The room was lit with candles, the walls were painted a deep crimson, and I found myself wandering down a long red-lit hallway to the scratching sounds of 1920s jazz being played from an old record.

He appeared out of nowhere. 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 an antique lampshade on the wall, inches from my face.

“Wait.  This talisman.  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 Witch.

The Talisman: 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 a vintage shop.  A strand of cut garnets…rosary beads from the 1930s.  The snowy winter sunshine moving through the window made them sparkle to catch my eye.

I took them home with me and did what I always do….made them my own. I dragged out my craft box. I brought out my pliers. De-constructed. Re-constructed.

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 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 talisman into the river 9 times (9 is my lucky number) and I said this three times (because I love, and have always loved, crafting rhyming spells):

“Three times Three,
Magick flows through me.
Three times three,
This charm acts as a key.
Three times three
So mote it be.”

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. Then I did what my Grandma Helen taught me, an old Bohemian Magick tradition, I cupped my hands in front of me as if I was about to gather water from the stream to drink, then I imagined the one sentence I chose, manifesting powerfully and beautifully and easily into my life and what that looked like. I waited until my imagination really took me there and I could feel the feelings in my body. Then, and only then, did I blow my breath into my palms (for it carries the wish and gives life to it). Then I clasped my palms together into a prayer position and rubbed them back and forth as fast as I could.

Breath gives life to your dreams.

The friction of rubbing your hands back and forth gives it fire and passion (and also, as my Grandma Helen would say – the act of blowing your breath into your palms writes a new story for you in the lines of our palm, and then the heat burns it in there!)

I did this until I felt like my hands were starting their own fire.

Then I grabbed the necklace in my hands and held it tightly. My hands were tingling with my energy and thoughts, imagining all that I want to create, and in that moment, my vibes, my dream, my intention are intensified and put into the energy of the talisman.

Objects of a Witch always have a life to them, my Love.

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 place sacred to me from my childhood.

I tied it with a ribbon to my fire escape in Brooklyn 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 paths out there for you today as well.

Cherish all the moments. What a life this can be if we look to find the magick in it…..

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