grateful to have been able to work with them the way I have!

delighter in tricks: talismans of mercury with capella