Introduction 
Introduction Like many people who decide to road-trip cross-country, I was traveling with baggage of the emotional sort. I’d quite intentionally left someone behind, a married someone who flirted and promised but remained steadfastly married to someone else. During weeks alone on the road, I’d peeled back layer upon layer of hurts and betrayals. On this particular desert afternoon, I suddenly knew I’d walked myself through the worst of it: it was time to move on and be done.
In Santa Fe, I’d picked up a tumbled piece of Snowflake Obsidian. Its shiny black surface with a dusting of white “snowflakes” had sparkled in a way that, crow-like, caught my eye. Driving north toward the New Mexico border, I rolled the stone through my fingers, enjoying its cool smoothness. The road was languid before me, lazy in the summer heat. I was on my own schedule with nowhere to be but, still, I couldn’t relax. My breath, I noticed, was coming harder. As the miles rolled by, my breathing picked up force, as if something within me was seeking a way out, pushing upward with each exhalation. The snowflake obsidian felt glued to my palm and I had the weirdest sensation that it was breathing me, the stone squeezing the last bits of hurt from the molecules of my being and releasing them to the azure sky.
Moments like this are dreamlike. We have scant language to describe the mysterious, and stories like this can sound nonsensical or get diluted in the retelling. So, when I learned of a branch of Traditional Chinese Medicine that included minerals (like that piece of Snowflake Obsidian) I was intrigued. Perhaps these teachings could provide a vocabulary for talking about stones and crystals as more than just shiny objects. Maybe there was some logic for thinking of crystals as “medicine” in the same way that plants and animals can be medicine for our bodies and spirits.
Today, we can walk into a pharmacy and buy bottles of vitamins and minerals that have been purified in a lab and conveniently encapsulated. This has not always been the case. While traditional healers knew that the human body needed specific mineral nutrients, these supplements were not pre-encapsulated; they were unrefined and found in the dirt of the earth. We consumed these nutrients indirectly through eating plants and animals: minerals in the dirt nourished the plants and plants then fed the animals (including us humans). Ancient healers decided to see if we could skip the step in which the plants assimilate the minerals and instead use rocks and crystals directly. In Asia, an entire materia medica of stones was created which complemented the use of medicinal plants. In fact, because these minerals feed the plants, stones were considered the primary medicine.
A few principles emerge that can help our heads understand the compelling song stones sing to our hearts:
But how did the ancients, without microscopes or spectrometers, know what micronutrients were in a crystal? Color was key to understanding chemical composition. Most stones considered important for the heart or blood have a reddish cast. These colors can be the result of the presence of iron, which builds blood and creates red tones in stones and crystals. But not all red stones contain iron, nor are all red stones safe for use, so think of this as a beginning point, not a complete and perfect system.
When you pair traditional teachings with the properties of crystals discovered through modern science (engineers have tinkered with them to create everything from mobile phones to sonar to LED lights, so quite a bit is known about crystals), you begin to realize that these were never merely shiny objects. Our hearts hear the stones’ song but it might take advanced degrees in chemistry, physics, and electrical engineering for our brains to understand intellectually what our spirit knows intuitively.
This book blends learnings from modern science, mysticism, ancient lore, Taoist Stone Medicine (a branch of Traditional Chinese Medicine), and the songs of the stones themselves. To continue your exploration of Stone Medicine, see Sources & Resources.
This book will introduce you to the stones’ medicine so you can begin to recognize their harmonies for yourself. While you may use different metaphors to understand stone speak, you’ll quickly recognize the vibration of your crystal friends as they appear here.
Use this book for inspiration and confirmation. Each entry includes a ritual and reflection to help you connect more deeply to the energy of a particular stone as you open your spirit-ears and listen for its song. You can draw a card from the deck to guide your day or open the book to a random page to see who wants to speak with you or read the book cover to cover to familiarize yourself with all the crystals here.
If you want to connect more deeply with a particular stone, try free writing. You’ll need a pen and paper as well as a timer.
Set the timer for 10 minutes.
Draw a card from the Crystallary deck, then ask: What message do you have for me?
Begin writing and don’t stop until the timer goes off!
This process is meant to help you get past your conscious mind so you can access your intuition. Often in the first few minutes you’ll write nothing of consequence as you sink into the process. Keep going! The juice often comes toward the end of the 10 minutes when your conscious mind is relaxed and off-guard.
Invite a stone into your dreams, journeys, or meditations. Before slipping into a journey or meditation or sliding into sleep, consciously ask a stone to be with you. You can use an actual stone or use a card from this book as a focal point to gather your intention and direct your spirit.
Unlike plants and animals, minerals have no scientific nomenclature. So, in these pages, instead of a Latin name under the stone’s common name, you’ll find the stone’s hardness on the Mohs scale. Remember: harder stones take longer to work and are used for more stubborn conditions. On the Mohs scale, 1 is the softest (like talc) and 10 is the hardest (like a diamond). The higher the Mohs number, the longer you’ll be working with the stone!
The following stone families are represented in this book. As you discover new stones, you can look to their family to begin to understand patterns and similarities:
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Beryl
Corundum
Flourite
Mica
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Quartz
Topaz
Tourmaline
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