Talismans, with their sources
Every design we print began as a page in a book, a sheet of woodblock-printed paper, or a talisman found folded inside a straw rice bale. We reproduce them in white on black cotton, and we tell you exactly where each one comes from: the edition, the page, the library that holds it. We do not claim these designs do anything. We claim they meant something — and that the meaning is worth getting right.
Volume 1
The Tawara
Three printed oath-talismans (goōhōin) that came to us folded inside a straw rice bale.
In preparationThe Stars
The Northern Dipper, the twenty-eight lunar lodges, and the seventy-two house-quieting talismans of a 1912 Japanese manual.
The Cosmos
Systems that count the sky differently — twelve, thirty-six, fifty-eight, sixty-four — and the instructions that told their owners to wear them.
朱
How we work
Public-domain sources and our own collection, identified as such. A citation for every design. Facts, hypotheses, and open questions kept visibly apart. When we get something wrong, we correct it in public.
The Library
Long-form essays on the objects behind the designs, footnoted to their sources. Start with The Crow Letters of Kumano, a six-hundred-and-fifty-year history of a talisman made of crows.