The article is brief, but it does give credit where credit is due. The box of talismans and charms is the property of one of ten people found together in the ruins of Pompeii, all of whom are women or children, in a room in the servants’ quarters of a family home.

The scientists speculate that some of the objects were for personal adornment, but also acknowledge that many of them would have been used for magical purposes. None of the objects are made of gold or precious stones, so the archeologists conclude that the box belonged to a servant or slave, rather than a member of the family which owned the house.

Next time you look at your charm box (or bag, or five pound can), stop for a moment and consider your magical ancestress, and see if you can feel a connection to her work in providing hope and comfort nearly 2,000 years ago, much as you provide hope and comfort for those with whom you share your magic today.

Experts in Pompeii Have Discovered a Female Sorcerer’s Mysterious Arsenal of Charms—See Them Here

Late September
~ Amy Lowell

Tang of fruitage in the air;
Red boughs bursting everywhere;
Shimmering of seeded grass;
Hooded gentians all a’mass.
Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind
Tearing off the husky rind,
Blowing feathered seeds to fall
By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.
Beech trees in a golden haze;
Hardy sumacs all ablaze,
Glowing through the silver birches.
How that pine tree shouts and lurches!
From the sunny door-jamb high,
Swings the shell of a butterfly.
Scrape of insect violins
Through the stubble shrilly dins.
Every blade’s a minaret
Where a small muezzin’s set,
Loudly calling us to pray
At the miracle of day.
Then the purple-lidded night
Westering comes, her footsteps light
Guided by the radiant boon
Of a sickle-shaped new moon.

I’ll Always Love You
~ Rebekah Anne

This is the one I never get rid of; the scar I’ll still pull out when
I’m 90 and we’re talking about how time heals. You promise me
forever and it’ll be the truth, won’t it? Even after you’re gone.

Many-Roofed Building in Moonlight
~ Jane Hirshfield

I found myself
suddenly voluminous,
three-dimensioned,
a many-roofed building in moonlight.

Thought traversed
me as simply as moths might.
Feelings traversed me as fish.

I heard myself thinking,
It isn’t the piano, it isn’t the ears.

Then heard, too soon, the ordinary furnace,
the usual footsteps above me.

Washed my face again with hot water,
as I did when I was a child.

Audio of the poet’s reading: https://aaknopf.tumblr.com/post/183936207234/the-boundlessness-and-the-limitations-of