Charm Casting Part 7: Casting and Narrowing Down

Bryn Hofmann

— 2 min read

Once you've made your preparations, the next step is to select the charms for the reading.

You can:

  • Deliberately pick charms with meanings that are useful for the question or subject
  • Randomly select a certain amount of charms
  • Have your querent randomly select a certain amount of charms

And if your charms are separated into categories, you can do something different for each category.

If your charms aren't in a container that allows your querent or you to select without looking, consider putting them in a dice cup or similar container while the selection is going on.

I aim to have enough charms that they can barely fit in my cupped hands, which is about 30-50. But this takes into account the size of my maps, the size of my hands (relatively small), and the amount of information I want to be able to interpret. And I don't interpret any one-sided charms that fall face down or any charms that fall off of the board, so I'm interpreting less charms than the number I'm casting. Experiment with test casts to see how many charms you're comfortable with.

I put all of the selected charms in my dice cup, then shake, roll, and turn it to randomize. Then I pour the charms back into my hands because that's how I prefer to cast.

Casting methods:

  • Hold the charms in one hand and gradually release them bit by bit as you move your hand over the map
  • Pour the charms from a dice cup - this also works as a gradual, directed thing or you can practice trying to drop them in one go (I haven't gotten the latter approach to work)
  • Hold the charms in your cupped hands about 6" above the map, then drop and separate your hands quickly - this is what I normally do

Practice each method to see which one you prefer. The directed methods may work better with certain types of maps; if you want to see some charms in each area, this is a way to ensure it.

Take pictures of the map after casting. You'll probably want to take pictures at several points; this one shows you all (hopefully) of the raw data before anything is moved.

I have certain rules regarding interpretation; the two that are relevant right now are:

  • If the charm has a blank back and it lands back up, I don't interpret it
  • If the charm lands off of the map, I don't interpret it unless it's the meeple representing the querent

I remove charms that fall under these two rules and take another photo showing only the charms that will be interpreted.

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