Lucky W Amulet Archive: Good Luck Charms, Magic Talismans, Protection Amulets

The Lucky W Amulet Archive is a folkloric resource that contains hundreds of interlinked pages describing and illustrating amulets, talismans, lucky charms, and good luck pieces from all around the world and from all eras of history. It is a work in progress, and new pages are added on a regular basis.

To navigate the Amulet Archive, go the Lucky W Index Page or browse through these alphabetical shortcuts:

The publication of The Lucky W Amulet Archive on the web is sponsored by The Lucky Mojo Curio Co. Occult Shop, but although some of the good luck charms and amulets in the Archive are available at the shop, the Archive is not a catalogue of goods for sale and, indeed, many of the objects shown are antiques and museum pieces of great rarity. Since January of 2021, additional financial support for this site has come from my Patrons at Patreon.com, who pay $2.00 per week to fund my writing of four new web pages every month. Thank you, Patrons!

BUT ... WHAT IS "LUCKY W"?

Lucky W speaks to me of Aunt Sally's Policy Players Dream Book and Pow-Wows or The Long Lost Friend; of the Lucky 7 Grocery Store in Nevada City, California; of childhood Westerns set on ranches known by letter-brands, like the Flying A and the B-Bar-B; of radio station "KDIA Lucky 13," playing R&B music out of Oakland, California (and its remarkable, musically unresolved theme jingle); of Clover brand valve grinding compound with its four-leaf clover logo; of the cosmetics called Lucky Brown; of early 20th century "Good Luck" postcards; of fresh fruit from California's Central Valley packed in wooden crates with beautiful figurative labels and brand names like Lucky Celery; of musicians like Lucky Millinder and Lucky Otis and Lucky Wilbury; of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason mystery, "The Case of the Lucky Legs," set in 1930s southern California; of canned vegetables from California sold under the Double Luck and Lucky Trail brand names; of the 1920s British cigarette trading cards called Wills's Lucky Charms; of Jelke Good Luck Oleomargarine, which in the 1920s offered "Good Luck and Good Health to Millions of Happy Little American Boys and Girls"; of Lucky Luke cowboy comics (in French) and Lady Luck comics (In English); of the seventh son of a seventh son; of air-conditioned motels like the Flying W Lodge in Ozona, Texas; of the garden roses "Lucky Piece" and "Lucky Lady"; and of all manner of hoodoo potions, like Sonny Boy's Lucky Hand Alleged Indian Grandma oil and Double Fast Luck Soap, which i used to buy in Oakland, and magnetic sand, which i bought on Maxwell Street in Chicago way back in 1964, and High John the Conqueror root, which i saw for sale in New Orleans -- and, of course, my own Lucky Mojo brand Spiritual Supplies.

Why the name "Lucky W"?

That, friends, is a strange tale.

This web site grew out of alt.lucky.w, a usenet newsgroup devoted to discussion of the metaphysics of beneficent synchronicity and descriptions of, experiences with, and rationales for the operation of artifacts, tokens, and devices intended to increase beneficent synchronicity and decrease malevolent synchronicity. Alt.lucky.w was an "abandoned" newsgroup, adrift without a hierarchy, empty of any posts, its original purpose unknown even to The Cabal when i learned of its existence in 1994, through Froggy's Usenet Salvage Company. At that time, propagation of the group was so low that only two service providers were known to carry it. For some reason the name haunted me, though, and i campaigned to get America Online and other ISPs to pick it up. (You can do the same with your ISP -- just read and follow my directions for getting your ISP to carry alt.lucky.w.) As soon as i gained admission to the group, i decided to write an alt.lucky.w FAQ (although no one but me had any questions, frequently-asked or otherwise). In answering my own questions, i found a purpose for the group, and from that purpose has grown this web archive.

Then, as if from the void, the creator of alt.lucky.w appeared and told me how the newsgroup came to be!

His name (his given, birth name) is Lucky Wayne Donegan, and here is his story:

A long time ago back in college I was trying to set up a new group for computer science; this goes back about 7+ years ago, to 1988-9, when I had the IQ of plant life. I made a real big goof and the area was accidentally created, unintentionally, for whatever it's worth.

You can add this information to the web site if you wish. I have no problems with it. I am rather open minded. Being named Lucky cannot be as bad as being named the Boy named Sue (Johnny Cash's song). Believe me that name has darn near cost me my life on occasions and at other times a tremendous amount of embarrassment. However, I have learned if I cannot laugh at myself or at life it's not worth living, so HAVE FUN. Just keep me posted, ok?

Lucky W. Donegan
[email protected]
Montana Computer Nut Software, Inc.
P. O. Box 1647
Polson, Montana 59860

P.S.: I live on the Flathead Indian Reservation; it's a Confederation of the Salish & Kootenai Tribes and is one of richest Indian Reservations in Montana.

This man CHANGED MY LIFE!!!

Because of his name and a mistake he made while messing around with computers:

I took on the rehabilitation of the alt.lucky.w newsgroup in 1994 and began posting short essays on lucky talismans and folklore online there and in other usenet newsgroups devoted to magic, thus making the online acquaintance of my husband-to-be, nagasiva.
I renewed my lifelong interest in writing about folk magic by teaching myself HTML code in 1995 and creating web pages on the subject of lucky amulets and charms.
I acquired the luckymojo.com domain to permanently house my Lucky W Amulet Archive web pages in 1996, and started work the same year on a massive and free online book called "Hoodoo in Theory and Practice" (HITAP) and a collection of songs about conjure called Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo.
I took my Lucky Mojo Curio Co. online spiritual supply catalogue fully online to support my work on Lucky W, HITAP, and Blues Lyrics in 1997.
After four years of online friendship, i finally met my husband, nagasiva, in 1998 and he moved in with me; we were married as the odometer shuffled from 1999 to 2000.
In 2002, i wrote a book on folk magical herbalism called "Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic" and nagasiva and i formally founded our own Lucky Mojo book publishing company
-- which to date has released more than three dozen titles on folk magic and fortune telling by a wide variety of authors.
In 2003, i commenced teaching an Online Correspondence Course in Hoodoo Rootwork Magic.
In 2003, nagasiva and i founded the free Lucky Mojo Forum about hoodoo, rootwork, and conjure, first just for my students, but by 2008, fully open to the public at large.
In 2004, nagasiva and i inaugurated sponsorship of The Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour, a weekly radio podcast on divination and folk magic, and by 2010 it had grown into a full-fledged radio podcast network hosting many different shows about magic and mysticism.
In 2004, i began hosting my curated collection of historical newspaper and magazine articles on Black American folklore and conjure at a new domain i called Southern Spirits.
Nagasiva and i collaborated on the development of Herb Magic, a very large free site on folk magical herbology in 2004; its illustrated listing of hundreds of herbs, roots, and minerals, with traditional spells for their use, is supported by the Lucky Mojo Curio Co.'s Herb Department's sales platform.
In 2006, nagasiva, my students, and i held our first in-person workshops, which, in 2008, were professionally organized by our friend Ms. Robin, and became the annual Hoodoo Heritage Festivals..
Missionary Independent Spiritual Church was founded on June 6, 2006; we held an official consecration of its new church building on May 12, 2007, and placed its Candle Ministry website online -- the internet's first candle-burning altar service.
In 2007 The Mystic Tea Room went online to host my extensive collection of vintage fortune-telling tea cups, tea leaf reading books, historical tea rooms of the world, and free instructions in how to read tea leaves.
During 2007, with the support of Ms. Robin, Deacon Millett, and nagasiva, a group of my students and i developed the Association of Independent Spiritual Churches and its subsidiary organization, the Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers (AIRR) to provide a directory of ethical psychic readers and rootwork practitioners and educate the public about the history and practice folk magic and spell-casting.
In 2008 i became the lead writer and editor-in-chief of the volunteer team of web designers that produces AIRR's online encyclopedia of conjure and folk magic, Readers and Rootworkers -- which made its public debut on June 6th, 2009. Millions of people have visited this site in the years since its creation, and we release a new page about folk magic every week.
The Crystal Silence League, which had originated in 1919, got its own web site in 2009 as a free online prayer chain, funded by nagasiva and me; in 2020, we released its ownership to the Association of Independent Spiritual Churches.
In 2020, i started a new site, Your Wate and Fate to host vintage graphics selected from my collection of 19th and early 20th century fortune-telling games, postcards, trading cards, books, movie posters, and other material objects connected to popular systems of divination, such as crystal gazing, dice reading, cartomancy, numerology, astrology, and palmistry.
In 2021, to fund all of these educational websites, nagasiva and i started my very own "It's All Ephemera" Patreon account, where members pay $8.00 per month to receive a one-year advance look at the new material i am creating on folk magic and fortune telling, at the rate of four new web pages per month.
In 2021 I collected together 154 of my favourite lucky amulets and collaborated with the writer and artist Gregory Lee White to create and publish the book "How to Use Amulets, Charms, and Talismans in the Hoodoo and Rootwork Tradition," which you can order right here on this page!
In 2024 nagasiva and i are launching a new website called "All the Popular Gods . com" -- look for an official announcement soon!

I am completely in awe of the complexity of the universe and the arbitrary nature of many of its little wrinkles and fractal permutations.

I hereby declare Lucky W. Donegan the Creator of alt.lucky.w and nominate him to the post of Ascended Master.

Whew.

P.S. Lucky W. Donegan ran into some bad luck in 2013 when his house burned down. Here's a news article on that. Luckily, he and his wife were not hurt in the fire and were able to rebuilld their lives, and he is still working on computers, as far as i know.

$12.00
BOO-GRI-ACAT

How To Use Amulets, Charms, and Talismans in the Hoodoo and Conjure Tradition: Physical Magic for Protection, Health, Money, Love, and Long Life
by Catherine Yronwode and Gregory Lee White
In a mere 96 pages, this densely packed and lavishly illustrated occult manual presents more than 150 popular natural curios, apotropaic amulets, protective talismans, animal totems, and religious emblems from around the world and from all eras of history, as prescribed and employed in contemporary hoodoo, conjure, and rootwork.

Animal Mascots and Fetishes

Stone and Crystal Amulets

Herb and Root Curios

Enchanted Jewelry

Zodiacal Gemstones

Empowered Key Rings

Talismanic Seals and Sigils

Lucky Charms and Lockets

Reliquaries and Prayer Papers

Learn how to identify, select, prepare, and consecrate your own magical and metaphysical amulets and charms -- and how to wear or carry them for good luck, protection, health, wealth, success, victory, and love! At last: a practical field guide to folkloric charms!

Art Credit: The images on this page are a combination of scans from my collection of lucky talismans, candles, and paper goods, and labels that i have designed for the Lucky Mojo Curio Co. The lovely border artwork was composited by an unknown web designer who stole the images of objects from my Lucky W Amulet Archive and lifted my retro-deco label art from the Lucky Mojo Curio Co. Occult Shop catalogue without credit to me. To paraphrase the words of the great blues singer Robert Johnson, "Somebody got lucky and stole them back again."

LUCKY MOJO CURIO CO.

6490-B Front Street, Forestville, California 95436
707-887-1521 • [email protected]
Retail Shop • Mail Order Catalogue • Wholesale Catalogue
YouTube • Customer Forum • Learn Hoodoo • Facebook • Instagram

Manufacturers and Distributors of Hoodoo and Conjure Supplies: Oils, Powders, Incense, Baths, Washes, Herbs, Resins, Colognes, Roots, Minerals, Curios, Books, Candles, Statuary, and Amulets.

THE LUCKY W AMULET ARCHIVE

AN ILLUSTRATED MUSEUM OF LUCKY CHARMS, TALISMANS, AND AMULETS
by
CATHERINE YRONWODE

WELCOME TO THE LUCKIEST WEBSITE ON THE INTERNET!

BUT ... WHAT IS "LUCKY W"?

LUCKY MOJO CURIO CO.

6490-B Front Street, Forestville, California 95436 707-887-1521 • [email protected] Retail Shop • Mail Order Catalogue • Wholesale Catalogue YouTube • Customer Forum • Learn Hoodoo • Facebook • Instagram

Manufacturers and Distributors of Hoodoo and Conjure Supplies: Oils, Powders, Incense, Baths, Washes, Herbs, Resins, Colognes, Roots, Minerals, Curios, Books, Candles, Statuary, and Amulets.

THE LUCKY W AMULET ARCHIVE

AN ILLUSTRATED MUSEUM OF LUCKY CHARMS, TALISMANS, AND AMULETS by CATHERINE YRONWODE

WELCOME TO THE LUCKIEST WEBSITE ON THE INTERNET!

BUT ... WHAT IS "LUCKY W"?

6490-B Front Street, Forestville, California 95436
707-887-1521 • [email protected]
Retail Shop • Mail Order Catalogue • Wholesale Catalogue
YouTube • Customer Forum • Learn Hoodoo • Facebook • Instagram

AN ILLUSTRATED MUSEUM OF LUCKY CHARMS, TALISMANS, AND AMULETS
by
CATHERINE YRONWODE