Rock stars: Do healing crystals live up to their hype?
The use of crystals for healing has gone mainstream with celebrities leading way.But do they work and are they ethically sourced, asks
Will the rose quartz pendant resting on your chest heal your heart? Have you got a piece of amethyst under your pillow to dispel anxiety – or perhaps some citrine in your pocket to promote self-esteem?
Crystals are the new mystical must-have, a kind of healing-in-a-stone that’s at the centre of a great global love affair. Celebrities are of course to the forefront in the love-in.
Adele finds crystals help her with stage fright. Victoria Beckham places them around her home and office for positive energy.
Katy Perry told Cosmopolitan she doesn’t stay single for long because she carries a lot of rose quartz, which ‘attracts the male’. And Miranda Kerr says her crystal wand — made of clear quartz and studded with rose quartz — is “incredibly special” to her, one of her “most cherished items”.
In Castlebar, Aldo Jordan is a Shamanic practitioner and his wife, Helen, is a psychic. Clients who come to buy crystals at the Jordans’ Atlantis Holistic Store range from “the 80-year-old woman who read a newspaper article and would like to experiment, to the teacher who wants a piece of crystal for the classroom to help her students, to the teenage girl whose friend has broken up with her boyfriend”.
“We’ve had priests come in to buy crystals — and people diagnosed with illness who want to carry crystals with them as a complement to their treatment,” says Aldo, who uses crystals in his Shamanic energy-healing work.
He says we have seven main chakras — vortices of energy — within our energetic system.
“Each crystal has a particular vibrational imprint that can address a specific chakra that’s out of balance. I would place the healing crystal on the part of the body corresponding to that chakra imbalance.”
Integrated energy
Sinéad Coleman practises integrated energy therapy, Rahanni celestial healing, reiki and crystal healing. She owns Purple Lotus, a therapy centre and shop in Waterford city centre where crystals range in price from €1.50 to €1,700.
Her clientele “isn’t limited by age or gender — they’re young and old and all ages in between”.
What most commonly brings them is stress or the wish to regain some emotional balance after bereavement.
"You get people who find their workplace environment socially draining. They might have difficult colleagues."
Nine times out of 10, she says they come back to say the crystal she chose for them worked and now they’re looking for one for a different issue.
Coleman has given crystals to parents whose child isn’t a good sleeper.
“I tell them not to say anything to the child, just place it under their pillow and they’ll notice the difference in sleep pattern. They come back, saying ‘he didn’t wake up all night.
They put it under the mattress of a restless baby and notice the child’s calmer. On a few occasions, parents of children with special needs have bought crystals that would bring calmness and they’ve come back saying the effect was amazing.
Coleman came to crystals through her own healing journey. “I realised their true power in the effect on my own energy field – they brought pain relief and better sleep.”
She carries black tourmaline in her pocket to keep her grounded.
“Because I work every day with a lot of other energy fields, it protects me from absorbing too much of others’ energy. I wear different pieces [of crystal] depending on what I feel I need. Today, I’m wearing moonstone, which is about bringing calm to the emotions.”
On-trend moonstone
Based in Mallow, Co Cork, Monika Kertowska, says her small family business is now the biggest Irish online crystal-seller.
With two shops on Etsy — RockyRoadMinerals and NatureMagicStones — Kertowska says popular crystals are those addressing common 21st-century problems: anxiety, addictions, depression, stress-related issues, sleeping problems and, in winter, seasonal affective disorder.
“Popular crystals for these issues are good old classics like amethyst, how lite, aquamarine, sunstone or different agate types, but also rarer crystals, such as astrophyllite or pink opal.”
Kertowska herself uses citrine believed to bring joy, optimism and happiness. “I consider myself a happy person so I’m drawn to crystals that match that vibration – it’s all about matching vibrations. Flint is another crystal I simply love. It’s very grounding .”
As with anything else, there are trends in crystals and Kertowska says shungite was popular a few years ago – it’s credited with cleansing and toxin-removal. “The trend now is towards ocean jasper, fire quartz, moldavite and larimar.”
Moonstone, she says, is “super-trendy” right now.
“Everyone wants it. It’s a very spiritual crystal that you can use for meditation. Yoga and meditation are increasingly popular, so people look for crystals that help with these processes.”
Psychological study
There have been few conventional studies on crystals, but a 2001 study presented at the European Congress of Psychology in Rome asked 80 people to complete a questionnaire designed to assess their level of belief in paranormal phenomena.
Later, the researchers asked participants to meditate for five minutes while holding either a real quartz crystal or a counterfeit crystal made of glass.
Both the real and fake crystals produced similar sensations, and people who tested high for belief in the paranormal tended to experience greater sensations than those who ridiculed the paranormal.
“Lots of people claimed they could feel odd sensations while holding the crystals, such as tingling, heat and vibrations, if we’d told them in advance that this is what might happen,” said Christopher French, a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, who concluded that the effects reported were a result of power of suggestion, not the power of the crystals.
But while their effectiveness as healing entities may be as yet unproven, there are more serious considerations. Healing crystals are believed to connect us with the nurturing energy of Mother Earth – but some crystals may be coming to us at a great environmental and human cost.
Writing last year in The New Republic, an American political magazine, Emily Atkin reported:
Some [crystals] come from large-scale industrial mines owned by companies with poor environmental records and a history of labour violations.
And a petition demanding that Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, Goop, sell ethically-sourced healing crystals has garnered almost 17,000 signatures online.
“The medicine bag on Goop’s website is priced at $85 and says all the crystals have been ‘energetically cleansed with sage, tuned with sound waves, activated with mantras, and blessed with Reiki’. But no amount of sage can get rid of the bad vibes that come from human exploitation and environmental destruction,” the petition reads.
Stephen Carter is lead campaigner on Afghanistan for Global Witness, an organisation that ‘campaigns to end environmental and human rights abuses driven by the exploitation of natural resources and corruption in the global political and economic system’.
Given that the crystal industry is unregulated, I ask Carter if we need to ask tough questions about the journey of crystals from mine to therapy room?
“We absolutely should be asking questions,” he says. “It depends very much on what the crystals are and how they’ve been mined but we’ve seen with far too many that the supply chain involves conflict, corruption and abuses.”
Carter authored a report on lapis lazuli mining in Afghanistan – lapis lazuli is a semi-precious stone used as a healing crystal and friendship stone.
The investigation revealed that the Taliban and other armed groups are earning up to $20m annually from Afghanistan’s lapis mines – the world’s main source of the brilliant blue stone.
“Lapis lazuli symbolises friendship and truth,” says Carter. Yet it’s a “conflict mineral”, he says.
“The tragic fact is if it was mined anytime in the last 40 years it has been extracted illegally and has helped fund armed groups. And it has provided far less benefit to [ordinary] people than it should in the mining areas of Afghanistan.”
Carter believes the onus isn’t so much on consumers as it is on companies buying crystals commercially to verify their supply chains. “They have a responsibility to do due diligence and ensure crystals are extracted in a way that doesn’t involve major abuses.”
Ethically sourced
Kertowska says her business sources any crystals from Asia directly from miners, so she’s comfortable child labour isn’t involved.
We have established a relationship with a lapidary master in Pakistan, who polishes crystals for us. This way we avoid buying from factories we are uncertain of. Ethical sourcing is on top of our priorities, so sometimes our crystals would be more costly.
Back in Castlebar, the Jordans source a large amount of crystals from Mayo. “Achill Island is full of clear quartz and amethyst — there’s a large vein of amethyst running from one end of Achill to the other.
Walk the beach in Westport, and many beaches around Ireland, and you’ll find red jasper, which we use for grounding,” says Aldo Jordan, adding that otherwise they source from ethical mines in various places worldwide that don’t promote child labour or environmental damage.
Sinéad Coleman would like to see robust guidelines introduced.
“You don’t want to have any part in damaging the environment. My suppliers are based in the UK and in Europe. I always check that they have Fair Trade and ethical standards. The companies usually visit the source from where they’re buying the crystal. And I have to trust that this is how it is.”
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