He pushed me up against the wall and leaned his face against my neck.

His voice was choked with sobs when he finally spoke:

“There’s nothing I can do to save you.”

His eyes caught something gleaming, something hidden on a red lampshade on the wall, inches from my face.

“Wait.  This amulet.  It’s for protection.   It’s the only thing that might save you.  It will identify you as one of us…..”

He was a wild haired boy witch.

The Amulet: a single sacred heart charm dangling at the end of red thread.

He slipped it around my neck and disappeared down the stairs.

I never saw him again.

The night was a wild immersive theater experience known as Sleep No More.

I was inspired.
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In four days time, I found a little treasure draped across a music box of an outdoor fair.  A strand of cut garnets…rosary beads from the 1930s.  The sunshine made them sparkle to catch my eye.

I took them home with me and did what I always do….made them my own. I brought out my pliers. De-constructed. Re-constructed. When I was finished, the end of the rosary beads held the sacred heart. The heart charm represents wild imaginative theater, performance that pushes boundaries, and gorgeous unknown adventures….the holy trinity of my own religion.

A new magical talisman had found its way to me.  Vintage.  Repurposed by my own hands.  The religion of sacred adventure.  Gifted by the witches of Macbeth.  Not half bad.

This is what it looks like.

The heart dangles right over mine. It protects me and I use it to draw the best experiences to me. Its purpose is to open the gates of adventure around me.

When I am craving…
nay, fiending adventure,
my fingers will find their way to each cut garnet bead, and I will whisper my own made up prayers, as wild hearted dirty girls are apt to do.

There are no words I can tell you for these prayers…they are not meant for me to tell you. They are hidden in your own heart, your own mouth, and one day the breath will come out and exhale them into being.

There are many books and sites, all with different stories and scripted words of how to “consecrate” or charge your amulet or talisman. There is always sage involved. And none of the things I’ve come by in form of a book spell have ever moved me.

This is what I did that worked for me…but magic is very Choose-Your-Own-Adventure…

I went down by the river.

I slipped off my shoes and balanced on a tree that spans from one side of the river to another. I lowered myself down and laid down on it in the middle of the river. My face was to the sky and my back was held by the tree above that the rushing river. I dipped my amulet into the river 9 times (9 is my lucky number).

Then I took it in my hands, looked up at the sky and thought of the good things that I wanted it to attract to me. I picked one sentence that summed it up the best and said it on every single bead. I put the necklace on my heart and rubbed my palms together – thinking about what I wanted to create. I rubbed them back and forth, as fast as I could, until I felt like my hands were starting their own fire. Then I grabbed the necklace in my hands and held it tightly – imagining all my best thoughts for adventure. I cupped it in my hands and blew into it – like making a wish. And then I sat up tall and put the amulet around my neck.

I do things to charge it often. When I am in the middle of an adventure, like the kinds I’ve imagined it to bring to me…I make sure part of that adventure is rubbed off on it. I’ve dipped it in a secret cave in Mexico where water collected after dripping from stalactites, I’ve left it in a hole in a tree in Congo Square in New Orleans overnight, I hid it in the pyramids of Uxmal while the sun rose, I’ve dipped it in the Lake of Brightness on the other side of the world from where I was born, I dipped it in a glass of champagne on the top of the Eiffel Tower on the 11 o’clock hour as the lights twinkled up the structure, and I rolled it in the dirt of a foundation built over a 100 years ago, a space rarely seen and illegal to enter. I like my adventure to be boundless.

On Saturday night and yesterday, while the moon was closest to us for the entire year, I laid it out on the front porch for a moon bath, to soak up the beams.

Oh, La Luna.

And here I sit, its heart over mine, ready to go out and see what adventures shall unfold…

I hope there’s many gorgeous, unexpected paths out there for you today as well.

For it is a magic day…. it is the 7th anniversary of marrying my true love, Burke Heffner.

Tell me about talismans that you have. What have you done to “charge” them? How have they found their way into your life?

Here I am. In Curiosa. Waiting to hear your secrets…