Tune into the energies of the Winter Solstice by creating a seasonal Yule Altar with herbs, crystals & more!

Join Adam Barralet and Kyle Perez  in Episode #11 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Petalite meaning, including:

Petalite for navigating the Full Moon in Gemini

Summoning emotional strength with Petalite

Petalite for peace of mind and deeper meditation

Raising consciousness with Petalite

 

Tune in now for a deeper look at Petalite 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 4 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 where we casually confab about a different crystal each week, and this week, we're going to be talking about the rare and magical energy of Petalite with just myself and Adam Barralet. Adam, how are you?

Adam Barralet: I'm very good. When the Americans are away, the Australians will play.

Kyle: Watch out.

Adam: Exactly. Yes. Well, we are recording this. We record a couple of weeks before we release our episodes, and today is the beginning of Mercury retrograde. We wonder whether there's been some little mishaps there, but that's alright.

I'm really looking forward to having a chat to you about this amazing crystal that probably came into my realm. I think when I remember the good old days when it was Robert  -  I always get Robert Simmons and that other crazy actor Simmons confused -  But, you know, remember the synergy 12 crystals?

Kyle: Yes. Absolutely. Of course.

Adam: And there's this whole range of these kinds of white and clear crystals that were meant to be high vibration crystals. Alright. Oh, they're interesting. So I slowly started to gather them together. And although, you know, things like that and natural like, petalite naturalite, scholastic, they can look, especially in the tumbled form, very, very similar.

When you start working with the energy, you start to realize that they are absolutely amazing and quite different, aren't they?

Kyle: Yeah. Absolutely. I find the subtleties and the differences, especially between white and colorless crystals, is all about getting to know them because transparency really does give that, oh, you can see right through it, what's even in it. But once you actually sit with it, connect with it, get to know it, you can really learn a lot and get a lot from them, I think.

Adam: Now one thing that makes Petalite special, I believe, is it has a bit of a lithium in it, which is quite an interesting element, isn't it?

Kyle: Yeah. Exactly. What's really interesting about Petalite is it's found in what are known as lithium pegmatites. And lithium pegmatites are very popular nowadays because lithium is going into all of our long term batteries and all of that sort of stuff. So lithium mining is at the forefront of what humans are doing at the moment.

And petalite is one of those minerals that you find in lithium pegmatites along with some of our favorites like kunzite, pink tourmaline. You find all those real relatives spodumene, the spodumene families, like kunzite, hydnote, triphane, all of those really, and lepidolite. I knew there was another one I was forgetting. Really heavy lithium crystals that all bring a beautiful softness. They all bring a beautiful calming energy, and that's where I think petalite, for me, has been really, really important is working with that obvious content of lithium is super calming and brings peace of mind.

For me, I'll show you a couple of really cute little pieces. Clear, colorless, not very interesting looking. Right? And they actually interestingly get their name from Greek, petulos, which comes from leaf, not petal. It has really interesting little veins, little white veins that go through it because it looks a little bit like a leaf.

So it has that sort of softness like leaves do. They have that natural element. They are, for me, like stops. Slow down. Listen to what's happening around you.

For me, they allow me to sort of soften my mind. Then when I soften my mind, I can soften my emotions. Then when I soften my emotions, I feel like I soften my body. Then when I soften my body, then I can really deepen that sense of peace, deepen that sense of peace of mind. But also for me, you can then work with it in a really beautiful sense of deepening your meditation because it allows all of this softening, because it allows this calming element.

I found it really helpful when I've meditated, when I've gone on meditative journeys, if that makes sense. It's allowed that, like, lengthening as someone who is super hyper. I know, undiagnosed ADHD really calms the mind, not very well. I found Petalite really great to work with as an ally, support, especially when I'm proactively trying to meditate. As like a day to day crystal, I haven't done as much work with it, if that makes sense.

Like, I don't sort of sit with it in my pocket every day and wear it every day. It's not crystal that I've done that with. For me, it calls to me when it wants me to actually stop and slow down and listen properly and to meditate properly and to not just sit for 5 minutes, but to maybe sit for half an hour, do some, like, long journaling and, creative writing, some emotional work where I actually look internally or I actually have to stop and listen to what my guides are saying. I've done long guided meditations with it, a couple of yours all those years ago when you used to come to my mom's shop and teach. All those years ago, I remember doing and working with Petalite in a couple of those, and it's, for me, stopping, listening, letting it come in, not forcing.

We as humans are so driven to do, to run, to know everything, to be on this it's like this readiness. Does that make sense? It's like you're ready for action at all times, and Petalite is, like, just let it wait. Like, it can literally go to the back. It can wait.

Your phone can be turned off, or taken off the hook back in the day. Like, the emails don't have to be answered until Monday. Like, it forces you and tells you you're allowed to have time and space. You're allowed to give yourself that time and space. And I think today, in today's modern world, we're so busy all the time, it's been so, so nice to go, guess what?

They can wait. If it's really, really urgent, they'll figure it out or they'll come to your door or whatever. But, like, if it's not that urgent, which it probably isn't, you can actually just let it go. Come to it later. And it allows you to actually have a clearer mind when you come back to the situation.

It allows you to know more about the situation because you've emptied all the stress out. And that's the whole point of, like, meditation. Right? Is that we, like, calm ourselves, connect to ourselves, know the answers better, be more aligned to our own truth, our intuition, all of that sort of stuff. Like, that's pretty much the point of meditating.

And so Petalite for me is like that. Like, it is meditation in a stone and what it does and how it helps. And even pink petalite, I don't know how much work you've done with pink petalite, Adam. I love it because it has iron in it. Unlike most pink crystals, which are like manganese or lithium or something like that, the iron content brings that strength.

Strength to the heart, strengths to who you are, what you're doing, the ability to meditate better, the ability to connect to your emotional intuition better, if that makes sense.

Adam: I'm really interested in what you've been saying, especially about lithium. Where I guess I first got to know about lithium was with Lapidylite. That's kind of one of the main constituents in that. And I've always known that lithium is used, medically, for people with bipolar disease. And, you know, that because of that stabilizing kind of effect that it has.

And it's interesting that lapelite does have that beautiful calming energy, you know, then you mentioned Kunzeit, and they are very, you know, they're very calming as is petalite as well. So I I really wanted to throw back at you with the pink petalite. As you're talking, I was kinda like, oh, well, Kunzeit, lapid light, they're kind of pinky purples. Is it just more, lithium in the pink petalite, or is it lithium plus iron, which is like calm plus grounding, which is really interesting.

Kyle: Yeah. Exactly that. It's so, so fascinating that it's something different that makes it pink. You would think it is more of the same, more of what we see in other pink crystals, but I love that uniqueness of pink petalite. Like, it already has lithium.

That actually is already there. It doesn't need more of that for the heart. It's bringing strength. It's bringing iron. It's bringing energization.

Like, iron has that physicalization energy. It brings it to the body. It helps us to do the thing as I like to say, and so I really love that pink iron crossover. I think the only other one that you really see that in is like strawberry quartz, and pink amethyst. Because of the hematite content, both of those have iron and make them pink.

So you don't see it a lot so much in all of your other pink stones. So I love that it has this sort of intuitive edge, but also heartfelt strength. It, for me, I think, gives objectivity to, like, big emotional problems. Like, it helps you to go, okay. What does my heart actually need in this situation? What's going on in the big picture?

And how can I best take care of my needs and everyone else's without, like, it getting messy? I feel like it helps to reinforce emotional boundaries in a really beautiful way because it gives you that perspective. I think Petalite because it gives you peace of mind, because it calms you. It gives you that ability to change the way you're looking at things, to give you that perspective shift,

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #10 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Red Jasper meaning, including:

Red Jasper for Pendulum Dowsing and Dream Recall

Navigating Mars Retrograde with Red Jasper

Balancing the Air Element with Red Jasper's Earth Element

Historical perspectives on Red Jasper

 

 

Tune in now for a deeper look at Red Jasper 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 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

Adam Barralet: You've probably got at least one of these stones, if not many of these stones, floating around your home. Today, we're gonna be exploring here on crystal confab, jaspers, in particular of the red variety. But I am joined by 3 of the most fabulous crystal experts from around the world, Ashley, Kyle, and Nicholas. Welcome to Crystal Confab, everyone. Today, we're looking at red Jasper and Nicholas. You've become - I don't know if this was intended or not - but you for me, you're feeling like a crystal historian. You're really, really great in telling us where the crystals have kinda journeyed through things. And Jasper, it seems like any rock that you don't know what it is, you just call it a Jasper. Is that playing a bit of a historical thing or why are we calling everything a Jasper?

Nicholas Pearson: You know, it's kind of interesting. We've almost come full circle in this. So I think before we can build that context, we gotta, like, talk about what Jasper really is. And the short answer is it doesn't mean anything, except that it does, but different things to different people. So, to make that make sense, we have to consider that there's a geological definition of Jasper, a gemological definition of Jasper, and then also historical and linguistic one, and very seldom do they agree.

So if you ask a gemologist what the definition of jasper is, you're usually going to get something, and Kyle's please correct me if I'm wrong here. You're usually gonna get an answer that sounds a lot like a cryptocrystalline or microcrystalline variety of quartz. It is often defined as a variety of chalcedony. So chalcedony forms, and we have, these, length fast fibrous, microscopic crystals of quartz that form together. They usually form out of a kind of colloid or goo, if we wanna be unscientific about it.

And as that kind of gel solidifies, we get these tiny little crystals to emerge. And because of the way the crystal lattices kinda line up and twist and form those little fibers, there's space in between them. They don't form in neat little stacks like a box would because they're not shaped like a box. They're shaped like microscopic quartz crystals, and so they have a little twist to them, a little spiral, and there's room in between, which allows for so much variety and color and texture and pattern in the chalcedony world. That's how we get our carnelians and our Botswana agates and blue lace agates and red jaspers and green jaspers and bloodstones and, I mean, if you name it, if it's chalcedony, that's what it is.

Except the challenge here is that, socially speaking, a lot of the things that get called Jaspers are maybe in fact a variety of quartz, but don't meet that length-fast fibrous definition that makes a chalcedony a chalcedony. So some of them are actually something called quartzine, which is a very, very close cousin to that. The crystals orient slightly differently, but still form in fibers. It makes room for different shaped gaps in there. We can also end up with chert, which is also known as flint except when it's not.

And then we get a whole bunch of other hard stones that don't necessarily fit a perfect little catchall term, so we call them anyway, whether or not they are rich in silica, rich in ports or not. And the truth is that this kind of latter definition is the one that we see most frequently applied in the historical record. When we look at early writings about things called jaspers, they were often durable hard stones, which may or may not be rich in quartz. And now we've circled the background, and we call everything that we don't have a good name for Jasper. Dalmatian stone, not Jasper.

Kambaba stone, also not Jasper. Bumblebee Jasper, not Jasper. Technically speaking, ocean Jasper, not Jasper. It's spherolytic chalcedony, which is a much sexier term anyway if you ask a geologist. But historically, this word Jasper comes to us in English from a really, really long kind of circuitous route.

We can't really track its origins, but we can see that there are a lot of related terms and some, like, Afroasiatic linguistic groups. They eventually give rise to Iaspis in Greek, which referred to spotted stone. And in some of the early Lapidary texts, the finest and most coveted of these spotted stones were green in color. And so they were often either equated to or considered a special variety of another famous green stone in the Greek lapidary canon, which was Smaragdus. We know that that came to mean emerald eventually, but often didn't back then.

There are some analogs. If we look at, like, the Acadian language, we see Ashpu. If we look to Hebrew, we see Ashpu, which more or less translates to, like, polished stone or gleaming stone. We assume it meant Jasper, but we can't. It's not a very good assumption. And so, ultimately, when we look at a lot of this early lore, we have to recognize that what people called Jasper was often very local, very individualized.

And so we end up with so many kind of attributes of Jasper today that have been filtered through so many layers, through our own kind of current modern era of experiences with new materials we're discovering, but also we've inherited this kind of, like, historical record of things that jaspers do, which is almost everything, because they weren't all the same stone. And we've certainly had this interesting kind of cultural shift from, you know, the archetype of the finest jasper once being red to nowadays, our green rather, and our modern one. The first thing we think of for most of us when we think of Jasper is red Jasper, and that is in fact what we're talking about today. And I I suspect it may have something to do with jasper being a catchall term, particularly by the medieval period or early modern period for chalcedony, any fine gem quality chalcedony with the exception of carnelian, but because carnelian has this really strong Martian influence and is typically reddish to orange in color, since they began to take on a lot of similar attributes, spiritually and therapeutically, we we kinda allowed red jasper to, jasper to, you know, take over that that role of the umbrella of our jasper family and and share a lot of those same properties.

Adam: So I know that I've got a red jasper. It was one of my very first tumbled stones in my collection. So I've had it for about 30 years. It's a small one and, you know, a couple of others have come into my life since then. Would my little red jasper tumbled stone that I bought at a crystal shop 30 years ago be similar to what we might find if we walk into any general crystal shop these days? It's kind of got that earthy red kind of color, Nicholas?

Nicholas: Probably. So a lot of our red jaspers that we find on the market that we label pretty universally are, silica rich rocks that are part of, what we call BIFs or banded iron formations. That is a whole deep dive we can do onto the geology and the archaeozoology involved in that, because they are the products of really unique cycles and geological time and how that affected life on earth. But, essentially, we have oxygen rich cycles and oxygen deficient cycles, and that kinda shapes what got deposited. In the ones that had less iron, but still a fair amount of it, we get those silica rich bands that are the red jaspers.

They are at least the kind of social designation of Jasper or chalcedony in that sense, but they're probably not necessarily as fibrous, and they might not form out of a colloid the way that a true chalcedony would. They may in fact just be silica rich sedimentary rocks, and that's kind of the challenge. Jasper means a lot of things to a lot of people.

Ashley: Okay. I have to, like, throw something out there that this was just sort of like a passing thought that came to me when you were talking about this evolution of Jasper going from, you know, something we typically thought of as being green to now almost everybody thinks of as red, it it made me think of especially, like, in the English language, there wasn't, like, a firm word for orange for a really long time. So we have carnelian, right, being, like, distinct from something like Jasper, which maybe was green, red, whatever, but this distinct more, like, orange red variety that was a little bit more translucent, a little bit more more whatever had its own kind of name because we didn't even have that that word to represent that specific color, ray, yet. I'm curious if, like, you think there's something that we already sort of knew that these energies were quite different or that there was something really different about these two stones because largely, we see historically things of a kind of similar color often get lumped together.

There was really no way of knowing what was what unless it had real distinct qualities to it. Right? So do you think that, you know, people throughout history were kind of aware of the fact that there was something quite different between carnelian and red jasper that they were sort of already starting to distinguish this, or what does your gut say about that?

Nicholas: I do have a theory on this, and it is, carnelian, generally,

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez and Ashley Leavy in Episode #9 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Blue Barite meaning, including:

How Blue Barite can aid in decision-making

Working with Blue Barite to promote knowledge expansion

Blue Barite for supporting you on your transformation path

Blue Barite Meaning & its connection to Mercury Retrograde

 

 

Tune in now for a deeper look at Blue Barite meaning!

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 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

 

Kyle Perez: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Crystal Confab, our weekly get together where we confab about a different crystal, and this week, we are going to dive into the incredible and rare magic of blue barite. I am, of course, joined by the fabulous panel of Ashley Leavy and Adam Barrelet. How are we today?

 

Adam Barralet: I'm excited to be talking about a bit of a rare crystal because sometimes the rarer crystals and not a lot of content out there, so it's gonna be a great one to talk about. What about you, Ashley?

 

Ashley Leavy: Yeah. I agree. These are the kinds of things that, you know, people will often ask about because there's just no resources. So I love getting to do these episodes in addition to the ones we do about the sort of tried and true ones.

 

Adam: Very true. Very true. And this is a really good week to be talking about blue barite, especially because it is a blue color. And that's you know, I find it works really well with the throat chakra because as many people are probably aware, they're probably seeing on their social media, It's Mercury retrograde. So let me talk a little bit about Mercury retrograde.

 

First of all, what is a retrograde? Well, what it looks like in the sky is that a planet slams on the brakes and starts going backwards in the sky. It's actually not. That's an optical illusion just because we're on one side or the other side of the sun and so on. But what our ancestors noticed is whatever planet goes into retrograde, while it's in retrograde, whatever it governs, it takes its help away.

 

So I like to think of the planets as being like our parents, and they kinda go on holidays for a little while. So we know that Mercury goes on holidays for 3 to 4 weeks at a time, 3 to 4 times a year. So during that time, we have 2 options. And unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of focus on the first one. The first one is fall on the floor and cry and blame everything on Mercury because everything goes wrong.

 

However, what I'm hoping to instill with you today, and I think blue barite is a perfect crystal for that, is option number 2. You're at home by yourself for your first time. Now you could either burn the house down or you can put on your big boy pants or your big girl pants, and you can learn how to do things better. So what we traditionally do find throughout Mercury retrograde, yes, back up your electronics. Yes.

 

Short trips like car trips can go a little bit wrong, so you wanna leave earlier. If you're traveling by air, definitely allow extra time and that type of thing. But with communication, there'll be communication breakdowns. There'll be misunderstandings. And this can be verbal.

 

This can be written. This can be text message, contracts, all those different type of things. And that's why you're often recommended not to sign a contract during a Mercury retrograde because you might misread it. Just take a bit more time if you do have to. So this is our opportunity.

 

When things go wrong, we can either blame someone else, including a bit of rock floating around in our solar system, or we can go, ah, what's the lesson here? What I love about the throat chakra is that the throat chakra for us, it has the ability to form bridges of peace or create, you know, bridges of war, the way we speak. Now 8, we know that Mercury and all the other planets are going through the 12 zodiac signs. So this Mercury retrograde is in Sagittarius. So what can you expect?

 

So normally, Sagittarius in its good mode is very happy, very collaborative, ver… it's like a party starter, really joyous and optimistic and exploratory. In its bad form though, it can be a little bit kind of like someone who's had one drink too many or a few drinks too many at the party. A bit blunt, a bit, say blurting things out, a bit insensitive in that way. So kind of look for yourself and be aware that other people may be blurting things out, saying things insensitively, not really, emotionally relating to other people in other ways. How do we sort this out?

 

Well, when we know what's happening astrologically, just like we know the weather forecast, we pack an umbrella, we pack the right crystals. And this is why we're talking about blue barite. So there are lots of great throat chakra crystals, and I'm sure you could personally name many, many, many. But what I found with blue barite is it helps you up level your communication. Really, really great.

 

And, you know, we talk about using crystals for protection or attracting love into your life. But I don't know if you've noticed sometimes when you're wearing a crystal, it just changes how you feel. I know another crystal from Greenland called Corticite. When I wear that, I actually noticed my posture improves. And what I noticed with blue barite is that this changes the way you communicate.

 

It kind of up levels it. And especially one thing that's really, really great for allowing you to, adjust how you communicate in different situations. How we talk to our partner, friends, kids, colleagues, a superior. We need to be able to modify that, and Blue Barite really, really helps you to do that. And if you are feeling nervous about maybe speaking to a superior or maybe to someone you're interested in romantically, blue barite's a really great one to help you go, how do I choose the right words for this situation?

 

So I'm gonna be going my blue barite throughout this Mercury retrograde to really, really help me navigate through that, process and learn lessons on how I can become a better communicator.

 

Ashley: Adam, let me ask you a question. I have heard of this thing called Mercury's shadow. Can you tell us, like, a little bit about that? It's supposed to be, like, the period just before and just after Mercury retrograde where things are still a little they're kind of ramping up or they're just winding down where it's gone direct, but it's still a little weird. Would that be a good time to continue working with blueberryite, do you think?

 

Adam: Yeah. A retrograde, just like the full moon, isn't like it happens on that day and it comes off on that day type of thing. It's more like a wave. Now I again, for another analogy, I do find that Mercury retrogrades are very much like splinters. It hurts going in the most and hurts coming out the most, but it can be a little bit painful throughout and a little bit painful after as well type of thing.

 

So different people will be impacted by different retrogrades and different based on their personal astrology as well. So I wouldn't go, oh, crap. It's over. It finishes halfway through December. It's over.

 

Okay. Get rid of the blue Barite. See how the communication's going, and you'll probably find, no. I think it's fine now. Now I can take it off or now I can stop carrying it or now I can stop, pardon me, meditating with it, in that time.

 

Yeah. That shadow is don't just think it's an on off switch. It's a wave that comes and goes.

 

Ashley: But what I also sort of hear you saying is Mercury retrograde isn't something we have to be fearful of. We don't have to cower under the table. We don't have to, like, ostrich ourselves and put our heads in the sand. It can actually be sort of a gift, sort of a time to review things and make sure that we're like, you know, taking care of things that we need to do.

 

Adam: Exactly. It is actually a golden opportunity. When you talk to anyone who says, what's the key to a perfect relationship? Communication. And so 3 or 4 times a year, we get this little snippet where we get to practice, evaluate, and improve the way that we communicate.

 

All the other planets go into retrograde for a lot longer. You know, the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and so on, it's normally for, you know, 3 to 5 months for a big chunk of time, once a year. Mars does it once every 18 months and Venus is a bit erratic as well. But Mercury, we get these lessons throughout the year. Just go, hold on.

 

How are you communicating? And I think with a partner, it's a really great place to look at. You know, we're probably a bit more relaxed how we communicate with our partner, and this is where you can really learn where you can be maybe a bit snappy, a bit intolerant, a bit blunt, bit inconsiderate, and those type of things, and improve and create those stronger bridges of peace.

 

Kyle: I've literally had all of that happen on a holiday with my husband during Mercury retrograde that was, we had a cyclone that meant we couldn't go to certain locations. We had lockdowns that happened in Perth, which meant we, like, were stuck where we were. We were in a caravan, so we were on top of each other, and we had to really, like, go, this is how I'm feeling right now. This is what I need right now. I'm not happy or I am happy.

 

And we had to, like, change our plans. We had to rebook things. And if we weren't being clear and honest with each other, I think we might have actually killed each other in that little van.

 

Adam: Yep. And that that's the golden opportunity of the Mercury retrograde. And do you know what?

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez, Nicholas Pearson and Ashley Leavy in Episode #8 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they unpack all-things Watermelon Tourmaline, including:

How Watermelon Tourmaline helps you understand the true meaning of joy

Balancing the inflow and outflow of love with Watermelon Tourmaline

Watermelon Tourmaline's connection to the heart energy center

Bi-color vs. True Watermelon Tourmaline

 

 

Tune in now for a deeper look at Watermelon Tourmaline meaning!

 

P.S. - Watermelon Tourmaline fakes are flooding the market! However, once you know what to look for, it's typically fairly easy to recognize the real deal. Make sure to check out my video all about How to Spot Watermelon Tourmaline Fakes and never be fooled by imposter crystals again!

 

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 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

 

Nicholas Pearson: Hello, and welcome to Crystal Confab. Join me and my friends, Ashley, Adam, and Kyle, as we confab about a new crystal each week. And this week, we get to talk about something really special, unusual, rare, wonderful, magical, and it is watermelon tourmaline. And I think we should hand it on over to Ashley to give us a lowdown on what makes it special.

 

Ashley Leavy: Oh, hello, everyone. So excited to be doing another episode of Crystal Confab. I love this crystal. This has long ranked in my top five, maybe even my top three crystals, dare I say, for a while. I named it out loud as my favorite, which if you're anything like me, you know, it's so hard to pick an absolute favorite crystal.

 

But I love this stone for so many reasons. Largely though, because I am so drawn to the color. I'm definitely a big color person. I get a lot out of the different colors of stones that I work with. And there's something so magical about this combination of the green and the pink that just makes me feel some kind of way.

 

And I want to take a moment to kind of talk about the difference between in my eyes at least, and, you know, I'll let my fellow cohost decide for themselves here. But in my eyes, between a true watermelon tourmaline and a bicolor tourmaline. So let me sort of explain. A bicolor tourmaline could be any tourmaline that has two colors. And usually, these are going to be at opposite ends of the stone, so you'll often have, you know, a different colored cap.

 

Sometimes you'll have more than 2 colors in a long tourmaline crystal, and this is pretty common. We see this a lot that there's this really distinct color zoning that can happen. And this is one of the things that makes these stones so incredibly magical. But watermelon tourmaline is a little bit different because rather than the color happening, different on one end of the crystal and the other, it actually happens from the inside out. So there is this colorful core, in this case, that is pink, and then this sort of shell or exterior, in the case of watermelon tourmaline, that would be green.

 

And so what happens when that is sliced is you get these really stunning concentric circles of color. And this is one of the things that I think is so special about this stone. And so I just want to sort of put out there that, you know, just because you see a piece of Tourmaline and it happens to be pink and green, I wouldn't necessarily always call that watermelon. It has to have those concentric circles. And in researching for a blog post I wrote just a little while back, I found through min.org, which one of the best websites out there for great info about crystals, that the first time the name watermelon was used to describe Tourmaline goes back to 1910 in Maine.

 

When some was found, the name was coined by George Roblee Howe. So that was pretty exciting that this has really only been a name that we've used for about a 100 years, little over a 100 years. And it really had to do with that idea of those concentric zones of color because when you slice that stone, you get the green exterior and the pink center, and it looks just like a slice of watermelon. And, you know, there's, definitely a connotation that happens, especially here in America. I think, you know, like summer barbecues and picnics and, you know, beautiful watermelon that you enjoy.

 

It's my favorite summer fruit. And so there's just a lot of happiness that emanates from this stone even just with that sort of connotation of the watermelon color. But it's this color zoning that I find particularly special because it creates almost like this little lens when it is in these slices where we have that green exterior, which I kind of associate a lot with, kind of creating like a protective shield, green tourmaline on its own. I'll often use for shielding, for dissolving, or removing, unwanted energy from the energy body, that sort of thing. But when you have this watermelon tourmaline with that beautiful pink core that's so connected to the heart, this is a way to really focus your actions and the way that you show up in the world in love.

 

And there's a really simple ritual that you can try with some watermelon tourmaline to do this, and it is easiest with a little slice. You could try it with, like, a raw crystal, but when it's sliced thin and you can really see through it, even if it's just a small piece, that's when this works best. So I love to hold this over the heart, close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and then take that little slice and hold it up to one eye. And I like to really gaze through that central pink core of the crystal. And this acts like a little lens.

 

It's like a little point of focus to root or center your actions in love. It's kind of like, you know, the same, like, looking through rose colored glasses, but in this case, we're looking through this love tinted lens of watermelon tourmaline. And this really helps shift our perspective and shift the way that we show up by seeing things from a new place, seeing things from that place of love. Like, imagine what the world would be like if all of us rooted our actions in love first. And this is kind of what this practice reminds you to do.

 

And it's this literal shift in perspective that helps us just get in tune with that energy. I like to sort of make a little intention when I do this, that I'm going to root my actions in love, that I'm going to show up with more love, that I'm going to, show up for myself, for my community, for my family from that place of love and, you know, really think about how that would shift your life if you were able to do that more. And then you can carry that little stone with you as a talisman for reminding you to put love first when you can, to put love into those everyday actions, big and small. So I know I just kind of blathered a whole bunch about that, but this is really, like, one of my favorite crystals for this. So thanks for turning it over to me, Nicholas.

 

I would love to hear what everyone else is thinking.

 

Adam Barralet: I love that activity. Actually, I've never actually done that of looking through the actual the rose colored glasses kind of practice. There is a bit of an astrological time when this would maybe got be quite relevant. You know, when we think of watermelon tourmaline, there's gonna be a bit of a chat about love today, and we'd probably go, oh, it's very much probably a Venus, crystal. But when you look at the outer planet, what is considered the higher octave of Venus is Neptune.

 

And Neptune is about aesthetic and inspiration and the art and how we feel when that kind of feeling, you know, that kind of real life life is beautiful type of thing. Now when Neptune is direct, so not retrograde, we kind of have those rose colored glasses on, and we can tend to kind of go, yeah. You know, we put up with, oh, yeah. You know, that's just my partner. They're always in a foul mood in the mornings or, you know, oh, my boss is, you know, going through a divorce.

 

You know, they're allowed to be nasty to me and that type of thing. When Neptune goes retrograde, it takes its energy away from Earth, and we tend to get this reality check. And we start to see things as they truly are. Now this can be a little bit of a, you know, bit of a slap in the face because the rose colored glass would come off. And there may be times when you hear Neptune going into retrograde that you're kind of losing faith in everything because you start to see the world as it really is.

 

And I think what actually just, suggested that meditation of maybe just okay. Remind us that when we do work through that filter of love, it would be really, really beautiful. So it could be a good time maybe when Neptune goes in direct grade, but any time when it's just a harsh time. Yeah.

 

Kyle Perez: And just on a really amazing note, there's actually an American designer who creates glasses sunglasses out of slices of watermelon tourmaline and different tourmalines. I think her name's Naomi Inns designs, and she wire wraps the slices, and you can actually buy them and wear them, and they look amazing. Sorry for that side note.

 

Adam: We've just lost Ashley. She's gone googling to buy herself a pair already. I couldn't see that.

 

Ashley: I'm honestly whole idea of these glasses. I had no idea that that was a thing. It's hard to find large slices. I am so fortunate to have a really, really large slice of watermelon tourmaline. It's one of my favorite things.

 

But, it's you know, the other thing I love is the color variation in those greens and pinks that show up. Sometimes they're so soft. Sometimes they're really, really deep and vibrant. They're just pretty magical.

 

Adam: Can I ask as well?

Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #7 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they unpack all-things Moonstone, including:

Moonstone meaning & uses

Working with Moonstone during the Full Moon in Cancer

Which varieties of Moonstone to use for each lunar phase

What's the difference between Genuine Moonstone and Rainbow Moonstone?

 

 

Tune in now for a deeper look at Moonstone meaning!

 

P.S. - Moonstone comes in many varieties and colors, which can make it difficult to spot Moonstone fakes! However, once you know what to look for, it's typically fairly easy to recognize the real deal. Make sure to check out my video all about How to Spot Moonstone Fakes and never be fooled by imposter Moonstone again!

 

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 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

 

Adam BarraletHello, beautiful Crystal Confab family. Thank you so much for listening or watching our episodes each week. This week, we're exploring the magical crystal of Moonstone. Now the really interesting thing is we're really organized and we prerecord a few weeks ahead so that we always have some episodes in the bag in case we have any tech issues or anything like that. And we were talking about and we're gonna talk about in this episode about the full moon.

 

Now for some reason, I got my wires crossed and thought we're already up for the wall full moon in Cancer. Of course not. This week is the full moon in Aries. A really great time at looking at your financials and your physical well-being as in your security in that way. So forgive me when I talk about the full moon in Cancer.

 

I'm 2 moons ahead of myself, but enjoy the episode anyway. Bless the day.

 

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of crystal confab. Hopefully, you're sitting out under a beautiful full moon as you listen to our heavenly voices because today we're gonna be talking about Moonstone. Today, I'm joined by Nicholas and Kyle, and we are gonna dive deep into the crystal that is the epitome of lunar energy, and we're really excited for you to join us, for this conversation or this confab. So, obviously, with such a dazzling crystal, there's gonna be a lot of different stories and kind of folklore about Moonstone. So who better to share a little bit more about that than Nicholas?

 

What can you tell us about Moonstone, Nicholas?

 

Nicholas Pearson: I can probably tell us more than is productive. So let's start with, like, the origin of the name. What we call moonstone today, got that designation in the early 19th century, at least in the English language. But other stones had been known as moonstones in other languages for, I mean, at least several centuries. The earliest written record that we have about a stone that we assume to be moonstone, comes from Pliny the Elder, in Rome, and he referred to it under a few different names.

 

One of them is derived from the same root as the word for star, so it would be called like Astrates or Astroites, and would also take on the name Selenites, after the Greek goddess Selene. However, it's important to note that, like, what we think of as moonstone may not have been what they thought of as moonstone. Anything that had a kind of lunar glow to it. And if we look at some of the earliest written descriptions, more than likely, in some cases, authors were talking about really flashy adularescent feldspars. Sometimes they were probably talking about gypsum and mica, and in other cases, they might have even been describing good old fashioned white marble, or pale colored jaspers.

 

And, you know, ultimately it was just any stone that reminded folks of the moon itself, and even today we don't have a single mineral species that can be called moonstone. It's more an optical phenomena than it is a physical discrete substance. But when we look at some of this ancient lore, it is that phenomenon that drives the magic, the mystery, the medicine that it has to offer. So we see it as being fairly protective, especially good at protection for travelers. The idea being kind of tied to the lunar symbolism that in 1 lunar month, the moon travels through all 12 houses, all 12 slices of the pie that is our nighttime sky.

 

It doesn't matter if the moon is full or only halfway there, if it's practically nonexistent. Whatever state it's experiencing doesn't affect that journey, and it's able to return back to that starting point. So the idea is no matter what we've got going on in our lives when we carry Moonstone, we're gonna make it back home safely. The loons' the moon's associations with the tides also meant that it was a really popular stone for sailors to wear while they were at sea for, you know, safe voyages. There's some interesting ideas about the stone, kind of waxing and waning with the moon's light.

 

And, we probably find the best description of this coming, in like the late medieval, early renaissance. There was a French astrologer and physician by the name of Antoine Mezeaud who purportedly borrowed a very large and lustrous moonstone from pope Leo the 10th, to document what he saw in its adularescence, its flash all month long. And he claimed that the old stories of the light in the stone waxing and waning with moon cycles were true. And that, you know, kind of became holy writ, if it will, for several centuries until we learned better. Its folkloric origins are often attributed to the moon itself.

 

The Romans maintained that it was solidified moonlight. There's an alternate story that rocks that were exposed, particularly bright moonbeams, might develop moonstones within them. There's a Sri Lankan myth that says that every so many generations when the ocean tides and the lunar tides converge, the result is that moonstones are borne by the waves themselves and carried to the shore. So, you know, we get lots of interesting stories that kind of link it to the moon, even the pre modern era. One of my favorite things that people did with them, although I'm not suggesting we necessarily do this today, is from the earliest written record.

 

Moonstones were associated with, we'll say prophecy. It was thought that, not just holding a moonstone, but actually placing it under your tongue would confer a knowledge of future events. And whatever you would speak would give you, you know, prescience, would give you the power to speak it into existence, whether because you were predicting it or willing it to happen. Not every lapidary text necessarily agrees. You know, we see in in our modern kind of magical, communities that the moon is associated with psychic development, with magic itself, with divination.

 

So it's, you know, a perfect marriage, I think, of the traditional folkloric wisdom, our understanding of that planetary gemmology, and the power of Moonstone to stimulate our psychic senses. It all kind of goes hand in hand. So there's a lot of other fun stories about Moonstone, that maybe we can save for the future. But, what I really love is that this relatively obscure stone in the ancient world, had, you know, it's hard to find artifacts made from moonstone. I I had a project where I I had to do just this, and the best I could do was find a handful of, like, treasure cases that you'd put holy writings in.

 

You know, they're gilts and they're set with stones, and a couple of maybe Renaissance era, artifacts that were related to, relics, saintly relics. But it really is about the 19th century that we start to see there is access to Moonstone pretty regularly, and the names get coined for it. And it would kind of pick up as we see the Art Nouveau movement coming, you know, about a century or so later, and it really was, very fashionable then. And like all things that are fashionable, it went out of fashion until about the 19 sixties when we get the rebirth of the, kind of hippie dippy magical counterculture, which saw the symbolism of the moon and those folkloric associations very much in alignment with their general ethos of living in connection to the cycles and seasons of the earth itself. And from there, it was picked up by the witchcraft revival, the modern metaphysical movement, and now it's one of the most popular gems that we find in crystal healing today.

 

Adam: Oh, so so true. Everyone's got to have a moonstone, I think, in their collection, don't they? It comes in early with such a dazzling stone as well.

 

Nicholas: Absolutely.

 

Adam: So, Kyle, when it comes to actually what is a moonstone, can you kind of shed a bit of light on that?

 

Kyle Perez: Yeah. Absolutely. This is something that I find quite interesting because I find the whole feldspar mineral family, which was what a moonstone lives under, or our modern understanding of a moonstone is in the feldspar group of crystals or minerals, which covers sunstone, labradorite, amazonite, and of course our moonstone. What we know as moonstone trademarked, like, what should be a moonstone is a, orthoclase feldspar. This is something that is, layered, and that's where the diffraction of light refer.

 

I always get these mixed up. The diffraction of light coming through, bouncing, coming back out gives us that sort of white to blue shimmer or shiller or a duller essence. There are many names for it, and it's all essentially the same thing. It's that beautiful hue that is white to blue, the really beautiful quality stuff. The clearer the stone will have a bluer flash as you will see, whereas what we call rainbow moonstone is actually white labradorite.

 

It is a slightly different flavor of, feldspar, which is plagioclase, and it has, again, layering of 2 different,

Selecting crystals for the seasons is all about trusting your intuition and considering the emotions each season evokes in you. Then it's as simple as matching these feelings with crystals that reflect the same energy.

Join Adam Barralet, Ashley Leavy, Kyle Perez, and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #6 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they explore Rose Quartz' meaning and uses, including:

Is Rose Quartz actually the ultimate "stone of love"?

Spotting Rose Quartz crystal fakes

Rose Quartz for grief & loss

Working with Rose Quartz at Beltane

Rose Quartz for fresh starts

 

 

Tune in now for a deeper look at Rose Quartz' meaning!

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 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

 

Adam Barralet: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of crystal confab. Today, we're looking at the crystal of love, or are we? I've got a bit of an issue, to be honest with Rose Quartz. I feel it's a bit like the Kardashians. It gets far more attention than it deserves because there are so many beautiful, loving crystals out there.

 

But whenever people are talking about love, they go straight to Rose Quartz. So today, me and my gang, we're gonna kind of unpack rose quartz. What it's good for, what maybe another crystal might be good for, and maybe throw in some surprise uses for this crystal as well. How are we today, guys?

 

Ashley Leavy: Oh, good. Good.

 

Adam: Good. Good. Now, Nicholas, I wanna start with you today. Tell us a little bit, rose quartz, it's counted as the crystal of love, but where did that come from? And do you think that's all we can use rose quartz for, love?

 

Nicholas Pearson: Oh, I'm so glad you asked. This is like my nerdy superpower is, like, tracking down where these, like, little epithets and things come from in our world. And, just casually over the years, I noticed that, like, before a certain point, nobody really makes a strong connection between Rose Quartz and Love. There might be a little kind of anecdotal stuff here or there, but it's about from the year 1985 onwards, and it's really, like, more frequent in the late eighties, early nineties that we start to see rose quartz called the love stone pretty universally. So, at some point in the last couple years, I decided to, like, intentionally do a deep dive on this.

 

I was writing some new curriculum centered around rose quartz. I was like, let's actually find out where this comes from. And to the best of my knowledge, and I could be wrong, I I would love a larger dataset than I've got, but it's already pretty big. The first time we see rose quartz called the love stone is in, like, one of those classic late eighties books called, Crystal Awareness by Kathryn Bowman, where she just gives it, among other things, she calls it the love stone. However, what happened 1 year later would really cement this.

 

And there's a kind of obscure book by today's standards, but this author was, at least at this point, quite popular. Her name is Connie Church. She released a couple of books. Crystal Clear, which, if you bought it in the eighties, originally came, like, shrink wrapped with a clear quartz crystal to go along with it. So you could do all of the exercises in tandem with the crystal.

 

And then as a sequel in, 87, so just 2 years after Catherine Bowman books Catherine Bowman's first book comes out, she puts out a book called Crystal Love. And, of course, it also comes shrink wrapped with a little piece of rose quartz. And throughout the book, she's constantly referring to this stone as your love stone. Not saying all rose quartz is the love stone, but all the self love exercises you're gonna do are with this stone, which is now your love stone. It theoretically could have been anything, but she wrote the book about rose quartz, and that's why it really just kind of became cemented in our collected psyche as the stone of love.

 

And, I think I think that is a really nice entryway to talking about what rose quartz can do for us, but I kinda have, like, this vendetta against getting too prescriptive and reductionist about crystals. If I asked any human being to summarize their entire life in one word, they're obviously going to miss most of who they are. You know, I could say that I am a writer, but I also wear a lot of other hats. So rose quartz, of course, is a love stone, but it does so many other things. If we look earlier in history, we start to see that, you know, in more recent history, at least, it's definitely associated with things like emotional well-being, we'll say psychological healing, and, like, really broad strokes, which isn't too far a cry to being a love stone.

 

But, you know, the farther back in history we go, we start to see that there's actually some pretty interesting connections to rose quartz. Some of the earliest evidence that we've got of its use goes back about 9000 years ago. In what is now modern day Iraq, we've got evidence of some carvings, things like cylinder seals and beads and a few other stuff. Here in the Americas, we find, like, pre Columbian artifacts, indigenous artifacts that are mostly blades carved from it, which feels like a pretty unloving application for this stone. We've got a few references in, like, let's say, late antiquity, early kind of classical period to stones that we think could have been rose quartz, but, you know, they weren't classified as a variety of quartz because that's not how I mean, geology wasn't a science yet, and that's not really how stones were cataloged then.

 

So we suspect that there might be a few evidences of this stone really being used in healing, but it wouldn't be until the rebirth of the modern crystal movement that we start to see it, like, used in full force. And, you know, by this point, I think one of, like, my favorite discussions of the activity of rose quartz comes from the writings of Michael Katz, and formerly Ginny Katz, now Isabelle Morton. But…and they…really together in those early writings that they did, like gifts of the gemstone guardians, which is now Wisdom of the Gemstone Guardians, they describe this, like, fourfold activity that comes from working with the energy of rose quartz. And there it's all kind of centered around this idea of helping us deal with our unexpressed emotions. It's a stone of emotional healing, but it's not just, like, focused on bad things.

 

You know, we tend to in our, you know, modern kind of broader community of energy healing, holistic healing, we tend to focus on resolving the stuff we don't like, the stuff we don't want. But rose quartz doesn't make a strong dichotomy between good and bad. It's about expressed versus unexpressed. So it stirs hidden emotions to help them become more accessible. It helps us really sit with them and acknowledge whatever they might be.

 

That's gonna lead us to a state of understanding of what those emotions are and where they come from. And from there, we have the emotional wherewithal to be able to communicate or express them more effectively and authentically. And we can note that, sure, that could be sadness or pain or loneliness, but it could also be joy. Like, how many times have we just had a wonderful day and then come upon a situation where it's not really appropriate to share that joy? So we, like, bottle it up for later, and then we forget it's there, and it, you know, goes sour on the shelf.

 

So, this is gonna help us really kinda broaden what rose quartz can do for us. Now among all of the emotions that could be unexpressed are love. And I think that's why we really think of it as a love stone today because if our emotional body, if our psyche is so gummed up with other things that are clogging the pipes, there's no space for love to flow either. And this takes us into that space of, like, love as a cosmic force, not love as an emotion. Love as a cosmic force, the glue that holds the universe together.

 

Like, it can't flow through us if we are clogged. So by expressing, by revealing, acknowledging, integrating, whatever other emotional stuff is there, there's a room for that kind of cosmic energy of love to flow through us. And that is what allows rose quartz to be a love stone, in my opinion. It's not like a romance specific stone. We can apply it there, but that's not its sole function.

 

Ashley: I would love to jump in with kind of a personal story that I think really illustrates what Nicholas is talking about. So for years, for the first many years that I was working with crystals, I was not at all attracted to rose quartz. I mean, my immediate judgment of rose quartz was, like, boring. You know, I'm not interested. I don't really care.

 

I don't get what the big deal is. I don't understand why people like this crystal. I never ever ever felt called to it or drawn to it until I really started doing a lot of work to bypass or to work through a lot of the spiritual bypassing that we see in the wellness space, in the healing arts community. So often we wanna just, like, gloss over the things that are difficult, that are challenging, that make us uncomfortable. And, you know, we have this way in the wellness community of framing everything in a way that truly can be a little bit toxic.

 

And it wasn't until I started to recognize and acknowledge that that rose quartz really called me in in a big way because, like Nicholas said, you know, it really helps us get in touch with some of those emotions that we haven't wanted to recognize. And so it allowed me to get in touch with those things, to feel those things, to be in that discomfort while offering me this, like, unconditional support and love and making me feel so loved as I worked through some really hard and really heavy stuff. And that relationship sort of kind of was going in the background, and I didn't really realize at the time that that's what was happening. It wasn't until later that I sort of put that together. But a little while into this process,

In this enlightening interview, energy and death worker Cassie Uhl chats to me about her new book, Craft Your Own Magic, which is all about cultivating personalized and ethical magical practices. Dive in now to hear about the transformative "tower moment" that prompted her to address cultural appropriation in her work and reconnect with her ancestral roots. Plus, learn Cassie's insights on building meaningful relationships with nature and her guidance on developing discernment in intuitive practices. This interview is a must-read for anyone looking to embrace the mystery of spirit and craft their own unique magical practice with an ethical framework.

Disclosure: The link here is an affiliate link, meaning I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.  Yay!

 

Catch the interview highlights here:

Ready to Craft Your Own Magic? Watch the full interview now!

 

Read the full interview about Craft Your Own Magic below!

Ashley Leavy: Hello and welcome. I am so deeply honored to be interviewing today my dear friend Cassie Uhl, who is the author of so many phenomenal books, decks and journals. Today we are discussing her brand new book, Craft Your Own Magic: Reawaken Your Intuition, Understand Magical Correspondences and Create a Meaningful Personal Practice. Cassie, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Cassie Uhl: Thank you, Ashley. I'm so happy to be here.

Ashley Leavy:  You have been on the show before, but would you mind introducing yourself and a little bit about your work, for those who are new to learning about what you do, and also because your work has changed a good deal over the past few years.

Cassie Uhl: Yes, absolutely, it has so much in beautiful, beautiful ways. Um, yeah, I'm an energy worker. I'm a death worker. Those are two things that I'm really passionate about. As you mentioned, I'm an author, and those are the things that really inspire my work and my practice. And I'm a magic maker. Some might say a witch. That's a word I use sometimes, but I like to be out in the land, working magic with trees and flowers and water. That's also a big part of my my personal practice.

 

 

Ashley Leavy: And I think all of those things really weave together in the work that you do. You see it come out in all these different magical ways, and especially in your writing and in your art, where there's this really deep expression of what you do. And I think the thing that struck me most about your newest book, Craft Your Own Magic is how deeply personal it is, and how vulnerable you are in those pages, and how much of yourself you share, but you do it in this way that is, I think, so different than what we often see in the healing space or the magic space. You're not sharing these parts of yourself to be like, and this is how it's done. You're very much sharing from this, like I said, really vulnerable place to say this is one way that it can look like. And you're often turning a question back on the reader and saying, 'What does it look like for you?' So I would love to know what inspired this approach to Craft Your Own Magic and what really got you started on the journey of creating and releasing this book?

"I already had a really strong relationship with my guides and some of my ancestors, and it almost felt like they were really pulling and calling me to create something of my own. And in that moment, in the tower moment of all of that, it felt awful. But now today, I can look back and think, 'Wow, what a gift.'"

Cassie Uhl: Thank you. I love this question. Yeah, Craft Your Own Magic is so different from my other books. And when I tell people that this is my first big book, it's my first book that's really got more me in it. And it still is really important for me to share in a way that's like, 'This isn't how you do it. This is how I did it.' And what really started that journey for me was, I would call it a tower moment, referencing the Tarot, which I'm sure a lot of folks listening here know the Tarot. I had this moment of realizing that there was a lot of cultural appropriation alive in my practice and in my work, and how I was sharing my work with my audience and people who read my blogs. And there was a moment where I was just like, 'okay, this has to stop'. I saw the violence in my cultural appropriation. And when I did that, I immediately was like, 'okay, now I'll turn and look to the practices where my ancestors are from, in Ireland, in England.'

And I realized, it's not something I can just be like, 'Okay. And now I'm this.' And in that moment of realization, I'm so grateful, I was like, 'Okay, now I'm the one.' I already had a really strong relationship with my guides and some of my ancestors, and it almost felt like they were really pulling and calling me to create something of my own. And in that moment, in the tower moment of all of that, it felt awful. But now today, I can look back and think, 'Wow, what a gift.' I got to create something of my own. How beautiful. And so from there, I sort of had to recreate what my magical, spiritual practice is for me. At the level of where I start in Craft Your Own Magic with Earth, which is a focus on ethics and ancestry, what is important to me? What are my morals and how can I create a magical practice from a really sturdy foundation of ethics and ancestry, in a way that I'm not taking from the people who live on the lands that my ancestors came from. I can still look back to that. I can still incorporate it into my practice. But the truth is, I'm living here on stolen land in so-called Indiana, and those are really alive and real parts of my practice too. So I had to really be with the nuance of what was looking me right in the face when it comes to building an ethical, magical practice. So that was where that book really came from. And then I weave just what that process looked like for me, and invite the reader to really think about ways that it might work for them in their own way, with their own unique lived experience and histories and ancestries, because it's so different for each of us.

 

Ashley Leavy: I want to reflect on something that you just said, because I literally got goosebumps when you said it like after you had this tower moment and and everything was sort of, you know, stripped down, and you really got sort of a raw, real look at what was going on. And it felt horrible going through that. And I know you and I have had lengthy conversations about this, personally. But then you, you said, What a gift. And that part is what gave me goosebumps. Because, wow, for you to be able to see sort of the beauty that came out of that very painful in a lot of ways, process of releasing and letting go and confrontation and all those things that sort of come with that. I'm curious how writing this book and getting real honest with yourself about all parts of that process, and being brave enough to share those out there - I wonder how that offered you any additional insight or clarity into what you went through?

"I, like so many, was raised in a dominant culture that told me it was not only okay, but preferred to steal, extract, and take things that weren't mine. So to be able to really sit with the process that I went through and write 'Craft Your Own Magic', gave me so much self compassion that I hope folks who read the book can really feel for themselves too."

Cassie Uhl: Yeah, Craft Your Own Magic offered a lot of insight and clarity. It was really healing for me to write Craft Your Own Magic, because I was able to see things and to go back and revisit parts of this journey and contextualize it a little bit more, and I was able to really be a lot more loving to myself, which is something that I really strive to share in the book too. These things like the cultural appropriation that were happening in my work, it wasn't something that I needed to beat myself up for. Actually, in writing the book, I was able to say, 'Oh, yeah. Of course, this happened.' I, like so many, was raised in a dominant culture that told me it was not only okay, but preferred to steal, extract, and take things that weren't mine. So to be able to really sit with the process that I went through and write Craft Your Own Magic, gave me so much self compassion that I hope folks who read the book can really feel for themselves too.

We live in a culture that really creates the environment for us to do things that can be really violent and harmful, and what a gift it is to realize that and be like, 'Oh, actually, there's there are other options. I can create my own magical practice, one that's rooted in in my morals and values, and I don't have to extract from other people, and I also don't have to know everything my ancestors did and everything they practiced.' That's so amazing. And so I really hope that people who read it can feel the love and the compassion in my invitations, because that was such a meaningful part of it for me to go back and revisit some of those times that sometimes brought up shame, and to look at that with a fresh perspective, and be like, 'Yeah, of course you did. And here's another way to try it, like we're okay.'

 

 

Ashley Leavy: I think so much of that does come through in Craft Your Own Magic. This is a book that helps you feel really held as you explore some of those things for yourself, as you ask those questions. And this topic actually really ties in well with my next question. Now, you mentioned earlier you started the book with the chapter of Earth, and all the different chapters tie into different elements, and they're really well woven throughout. And so our loose main topic of discussion today is about de-entering the self in magic. And this is chapter six of Craft Your Own Magic, and it's tied to the element of Spirit. And one of the things that you lean into really heavily in this chapter is the mystery of Spirit,

Join Adam Barralet, Ashley Leavy, Kyle Perez, and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #4 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they explore Dioptase meaning and uses, including:

Dioptase & Chariklo

Connecting with your Guides using Dioptase

Cultivating Powerful Compassion with Dioptase

Dioptase & the Divine Feminine

 

 

Tune in now and dive into the magical world of Dioptase!

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 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

 

Ashley Leavy: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the crystal confab podcast. We are really excited to share a lot with you today. We're gonna talk about some magic related to the crystal dioptase, which I personally really love. It's one of my favorites. I am Ashley Leavy and I'm here with my fellow co hosts, the amazing Adam Berlick, Kyle Perez, and Nicholas Pearson.

 

So hey, everybody. How are you doing?

 

Adam Barralet: Really good. Exciting to talk about a bit of a rarer crystal today.

 

Ashley: Yeah. I know. We have so much crystal wisdom in store to share in today's episode. So why don't we go ahead and dive right in? I believe Nicholas had something to share to kick us off.

 

Nicholas Pearson: Yeah. So it's not a secret that I really love copper minerals for folks who listen to be nerd out about rocks. They were like one of the first moments that I had in my journey of, like, learning about the geology and how the energy kinda synced up with it. It would be like I'd find a weird, unusual thing I'd never heard of before in my museum days, like cyanotrichite or something similarly odd, that I had difficulty sounding out and pronouncing, let alone remembering how to spell. And I'd sit and meditate and, you know, come up with my own personal experience and then go look it up and go, wow.

 

This also has copper in it, and that's why it has this property that reminds me of this other thing and that other thing. So it was like one of those big light bulb moments. So I've always loved, like, the whole copper family. And, Dioptase, I find, like, really exceptionally sweet. There's a tenderness to it.

 

Copper minerals are so connective and synergistic on their own, but there's something about it being like a copper silicate that makes it so much more expansive and radiant and luminous. And, some years ago when I was doing some, like, extra research on on copper minerals for, in bookstones on the Goddess, I found, like, these little threads that all fit together that kind of connect them to the divine feminine. You know, we've got the the word copper itself comes to us because of the island of Cyprus, which is cupros in Greek, which became cuprum in Latin, eventually copper in in English after making a few more stops along the way. And among among other great mythic things about Cyprus, it was a really historically important source for copper minerals and copper ore in the ancient world. It's also said to be more or less the birthplace of, the goddess Aphrodite or Venus.

 

So, you know, when she first set foot on solid land after being born from the foam of the waves, it was in the island of Cyprus there in the Mediterranean. And so that place is, like, impregnated with her coppery-ness, if you will, in its local geology. But there's this really kind of fun thread that connects a lot of copper minerals to the divine feminine. In some Slavic lore, you occasionally find references to, like, either a copper mountain or a malachite mountain that's kind of the same as Mount Venus, which we find farther to the west in the European, like, witch lore that talks about this meeting place for magic, a connection to the witch mother, the witch queen, the queen of magic and mystery, the queen of heaven, and appropriately enough, and some of this territory, which is famous for its malachite mines, we also find really good evidence of some very fine, albeit rare, dioptase that can occur in similar regions. So in my own kind of reflections and connection to dioptase, I find this like, expansive, like, exalting quality that it brings to the heart, and it's through that energy of love that we experience the divine feminine.

 

It's surrender to love in its highest, most cosmic kind of sense, and that kind of love isn't just like a, you know, whimsical feeling, it's not a just limited to romance, it's not an emotion, it's a force of nature, and it's it's the kind of force of nature that mends the things that are broken. It's the quality that helps us have new beginnings and that's so appropriate for a stone that in the modern crystal world we see associated with like forgiveness, emotional balance. My other favorite little bit about copper minerals, that also connects to the divine feminine is, a little bit of a, we'll say, off color, alchemical joke because alchemists apparently had senses of humor in the medieval and early modern period. And, you know, they'd write in the scholarly language, which of course was Latin for the most part. And you find references to the meretrix medalorum or the harlot of metals, referring to the metal of Venus, the metal copper.

 

And the idea here is that compared to other metals that only make certain kinds of ionic bonds or readily produce sulfates and salts and and and other chemicals, under very specific conditions. Lady Copper is easy and rejects no levers. She'll bind to oxides and sulfur salts, and she makes all colors of the rainbow in her children as she blends with these other things. And I think that's really part of the magic of the goddess. Right?

 

It's being able to be in the moment and open yourself to receive this magic. You'll never get this chance again. There'll be more. You'll make different magic. And it's kind of how I think of the whimsy of so many copper minerals that are so brightly colored.

 

We've got the emerald green of dioptase, the neon blue of, Shattuckite, and just so many other colors. So, yeah, for me, it's definitely a stone of finding those qualities of the divine feminine.

 

Adam: Nicholas, lots of people, you know, like us, we love to get into the geology of the crystals and what forms them, but a lot of people were just buying their crystals because they like the colors or they like the properties and that type of thing. I get you. You mentioned, you know, malachite and Shattuckite briefly there. Can you give a few more examples of those copper based crystals? And, you know, maybe even if you could explain a little bit for people about why the crystals are normally green and blue, but copper's kind of an orange color.

 

Nicholas: Yeah. So, this is super fun. Copper minerals come in

 

Speaker 0: a really wide array of colors, and

 

Nicholas: it depends on, like, what they're connected to. So other common copper rich things that we might have in our crystal toolkit could include things like turquoise and chrysocolla, maybe some cuprite. You can have malachite and azurite. You can have, as I mentioned, Shattuckite. There are things like chalcocite, some copper sulfides, like Covellite and chalcopyrite, and a few others that escape me at the moment.

 

And so, we find metallics in reds and golds and blacks and silvers. We find really richly saturated blues and greens. We occasionally find brilliant oranges and yellows, and it really depends on the kind of partner that copper has in the making of that. A lot of copper mineral deposits that we find are in these, like, oxidation zones. So we get we get some sort of superheated liquid in the earth, usually magma, but it it could also be byproducts of that that won't yield our primary copper deposits, but because copper is welcoming of all lovers, she's especially fond of water and the things it carries, and so that copper gets leached out as water percolates through and then oxidizes higher and higher up.

 

So we get a lot of these minerals like chrysocolla and turquoise and, azurite and malachite in these secondary and and even later stages of oxidation where the primary copper, that kind of raw metallic form is is eaten away and dissolved and and recombined. And every time it does so, it changes just a little bit, and some of these copper minerals are very closely related. If we look at something like azurite and malachite, they're off by one tiny little ion, and one of them, malachite, is far more stable in more environments than its counterpart, which is azurite. So even just that one little bit of ionic charge that changes when we remove one thing, can give us a really big shift in color and luster and texture. And so we see these copper minerals kinda like blending into one another, forming these, like, really complex sedimentary rocks that have such brilliant shades and colors and contrasting patterns.

 

They're just…they're so magical.

 

Ashley: Okay. I wanna say thank you for explaining that because, Adam, that was a really good question, 1st and foremost. Like, you know, how do we go from this, like, beautiful metallic orange to these gorgeous blues and greens? And, Nicholas, I've never heard anyone explain a very complicated process quite as simply as that. That made it really easy to understand.

 

And I don't want to take away from, you know, the importance of the scientific part that you just talked about. And I also don't want to take away from the beauty that you described between, you know, Lady Copper and her many suitors and lovers and creating all these beautiful minerals. But there was something that you said very early on when you started your discussion about dioptase that I want to point back to because you, just like, slipped it right in there, but it made me think of how important it is. And that is, you know,