Crystal Power

Crystals can be very polarizing. Sorry fellow geologists, bad pun, I know.

In three decades, I’ve built a half-decent collection of museum-quality pieces, currently leased to a business downtown. I collect them because of my love for the inherent esthetic value of crystals; their rarity, the science behind their formation and the intangible “wow factor” that spectacular samples elicit. See I’m in Love for some recent drooling.

What I loathe about crystals is the mythology that’s grown up around the supernatural physical and mental-healing powers they supposedly possess. If crystals were doctors, we’d be cured of everything. Seriously. Cancer, AIDS, warts – all gone in the blinding flash of a well-polished aquamarine.

The last 20-30 years have seen a massive explosion of interest in all-things crystal-related, kicked off I believe by the New Agers in 1980s. The range of abilities attributed to crystals by true-believers has evolved pretty much the same way as life on earth has: both show a trend towards increasing complexity with time, but sadly only one of them suffered from mass extinctions.

In the 1970s, when I started collecting, the likes of quartz, garnet and topaz hadn’t acquired the supernatural mystique they now have. Our local rock shop (Gemset in Broadstairs, which has been around for 47 years now, bless them!) sold lapidary equipment as well as the modest inventory of crystals and fossils I went there to gawp at every Saturday. Tumblers, polishing laps, glue, plyers: everything the amateur enthusiast needed to make shiny-rock-jewel-things. They also sold quartz crystals in small wire clasps, usually hung on leather hawsers. I remember sometimes seeing a small sign saying, “Quartz for energy” but that was about it.

Fast forward to today, and the websites that sell healing crystals are engaged in a cold war escalation of absurdist creative writing.

“Apophyllite creates a conscious connection between the physical and spiritual realms, allowing you to access the Akashic Records and past life experiences. It helps you recognise and act upon the truth in all situations. Apophyllite is mentally and spiritually calming and grounding It can be used to open the third eye and to bring light and energy into the heart.”

I can hear the silence as you mull over the key phrase “Access the Akashic Records and past life experiences”.  I think I did that when I applied for Permanent Residence to Canada years ago but there were no rocks involved.

I have first-hand experience of apophyllite. I’ve owned a beautiful piece of it for about 25 years. I bought it in the Souk in Dubai for thirty bucks -a steal- thinking it was a museum quality fluorite sample. After all that time, I can tell you it’s incapable of doing anything other than sit in a reassuringly rock-like pose, on a shelf, collecting dust. I’m still waiting for the flashbacks to my past life as a lusty, absinthe-soaked dilatant in 19^th Century Paris. Maybe I’m not using it the right way or perhaps the shop sold me a dud.

Here’s another cracker, this time kyanite. All hard-rock geologists know kyanite as a diagnostic metamorphic mineral that can tell you very specific things about the temperature and pressure that a rock formed at. It’s dark to sky-blue in colour and forms long crystals. What my university forgot to tell me is:

“Blue Kyanite is a great stone for working with the Throat Chakra and communication issues.  Blue Kyanite helps to speak one’s truth with clarity, making it a great stone for diplomats, singers, public speakers, and even teachers.  Blue Kyanite is also useful for healing ailments of the throat and voice.  Blue Kyanite also facilitates an alignment of all the subtle bodies, creating a larger and a more balanced aura.  

Blue Kyanite is ideal for the third eye chakra. It can pull very high vibrations in through this chakra to be processed as messages from other realms or planes.  It can also transfer a high vibration, allowing for an opening of psychic abilities, especially when one meditates.  Blue Kyanite can also be used to promote lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, and astral travel.“

I’m at a loss for words. There’s enough WTFs in those 2 short paragraphs for 2 lifetimes. A great stone for diplomats? Someone should let Nikki Haley know: she can wave it at the Iranian delegation to the UN and see what happens.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, plus a lot more crystal-related puffery,  here. I urge you to scroll down to the wonderful lemurian seed crystal description where lost continents, solar chakras, planets, light circles and yin come throbbingly together in a masterpiece of metaphysical testicular-juggling.

Where am I going with all of this? Well, as my awareness of the awesome power of crystals has grown, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I was conned at University. I missed out on an entire earth-science discipline as an undergrad and I’m still bitter about it.

Why the hell were we being taught structural analysis of folds and faults, when we could’ve been fondling each other’s chakras? How come I spent lonely hours staring at ooliths down a binocular microscope but still graduated knowing nothing about calming my raging emotional storms with rose quartz?

Tell me honestly.. all those field trips collecting trilobites in the Forest of Dean, were they just wasted effort? They pale into nothingness compared to the utility of using a tiger’s eye to reconnect with the optimism channeled by the very earth beneath my feet.

But not to worry, I’ve just ordered a gorgeous green Peridot gem; the answer to the simmering anger I’ve been left with. Its guaranteed, GUARANTEED, to shift my mindset and make it easier for me to forgive others. Finally, geology is useful.