Cleansing, Charging, and Recharging Your Crystals and Gemstones

Spirituality is a powerful term encompassing a way of thinking about, feeling, and living in the world. Essential to spiritual life is mindful thinking and experiencing the many different aspects of human existence and conscious interaction with others and our environment. With a spiritual view of life, we can see the divine in the mundane, the miraculous in each and every day, the extraordinary in the ordinary. One of the most important ways to think spiritually involves a broader and deeper understanding of energy than “gas makes my car go” or “electricity powers the lights in my house”.

We are part of a matrix of energy that is becoming more attuned at this time in human consciousness to different expressions of energy through various kinds of objects in our daily lives.  As with so many other tools, like the explosion of tarot/oracle decks available, crystals, and gemstones have become tools people from all walks of life now purchase with a serious interest in the energy vibrations these natural substances emit.  This article will talk about how to select, take care of, and most importantly charge and recharge your crystals and gemstones.

The Energy of the Earth

Crystals and gemstones all emit a frequency of energy based on their molecular design.  This energy can be enhanced by encasing them in metals, cutting them into special shapes, and combining them in certain ways with other crystals and gemstones.  Perhaps one of the best series for crystals is Judy Hall’s three volumes of the Crystal Bible, which can be purchased as a bundle on Amazon.  There is no shortage of books on the meaning, use, and mineralogy of crystals, gems, and stones.  Suffice to say, for purposes of this article, that specific crystals or gemstones for certain purposes can best be researched through a reference text or websites.

Buying Your Crystals, and Gemstones

Finding someone who knows crystals and gemstones will always be helpful; I know a local dealer, Pete, who owns Vintagearth in Raleigh and he is my “go-to guy” for crystals, raw gems, and special stones.  He can give me the location and history of all the items he sells, and he is able to find some of the most unusual and rare examples, which he sells at excellent prices.  Shops dedicated to crystals, gems, and stones (aside from jewelry stores) have successfully established themselves in a few of the major markets of North Carolina (like Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Asheville, and Durham).  Many specialty shops that carry New Age or eclectic merchandise often have sections devoted to these items.

Knowing the source point of the items can certainly be helpful, as well as being able to discern the quality of the crystals and gemstones based on color, clarity, and any type of vibration you may discover you are sensitive to when handling the crystal or gemstone.  I recently attended an event and one of the dealers had a bowl of common stones pierced with settings to be worn as pendants.  I generally avoid the color yellow but found a stone in the “cheap” bowl that I simply felt compelled to buy.  It was a piece of yellow jasper and is the only yellow stone I currently own.  When I picked up the stone it “made sense” for me to have it.  It is now a stone I wear in rotation with other pendants when I go out to read publicly.

Cleansing Your Crystals, Gems, and Stones

These items can be powerful talismans or inert hunks of rock, best reserved for work as paperweights.  To get the most out of your stone, especially one you recently purchased, it is best to cleanse the item, energetically speaking.  Taking the crystal or gemstone and burying it in a container of soil or somewhere in your garden/yard for 24 hours is one of the best ways to clear any unwanted energy that may have attached to the stone by the handling of the many people before you decided to get it.  Another method, just as effective, is to immerse the item in a container of salt, letting it sit in the salt for 24 hours.

• The Best Protective Crystals for Your Home

Some dealers will offer a spray you can use, usually based with citrine, that can effectively cleanse a crystal or gemstone “on the fly” or regularly and quickly between the deeper cleaning you can get when burying it in soil or salt. These items make excellent talismans for us to wear because they do absorb, deflect, or project different kinds of energy.  And when used intentionally, they can help us achieve all kinds of energetic states by having them on our person on a necklace, ring, bracelet, or just in our pockets.

Charging and Recharging Your Crystals, Gems, and Stones

Think of stones like rechargeable batteries that actually never get old, but do, over time, lose some of their charge.  Salt is an effective cleanser but does nothing to recharge a stone.  Soil, especially the part of a garden or landscape (not separate like the soil in a pot), can both cleanse and recharge.  But one stone is considered the “battery charging” stone, and that is citrine.  It’s always good to keep your stones in a wooden box when not in use and put a piece of citrine in the box permanently to help with charging the stones while they are “at rest”.

• The Powers of Crystals and Gemstones

Another method, and one I use (along with citrine in the box of my crystals, gems, and stones), is to purchase a geode of citrine and set stones on or near the geode just like you would use a charging station for your phone.  I use the geode when I want to charge a stone for a specific purpose, or I want to supercharge it.  Like any tool you use in life, getting a good quality version, making it “yours”, and taking care of it will help you get the most value out of your purchase or gift (if someone has been generous enough to buy you a crystal or gemstone).