When you first open your cards, spend a few minutes getting acquainted. Allow your eyes and your mind to wander as you look at the pictures.
If you’re familiar with smudging, use sage or palo santo, cedar or sweetgrass to clear your cards and set an intention for their future use. Think of it as the beginning of a relationship, open your heart and introduce yourself.
The Crystallary cards tend to be about core values, soul truths, and past traumas that are ready to be faced. They help you explore who you have been and who you want to be moving forward.
As you read through the Crystallary, you’ll notice each mineral holds a spectrum of energy. For instance, Hematite speaks to us of getting grounded and anchored. You may or may not feel grounded in your everyday life. Pulling the Hematite card is telling you to focus on that aspect of yourself so you can assess where you are on the spectrum from well-rooted to flighty and flaky.
The simplest way to use your deck is to focus your mind on a particular topic or conundrum in your life and hold this thought as you shuffle the deck. When you feel ready, pick a card. While some people say to draw a card off the top of the deck, I think it’s just as useful to fan the cards and pull whichever you’re drawn to.
You can also use a soft gaze to study the pictures, choosing the mineral that feels intuitively right for you to work with in this moment.
Drawing a card cracks open the door to the collective unconscious — the world of meanings and symbols — where you can gain a new way of approaching or thinking about aspects of your personality or circumstances of your life. I find it more useful to think of the cards as illuminating — allowing you free will and room to pivot on your path — rather than prophesizing, which denies your ability to create many possible futures. Remember, these cards are merely a tool to help you tap in. Your own insights are as valuable as mine, so let your intuition sing!
A different way to approach the cards is to choose one card to represent you and then draw a card to see what’s crossing you.
The card that crosses you offers insight into places you might be stuck or perhaps to a situation that you’re not seeing clearly. It also might indicate where your thinking might be false or the story you’re telling yourself needs to shift.
Stones come from three layers of the earth: the outer crust, the mantle, and the inner core. Use this metaphor to dig deep into one particular situation or issue in your life.
The first card you draw reflects the surface level of the situation. This may be things you’re already aware of and taking into account or things that are obvious only when you pause and pay close attention.
The second takes you down a bit deeper, showing you cause and effect. At this layer you realize how this situation is impacting you emotionally.
The third and final card unearths the core of the matter, the truths that need to be revealed before the situation can move forward or come to a conclusion. These are often truths you are not yet consciously aware of.
Remember, each reading reflects what you need to know in the present moment. Change is constant; no one reading lasts forever. Use your cards to have an ongoing dialogue and to deepen your relationship with yourself and the world around you.
Download the printable Crystallary Cards at whol.st/illustrated-crystallary-cards
