Edinburgh Napier University

  Researchers may focus on charms as evidence about belief-systems in particular regions, periods or demographics; for insights into wider theoretical issues in the anthropology of religion, magic and ritual; or for their intrinsic qualities as poetic and /or performative genre. This paper contributes primarily to the second and third of these foci. I am interested in charms as a cultural intersection for beliefs to do with dreams and nightmares. I draw on materials from a wide range of times and places to explore certain tenacious semiotic structures in the interlinked media of charms, curse and evil dreams; made visible in the ways that people conceive of, mount, and guard against external occult threats. Resonances between the characteristic rhetorics of bad dreams and charms shed light on the "cultural scripts" which shape them both.