Two of these theories have already been noted, but the doctrine of effluvia admittedly applied only to a certain class of amulets, and, I think, need not be seriously considered.  The “astral-spirit theory” (as it may be called), in its ancient form at any rate, is equally untenable to-day.  The discoveries of new planets and new metals seem destructive of the belief that there can be any occult connection between planets, metals, and the days of the week, although the curious fact discovered by Mr OLD, to which I have referred (footnote, p. 63@@@), assuredly demands an explanation, and a certain validity may, perhaps, be allowed to astrological symbolism.  As concerns the belief in the existence of what may be called (although the term is not a very happy one) “discarnate spirits,” however, the matter, in view of the modern investigation of spiritistic and other abnormal psychical phenomena, stands in a different position.  There can, indeed, be little doubt that very many of the phenomena observed at spiritistic seances come under the category of deliberate fraud, and an even larger number, perhaps, can be explained on the theory of the subconscious self.  I think, however, that the evidence goes to show that there is a residuum of phenomena which can only be explained by the operation, in some way, of discarnate intelligences.[1] Psychical research may be said to have supplied the modern world with the evidence of the existence of discarnate personalities, and of their operation on the material plane, which the ancient world lacked.  But so far as our present subject is concerned, all the evidence obtainable goes to show that the phenomena in question only take place in the presence of what is called “a medium”—­a person of peculiar nervous or psychical organisation.  That this is the case, moreover, appears to be the general belief of spiritists on the subject.  In the sense, then, in which “a talisman” connotes a material object of such a nature that by its aid the powers of discarnate intelligences may become operative on material things, we might apply the term “talisman” to the nervous system of a medium:  but then that would be the only talisman.  Consequently, even if one is prepared to admit the whole of modern spiritistic theory, nothing is thereby gained towards a belief in talismans, and no light is shed upon the subject.

[1] The publications of The Society for Psychical Research, and FREDERICK MYERS’ monumental work on Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, should be specially consulted.  I have attempted a brief discussion of modern spiritualism and psychical research in my Matter, Spirit, and the Cosmos (1910), chap. ii.