St. Paisios on Amuletes

Asked about the amulets, Elder Paisios said:

It is better to give crosses when they ask you for an amulet. Do not make amulets, because magicians now make amulets. They put no icons or crosses on the outside, but inside they have various magic. People see the image or the cross and are confused.

Yes, a few days ago they brought me an amulet from a Turkish Ibrahim, which also had a cross embroidered on it. I have also learned about an atheist who wraps various icons and puts in hair, sticks, pins, beads, etc.

When the Church checked him, he said:"I am a psychic, because psychics are free", and so he does whatever he wants. I said to someone who had been hurt by him:

Go to confession, because you are receiving demonic influences.

He went, he confessed.

He comes later and tells me: "I did not feel any difference. "Look, do you have anything on you from this deceiver? " I ask him.

"Yes," he says " I have a small box like a small gospel."

I take it, open it and find inside various wrapped icons.

I unwind and unwind and inside it had some beads, some hair, something like wood! I took it and the man was released.

You see what a craftsman the devil is.

Poor people wear such amulets, ostensibly to help, and they suffer. They have to burn them too to give up the ashes or throw them into the sea and go to confession.

Two of his friends who came regularly to Mount Athos, persuaded him after many difficulties to come  to Mount Athos with them, in order to bring him to Kalivi. On the way from Ouranoupolis to Daphne, every time the boat arrived at a monastery, the young man collapsed. His friends with the fathers who were on the boat tried to revive him by saying a prayer.

With great difficulty they reached Kalyvi.

My poor man opened his heart, he told me about his life. I saw that he was tormented by some demonic influence.

I told him to go there to confess to a spiritual father, to do whatever he was told, and he would be fine. He did go and confess.

When they got on the boat to return, he told his friends that the Holy Spirit had told him to throw into the sea the amulet given to him by an acquaintance that he was wearing, but it was impossible for him to do so.

No matter how much his friends begged him to get up and throw it away, he remained a statue.

He could not get up from the seat. Then they caught him and took him out on deck with great difficulty. With their help, the young man managed to pull out the amulet and let it fall into the sea, because he did not have the strength to throw it.

He immediately felt his hands free and his aching body gained strength.

He began to leap for joy in the corridor full of life and to test the strength of his hands on the irons and walls of the ship.

Finally, amulets alone do not save, if there is no faith in God, accompanied by participation in the sacred sacraments of the Orthodox Church.

Amulets are sacred means of salvation, they are not fashionable.

And these amulets are contagious of God's grace.