On Friday, I had a date with my friend, Lauren. It was the day of the economic blackout, so instead of grabbing coffee I suggested we walk to Full Moon Blends, an aromatherapy shop a little over a mile from where we met up.
I wanted to give Michele, the shop owner, a book I picked up for her.
The book is The Essence of Tarot by Mary K. Greer. It’s all about the intersection of aromatherapy and tarot. The book had been out of print for years, but it was brought back in January. I learned about it the very day I met Michele!
Tarot and aromatherapy is a fascinating subject worthy of its own post, though this post is about signs and synchronicities of the sort that brought Michele and The Essence of Tarot into my life on the same day.
Walking out of Full Moon Blends with Lauren, I automatically turned to walk back the way I normally would, up a busy commercial street. When I walk for pleasure, I have just a handful of specific routes.
I am led by habit and not intuition. I never wander.
***
Lauren didn’t want to walk up the busy street. She wanted to go a different way, up a street neither of us had traveled in a long time.
We saw that there was a new liveliness to this street different from what we remembered, with lots of new businesses operating.
One of the new shops was so magnetic we had to go in even though I was committed to not spending money.
Little Treat is a tiny shop selling ceramics, flower art, crystals, jewelry, home accessories, tie dye clothes, and stationery—all in the pink/purple/floral family.
Christiana, the owner, told us about an event happening the next day.
She said it was a pop up Charm Bar with Yay Diff Jewelry.
Reader, I may fail to let my intuition lead me on walks around the city (something I plan to work on), but I know to pay attention when three words set off a glitter confetti explosion in my brain.
The phrase “popup Charm Bar” captured my imagination immediately.
***
Let’s take a moment to talk about this phrase and concept: “Captured my imagination.”
Having my imagination captured is a magical experience. It’s a siren of importance. I start having ideas when my imagination is captured. It’s an experience full of fun and excitement.
A captured imagination puts a little space between me and my routines, rules, routes.
Tarot, for example, never fails to capture my imagination.
Anyway, I think it was the whimsy of a “Charm Bar” that so grabbed me on Friday. I knew as soon as Christiana uttered the words I would be back for my charms.
***
Fast forward 24 hours.
I returned to Little Treat to find a bountiful buffet of charms.
This is how the Charm Bar works: you study every tiny clear container of charms and choose the ones you want. It seemed to me there were hundreds. Each was only $1 or $2.
I felt like a kid in a candy store, but at the same time I understood I should take these choices seriously. I realized I had been summoned here by my inner child—it was her imagination that had been captured. The Charm Bar was needed playtime, but it was something else, too.
I was looking for charms that could be symbols. This bracelet and everything on it would be a talisman. These little objects represent who I am, what I want, and what matters.
I’m not going to bore you with all 10 charms I chose, but there’s a lightning bolt which represents the Tower card. I have my husband's first initial, and a spoon to represent everything that food and cooking mean to me.
I chose a bracelet because I wanted to see these charms easily and often.
***
I’ve always been cozy with words. Images and imagination aren’t my home country. I struggle to picture things. I don’t have the best eye. There’s something fundamentally literal about me.
And yet I know images have a power that words don’t have. That is part of the magic of tarot. I see the pictures and the art itself activates me, stirs up my subconscious, brings my creativity online. Even when I struggle with them, images charge up my lifeforce.
This is what the charms are—small images with big concepts hidden inside. They become magical the minute someone chooses one and imbues it with personal meaning.
***
The word charm has so many shades of meaning. One of my earliest reckonings with the word came from the book The Gift of Fear, an awful book my father insisted I read when I was in college!
Gavin de Becker, the book’s author, writes:
“Charm is another overrated ability. Note that I called it an ability, not an inherent feature of one’s personality. Charm is almost always a directed instrument, which, like rapport-building, has motive. To charm is to compel, to control by allure or attraction. Think of charm as a verb, not a trait. If you consciously tell yourself, “This person is trying to charm me” as opposed to, “This person is charming,” you’ll be able to see around it.”
So some of my oldest associations with charm were not the greatest! But de Becker twists the meaning through a dark mirror.
Among the actual definitions of charm are, “to affect by or as if by magic,” and “to endow with or as if with supernatural powers.”
Those are the means I now prefer. Every tarot card is a charm.
At the Charm Bar, everyone selecting their collection of trinkets casts a spell. I charmed myself.
Each item, an amulet leading me deeper into my evolving self.
Yessssss, Joy! Yes to following what captures your imagination! That’s a much better way of saying that projectors are supposed to follow what fascinates them. Also, I’ve always wondered if I should read that book. Thank you for the loud and clear, “nope!” You’re wonderful, I love your words and I love you.
"Note that I called it an ability, not an inherent feature of one’s personality." ugh, that guy is definitely not going to be into Human Design. Says the girl with a 12-22 channel.