Blue Sapphire Meaning | Crystal for Commitment & More! [Crystal Confab Podcast]

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez  and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #30 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Jet crystal meanings, including: Working with Jet Crystals during the Full & New Moons Adopting the 'less is more' approach with Jet crystal energy Jet's historical significance, including its connection to queer identities in the ancient world   Tune in now for a deeper look at Jet crystal meanings!   Podcast Episode Transcript: Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for a casual chat about all things crystals.   Kyle Perez: Hello, and welcome to another crystal confab. Today, we're staying with another, not necessarily ‘gemstone-gemstone’, and I'm joined by Adam and Nicholas, and we're going to dive into Jet. How many of you love a bit of Jet action?   Nicholas Pearson: I've grown fond of it over the years.   Adam Barralet: Yeah. Me too. I think one of the really interesting things a lot of people find is just tactile-wise, how it feels so different to a crystal. And, you know, one of the problems I think all of us probably get is people sending pictures or trying to identify what this crystal is. And the great thing about when it comes to black crystals, Jet is so much lighter.   So if it's a really, really light crystal, then it's going to be really, really easy to go up that Jet type of thing. So that's one thing. But I, you know, I've had experiences and I'll share them later on about just the tactileness of Jet is really, really nice. But, I believe it's been used for a long, long time and has a really great history about it as well. And who better to tell us about the history than Nicholas?   Nicholas: Yeah. This is one of those rocks that I think we can trace approximately 30,000 years of human use of. Going back a really long time. In, you know, the earliest instances, people didn't necessarily make the strong geological distinction between Jet and related materials. Kennel coal and lignite and sometimes black shale were treated very similarly.   So we kinda have to have a little grace in interpreting the data. But it is a stone that is inherently in between, and I find that really magical. One of the most important sources for Jet in the ancient world was in Whitby and what is now modern day Whitby in Yorkshire. I have a bit of Whitby Jet here from the coast of England, and it is my favorite piece in my collection, of very few pieces of Jet. But I think it is really marvelous to imagine that particularly during the Roman occupation of Britain, this material was traded across thousands upon thousands of miles.   We find evidence of Whitby Jet carvings in faraway Switzerland and Germany, as well as in Rome proper. So this was a commodity that was traded for a very long time. In other parts of the world where Jet can be found, we find similarly ancient uses of it. But when this kind of Romano British center production was in full swing about thirty five hundred years ago, Jet seemed to acquire, if we read between the lines, a number of uses that are a little bit weird, a little queer, we might even say. And one of my favorite examples is, the remains of a a skeleton found in a a Roman period burial.   The skeleton is officially known as skeleton six five two, because we don't have names and dates and ages for all of these figures. And there are a lot of confusing data points about this. This person was interred with a lot of very lavish expensive funeral goods, including jewelry, but they were buried in the part of the cemetery that you would put people who were on the outskirts, the fringe, the beggars, the thieves. So we have a little bit of contradictory information there. When this area was being excavated for the first time, doing, osteological analysis,

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #29 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Ammonite & Fossils meaning, including: Kitchen witchery & Fossils Opal and Fossils combining to make Ammolite Horns of Ammon, Avalon connection and Ammonite   Tune in now for a deeper look at Ammonite & Fossils meaning!   Podcast Episode Transcript: Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for a casual chat about all things crystals. Adam Barralet: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of crystal confab. Each week, we like to talk about things that are buried in the ground and have been waiting for a long, long time for us to discover them. But today, we're doing something a little bit different because we won't be talking about a crystal. We're gonna be exploring the world of fossils and things like amylenite and ammolite. So I'm gonna be honest with you. Fossils don't really thrill me. So I've set a challenge to the other three to see if they can win me over by the end of the episode. So to dive in and explore these, welcome, Kyle, Nicholas, and Ashley. Kyle, I know you like the ammolites and ammonites. Talk us a little bit through them. Kyle Perez: Well, for me, I am kind of like you in the way that I'm not a huge fossil person, but I know other people around the confab are much much bigger. I will start with fossil light, ammolite. But what I wanna talk about first is what I've seen as an explosion of interest in fossils recently. I don't know if the rest of you have seen this as well, but last year at the gem show that I worked at, people gave no crap about the crystals. I had to learn on the fly about the fossils that we had because that's where a huge amount of interest was. Our ammolite shells, our ammonites, the megalodon teeth, like amber, green ambers, all of these sorts of things were, like, really exciting. Have you seen that sort of thing, or is it maybe just a niche thing that's happening here? Nicholas Pearson: Yeah. I'm pretty much seeing it industry wide, but I would love to say that it's probably people like Ashley and me who might be bringing some more crystal folks to the dark side. I haven't been to any, like, really big trade shows in a hot minute, but I know Ashley frequents them. So she might have some more insight there too. Ashley Leavy: Yeah. I think if I really reflect on it, the fossil boots might have been a little bit busier than they normally are. Usually, I'm one of, like, two or three people shopping at those booths for the store. So maybe that is the case. I haven't noticed it yet trending amongst the crystally people, the healy feelies, like all of us. I feel like I'm always being like the fossil evangelist out there, trying to get people to appreciate them a little bit. I know Nicholas is the same. We actually did an amazing event last year hosted by Anwen Avalon who did, like, a fossil symposium, and it was Anwen, Nicholas, myself, Brett Holyhead, and Moss Matthew. And it was just, like, five days of fossils, and it was super fun. But that is very much not the norm. I think it takes a little, a little bit of special interest to get people going.   Are you captivated by the ancient wisdom of fossils? Elemental energies shape the world and guide our spiritual practice. By working with fossils, you can access these ancient forces and bring balance, empowerment, and connection into your life. That’s why I created the Fossils for Elemental Magic Course—a beginner-friendly journey into the magic of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit.     In this course, you’ll explore how fossils act as conduits for elemental energy, empowering you to align with nature’s forces in your rituals, divination, and healing work.

Make your own ultra-nourishing and joy-boosting balm with this simple Calendula Salve Recipe - with a touch of herbal magic of course!

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #28 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Libyan Desert Glass meaning, including: Varuna Direct & Libyan Desert Glass Libyan Desert Glass for transformation and unity Enlightened Leadership with Libyan Desert Glass Origins and history of Libyan Desert Glass   Tune in now for a deeper look at Libyan Desert Glass meaning! Podcast Transcript:   Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for a casual chat about all things crystals.   Kyle Perez: Hello and welcome to Crystal Confab. We are, of course, here for another week talking about something that jumps into the crystal realm without technically being a crystal. I am, of course, joined by Ashley, Nicholas, and Adam, and we're going to talk about Libyan desert glass, also known as Libyan gold tektite. Are you all as excited as I am to talk about this rather interesting one?   Ashley Leavy: I definitely am. I love this stone so much. I was first introduced to it years and years ago, and we were just talking a little bit before we started recording. There's sort of this, like, moldavite to Libyan desert tektite pipeline that many of us follow to sort of find this stone. And I remember just being so taken with it.   Adam Barralet: I know I had so many people come to me and go, oh, what do you think of moldavite? And I'm like, that's moldavite. And, of course, moldavite got, you know, it's kind of a time of glory a few years ago, and I think it was being shared a lot on social media and TikTok and so on. And its price skyrocketed. But I'm like, you don't want moldavite.   You want me to be in desert class. And in my opinion, maybe that's why we're doing the episode before a moldavite episode. I think it's actually better than moldavite. But there's amazing other tech types as well, that I love that are found all around the world.   Kyle: Absolutely. This is one of the, I think, underappreciated gems that we really should work with a little bit more. And I think of all of us, it is always appropriate for Nicholas to dive into the amazing information that we have about Libyan desert glass.   Nicholas Pearson: Thank you. This is a special piece to me. I'm wearing my favorite one, which Ashley, of course, will recognize that I bought and treated myself to. I saw this on a store shelf in Glastonbury A Couple Years back, and I had to do a double take because I really thought this pendant was on the wrong shelf. It's just too perfect, and I thought I was looking at some really flawless citrine with an emerald set in the bezel.   And on close inspection, I could see these little wispy waves running through it, which tell us that it has an amorphous silica structure, which we call Lechatelierite. And it is like the juiciest piece of Libyan desert glass I've ever seen in my life. But, I do have a few pieces. I've been fascinated by this rock for a really long time, and we have evidence that may stretch as far back as 30,000 years of human history with this stone. And there are some mysteries about it that remain unsolved.   We don't have a really rich record of use. We don't have, like, an overwhelming amount of materials that have been made from it. We've got some lithic points, things like, you know, spear points, arrowheads, knives, that kind of thing. And obviously, the most famous thing that I think all of us here have seen is the pectoral of King Tut. So King Tutankhamun was buried with a really resplendent piece of Libyan desert glass carved into the shape of a scarab and set literally over his heart, which is pretty significant in Egyptian history and culture.   I'm not the expert in that though, but what I would really love to talk about is our evolu...

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #27 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Blue Sapphire meaning, including: Blue Sapphire for commitment Sharpening the mind with Blue Sapphire History and folklore of Blue Sapphire Blue Sapphire and Full Moon in Libra   Tune in now for a deeper look at Blue Sapphire meaning! Podcast Transcript:   Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for Crystal Confab: a casual chat about all things crystals.   Nicholas Pearson: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the crystal confab. My name is Nicholas, and I'm joined by three of my crystal besties, Kyle, Ashley, and Adam, and we are gonna confab about another gemstone. So this week, we are going to talk about the sibling gem of one we just recently covered. And although we alluded to the fact this was coming, I think it's gonna be really fun to talk about sapphires. And before we really, like, dive into our our separate topics, I would love to just kinda open the floor to, we'll say, the the cornucopia of things we see labeled sapphire on the market from maybe different flavors and colors of it to things that are maybe a little disingenuous that can also be out there.   Kyle Perez: I am so excited to talk about a little bit of sapphire. Sapphire is a stone that is very important to me. I spoke about this in our last episode. I have orange sapphire in my wedding band as one of my important stones of connection, but I would really like to talk about fakes first. Fakes, synthetics, imitations because sapphire being one of the big four, emerald, diamonds, sapphire, and ruby, it is one of the most imitated and faked stones.   Right? It's one of the most and I've been doing it the longest. Right? Because these stones have been loved for so long. And I've got a couple of examples that I have and you're not going to be able to see it as well as I'd like you to, but this is a really pretty blue sapphire pendant.   It's got a lovely little clear stone on the top. But this is one of the lyres that is out there. And what I know with my little loop when I look at it sideways is it has a clear portion on the top, a tiny little sliver of dark blue, and then clear underneath. That means it's a foil scented stone, so it's an imitation. It's not even a real sapphire.   It's totally, totally imitation. And then within this little box, you can see a lovely bright blue stone in the middle. This was actually our gift. There's a couple of real ones on the outside, but it's, you know, gotta keep them together because they're all sapphires. The one in the middle is actually a synthetic manmade sapphire that was a gift to all of our gemology class when we graduated.   We were told it was. It's one full carat. It's really, really beautiful, but it is a lab grown example. And it's really interesting to know that we have lab grown. We have synthetic.   We have, like, imitation. There's all of these different layers of fakes that are out there. So it's really important that if you can, when you're looking at jewelry, fine jewelry, especially examples, a nice triplet loop as a base is an amazing place to start. These have come a long way in a really long time. They've got UV lights on them.   They've got lights on them, so you can really dive into and look at stones and see within them. And that's something that reveals a sapphire. Sapphires will often have layers of blue color, which I alluded to with Ruby last week. That dichroic nature of showing more than one color is something that is very common in our sapphires. So it's important to look for that subtle difference in color, but not necessarily clear blue in such dramatic spaces.   Ashley Leavy: Let me ask you, Kyle.

A stone used for millennia in both toolmaking and ritual, Black Obsidian is a form of naturally occurring glass, formed when volcanic lava cools rapidly. It's a powerful stone known for its ability to reveal hidden truths, dissolve energetic blockages, and support deep emotional healing. Whether used for energy clearing, scrying, or shadow work, the healing properties of Black Obsidian carry profound potential for clarity, transformation and empowerment. In this post, we’ll explore how to work with the raw, untamed power of Black Obsidian to help you navigate deep healing and uncover your most authentic self. A Crystal Message about the Healing Properties of Black Obsidian: "I consciously tap into divine wisdom and knowledge and embrace my intuition and inner knowing."     Common Healing Properties of Black Obsidian: Promotes energetic protection Reveals the truth in any situation Exposes areas of yourself that need growth and development Blocks negative energies from entering your auric field Enhances grounding Banishes negative energy Brings peace and calming Encourages living in a virtuous manner Increases courage Encourages personal growth Facilitates compassion Enhances accuracy in scrying divination Aids in acceptance of your weaknesses so that you can begin to heal and correct them Helps you to address issues of control and power struggles Enhances the experience of ceremonies and rituals Removes negative thought patterns and conditioning     Black Obsidian Companions: Colors: Opaque black (sometimes with transparent banding) with a glassy surface. Zodiac Signs: Capricorn, Scorpio Elements: Earth, Fire Companion Flowers: Fireweed Companion Essential Oil: Camphor Companion Stone: Howlite Common Origins: Mexico Notes: A natural volcanic glass. Wanna’ Get Science-y? Click Here to get information about the chemical composition, hardness, streak, etc. of this crystal from one of my favorite sites!   One way to work with the Healing Properties of Black Obsidian: Scrying Divination Obsidian mirrors, made by polishing thin slices of Obsidian into mirror-like discs, serve as potent tools for scrying divination. With their glassy, reflective surfaces, Obsidian mirrors provide a gateway to the realm of the subconscious. These mirrors give you the ability to look at yourself, so you are better able to reflect on your life paths, your behaviors, and your identity.     Obsidian mirrors have been esteemed for their connection to the underworld and the spiritual realm. In the last few years, the popularity of Obsidian mirrors has surged again, but they have long served as tools for scrying divination. Practitioners like John Dee, the famous crystallomancer, worked with one of these mirrors in his scrying practice to communicate with otherworldly entities and gain profound insights. By gazing into obsidian mirrors, you can receive messages from your intuition, your guides, and your ancestors as part of your crystal scrying practice. If you’d like to stick with natural stones, rather than glass mirrors for your work in divination with crystals, a Black Obsidian tumbled stone or small palm stone will also work well as a scrying tool, and these are typically much more affordable than the round disc-shaped mirrors.   The staff at my new age shop, Mimosa Books & Gifts, had this to share: Obsidian is the most abundant form of naturally occurring glass, the result of volcanic lava cooling quickly. Technically obsidian may have any composition, but usually, it’s a glass with inclusions of hematite and rhyolite. Because it’s easy to chip and forms a sharp point, it has been an invaluable material for toolmaking throughout history, thus contributing to the evolution of the human race’s evolution.

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #26 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Ruby meaning, including: Ruby and lookalikes throughout history Ruby for confidence Emotional strength with Ruby   Tune in now for a deeper look at Ruby meaning! Podcast Transcript:   Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for Crystal Confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.   Ashley Leavy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of crystal confab where I'll be confabbing with my crystal besties about one of our collected favorite stones, as we always say. This week, Adam, Nicholas, Kyle, and myself are chatting about Ruby. I am so excited about this episode. I actually just got this brand new Ruby palm stone from the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show about two months ago, and it has just been sitting on my desk, kinda letting me hold it, drawing some inspiration. So, how is everybody doing today?   Adam Barralet: Really well. And I'm really wrapped up in talking about Ruby. It is one of my favorite crystals, especially when it comes to, like, red crystals. I find it really empowering as well. And I really am enthusiastic to have this conversation because I think sometimes people forget about, like, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds because they kind of think of them as being, like, jewelry.   And so there's probably people that have a Ruby and don't realize that the Ruby because it's their engagement ring. It's not a tumbled stone in that way. But in saying that as well, you know, I'd love to know how much you paid for your palm stone. Rubies don't have to be that expensive. They are gonna be more than your amethyst or your rose quartz, but this is a piece I paid, 50 Australian dollars for this type of thing.   It's just a tumbled stone. Obviously, it's of the quality that can be turned into a ring necessarily, but I think it's a real powerful crystal to have in your collection.   Ashley: That's a great point, Adam. And so often when we're talking about, you know, crystals, we're especially in the crystal healing community, we're not necessarily thinking of fine jewelry. We're not necessarily thinking of precious gems. And those precious gems, the Ruby, sapphire, emerald, and diamond, are kind of in a class of their own, and then we have all the semi precious gems kind of that we see more commonly in the type of jewelry that, you know, we've been showing, frankly, in quite a lot of these episodes now. This Ruby palm stone, it's a good size.   It's a very nice quality. It has a good color. I think it was about 55 US dollars, so not too bad.   Adam: That's yeah. I'm very, very jealous of that. It's also interesting when we talk about those top four that we both listed, with Ruby rubies and sapphires, they're actually the same stone, aren't they? They're both corundum, but just different colors, which is quite that really interesting. And, you know, as I was learning throughout the years, I realized, oh, wow.   We always think of sapphires as being blue, but, no. You can get them in orange, yellow, green, white, black, every color. The only color that ain't come in is red. Well, they do, but we just call that a Ruby. And, Nicholas, do you know by any chance why that is?   Is that just through tradition before they realized it's all the same stone?   Nicholas Pearson: Yeah. So, you know, sapphire once used to mean more or less any blue stone, and Ruby literally comes from Latin, Ruby as red red colored gems. So, you know, they got some disambiguation over time. Like, the original sapphire, as we'll talk about another week, is not even remotely geologically related to what we think of as sapphire today. That is another semiprecious gem,

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #25 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Pietersite meaning, including: Pietersite and New Moon in Aries High magic and Pietersite Being in the 'eye of the storm' with Pietersite Formation and energy of Pietersite   Tune in now for a deeper look at Pietersite meaning! Podcast Transcript:   Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.   Adam Barralet: Nature is truly awe inspiring, and there's nothing more inspiring than a thunderstorm. I love them. I love the power and the rumble of the thunder, the flashes of the lightning, and the electricity that surges through the sky. And whenever there is an electrical storm, there's one crystal I run and grab. It's my Pietersite.   And that's the crystal we've decided to confab today. I'm here with Ashley, Kyle, and Nicholas, and we're about to dive into the stone of the storm. How are we today, everyone?   Nicholas Pearson: Excited.   Adam: Yay. It's an electrical kind of crystal, isn't it, Nicholas? And I know you've got some really great information to share with us about its formation because it's a really interesting looking crystal. And I'm sure the formation is really potent as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that?   Nicholas: Yeah. I have to preface this by saying, this, in no uncertain terms, is one of my all time favorite minerals. And I know we've all said that more than once, but this is the first gemstone that I truly took one look at and fell in love with. I remember visiting my local little crystal shop in the teeny tiny town I grew up in, and I'd seen almost everything in every single case except for this one dark stone in the back corner that didn't quite have a light reaching it. And so finally, you know, I turned to the owner of the shop.   I'm like, what is this one? He's like, oh, Pietersite. I think you'd actually like this. I'm surprised you'd never seen it. At that moment, he brought it out and I could turn it in the light.   I was in love. Now in that stage of my life, I was all of, like, maybe 12 years old. I just didn't have $68 to spend on a pretty chunky cabochon. I do wish that I had that money then because, you know, ten, twelve years later, it would have been worth five or seven times that. Thankfully, I've seen prices kind of recede a bit in a lot of markets here in North America in the last few years.   So it's certainly coming out in greater abundance, and I'm really grateful for that. But Pietersite is this stone that's kind of wrapped in mystery, and I think that's really appropriate for a gemstone like this. It's one that, a lot of, let's say, theories were put forward as to its formation process, but it wasn't until about, like, fifteen years ago, in 2010 that there were some pretty decent, like, good structural and chemical and optical analyses done that gave us some answers. So we have to address its relatives to better understand what makes it different. And so pietersite is very similar to tiger's eye, in a lot of ways.   They contain a lot of the same ingredients. They are predominantly quartz. They have these fibrous asbestos forms, we call them, inclusions of crocidolite and some of its altered relatives. There tend to be a lot of iron oxides and hydroxides in both. But in tiger's eye, we see these kind of broad parallel brush strokes of that chatoyant or cat's eye like pattern.   And in Pietersitezite, we see anything but that. In fact, the gemological term, and this is one of my favorites for it, my favorite gemological term maybe ever is chaotic chatoyance. And that is what this is. And, hence,

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #24 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Red Garnet meaning, including: Red Garnet for tuning into Mabon energies Powerful & protective nurturing with Red Garnet Red Garnet's connection to Goddess Brigid The chemistry and energy of Red Garnet   Tune in now for a deeper look at Red Garnet meaning! Podcast Transcript:   Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren't sure how to use them? Join four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.   Kyle Perez: Hello, and welcome to another Crystal Confab. I'm Kyle, the Crystalline Mage, and I'm joined by Ashley Leavy, Nicholas Pearson, and Adam Barralet, my crystal besties as we confab about a different crystal every single week. Now this mineral in particular, I would argue we all have a very good relationship with. I think everyone loves a bit of this, and this is, of course, our red garnet. Red garnet has few different variations, and we're going to dive straight into Nicholas who's going to share a bit of the chemistry, a bit of the magic, and a bit of the energy that it entails.   Nicholas Pearson: So I wanna preface this by saying I'm as we've probably discussed in the past, I'm like an Uber Capricorn. I've got a big stellium there. I'm a January baby. Garnet is my birthstone. I'm also red-green colorblind.   I have never been excited about a red garnet in my life. And I'd heard that there were such things as green garnets and never laid my eyes on them. You know, I'd seen orangey reds and pinky reds, but it was mostly the dull, earthy, browny kind of reds that I just don't think my eyes perceive that color well. So I grew up not loving my birthstone, a story that sounds similar to others out there. And when I was a freshman at university and I started working for the Earth Science Museum, I found out that garnets could come in other colors, not just kind of, you know, green was an option and then variations on red, but they actually came in a a wide variety, and it dealt a lot with their chemistry and trace elements and things.   And I was really mystified to learn that unlike quartz, which comes in so many different colors but is fundamentally the same substance, garnets are a whole family. In fact, they're like two two series that share a common element, and it blew my mind. Furthermore, that particular year, this would be, like, early, maybe mid two thousands, the discovery of the Japanese rainbow andro garnets from Tenkawa Mine in Nara Prefecture was just blowing up all over the place. It was on the front of, like, Rockin' Gym and the neurological journal. And the museum I worked for, of course, got all these publications, and I saw this vivid multicolored thing.   And I was like, what is this? And my boss goes, oh, well, those are the Japanese rainbow garnets. You like rocks. Really, you've heard about these. They're everywhere.   I'm like, I know nothing. So I learned everything I could about garnet. It turns out at that point, the textbook said garnet came in every color of the rainbow except blue. Not long later, I found better, better data, more up to date information that said garnets could come in every color of the rainbow except blue garnets were usually microgarnets, and they were found in things like kimberlite pipes. And they were good indicators if you're looking at thin sections under polarizite that you might have diamonds nearby.   So you wanted to find them. They just weren't exciting to look at. And then sometime in the last decade, there was a find in Tanzania. I don't know how well this is gonna show up on camera, but blue garnets exist. They're kind of more blue violet than, like, a true blue.   But my white whale is out there in college.

If you’ve been working with crystals for a while, you’ve probably heard that they need to be charged—kind of like little energetic batteries that run out of juice. Traditionally, people believed that a crystal’s energy could get depleted over time, and charging was the way to refresh it. But over the years, I’ve come to see things a little differently. In this post, I’ll share my take on charging crystals, why I still do it (but for a different reason!), and how to charge crystals to align their energy with your intentions. Traditional Thoughts on Charging Crystals: Traditionally, the concept of charging crystals was taught because it was thought that a crystal's energy could become depleted over time. Charging was the method used to replenish the crystal's energy so that it could continue to work effectively. Basically, crystals were treated like batteries that were drained of their energy and then "re-charged" to energize them again. If a crystal didn't feel the same or work quite the same any longer, then it was recommended to charge the stone. Some people also viewed this as a necessary step after cleansing, because they believed that the cleansing process removed ALL energy from the stone.   My View on Charging Crystals: In my experience crystals don't need to be charged the same way they need to be cleansed. A crystal doesn't actually lose its energy over time just because you've worked with it - it's not like a battery as we were made to think. If the energy of your stone feels "off" to you, it likely just needs a good cleansing. If that doesn't help, it could just be that the stone is no longer needed - that it has served its purpose and it's giving you a subtle hint to move on. I still charge my crystals, but instead of doing this to replenish their energy, I think of it as a way to add to it...a way to further define and align the energy of the stone with your intention. Each method of charging adds its own energetic imprint to the crystal, so you should decide which type of energy you would like to work with and then charge your stone using a corresponding method. How to Charge Crystals: Common Methods Sunlight Wheel of the Year Holidays Solar and Lunar Eclipses Pyramids Quartz Crystal Charging Grids & Numerology Seeds Flowers Herbs Water Snow Rain & Storms Fog   How to Charge Crystals: My Top 3 Favorite Ways 1) Charging with the Sun: When charging your crystals with the energy of the Sun, place your crystal outdoors or on the windowsill and leave them there all day (or a minimum of 2-3 hours). Many healers prefer to place their crystals outside on the ground (where they have direct contact with the earth), but if this isn't possible, placing them in a windowsill is also acceptable. To assist the process further when working with the Solar holidays (Holy Days), you can set your stone atop a picture of the Wheel of the Year on the corresponding day. In general, this method of charging is connected with personal power, good luck, vitality, and with the fire element.   2) Charging with the Moon: When charging your crystals with the energy of the Moon phases, place your crystal outdoors or on the windowsill and leave it in there overnight. Many healers prefer to place their crystals outside on the ground (where they have direct contact with the earth), but if this isn't possible, placing them in a windowsill is also acceptable. To assist the process further, you can set your stone atop a picture of the corresponding moon phase.   3) Charging With Herbs (Fresh or Dried): Place your crystal in a container (preferably wood, glass, or ceramic) filled with leaves (any type will do, but specific types will carry the energy of that plant) and leave it there overnight. It's best to completely cover the stone with the leaves. When using fresh leaves, this method of charging is connected with the property of new beginnings and with sp...