Well you have tried looking towards the homosexual community for improvements to your relationship (see previous entry) and it is still not working out. It might be time to pull out a charm or two.

John Brolley, University of Cincinnati program director for Religious Studies, is your man here. He has been translating four little books of Syriac charms that are among the rare collections at Harvard University that date from the 17th and 18th century. Each book is so fragile that they cannot be microfilmed and contains about between 50-100 written charms.

There are charms to protect against the 'Evil Eye' and illness as well as more modern ones to deflect gunfire and to make a judge favourable in a court appearance.

Christians need not be concerned. Although some charms date back 5,000 years they have been lovingly "christianised" by an early priest with references to Zeus and other pagan dieties removed and replaced with the power of God and Jesus. Also there is a reduction in the amount of physical ritual involved in the charms, moving more towards the spoken word.

"So, for example, if I were a farmer who had somehow ended up with a sick cow or a sick spouse, the priest, probably for some small amount of money, would copy down a charm from one of the books and the farmer would take it and wear it as an amulet. Many of the local villagers may not have been Christian, but they appear to have considered the local priest what you and I would call a medicine man, and were able to trust him."

The real question, of course, is "Do they work?" On this point Dr Brolley is remaining non-commital.

Read more here.