Care and Feeding of Crystals

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Care and Feeding of Crystals

Crystals have been in the lime-light ever since celebrities such as Shirley

Mcleane and Cher have come out of the closet and admitted they were

"New-Agers". However, along with this public scrutiny, has also been a whole bunch of

misconceptions. The most common of which is that a person just wears a crystal

like jewelry or carries it and it works like some kind of instant stage-magic or

prestidigitation. This, of course, is not the case. To get the full effect of

"crystal power" in your life means, as with so much else, that you must put

into it what you take out of it. So here are a few simple guidelines for those

of you who plan on taking this subject seriously.

1. Selecting your crystal

To select a crystal is not all that much different from selecting a pet or a

work of art. When you go into the store to purchase your crystal - or any

other stone used in healing or psychic work - just pick the one that "calls" to

you. Handle the various stones and place them, one by one, in your receptive

hand. (the one that is not your dominant hand; if you are right-handed or

ambi-dextrous, your receptive hand is your left. If you are completely left-handed

your receptive hand is your right.) The stone that is right for you will "pull"

you to it. This may not be the stone that looks the clearest or the most

impressive, either. Our societies materialistic values and our conditioning to

accept them must not enter into our decision, which is very hard for most of us at

first. Our first tendency is to judge the stone -as we always judge ourselves

and everything else in a constant stream of thoughts- by what we have been

conditioned to believe is "good" or "bad".

If the piece you are choosing is for a specific purpose; i.e. for healing, or

to enhance your psychic abilities, or for meditation; it will help if you

keep that purpose in mind while you are selecting the stone. An interesting

phenomena often happens to people who are just going into the gem and mineral

healing or psychic work. Most people start off with clear quartz, because it has

the most applications. They go into a store or a gem show to purchase a clear

quartz and find themselves drawn to all kinds of other "rocks" (as the

collectors call them) too. Many times they bring a bag of various mineral specimens

home with them. Later they look up the stones in one of the many reference books

on this subject, only to find the stones they were drawn to are exactly the

ones they need to deal with issues or illnesses that they need to work on.

The very first thing you need to do when you first get a crystal is to "clear

it" from the imbalanced energies of anyone else who has touched it. Crystals

"work" because of their piezoelectrical field. Researchers in Kirlian

photography and other subjects have long shown us that the body is surrounded by a

field of electro-magnetic energies, which psychics call the aura. People who have

studied this subject tell us that crystals help us by attuning their

piezoelectrical charge to the charge of our auras. So we must first remove the charges

from the stone that come from other's handling of it. This is done by leaving

the stone in sea-salt (available at almost any health-food store) for 3 days.

The only time you will have to use this technique - which is drastic - to

cleanse the stone is when you first buy it. The reason I say the technique is

drastic is because it erases all of your energy from the stone too, so the stone

has to be rebonded. (explained later) This piezoelectrical effect of the stone

is the same reason that quartz is useful in making computers, telephones,

watches, and in other electronic devices.

2. The regular maintenance of your stone

The regular care and maintenance of your stone is really quite simple. First

of all a gentler method of clearing the piece should be used at least once a

week and after any uses in either physical or inner

(mental/emotional/spiritual) healing work. This can be done in several ways. First of all, you can run it

under cool - no extremes of temperature please - water in your sink for

several minutes, while visualizing (intensely imagining in vivid detail, from a

meditative or extremely relaxed state) all imbalanced energies leaving it. You

can also leave it carefully buried in mugwort (an herb) for two to three days,

or place it in a flowerpot with an african violet plant (but you should know

that if it has been used to heal any severe conditions, the plant will die). The

stones should also be re-charged about once a month or after every use. For

other stones, direct sunlight is not such a good idea as it can fade the

colors. You can get the reflected energy of the sun by placing them in the moonlight

during the waxing of the moon (from one day after the new moon through the

night of the full moon). They can also be charged by surrounding them in a

circle of quartz points that have been charged by the sun, with the points of the

crystals facing inward toward the stones being charged. Another method is to

purchase an amethyst or quartz cluster and place the stones on it. A cluster is

a specimen with several individual crystals on it. Oh, and if you charge the

stone by a circle of crystals, be sure they have been cleared and charged

themselves before using them to charge anything else. The circle should consist of

at least four points, but eight is best. These stones used for charging do not

have to be large at all.

3. Using your stones

Stones are tools in our psychic work and, as in any other object used, work

by focusing the mind's powers. To get the best use out of them, more than just

wearing them or carrying them is required. They should be used from a state of

meditation, while visualizing the goals we wish to accomplish with them, such

as healing, increased psychic perception, etc. A good way to do this for to

help you focus and a self-hypnosis tape that relates to your goals and use it.

And if you are using the crystals in healing, be aware that they are not meant

to replace the care of a competent health professional - but many people find

them a useful adjunct to it.

- by Matrika