April 7, 2025 • 51 mins
Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #27 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Blue Sapphire meaning, including:
Blue Sapphire for commitment
Sharpening the mind with Blue Sapphire
History and folklore of Blue Sapphire
Blue Sapphire and Full Moon in Libra
Tune in now for a deeper look at Blue Sapphire 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 four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for Crystal Confab: a casual chat about all things crystals.
Nicholas Pearson: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the crystal confab. My name is Nicholas, and I'm joined by three of my crystal besties, Kyle, Ashley, and Adam, and we are gonna confab about another gemstone. So this week, we are going to talk about the sibling gem of one we just recently covered. And although we alluded to the fact this was coming, I think it's gonna be really fun to talk about sapphires. And before we really, like, dive into our our separate topics, I would love to just kinda open the floor to, we'll say, the the cornucopia of things we see labeled sapphire on the market from maybe different flavors and colors of it to things that are maybe a little disingenuous that can also be out there.
Kyle Perez: I am so excited to talk about a little bit of sapphire. Sapphire is a stone that is very important to me. I spoke about this in our last episode. I have orange sapphire in my wedding band as one of my important stones of connection, but I would really like to talk about fakes first. Fakes, synthetics, imitations because sapphire being one of the big four, emerald, diamonds, sapphire, and ruby, it is one of the most imitated and faked stones.
Right? It's one of the most and I've been doing it the longest. Right? Because these stones have been loved for so long. And I've got a couple of examples that I have and you're not going to be able to see it as well as I'd like you to, but this is a really pretty blue sapphire pendant.
It's got a lovely little clear stone on the top. But this is one of the lyres that is out there. And what I know with my little loop when I look at it sideways is it has a clear portion on the top, a tiny little sliver of dark blue, and then clear underneath. That means it's a foil scented stone, so it's an imitation. It's not even a real sapphire.
It's totally, totally imitation. And then within this little box, you can see a lovely bright blue stone in the middle. This was actually our gift. There's a couple of real ones on the outside, but it's, you know, gotta keep them together because they're all sapphires. The one in the middle is actually a synthetic manmade sapphire that was a gift to all of our gemology class when we graduated.
We were told it was. It's one full carat. It's really, really beautiful, but it is a lab grown example. And it's really interesting to know that we have lab grown. We have synthetic.
We have, like, imitation. There's all of these different layers of fakes that are out there. So it's really important that if you can, when you're looking at jewelry, fine jewelry, especially examples, a nice triplet loop as a base is an amazing place to start. These have come a long way in a really long time. They've got UV lights on them.
They've got lights on them, so you can really dive into and look at stones and see within them. And that's something that reveals a sapphire. Sapphires will often have layers of blue color, which I alluded to with Ruby last week. That dichroic nature of showing more than one color is something that is very common in our sapphires. So it's important to look for that subtle difference in color, but not necessarily clear blue in such dramatic spaces.
Ashley Leavy: Let me ask you, Kyle.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Are you just starting with crystals?
Or maybe you have a whole collection but
aren't sure how to use them? Join four
crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal
confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of the
crystal confab. My name is Nicholas, and I'm
joined by three of my crystal besties,
(00:25):
Kyle, Ashley, and Adam, and we are gonna
confab about another gemstone.
So this week, we are going to talk
about kind of the the sibling gem of
one we just recently covered.
And although we alluded
to the fact this was coming, I think
it's gonna be really fun to talk about
sapphires. And before we really, like, dive into
(00:46):
our our separate topics, I would love to
just kinda open the floor to,
we'll say, the the cornucopia
of things we see labeled sapphire on the
market from maybe different flavors and colors of
it to things that are maybe a little
disingenuous
that can also be out there.
I am so excited to talk about a
(01:06):
little bit of sapphire. Sapphire is a stone
that is very important to me. I spoke
about this in our last episode.
I have orange sapphire in my wedding band
as one of my important
stones of connection, but I would really like
to talk about fakes first. Fakes, synthetics,
imitations
because
sapphire being one of the big four, emerald,
(01:27):
diamonds, sapphire, and ruby, it is one of
the most imitated and faked stones. Right? It's
one of the most
it and I've been doing it the longest.
Right? Because these stones have been loved for
so so long. And I've got a couple
of examples that I have and
you're not going to be able to see
it as well as I'd like you to,
but this is a really pretty blue
(01:48):
sapphire pendant. It's got a lovely little clear
stone on the top.
But this is one of the lyres
that is out there. And what I know
with my little loop when I look at
it sideways is it has a clear portion
on the top, a tiny little sliver of
dark blue, and then clear underneath.
(02:08):
That means it's a foil
scented
stone, so it's an imitation.
It's not even
a real sapphire. It's totally, totally imitation.
And then within this little box,
you can see a lovely bright blue stone
in the middle.
This was actually our gift. There's a couple
of real ones on the outside, but it's,
you know, gotta keep them together because they're
(02:29):
all sapphires. The one in the middle is
actually a synthetic manmade sapphire that was a
gift to all of our gemology class when
we graduated. We were told it was. It's
a one full carat. It's really, really beautiful,
but it is a lab grown
example.
And it's really interesting to know that we
have lab grown. We have synthetic. We have,
(02:50):
like, imitation. There's all of these different layers
of fakes that are out there. So it's
really important that you if you can,
when you're looking at jewelry, fine jewelry, especially
examples,
a nice triplet loop as a base is
an amazing place to start. These have come
a long way in a really long time.
They've got UV lights on them. They've got
lights on them, so you can really dive
(03:12):
into and look at stones and see within
them. And that's something that reveals a sapphire.
Sapphires will often have layers of blue color,
which I alluded to with Ruby last week.
That dichroic nature
of showing more than one color is something
that is very common in our sapphires. So
it's important to look for that subtle difference
in color, but not necessarily clear blue clear
(03:35):
in such dramatic spaces.
Let me ask you, Kyle. In your training,
did you ever come across, like, where you
had to inspect
different types of sapphires and see
if they were fully genuine or not? Because
I I have read that there are sapphires
that are glass filled,
where it would be like a natural sapphire,
(03:56):
and they would actually fill any little tiny
microscopic holes
with glass to make it a little bit
more solid for use in
jewelry. And they'll typically be disclosed, and they'll
typically be a little bit more affordable, but
maybe not always.
Is that something people have to look out
for when they're buying fine jewelry, or have
you ever seen any examples of that?
(04:18):
Honestly, in sapphire, it's not something I've seen
a lot because it's quite dramatic. The
refractive difference between glass and sapphire, it's quite
dramatic. So it's not something that you'll see
too much. If they have to, they will
and it should be disclosed. Obviously, they probably
won't. But basically, there's this really big difference
in diffraction that you see with the glass
(04:39):
and the sapphire. So it looks different. It
looks odd.
It won't sit correctly within it, if that
makes sense.
It's all I'm going oh, sorry, Ashley. Go
on. That's okay. Thank you for that. I
I I also know that we have to
look out for,
heat treated and artificially irradiated
enhancements,
(05:00):
which are obviously gonna make the color of
the sapphire
more blue, but I wanted to kind of
tell everyone about something that I've seen for
pretty much, like, my whole career out there,
but I didn't know what it was until
just about a year ago. So have you
ever I I know we have jewelry vendors
come to my shop all the time and
they'll be like, oh, let me show you
all these great things we have. And a
(05:22):
lot of times you'll find some fantastic, really
unique pieces.
But I kept having this one jewelry vendor,
come up from Chicago to my shop to
bring some things to sell wholesale,
and she had rubies, emeralds, and sapphires in
her jewelry that I could tell were not
rubies, emeralds, or sapphires. And I was like,
(05:42):
what on earth is this? All of the
stones looked very similar and they looked
unusually
bright,
and it looked like, from my research at
least, from what I could find, it turns
out that it's dyed sillimanite.
I don't know if I'm even saying that
right. Nicholas is, like, shaking his head. Nicholas,
do you have any, like, knowledge of this?
(06:03):
Because I see it a lot now.
Yeah. It's gotten really
pretty common. I actually bought a a large
piece of this material
faceted in, like, your classic kind of rectangular
emerald cut,
like, chunky, oversized
because it looked
from a picture
on the Internet to be lower grade kind
(06:25):
of matrix y emerald. And we took a
picture of it and put it in a
book. And then later, I would find out
that this is dyed fibrous
sillimanite. So forms in really big masses. Sometimes
if it's good enough quality, it will have
the kind of cat's eye effect. It will
have,
when cotton cabochon, be really nice to look
at if the fibers are really well organized.
(06:47):
If if you cut it differently so the
fibers are oriented in a different way, it's
also fiber optic the way selenite could be.
But most of the material that we're seeing
in
in the gem trade that's being dyed in
offensively bright colors and being sold as more
precious gems,
is more like a kind of felted mass
of these fibers that's the result of, like,
(07:08):
metamorphic activity kind of squishing the the rock
together to produce them. Silimanite is,
an indicator species that we often use to
understand the how strongly metamorphosed a rock that
contains it can be. So it's not uncommon
to find it in this kind of format,
but,
it it seems to be getting more and
more widespread as the years go on to
(07:30):
to sell it off as these other gems.
Well, I can imagine
as as people are listening and watching this,
they're kinda getting worried about how do I
pick you know, I'm gonna go buy an
engagement ring on the weekend. How do I
know? And that type of thing. And one
technique I learned from,
another
jewelry vendor that I knew, who used to
buy a lot of his stones in parts
(07:52):
of, like, Southeast Asia and so on, is
he relied on the good old Mohs hardness
scale, which is a scale of hardness from
one to 10. And, of course, rubies and
sapphires,
are a nine.
So what he would do is he'd take
a little quartz point with him
and which is of Mohs hardness of seven.
So
in
reality,
(08:12):
I guess what happens is a harder stone
will always dent or scratch the softer stone.
So he would go to these stores or
these distributors and go, hello, I'd like to
see your rubies. And they're like, oh, here
we go, sir. And,
it got these real rubies. They're like, yes,
sir. Real rubies. And that's why if I
get this quartz point and scratch them, it's
(08:34):
not gonna scratch them because they're harder. Is
that right? They're like, sir, come out back.
We show you other rubies and that type
of way. So that that's a kind of
real basic way of telling,
you know, a ruby and a sapphire from
from something. Do you know what the Mohs
hardness scale of selenide
is, guys? Nicholas?
Yeah. It's a seven like quartz, but
(08:57):
this is where we also have to remember
that hardness is not the only trait that
that is going to influence the reading. We
have to talk about tenacity and toughness, which
don't get numerical scales like our hardness scale.
The hardness scale is actually a comparative chart
and not a scale of absolute hardness because
a nine is is in reality many, many,
(09:18):
many, many times harder than an eight. And
a 10,
like, inconceivably
harder than a nine, but, like, a two
and a three, they're pretty darn close.
So it's it's a ranked chart, and the
challenge here is because we've chosen some indicator
species, we're gonna have to group things similarly
that may not read the same way. So
because of that,
like, fibrous structure that
(09:40):
the sillimanite has when it's when it's in
that kind of big massive form, it's gonna
be really resistant to abrasion even though an
individual crystal, if you could isolate one, has
about the same hardness ever so slightly more
than quartz probably does.
And I will say, like, Nicholas, you brought
up that you purchased this beautiful, you know,
seem to be emerald online.
(10:01):
And I think this is, like, part of
part of what people can look for with
this particular variety of fake, whether that's looking
at sapphire,
ruby, or emerald,
is looking for it's almost always,
from what I've seen, in those faceted stones
because when you cab it, it looks a
little different. It catches the light a little
(10:22):
different. It it's a little bit more obvious
that it's not quite what it seems.
So those emerald cuts,
any type of really faceted shape, honestly, I've
seen it in the nice emerald cut like
rectangles, I've seen it in ovals, that sort
of thing.
And then if the color looks just a
little too good to be true for the
(10:43):
price, that's usually an indicator.
And
then the other thing is if you're purchasing
online,
keep in mind
that
a lot of sellers, they'll show you a
picture of a real ruby, they'll show you
a picture of a real sapphire, and that's
not what you'll get.
Or they can enhance or change the color
(11:03):
on those photographs. Right? They can show you
exactly what it is you really are buying
and not disclose
what it is. And I don't think,
for the most part, that people are out
there really trying
to, like, pull the wool over your eyes.
I think, like, this vendor that I had
coming up from Chicago,
this wasn't intentional on her part. I think
(11:24):
she bought those stones
thinking that they were genuine
gems, and they weren't. And so it was
kind of like she was sold something that
wasn't quite right. She didn't really have the
knowledge, and she was reselling it. So I
think that happens a lot as well. And
most of us, we won't be able to
do the hardness test, we won't be able
to do that thing, but just knowing this
(11:45):
is an example,
looking for those faceted stones in colors that
are a little bit too good to be
true,
usually coming out of India honestly and a
lot of the jewelry manufacturing there,
so looking for a lot of the sort
of styles that we see and almost always
with these set in sterling silver,
which it's not that you won't find precious
(12:08):
gems set in sterling, but, usually,
they're reserved for a little bit nicer metals
too, more precious metals. So those are kind
of all giveaways.
Look at that stuff and see what you
can piece together.
I'm really interested. Kyle mentioned the lab grown,
crystals before as well. I've seen some different
little snippets of information coming up recently.
(12:29):
And, you know, one argument might be, oh,
lab grown is better. They're still the same
structure and everything like that, but it's more
environmentally friendly because we're not mining them and
taking them all out of the ground.
However, I then got some extra information
about, well, all the different things that are
required, like the ingredients need to be sourced
from all around the world. There's actually three
(12:50):
other people nodding at the moment. So they're
actually
environmentally
less friendly
than mining
a, real stone as well. So if you
thought, oh, well, you know, I don't like
the idea of digging things out of the
ground. Know that all the different stuff that
needs to be dug out of the ground
to make your artificial diamond or sapphire or
whatever it might be can actually have a
(13:10):
worse consequence than actually getting a real thing
as well. How does everyone feel about
that Nicholas?
Oh, this this argument I've seen coming from
such well intentioned people.
And and all we have to do, like,
if if we are approached with this argument,
because people and as we've talked about it,
(13:32):
people have strong opinions about the ethics of
the crystal industry at large,
which, of course,
under late stage late late stage capitalism could
do better. But the crystal healing market is
also the smallest
representation of all mining and extraction performed in
the world, and there are far more sectors
that do more harm, which is not to
(13:52):
give us a get out of jail free
card. But when someone brings the argument
that, you know, if we use with an
artificially made gem, it is it is more
sustainable. It's better for the earth. Number one,
where did the raw materials come from? And
if you just ask that question
open hearted,
gently,
sincerely,
you're gonna see the light bulb go on,
the eyes get wide, and the jaw go
(14:13):
slack
every every single time. And then we have
to also consider
how much
energy it takes
to grow these things.
I've I've heard it said, and I don't
I don't really know how true this is
because there are too many variables. But, like,
a a a decent sized batch of diamonds,
synthetically grown
(14:34):
diamonds, you could power a small city on
for the amount of electricity that it takes.
I think maybe city is a generous term
to describe this, but the the point is
it takes a lot of energy to do
it. And there are lots of different methods
for for growing different kinds of synthetic gems,
but the truth is that,
the environmental impact is only one piece of
(14:56):
the puzzle. If we're also trying to sidestep
the ethical impact
on human beings, There are still human beings
mining those raw materials, and they're probably doing
it under equally bad conditions.
So it is it is complicated. I'm actually
not
anti
synthetic gems. As long as we disclose what
they are,
(15:16):
we use honest labeling. We're not taking things
that appear to be something and calling them
something else because that's what we call a
simulant and not a synthesized
gem. Those those words are different for a
reason.
Some episodes back, we chatted about the honeycomb
ruby, which is a ruby simulant,
but it's not synthetic ruby because it is
not
structurally identical to ruby. So if you have
(15:38):
a structurally identical lab grown sapphire,
and
it is in your budget to have that,
but not the perfect precious natural sapphire.
Get what's in your budget. Like, don't don't
stress yourself out.
Work with what's accessible to you. You can
also choose lower quality sapphires.
Sapphire is something that is frequently mined for
(15:59):
industrial purposes, and,
some of that material ends up getting turned
into jewelry or
or cabbed or tumbled,
to find its way into the crystal healing
market. But,
I'm I'm all about, like, just having a
really transparent conversation
about
all of the gray area in this.
(16:20):
I think this is a great question that
you posed, Adam, and and it kind of
led me down the same path that Nicholas
ended up at, which is
when it comes to those synthetics, those lab
growns,
if you're looking for something that really is,
like, transparent,
gem quality, that sort of thing, and that's
what's in your budget, then go ahead and
go for that. For me, personally, I rather
(16:41):
have just, like, an everyday
quality little stone
than have
the, you know, synthetic version that's gonna be
the gem grade. For me, this is kind
of more energetically what I feel aligned with,
but, you know, everyone's gonna be a little
different there.
I was just reflecting, and I guess, you
(17:02):
know, if someone just wants a sparkle,
something ornamental,
then go for lab grown if if that's
within your budget. But I think we all
talk about the magical powers of these crystals,
and I think that's something it's not just
in the structure and the ingredients. It's in
the the time and the energy and the
essence of what mother earth put into actually
(17:22):
grow it and all those situations. And we've
had some great discussions in the past of
how crystals form. I remember just recently, Nicholas
talking about how petticoat is formed.
That journey
is kind of, you know,
creates the crystal and it's part of it
just like we are who we are because
we've been on a journey.
It's like us all downloading doctorates from the
(17:44):
Internet and going, I'm a doctor now type
of thing. We've gotta go through the journey.
And for me, you you know, if it's
not a natural crystal, I'm not willing to
use it in my magic or spiritual or
healing works at all.
Now moving on, we've been talking about what's
happening with sapphires now, but I can imagine
just like when we mentioned with Rubies last
(18:05):
week, there was, you know this is not
this is not a thing that's isolated to
the here and the now. These beautiful stones
have probably been yearned for for centuries, and
there's probably been some mistakes along the way.
Nicholas, is that true? Sapphire's kind of had
this interesting journey of what a sapphire is
and what it's good for and so on?
Big time. I I hinted at this last
(18:26):
week.
And the really
like, the the bottom line is that our
word for sapphire
today, only fairly recently in the span of
human history became associated with the variety of
corundum we know as sapphire.
And for the majority of the use of
this word and its cognates,
(18:47):
it referred to lapis lazuli.
So,
the
the origin of this word
in English,
we we we have
a a a journey it takes from English
back into middle French, earlier than that into
Latin where it was borrowed directly from Greek.
The Greeks probably got it from the Phoenicians
who ultimately sourced it from the Hebrew language,
(19:08):
and that word is sapphire. And sapphire is,
one of the most recognizable
gemstone names that we see in the Hebrew
Bible.
It's there there's a lot of references to
it, and although a lot of modern English
translations just use the word sapphire because they're
cognates, it is absolutely not the gemstone
(19:29):
that the ancient people knew as sapphire.
So when we start looking at those biblical
texts and we're trying to get a feel
for what the energy of sapphire is, we
have to frame everything
within the idea that they're actually talking about
a very, very different rock.
So,
ultimately, this this association,
(19:50):
is is really well evidenced
in textual history. I'm a big old nerd.
We're gonna, like, fast forward
a few centuries
from, biblical Hebrew and look at the early
adoption of this term into Greek.
And from there, it kind of spread through,
we'll we'll say the Hellenistic period, Greco Roman
literature,
and ultimately throughout Europe.
(20:12):
But one of the earliest references that we
have in Greek to this is a very
famous book,
by Theophrastus,
usually translated as on the stones, would be
like the end of the fourth century BCE.
So about, you know, twenty three, twenty four,
a hundred years ago, this text is written.
And it's also the first time that we
see the word saphiro or saphiro
(20:33):
written in Greek.
And luckily for us, this is also
one of the very few times there is
a very lucid
depiction of the term
and and the rock it's describing. So rather
than just describing
the radiance or the brilliance of sapphire like
we see in most earlier texts, sometimes
describing it as transparent
(20:55):
or colorless, which is also
challenging,
given that we knew it applied to Lapis
Lazuli originally.
We get a really clear depiction. And
there is a passage in this book that
reads something to the effect of there are
also other stones from which seals are cut.
Some of them only for their appearance like
(21:16):
sardium,
which would be carnelian,
Iaspis or Jasper, and the sapphires. The last
of these seems to be spotted with gold.
And this this phrase at the end is
our clear indication
that the ancient sapphire was actually
lapis lazuli because it's a metamorphic rock. It
is metamorphosed limestone, believe it or not.
(21:38):
And one of the most iconic features of
high quality lapis are little flecks of pyrite
in there.
Another really important clue
is that Theophrastus
is reporting on an already ancient tradition
of cutting this gemstone into seals.
There there is a really spurious etymology that's
(21:59):
out there that suggests the word,
sapir comes from or,
which might mean,
to cut or to engrave.
Now we were talking about the Mohs hardness
scale earlier.
Diamonds were not regularly available in The Levant
or The Mediterranean
in the times that these texts were written.
So if we were talking about engraving
(22:22):
or cutting
corundum
into a seal or into anything else, you
would need a diamond to do so. And
that simply was not an option.
And lapis lazuli is significantly
softer. Its its number one ingredient by volume
is calcite, which has a Mohs hardness value
of three.
(22:43):
So we've got some other pretty clear references
that the the biblical and post biblical early
kind of, we'll say classical sapphire was in
fact lapis lazuli.
But over time, the two gems did get
kind of conflated.
In some of these Greek texts, there's an
interesting,
(23:04):
phenomenon that takes place where sapphire was adopted
after they already had a word for this
material. And that that that word is.
It's the origin of our word cyan,
which also gives rise to the word kyanite,
for example,
whose name means blue stone. And was a
really rich blue stone. Eventually,
(23:25):
the that and Saferas referred to the same
rock, but they they diverged. And Keanos took
on the,
association being pure lazurite
as opposed to the sapphire, which was the
metamorphic rock of lazurite, calcite, pyrite, and dozens
of other accessory minerals.
And the challenge here has been
trying to find the earliest iteration of this
(23:46):
term.
There are a lot of associated words that
we can find,
allegedly in Indian, although this is also kind
of
spurious to find these Vedic texts, Sanskrit texts
that have
seemingly related words, although they don't appear to
refer to a specific gem species.
We also find marginal cognates in ancient Egyptian.
(24:07):
For lapis lazuli, that shares at least a
majority of the consonants
with
the origin of the word sapphire.
We also see it in Ugaritic,
in Aramaic.
So
what our takeaway
is
is that,
there's a
there's a a kind of term that we
(24:28):
use
when talking about gems in an anthropological
and historical setting that I think we can
apply here. And a really good example of
this is found with jades. And maybe one
day we'll talk about how complicated jade is
in the archaeological setting, but you have
what are referred to often as precious jades,
which will be whatever the the native version
(24:49):
of that is in the region, jadeite or
nephrite. But then you also have social jades.
They are usually softer,
more plentiful, less valuable rocks that serve the
same function.
And although the stone carvers would have known
the difference between serpentinite rock and true jadeite
because one is a heck of a lot
easier to carve than the other.
(25:09):
They they would have been used very similarly
in in social settings, in religious settings, in
magical settings.
And we can assume by the time we
get to the medieval period when we have
the the kind of noble sapphire emerging, particularly
by the time we reach
the sort of the height of our medieval
lapidary tradition, we start to see, like, a
(25:32):
a rise in the,
Christian lapidary tradition where, like, all of this
pre Christian
imagery is being reinterpreted.
Now we're starting to take that word and
apply it to what is otherwise an entirely
new gemstone.
One that is transparent. One that can be
very luminous with a good reflective refractive index,
(25:52):
one that is also not nearly as easy
to cut.
And so it becomes associated
with royalty, not not merely for having come
from the rooftop of the world in in
the high mountainous regions like Lapis Lazuli does,
but because it is so difficult to work
that you had to pay people quite a
lot,
(26:13):
who were very skilled artisans to have access
to it. And so in this period, we
get a kind of blending
of the use of both of these stones.
And, ultimately, it kinda circles us back to
our earlier topic where
as these two
gem species got really murky and muddy as
to who was who based on which text
(26:35):
and which term,
eventually, any blue stone could be called sapphire.
Any faceted piece of paste or blue glass
could be called sapphire.
And so even until the early modern periods,
this is after the renaissance,
we find
pharmaceutical
texts that still talk about,
lapidary medicine or using gemstones and healing. And
(26:58):
almost all of these that we find circulated
by the guilds in Western Europe
have sections about
being able to determine the authenticity
of your precious gems, particularly
stones like sapphire, because
there is no new problem under the sun.
The problems that we have in today's market
are the problems that people had three hundred
(27:18):
years ago, are the problems that people had
three thousand years ago.
There are lots of people who'll do anything
to make a buck.
And so the the moral of the story
is that if we look only to ancient
texts, it gets really difficult to know what
a sapphire really means to that author, especially
if they were writing down someone else's story
(27:40):
that they heard from someone else, who heard
it from someone else. And that actually sounds
a lot like what happens when we memeify
our crystal descriptions on the Internet. Again, there
are no new problems under the sun.
That's really interesting when you think about
how many people take their,
ideas of what sapphires have been used throughout
(28:00):
history for on a magical kind of purpose.
You know, a lot of that information could
actually be about something like lapis lazuli and
how it's been used in the past in
spiritual or religious ways as well. So I
guess we should try and, you know, unpack
what we feel that sapphires are really good
for in this episode. Kyle, what do you
find that's really great for?
(28:22):
Well, for me, my journey with sapphire started
way back before I even connected to crystals.
Not necessarily because I had them, but because
I worked in hospitality,
I would notice a certain type of person
that wore
ruby, diamond, sapphire, and emerald.
The person that wore sapphire was always shrewd,
maybe a little cold,
(28:43):
very intelligent,
sharp. There was always this
decisivity,
this intelligence that I always got from someone
that was wearing a blue sapphire.
Generally, subtle earrings, a little ring,
a a man with a signet that had
a little blue sapphire in it. It was
never gendered, but they were always really sharp.
(29:05):
I dealt with a lot of lawyers,
CEOs working on Saint George's Terrace in Perth,
serving coffee to all of those that did
all of the work basically in our central
business district. It was I I noticed this.
And then when I got into crystals,
I started noticing the same thing.
Very shrewd, very decisive,
very great at picking for other people, very
(29:26):
great at, like, deciding what they needed for
themselves coming in. This is what I'm getting.
I'm getting a present for this person. Thank
you very much. I'll see you in three
weeks. Like, it was always very
quick. And so when I started working with
Safra, I was like, okay.
Let's see how this works. And it I
felt it sharpening, honing,
like,
directing the mind, helping me to know where
(29:47):
my intelligence was. It wasn't necessarily about being
a smarty pants.
It's about knowing yourself, knowing your own intelligence,
knowing what you know, and not trying to
kind of
overthink things. Like, this is what I'm doing.
This is what I know. This is what
I need to get done. Sometimes we need
that coldness, but it's not coldness. It's just
(30:09):
I need to get stuff done. I need
to make decisions. I need to do things.
And I found Sapphire really coming into its
own with that for me. A really lovely
dangly
earring.
It's a lovely little piece, but it was
this beautiful piece of corundum that has a
really soft blue center,
and it's an old stock,
old collection piece from a guy named Jerry
(30:31):
Norville, who's an Australian collector.
And this is an Indian
specimen. And there's just something about holiness. I
was immediately drawn to it. And I think
we touched on it last week with the
ruby, that hexagonal
strength, that support. It kind of brings everything
in and helps it to focus really beautifully.
And I found this balance, this ability
(30:53):
to find balance within myself and be more
decisive, to hone what I already had,
to focus my skills. And I've been able
to
direct it basically with crystals and what I
do. Like, what I do with my work,
with my crystals, with my knowledge, with my
readings,
it's allowed me to hone all of those
skills. It's allowed me to focus all of
(31:14):
those skills, bring them to an even better
place. And there's lots of stuff that I
now have gaps of that I don't worry
about because I don't need to know about
it. Like, it's not important to hold space
in my mind. It's not important for me
to
worry about things that I can't fix or
control.
I find Blue Sapphire especially able to bring
it in and rein it in and go,
(31:35):
this is what you can do. This is
where you can focus. If you can improve,
you can improve bit by bit, but
don't worry about the things that are outside
of those realms of what you
can and can't control. I find this fortification,
this insulation,
this strength, and I think that hardness,
that inner strength really comes with it.
(31:56):
I really love all the colors. As we
have touched on, I've got a little handful
of a few here. I'm not really gonna
be able to show them properly because of
the angle.
Bit of orange, bit of blue, bit of
green, bit of yellow.
This is a chatoyant
brown,
gold one
that is really, really lovely energetically.
(32:16):
I just
the strength that comes from strong crystals,
I think, is related to us. I think
that, like, Ruby not only has hardness, but
it has toughness. Right? It has that strength
within us. And I think one of the
key
ingredients
within it, aluminum,
aluminum for everyone in North America,
(32:38):
is, an ingredient that brings flexibility.
For me, the idea of, like,
creating a sword
and needing it to go through those
melting, hardening, melting, hardening to become sharp and
perfect and able to be used,
our mind is the same. Right? We sometimes
have to go through this bending, this warping,
(32:59):
this pushing, this pulling, this
plunging into something cold all of a sudden
to fortify our own mind and our ability
to work. Sometimes we actually have to go
through these pressurized
situations. I I think Sapphire helps us to
embrace
that. Like, yes. Do it. Go through it.
Expand in a way that's going to push
you because there's more within you. You're actually
(33:21):
really smart. You're actually really brilliant. You're actually
really capable of being a leader or doing
whatever it is you need to do. Sometimes
you actually don't know you can do it
till you do it,
and you have to push yourself into it.
Oh, I'm fascinated by this idea of certain
personality
types with certain crystals.
I must admit, I hadn't thought of sapphires.
I have noticed certain people that wear lapis
(33:43):
lazuli
have a certain kind of archetype as well.
But I'm kind of thinking
the way you were describing the sapphires,
This might be a bit of an unusual
reference for some people, but Anna Wintour,
the,
the editor in chief of Vogue USA,
would you say that she's that kind of
sapphire energy?
Yeah, totally. There is a coldness, there is
(34:05):
a detachment, but there is a creativity,
there is a knowledge.
Like, I think people that know themselves,
it's a really great stone that I think
really enhances that. But if you do need
to kind of develop that and hone that
and have strength within that, absolutely. And just
on the touch of stones and their names
and where they come from, I learned in
an Uber ride the other day, neelum, n
(34:27):
e e l u m, is the Indian
term for blue sapphire.
I was asked because the the guy knew
where I was going to my work, crystal
in the name. He's like, you know about
crystals. Do you know about Milam? And I
had to Google it, and it is the
Indian name for blue sapphire. So if you
see that come up, if you see that
in texts,
that's what I understand it is referring to.
(34:47):
An Indian
corundum is well known. Ruby sapphires of all
colors are so so prominent throughout the Indian
Subcontinent. I think it's quite an interesting little
note.
I love that. I love that. And I
love how we can then take that hardness
and that strength of the SAFIRE
and we can, you know,
we may not wanna be that personality type,
(35:08):
but those attributes of loyalty and commitment,
I think, are really, really powerful. Now one
of the traditional things that we'll see Blue
Sapphire is being used for is obviously in
engagement rings, and that's a one nice way.
But there are other things we want to
commit to. You know, this could be a
great crystal to work with when we need
that strength and resolve to commit to a
goal, whether it be an exercise regime or
(35:31):
saving money or different things like that.
I find it's also one that I recommend
people use when they need to create a
team environment. You know, it it whether it
be a sporting team,
a community team where you've got a whole
group of volunteers.
Because whereas employees have to do what you
tell them, volunteers are like herding cats, that
(35:52):
type of thing. Or whether you maybe you
are an employer and you do find that
people's loyalty to your business is waning and
maybe you keep losing employees to other companies
and things like that. This could be somewhere
where bringing Blue Sapphire into the space,
would be,
really good at helping to fortify that commitment
and that loyalty and bring that energy and
(36:13):
that strength as well.
I'm kind of pondering, though, after listening to
what Kyle was saying as well, with that
quite that
sternness,
about it, I'm wondering if when we were,
you know, doing something like we want to
keep it all our workers together, our team
together. Maybe we need to bring something in
like, I don't know whether a yellow sapphire
would have a bit more joy to it
(36:34):
or even something like the Citrine as well.
What do you reckon, Kyle, in that to
to not get too serious and people feel
like they're caught in a situation? Does that
make sense?
Yeah. Absolutely.
For me, I think because I bring so
much heart into everything I do, I actually
need a little bit of that sharp coldness.
So I think it helps to balance me
out a lot.
(36:54):
Mhmm. I think adding a bit of warmth
with citrine would be lovely.
Green sapphire could be a really great option.
Even star sapphire, because star sapphire brings this
sort of illumination.
So I think that would be a really
lovely way of balancing out any detachment that
maybe we need to balance.
Yeah. Very much so. But, you know, I
(37:14):
think it's still a great one for commitment
and loyalty in, in relationships as well.
You know, we do live in a world
now where there are so many options, and
there's online and all that type of thing.
Fidelity can be an issue. And even a
simple practice of having a beautiful photo
of the two of you somewhere prominent in
the house. And you could even look at
(37:34):
a bit of Feng Shui where the relationship
quadrant is in your house and put setting
where you first get together or when you
put it together to
sapphires. And, you know, like Ashley said, you
can get some tumbled ones that are quite
affordable. Pop a couple there. And each year
on your anniversary, pop another one there. Just
kind of strengthen that relationship
as the challenges go through as well.
(37:56):
A final little strength thing that I'll throw
in there as well is often our gums
represent commitment and strength to life and different
things like that as well.
And popping a,
a sapphire near your toothbrush is one of
those kind of medical and crystal things you
can pop together. Look after your teeth and
brush your blooming teeth a couple of times
(38:16):
and floss like you tell the doc the
dentist you always do, but a a sapphire
near your toothbrush could be an energetic supporter
as well.
Ashley, I noticed you ran off and went
and grabbed something. I'm intrigued what you've got
to share with us.
It was actually my book, Cosmic Crystals,
because, Adam, I am taking a little bit
(38:37):
of your role this week in talking a
little bit about the upcoming
astrology.
So we will very soon
be in the time of the full moon
in Libra,
which will happen, I think, just a little
short of a week from the release date
of this episode. So you have some
(38:57):
time to sort of get prepared and ease
into that energy.
Now I love this because so many of
the themes that Adam just discussed like partnership
and cooperation
are huge themes for this
full moon.
So Libra is associated with the air element.
Its ruling planet is Venus. So if we
(39:18):
think of that combination
of the sort of
wit and wisdom,
intellect, and clarity that the air element brings
with that connection
to love and relationships,
partnership and cooperation that we see with Venus.
These really create this interesting
dynamic during the full moon in Libra.
(39:38):
So
during this time, and I would say this
is, you know, for the few days before
the day of or evening of that full
moon and for the few days after, it's
really important to be super mindful of your
interactions
with others.
This is
an important time for relationships of all kinds,
(39:59):
not just our romantic partnerships.
This could be business partnerships. This could be
friendships. This could be relationships with your neighbors,
with your community members, friends and family, all
the way to acquaintances and coworkers.
Look at those dynamics that are presenting themselves
during this time and really getting your attention,
especially
(40:20):
the people that you already sort of have
a difficult time seeing eye to eye with.
Be extra sort of vigilant and aware of
what's going on
with those relationships because these opposing energies during
this time can create
a little bit of competition
or cooperation,
and you get to choose. And this is
(40:41):
one of the things where bringing sapphire in
can really support you. Right? It can turn
those competitive energies
on their head and help create and foster
an environment of cooperation instead.
So
think about
working with this stone
in whatever way that will support you, in
whatever way you're gonna be able to have
it
(41:01):
near you, on your person, around you. So
put some on your desk if you're worried
about those relationships at work. Wear it as
jewelry if it's gonna be, you know, potentially
a fiery time
with the people that you're closest to to
sort of cool things down.
Cooperation is always gonna be so much more
pleasant than that competition,
(41:23):
So make an effort to really,
put your best foot forward in your relationships
and take time to
smooth things over. Keep a cool, calm, collected
head. That's gonna be really important.
So Blue Sapphire
is one that really promotes a lot of
peace and harmony,
(41:44):
especially
among bigger groups.
So if you have any type of group
project,
any type of,
cooperative project,
this is going to be like your best
friend during this time.
If you've been dealing with any sort of
tumultuous
situations,
Blue Sapphire can help you just sort of
take your personal
(42:05):
feelings and pet peeves and ego and sort
of set it aside.
You know, not that you don't have to
go tend to that later on, but during
that interaction with other folks, set it aside
and find the common ground. So if you
feel like your toes are getting stepped on,
you can go journal about that later. You
can vent to your bestie. There are things
(42:26):
that you can do to sort of be
a little bit more tactful, and Blue Sapphire
is going to help you let that cool
mindedness sort of prevail.
So in order to use this stone at
this time, and this exercise comes
from my book From Cosmic Crystals, this is
what it looks like if you're watching.
You can get some paper,
(42:48):
a bowl, some colored pencils, some scissors,
and
a one, two, or three blue sapphire stones.
You can trace the bowl on the piece
of paper to create a circle and cut
it out and then draw some lines dividing
it into eight equal sections.
So you're going to label the eight sections
(43:10):
of your circle with some different archetypes.
The artist, the dreamer, the fool, the healer,
the leader, the scholar, the servant, and the
warrior.
Then you're going to make yourself comfortable. Take
your one to three sapphires,
hold them in your hands just a couple
inches above that casting board that you've created,
(43:30):
and drop them into the circle. So, what
you're going to do is
pay attention to where these stones have landed.
Those are the particular
archetypes that you really need to embody
during this full moon in Libra time. So,
if you have a crystal that falls on
the line between two areas you want to
(43:51):
make sure that you're acknowledging both of those
archetypes.
If you have a stone that falls outside
of the casting area you'll just disregard that
one, but especially in an area where you
have more than one stone fall that one's
going to be really, really important. And if
you've casted a stone and it's fallen right
in the center then to some extent a
(44:11):
little bit of all of those are going
to play a role. So this is a
great way for you to just sort of
pay attention
to those areas of your life that you
need to focus on, that you need to
call upon, those strengths that you need to
bring in during this time, and, you know,
really sort of embody to,
make sure that you are connecting with people
(44:33):
on the right way, that you're acknowledging
those relationships, but also that you're creating whatever
boundaries you need to create in those relationships
as well.
I love that, Ashley. And
I'm not competitive at all, but I do
wanna throw some extra astrology in here because
remember a few weeks. There's a few different
things that are happening around this full moon,
(44:55):
which are really, really important that will I
I've noticed it playing out in people's lives.
So I'm kind of been getting on my
bandwagon on Instagram and everything like that and
talking about it as well. So on exactly
the same day as the full moon,
we talked about in turquoise a few weeks
ago Venus going into retrograde.
This is when her loving energy goes away.
We start to feel a bit unloved.
We start to consider the relationships in our
(45:17):
lives, and this is the lesson to start
giving yourself some love rather than relying on
other people. But what I've noticed this retrogrades
are also times of introspection.
So I've noticed a lot of people are
ending relationships
or breaking relationships, not necessarily romantically,
but working relationships. They're quitting jobs. They're doing
(45:38):
other things. They're not this other work.
We're meant to use the retrograde to learn
the lesson,
and then when it goes direct, we apply
the lesson. So be careful that you haven't
broken something too early.
And but what I do like is the
lessons finish on the thirteenth,
which is then the same night as the
full moon. So you can then use that
(45:58):
full moon as Ashley is, beautifully described
to,
to then go, well, what do I wanna
bring in in my new relationships, whether it
be the current ones or existing ones?
You've also got Juno still in retrograde. She's
very much about loyalty and devotion and being
the best partner you can be. And my
favorite crystal for her is Blue Sapphire. So
that's a really good one. It's about focusing
(46:19):
on rather than keeping score,
you just being the best person you can
be rather than, you know, go, oh, they
did that, so I'm gonna do that and
so on.
Then we also have on the seventh no.
Sorry. The April 8,
Ioxon
going into retrograde. Now Ioxon's a bit of
a rebel. And normally what happens when Ioxon
goes into retrograde,
(46:40):
when people do you wrong,
you're like, stuff it. I don't care. And
you wanna you you rebel. And that might
happen in all different
types of situations.
But Ioxon actually wants you to listen to
your heart and go hold on. Am I
just rebelling just because I'm angry? Am I
dropping into a lower emotion?
Or is there a reason that I'm actually,
you know, am I upset? But what is
(47:01):
gonna be best for myself in the long
term and for everyone else in the long
term as well? So if you put them
all in a bloomin' big pot,
relationships are gonna be a little bit rocky
at this time. And I would recommend
Blue Sapphire is perfect, and
I'll,
I think it's a great way of helping
you to remain loyal to what's important.
(47:21):
And, you know, maybe you need, as Kyle
spoke about, that real energy of that sternness
and that devotion and that you know, just
withdraw a little bit and and analyze things
and wait till the month kind of unfolds
a little bit more for that to unfill.
But actually, I am so excited to go
draw my circle and divide it into eight
quadrants.
That I really, really love that.
(47:44):
Is there any other applications you've used for
that? What that
divination tool?
I honestly use stone casting
so often. I love cardamancy, so I love
working with tarot and oracle cards, but stone
casting is probably my next go to. If
you don't feel as comfortable with that, you
can use that circle also as, like, a
(48:05):
pendulum chart if that is something that you
align with a little bit more. I personally
really struggle to use a pendulum effectively.
It's just not, like, not in my wheelhouse.
I feel like I'm a little too strong
willed, and I'm always influencing,
like, the movements, you know, very unintentionally,
but subtly.
So I really love stone casting because I
(48:25):
can just get in that zone, hold my
stones, hold them above,
let go, and and see what really needs
my focus and attention.
But you can use this
for anything. You can create, you know, a
a little circle with three sections, or it
could just be on a sheet of paper,
divide it into different sections. The circle is
(48:45):
is nice because it's a little bit more
whole and complete
and, a little bit easier to sort of
break into different areas,
but, you know, do this with with different
themes in your life. Do this with
different decisions, right? If you have a really
difficult decision and there are different paths you
could take, put each of those in those
little areas and cast those stones and see
(49:08):
what calls your attention. I have this little
kit I've been collecting for ages
of tiny those little tiny crystal gemstone chips.
They're all in a pouch. I assign each
one of those a one word meaning
just to give me some focus and direction
for what that stone is representing.
I will often use those little gemstone chips.
(49:28):
I'll reach in at random, pull some out
of the pouch. Whatever I'm pulling out, I'm
trusting, you know, these are the options that
the universe is presenting for me. Drop them
on whatever casting board I've created
and go to town interpreting. And this is
something that's a little bit more fluid, a
little bit more free form than some other
divination methods. And, Kyle,
(49:49):
what did you wanna share about that?
You literally just finished like, I was just
gonna ask, could you just pick different stones
with those different archetypal meanings and then throw
them onto a piece of paper and just
see what's just you're drawn to or pick
one out of a bowl and see which
one is the one that speaks to you?
You literally just said what I was gonna
ask.
Yeah. I think especially for more advanced,
(50:12):
stone casters or lithomancers,
you can definitely do that, and you can
use a blank casting board at that point.
Have each stone represent a different archetype.
Cast those onto your cloth, your board, your
space, whatever it is, and let them tell
a story. Which ones are near each other?
How are they grouped together?
You have to be really
(50:33):
creative and and really, I think, discerning and
open to sort of seeing the picture that's
painted and the story that is told
among the stones,
but that is one of my absolute favorite
ways to do this work.
Consider it added to my repertoire of things
I'm going to be doing regularly. Thank you
very much.
(50:53):
Well, you've come to Crystal Confab every week
for answers, and this week, we've even shown
you how to get the answers yourself. So
thank you very much for joining us for
another week of Crystal Confab and Craft Corner.
We'll be back next week when we dive
into another gift of mother earth. Until then,
go and find the answers you seek. We'll
see you then. Blessed be.
Are you just starting with crystals?
Or maybe you have a whole collection but
aren't sure how to use them? Join four
crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal
confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of the
crystal confab. My name is Nicholas, and I'm
joined by three of my crystal besties,
(00:25):
Kyle, Ashley, and Adam, and we are gonna
confab about another gemstone.
So this week, we are going to talk
about kind of the the sibling gem of
one we just recently covered.
And although we alluded
to the fact this was coming, I think
it's gonna be really fun to talk about
sapphires. And before we really, like, dive into
(00:46):
our our separate topics, I would love to
just kinda open the floor to,
we'll say, the the cornucopia
of things we see labeled sapphire on the
market from maybe different flavors and colors of
it to things that are maybe a little
disingenuous
that can also be out there.
I am so excited to talk about a
(01:06):
little bit of sapphire. Sapphire is a stone
that is very important to me. I spoke
about this in our last episode.
I have orange sapphire in my wedding band
as one of my important
stones of connection, but I would really like
to talk about fakes first. Fakes, synthetics,
imitations
because
sapphire being one of the big four, emerald,
(01:27):
diamonds, sapphire, and ruby, it is one of
the most imitated and faked stones. Right? It's
one of the most
it and I've been doing it the longest.
Right? Because these stones have been loved for
so so long. And I've got a couple
of examples that I have and
you're not going to be able to see
it as well as I'd like you to,
but this is a really pretty blue
(01:48):
sapphire pendant. It's got a lovely little clear
stone on the top.
But this is one of the lyres
that is out there. And what I know
with my little loop when I look at
it sideways is it has a clear portion
on the top, a tiny little sliver of
dark blue, and then clear underneath.
(02:08):
That means it's a foil
scented
stone, so it's an imitation.
It's not even
a real sapphire. It's totally, totally imitation.
And then within this little box,
you can see a lovely bright blue stone
in the middle.
This was actually our gift. There's a couple
of real ones on the outside, but it's,
you know, gotta keep them together because they're
(02:29):
all sapphires. The one in the middle is
actually a synthetic manmade sapphire that was a
gift to all of our gemology class when
we graduated. We were told it was. It's
a one full carat. It's really, really beautiful,
but it is a lab grown
example.
And it's really interesting to know that we
have lab grown. We have synthetic. We have,
(02:50):
like, imitation. There's all of these different layers
of fakes that are out there. So it's
really important that you if you can,
when you're looking at jewelry, fine jewelry, especially
examples,
a nice triplet loop as a base is
an amazing place to start. These have come
a long way in a really long time.
They've got UV lights on them. They've got
lights on them, so you can really dive
(03:12):
into and look at stones and see within
them. And that's something that reveals a sapphire.
Sapphires will often have layers of blue color,
which I alluded to with Ruby last week.
That dichroic nature
of showing more than one color is something
that is very common in our sapphires. So
it's important to look for that subtle difference
in color, but not necessarily clear blue clear
(03:35):
in such dramatic spaces.
Let me ask you, Kyle. In your training,
did you ever come across, like, where you
had to inspect
different types of sapphires and see
if they were fully genuine or not? Because
I I have read that there are sapphires
that are glass filled,
where it would be like a natural sapphire,
(03:56):
and they would actually fill any little tiny
microscopic holes
with glass to make it a little bit
more solid for use in
jewelry. And they'll typically be disclosed, and they'll
typically be a little bit more affordable, but
maybe not always.
Is that something people have to look out
for when they're buying fine jewelry, or have
you ever seen any examples of that?
(04:18):
Honestly, in sapphire, it's not something I've seen
a lot because it's quite dramatic. The
refractive difference between glass and sapphire, it's quite
dramatic. So it's not something that you'll see
too much. If they have to, they will
and it should be disclosed. Obviously, they probably
won't. But basically, there's this really big difference
in diffraction that you see with the glass
(04:39):
and the sapphire. So it looks different. It
looks odd.
It won't sit correctly within it, if that
makes sense.
It's all I'm going oh, sorry, Ashley. Go
on. That's okay. Thank you for that. I
I I also know that we have to
look out for,
heat treated and artificially irradiated
enhancements,
(05:00):
which are obviously gonna make the color of
the sapphire
more blue, but I wanted to kind of
tell everyone about something that I've seen for
pretty much, like, my whole career out there,
but I didn't know what it was until
just about a year ago. So have you
ever I I know we have jewelry vendors
come to my shop all the time and
they'll be like, oh, let me show you
all these great things we have. And a
(05:22):
lot of times you'll find some fantastic, really
unique pieces.
But I kept having this one jewelry vendor,
come up from Chicago to my shop to
bring some things to sell wholesale,
and she had rubies, emeralds, and sapphires in
her jewelry that I could tell were not
rubies, emeralds, or sapphires. And I was like,
(05:42):
what on earth is this? All of the
stones looked very similar and they looked
unusually
bright,
and it looked like, from my research at
least, from what I could find, it turns
out that it's dyed sillimanite.
I don't know if I'm even saying that
right. Nicholas is, like, shaking his head. Nicholas,
do you have any, like, knowledge of this?
(06:03):
Because I see it a lot now.
Yeah. It's gotten really
pretty common. I actually bought a a large
piece of this material
faceted in, like, your classic kind of rectangular
emerald cut,
like, chunky, oversized
because it looked
from a picture
on the Internet to be lower grade kind
(06:25):
of matrix y emerald. And we took a
picture of it and put it in a
book. And then later, I would find out
that this is dyed fibrous
sillimanite. So forms in really big masses. Sometimes
if it's good enough quality, it will have
the kind of cat's eye effect. It will
have,
when cotton cabochon, be really nice to look
at if the fibers are really well organized.
(06:47):
If if you cut it differently so the
fibers are oriented in a different way, it's
also fiber optic the way selenite could be.
But most of the material that we're seeing
in
in the gem trade that's being dyed in
offensively bright colors and being sold as more
precious gems,
is more like a kind of felted mass
of these fibers that's the result of, like,
(07:08):
metamorphic activity kind of squishing the the rock
together to produce them. Silimanite is,
an indicator species that we often use to
understand the how strongly metamorphosed a rock that
contains it can be. So it's not uncommon
to find it in this kind of format,
but,
it it seems to be getting more and
more widespread as the years go on to
(07:30):
to sell it off as these other gems.
Well, I can imagine
as as people are listening and watching this,
they're kinda getting worried about how do I
pick you know, I'm gonna go buy an
engagement ring on the weekend. How do I
know? And that type of thing. And one
technique I learned from,
another
jewelry vendor that I knew, who used to
buy a lot of his stones in parts
(07:52):
of, like, Southeast Asia and so on, is
he relied on the good old Mohs hardness
scale, which is a scale of hardness from
one to 10. And, of course, rubies and
sapphires,
are a nine.
So what he would do is he'd take
a little quartz point with him
and which is of Mohs hardness of seven.
So
in
reality,
(08:12):
I guess what happens is a harder stone
will always dent or scratch the softer stone.
So he would go to these stores or
these distributors and go, hello, I'd like to
see your rubies. And they're like, oh, here
we go, sir. And,
it got these real rubies. They're like, yes,
sir. Real rubies. And that's why if I
get this quartz point and scratch them, it's
(08:34):
not gonna scratch them because they're harder. Is
that right? They're like, sir, come out back.
We show you other rubies and that type
of way. So that that's a kind of
real basic way of telling,
you know, a ruby and a sapphire from
from something. Do you know what the Mohs
hardness scale of selenide
is, guys? Nicholas?
Yeah. It's a seven like quartz, but
(08:57):
this is where we also have to remember
that hardness is not the only trait that
that is going to influence the reading. We
have to talk about tenacity and toughness, which
don't get numerical scales like our hardness scale.
The hardness scale is actually a comparative chart
and not a scale of absolute hardness because
a nine is is in reality many, many,
(09:18):
many, many times harder than an eight. And
a 10,
like, inconceivably
harder than a nine, but, like, a two
and a three, they're pretty darn close.
So it's it's a ranked chart, and the
challenge here is because we've chosen some indicator
species, we're gonna have to group things similarly
that may not read the same way. So
because of that,
like, fibrous structure that
(09:40):
the sillimanite has when it's when it's in
that kind of big massive form, it's gonna
be really resistant to abrasion even though an
individual crystal, if you could isolate one, has
about the same hardness ever so slightly more
than quartz probably does.
And I will say, like, Nicholas, you brought
up that you purchased this beautiful, you know,
seem to be emerald online.
(10:01):
And I think this is, like, part of
part of what people can look for with
this particular variety of fake, whether that's looking
at sapphire,
ruby, or emerald,
is looking for it's almost always,
from what I've seen, in those faceted stones
because when you cab it, it looks a
little different. It catches the light a little
(10:22):
different. It it's a little bit more obvious
that it's not quite what it seems.
So those emerald cuts,
any type of really faceted shape, honestly, I've
seen it in the nice emerald cut like
rectangles, I've seen it in ovals, that sort
of thing.
And then if the color looks just a
little too good to be true for the
(10:43):
price, that's usually an indicator.
And
then the other thing is if you're purchasing
online,
keep in mind
that
a lot of sellers, they'll show you a
picture of a real ruby, they'll show you
a picture of a real sapphire, and that's
not what you'll get.
Or they can enhance or change the color
(11:03):
on those photographs. Right? They can show you
exactly what it is you really are buying
and not disclose
what it is. And I don't think,
for the most part, that people are out
there really trying
to, like, pull the wool over your eyes.
I think, like, this vendor that I had
coming up from Chicago,
this wasn't intentional on her part. I think
(11:24):
she bought those stones
thinking that they were genuine
gems, and they weren't. And so it was
kind of like she was sold something that
wasn't quite right. She didn't really have the
knowledge, and she was reselling it. So I
think that happens a lot as well. And
most of us, we won't be able to
do the hardness test, we won't be able
to do that thing, but just knowing this
(11:45):
is an example,
looking for those faceted stones in colors that
are a little bit too good to be
true,
usually coming out of India honestly and a
lot of the jewelry manufacturing there,
so looking for a lot of the sort
of styles that we see and almost always
with these set in sterling silver,
which it's not that you won't find precious
(12:08):
gems set in sterling, but, usually,
they're reserved for a little bit nicer metals
too, more precious metals. So those are kind
of all giveaways.
Look at that stuff and see what you
can piece together.
I'm really interested. Kyle mentioned the lab grown,
crystals before as well. I've seen some different
little snippets of information coming up recently.
(12:29):
And, you know, one argument might be, oh,
lab grown is better. They're still the same
structure and everything like that, but it's more
environmentally friendly because we're not mining them and
taking them all out of the ground.
However, I then got some extra information
about, well, all the different things that are
required, like the ingredients need to be sourced
from all around the world. There's actually three
(12:50):
other people nodding at the moment. So they're
actually
environmentally
less friendly
than mining
a, real stone as well. So if you
thought, oh, well, you know, I don't like
the idea of digging things out of the
ground. Know that all the different stuff that
needs to be dug out of the ground
to make your artificial diamond or sapphire or
whatever it might be can actually have a
(13:10):
worse consequence than actually getting a real thing
as well. How does everyone feel about
that Nicholas?
Oh, this this argument I've seen coming from
such well intentioned people.
And and all we have to do, like,
if if we are approached with this argument,
because people and as we've talked about it,
(13:32):
people have strong opinions about the ethics of
the crystal industry at large,
which, of course,
under late stage late late stage capitalism could
do better. But the crystal healing market is
also the smallest
representation of all mining and extraction performed in
the world, and there are far more sectors
that do more harm, which is not to
(13:52):
give us a get out of jail free
card. But when someone brings the argument
that, you know, if we use with an
artificially made gem, it is it is more
sustainable. It's better for the earth. Number one,
where did the raw materials come from? And
if you just ask that question
open hearted,
gently,
sincerely,
you're gonna see the light bulb go on,
the eyes get wide, and the jaw go
(14:13):
slack
every every single time. And then we have
to also consider
how much
energy it takes
to grow these things.
I've I've heard it said, and I don't
I don't really know how true this is
because there are too many variables. But, like,
a a a decent sized batch of diamonds,
synthetically grown
(14:34):
diamonds, you could power a small city on
for the amount of electricity that it takes.
I think maybe city is a generous term
to describe this, but the the point is
it takes a lot of energy to do
it. And there are lots of different methods
for for growing different kinds of synthetic gems,
but the truth is that,
the environmental impact is only one piece of
(14:56):
the puzzle. If we're also trying to sidestep
the ethical impact
on human beings, There are still human beings
mining those raw materials, and they're probably doing
it under equally bad conditions.
So it is it is complicated. I'm actually
not
anti
synthetic gems. As long as we disclose what
they are,
(15:16):
we use honest labeling. We're not taking things
that appear to be something and calling them
something else because that's what we call a
simulant and not a synthesized
gem. Those those words are different for a
reason.
Some episodes back, we chatted about the honeycomb
ruby, which is a ruby simulant,
but it's not synthetic ruby because it is
not
structurally identical to ruby. So if you have
(15:38):
a structurally identical lab grown sapphire,
and
it is in your budget to have that,
but not the perfect precious natural sapphire.
Get what's in your budget. Like, don't don't
stress yourself out.
Work with what's accessible to you. You can
also choose lower quality sapphires.
Sapphire is something that is frequently mined for
(15:59):
industrial purposes, and,
some of that material ends up getting turned
into jewelry or
or cabbed or tumbled,
to find its way into the crystal healing
market. But,
I'm I'm all about, like, just having a
really transparent conversation
about
all of the gray area in this.
(16:20):
I think this is a great question that
you posed, Adam, and and it kind of
led me down the same path that Nicholas
ended up at, which is
when it comes to those synthetics, those lab
growns,
if you're looking for something that really is,
like, transparent,
gem quality, that sort of thing, and that's
what's in your budget, then go ahead and
go for that. For me, personally, I rather
(16:41):
have just, like, an everyday
quality little stone
than have
the, you know, synthetic version that's gonna be
the gem grade. For me, this is kind
of more energetically what I feel aligned with,
but, you know, everyone's gonna be a little
different there.
I was just reflecting, and I guess, you
(17:02):
know, if someone just wants a sparkle,
something ornamental,
then go for lab grown if if that's
within your budget. But I think we all
talk about the magical powers of these crystals,
and I think that's something it's not just
in the structure and the ingredients. It's in
the the time and the energy and the
essence of what mother earth put into actually
(17:22):
grow it and all those situations. And we've
had some great discussions in the past of
how crystals form. I remember just recently, Nicholas
talking about how petticoat is formed.
That journey
is kind of, you know,
creates the crystal and it's part of it
just like we are who we are because
we've been on a journey.
It's like us all downloading doctorates from the
(17:44):
Internet and going, I'm a doctor now type
of thing. We've gotta go through the journey.
And for me, you you know, if it's
not a natural crystal, I'm not willing to
use it in my magic or spiritual or
healing works at all.
Now moving on, we've been talking about what's
happening with sapphires now, but I can imagine
just like when we mentioned with Rubies last
(18:05):
week, there was, you know this is not
this is not a thing that's isolated to
the here and the now. These beautiful stones
have probably been yearned for for centuries, and
there's probably been some mistakes along the way.
Nicholas, is that true? Sapphire's kind of had
this interesting journey of what a sapphire is
and what it's good for and so on?
Big time. I I hinted at this last
(18:26):
week.
And the really
like, the the bottom line is that our
word for sapphire
today, only fairly recently in the span of
human history became associated with the variety of
corundum we know as sapphire.
And for the majority of the use of
this word and its cognates,
(18:47):
it referred to lapis lazuli.
So,
the
the origin of this word
in English,
we we we have
a a a journey it takes from English
back into middle French, earlier than that into
Latin where it was borrowed directly from Greek.
The Greeks probably got it from the Phoenicians
who ultimately sourced it from the Hebrew language,
(19:08):
and that word is sapphire. And sapphire is,
one of the most recognizable
gemstone names that we see in the Hebrew
Bible.
It's there there's a lot of references to
it, and although a lot of modern English
translations just use the word sapphire because they're
cognates, it is absolutely not the gemstone
(19:29):
that the ancient people knew as sapphire.
So when we start looking at those biblical
texts and we're trying to get a feel
for what the energy of sapphire is, we
have to frame everything
within the idea that they're actually talking about
a very, very different rock.
So,
ultimately, this this association,
(19:50):
is is really well evidenced
in textual history. I'm a big old nerd.
We're gonna, like, fast forward
a few centuries
from, biblical Hebrew and look at the early
adoption of this term into Greek.
And from there, it kind of spread through,
we'll we'll say the Hellenistic period, Greco Roman
literature,
and ultimately throughout Europe.
(20:12):
But one of the earliest references that we
have in Greek to this is a very
famous book,
by Theophrastus,
usually translated as on the stones, would be
like the end of the fourth century BCE.
So about, you know, twenty three, twenty four,
a hundred years ago, this text is written.
And it's also the first time that we
see the word saphiro or saphiro
(20:33):
written in Greek.
And luckily for us, this is also
one of the very few times there is
a very lucid
depiction of the term
and and the rock it's describing. So rather
than just describing
the radiance or the brilliance of sapphire like
we see in most earlier texts, sometimes
describing it as transparent
(20:55):
or colorless, which is also
challenging,
given that we knew it applied to Lapis
Lazuli originally.
We get a really clear depiction. And
there is a passage in this book that
reads something to the effect of there are
also other stones from which seals are cut.
Some of them only for their appearance like
(21:16):
sardium,
which would be carnelian,
Iaspis or Jasper, and the sapphires. The last
of these seems to be spotted with gold.
And this this phrase at the end is
our clear indication
that the ancient sapphire was actually
lapis lazuli because it's a metamorphic rock. It
is metamorphosed limestone, believe it or not.
(21:38):
And one of the most iconic features of
high quality lapis are little flecks of pyrite
in there.
Another really important clue
is that Theophrastus
is reporting on an already ancient tradition
of cutting this gemstone into seals.
There there is a really spurious etymology that's
(21:59):
out there that suggests the word,
sapir comes from or,
which might mean,
to cut or to engrave.
Now we were talking about the Mohs hardness
scale earlier.
Diamonds were not regularly available in The Levant
or The Mediterranean
in the times that these texts were written.
So if we were talking about engraving
(22:22):
or cutting
corundum
into a seal or into anything else, you
would need a diamond to do so. And
that simply was not an option.
And lapis lazuli is significantly
softer. Its its number one ingredient by volume
is calcite, which has a Mohs hardness value
of three.
(22:43):
So we've got some other pretty clear references
that the the biblical and post biblical early
kind of, we'll say classical sapphire was in
fact lapis lazuli.
But over time, the two gems did get
kind of conflated.
In some of these Greek texts, there's an
interesting,
(23:04):
phenomenon that takes place where sapphire was adopted
after they already had a word for this
material. And that that that word is.
It's the origin of our word cyan,
which also gives rise to the word kyanite,
for example,
whose name means blue stone. And was a
really rich blue stone. Eventually,
(23:25):
the that and Saferas referred to the same
rock, but they they diverged. And Keanos took
on the,
association being pure lazurite
as opposed to the sapphire, which was the
metamorphic rock of lazurite, calcite, pyrite, and dozens
of other accessory minerals.
And the challenge here has been
trying to find the earliest iteration of this
(23:46):
term.
There are a lot of associated words that
we can find,
allegedly in Indian, although this is also kind
of
spurious to find these Vedic texts, Sanskrit texts
that have
seemingly related words, although they don't appear to
refer to a specific gem species.
We also find marginal cognates in ancient Egyptian.
(24:07):
For lapis lazuli, that shares at least a
majority of the consonants
with
the origin of the word sapphire.
We also see it in Ugaritic,
in Aramaic.
So
what our takeaway
is
is that,
there's a
there's a a kind of term that we
(24:28):
use
when talking about gems in an anthropological
and historical setting that I think we can
apply here. And a really good example of
this is found with jades. And maybe one
day we'll talk about how complicated jade is
in the archaeological setting, but you have
what are referred to often as precious jades,
which will be whatever the the native version
(24:49):
of that is in the region, jadeite or
nephrite. But then you also have social jades.
They are usually softer,
more plentiful, less valuable rocks that serve the
same function.
And although the stone carvers would have known
the difference between serpentinite rock and true jadeite
because one is a heck of a lot
easier to carve than the other.
(25:09):
They they would have been used very similarly
in in social settings, in religious settings, in
magical settings.
And we can assume by the time we
get to the medieval period when we have
the the kind of noble sapphire emerging, particularly
by the time we reach
the sort of the height of our medieval
lapidary tradition, we start to see, like, a
(25:32):
a rise in the,
Christian lapidary tradition where, like, all of this
pre Christian
imagery is being reinterpreted.
Now we're starting to take that word and
apply it to what is otherwise an entirely
new gemstone.
One that is transparent. One that can be
very luminous with a good reflective refractive index,
(25:52):
one that is also not nearly as easy
to cut.
And so it becomes associated
with royalty, not not merely for having come
from the rooftop of the world in in
the high mountainous regions like Lapis Lazuli does,
but because it is so difficult to work
that you had to pay people quite a
lot,
(26:13):
who were very skilled artisans to have access
to it. And so in this period, we
get a kind of blending
of the use of both of these stones.
And, ultimately, it kinda circles us back to
our earlier topic where
as these two
gem species got really murky and muddy as
to who was who based on which text
(26:35):
and which term,
eventually, any blue stone could be called sapphire.
Any faceted piece of paste or blue glass
could be called sapphire.
And so even until the early modern periods,
this is after the renaissance,
we find
pharmaceutical
texts that still talk about,
lapidary medicine or using gemstones and healing. And
(26:58):
almost all of these that we find circulated
by the guilds in Western Europe
have sections about
being able to determine the authenticity
of your precious gems, particularly
stones like sapphire, because
there is no new problem under the sun.
The problems that we have in today's market
are the problems that people had three hundred
(27:18):
years ago, are the problems that people had
three thousand years ago.
There are lots of people who'll do anything
to make a buck.
And so the the moral of the story
is that if we look only to ancient
texts, it gets really difficult to know what
a sapphire really means to that author, especially
if they were writing down someone else's story
(27:40):
that they heard from someone else, who heard
it from someone else. And that actually sounds
a lot like what happens when we memeify
our crystal descriptions on the Internet. Again, there
are no new problems under the sun.
That's really interesting when you think about
how many people take their,
ideas of what sapphires have been used throughout
(28:00):
history for on a magical kind of purpose.
You know, a lot of that information could
actually be about something like lapis lazuli and
how it's been used in the past in
spiritual or religious ways as well. So I
guess we should try and, you know, unpack
what we feel that sapphires are really good
for in this episode. Kyle, what do you
find that's really great for?
(28:22):
Well, for me, my journey with sapphire started
way back before I even connected to crystals.
Not necessarily because I had them, but because
I worked in hospitality,
I would notice a certain type of person
that wore
ruby, diamond, sapphire, and emerald.
The person that wore sapphire was always shrewd,
maybe a little cold,
(28:43):
very intelligent,
sharp. There was always this
decisivity,
this intelligence that I always got from someone
that was wearing a blue sapphire.
Generally, subtle earrings, a little ring,
a a man with a signet that had
a little blue sapphire in it. It was
never gendered, but they were always really sharp.
(29:05):
I dealt with a lot of lawyers,
CEOs working on Saint George's Terrace in Perth,
serving coffee to all of those that did
all of the work basically in our central
business district. It was I I noticed this.
And then when I got into crystals,
I started noticing the same thing.
Very shrewd, very decisive,
very great at picking for other people, very
(29:26):
great at, like, deciding what they needed for
themselves coming in. This is what I'm getting.
I'm getting a present for this person. Thank
you very much. I'll see you in three
weeks. Like, it was always very
quick. And so when I started working with
Safra, I was like, okay.
Let's see how this works. And it I
felt it sharpening, honing,
like,
directing the mind, helping me to know where
(29:47):
my intelligence was. It wasn't necessarily about being
a smarty pants.
It's about knowing yourself, knowing your own intelligence,
knowing what you know, and not trying to
kind of
overthink things. Like, this is what I'm doing.
This is what I know. This is what
I need to get done. Sometimes we need
that coldness, but it's not coldness. It's just
(30:09):
I need to get stuff done. I need
to make decisions. I need to do things.
And I found Sapphire really coming into its
own with that for me. A really lovely
dangly
earring.
It's a lovely little piece, but it was
this beautiful piece of corundum that has a
really soft blue center,
and it's an old stock,
old collection piece from a guy named Jerry
(30:31):
Norville, who's an Australian collector.
And this is an Indian
specimen. And there's just something about holiness. I
was immediately drawn to it. And I think
we touched on it last week with the
ruby, that hexagonal
strength, that support. It kind of brings everything
in and helps it to focus really beautifully.
And I found this balance, this ability
(30:53):
to find balance within myself and be more
decisive, to hone what I already had,
to focus my skills. And I've been able
to
direct it basically with crystals and what I
do. Like, what I do with my work,
with my crystals, with my knowledge, with my
readings,
it's allowed me to hone all of those
skills. It's allowed me to focus all of
(31:14):
those skills, bring them to an even better
place. And there's lots of stuff that I
now have gaps of that I don't worry
about because I don't need to know about
it. Like, it's not important to hold space
in my mind. It's not important for me
to
worry about things that I can't fix or
control.
I find Blue Sapphire especially able to bring
it in and rein it in and go,
(31:35):
this is what you can do. This is
where you can focus. If you can improve,
you can improve bit by bit, but
don't worry about the things that are outside
of those realms of what you
can and can't control. I find this fortification,
this insulation,
this strength, and I think that hardness,
that inner strength really comes with it.
(31:56):
I really love all the colors. As we
have touched on, I've got a little handful
of a few here. I'm not really gonna
be able to show them properly because of
the angle.
Bit of orange, bit of blue, bit of
green, bit of yellow.
This is a chatoyant
brown,
gold one
that is really, really lovely energetically.
(32:16):
I just
the strength that comes from strong crystals,
I think, is related to us. I think
that, like, Ruby not only has hardness, but
it has toughness. Right? It has that strength
within us. And I think one of the
key
ingredients
within it, aluminum,
aluminum for everyone in North America,
(32:38):
is, an ingredient that brings flexibility.
For me, the idea of, like,
creating a sword
and needing it to go through those
melting, hardening, melting, hardening to become sharp and
perfect and able to be used,
our mind is the same. Right? We sometimes
have to go through this bending, this warping,
(32:59):
this pushing, this pulling, this
plunging into something cold all of a sudden
to fortify our own mind and our ability
to work. Sometimes we actually have to go
through these pressurized
situations. I I think Sapphire helps us to
embrace
that. Like, yes. Do it. Go through it.
Expand in a way that's going to push
you because there's more within you. You're actually
(33:21):
really smart. You're actually really brilliant. You're actually
really capable of being a leader or doing
whatever it is you need to do. Sometimes
you actually don't know you can do it
till you do it,
and you have to push yourself into it.
Oh, I'm fascinated by this idea of certain
personality
types with certain crystals.
I must admit, I hadn't thought of sapphires.
I have noticed certain people that wear lapis
(33:43):
lazuli
have a certain kind of archetype as well.
But I'm kind of thinking
the way you were describing the sapphires,
This might be a bit of an unusual
reference for some people, but Anna Wintour,
the,
the editor in chief of Vogue USA,
would you say that she's that kind of
sapphire energy?
Yeah, totally. There is a coldness, there is
(34:05):
a detachment, but there is a creativity,
there is a knowledge.
Like, I think people that know themselves,
it's a really great stone that I think
really enhances that. But if you do need
to kind of develop that and hone that
and have strength within that, absolutely. And just
on the touch of stones and their names
and where they come from, I learned in
an Uber ride the other day, neelum, n
(34:27):
e e l u m, is the Indian
term for blue sapphire.
I was asked because the the guy knew
where I was going to my work, crystal
in the name. He's like, you know about
crystals. Do you know about Milam? And I
had to Google it, and it is the
Indian name for blue sapphire. So if you
see that come up, if you see that
in texts,
that's what I understand it is referring to.
(34:47):
An Indian
corundum is well known. Ruby sapphires of all
colors are so so prominent throughout the Indian
Subcontinent. I think it's quite an interesting little
note.
I love that. I love that. And I
love how we can then take that hardness
and that strength of the SAFIRE
and we can, you know,
we may not wanna be that personality type,
(35:08):
but those attributes of loyalty and commitment,
I think, are really, really powerful. Now one
of the traditional things that we'll see Blue
Sapphire is being used for is obviously in
engagement rings, and that's a one nice way.
But there are other things we want to
commit to. You know, this could be a
great crystal to work with when we need
that strength and resolve to commit to a
goal, whether it be an exercise regime or
(35:31):
saving money or different things like that.
I find it's also one that I recommend
people use when they need to create a
team environment. You know, it it whether it
be a sporting team,
a community team where you've got a whole
group of volunteers.
Because whereas employees have to do what you
tell them, volunteers are like herding cats, that
(35:52):
type of thing. Or whether you maybe you
are an employer and you do find that
people's loyalty to your business is waning and
maybe you keep losing employees to other companies
and things like that. This could be somewhere
where bringing Blue Sapphire into the space,
would be,
really good at helping to fortify that commitment
and that loyalty and bring that energy and
(36:13):
that strength as well.
I'm kind of pondering, though, after listening to
what Kyle was saying as well, with that
quite that
sternness,
about it, I'm wondering if when we were,
you know, doing something like we want to
keep it all our workers together, our team
together. Maybe we need to bring something in
like, I don't know whether a yellow sapphire
would have a bit more joy to it
(36:34):
or even something like the Citrine as well.
What do you reckon, Kyle, in that to
to not get too serious and people feel
like they're caught in a situation? Does that
make sense?
Yeah. Absolutely.
For me, I think because I bring so
much heart into everything I do, I actually
need a little bit of that sharp coldness.
So I think it helps to balance me
out a lot.
(36:54):
Mhmm. I think adding a bit of warmth
with citrine would be lovely.
Green sapphire could be a really great option.
Even star sapphire, because star sapphire brings this
sort of illumination.
So I think that would be a really
lovely way of balancing out any detachment that
maybe we need to balance.
Yeah. Very much so. But, you know, I
(37:14):
think it's still a great one for commitment
and loyalty in, in relationships as well.
You know, we do live in a world
now where there are so many options, and
there's online and all that type of thing.
Fidelity can be an issue. And even a
simple practice of having a beautiful photo
of the two of you somewhere prominent in
the house. And you could even look at
(37:34):
a bit of Feng Shui where the relationship
quadrant is in your house and put setting
where you first get together or when you
put it together to
sapphires. And, you know, like Ashley said, you
can get some tumbled ones that are quite
affordable. Pop a couple there. And each year
on your anniversary, pop another one there. Just
kind of strengthen that relationship
as the challenges go through as well.
(37:56):
A final little strength thing that I'll throw
in there as well is often our gums
represent commitment and strength to life and different
things like that as well.
And popping a,
a sapphire near your toothbrush is one of
those kind of medical and crystal things you
can pop together. Look after your teeth and
brush your blooming teeth a couple of times
(38:16):
and floss like you tell the doc the
dentist you always do, but a a sapphire
near your toothbrush could be an energetic supporter
as well.
Ashley, I noticed you ran off and went
and grabbed something. I'm intrigued what you've got
to share with us.
It was actually my book, Cosmic Crystals,
because, Adam, I am taking a little bit
(38:37):
of your role this week in talking a
little bit about the upcoming
astrology.
So we will very soon
be in the time of the full moon
in Libra,
which will happen, I think, just a little
short of a week from the release date
of this episode. So you have some
(38:57):
time to sort of get prepared and ease
into that energy.
Now I love this because so many of
the themes that Adam just discussed like partnership
and cooperation
are huge themes for this
full moon.
So Libra is associated with the air element.
Its ruling planet is Venus. So if we
(39:18):
think of that combination
of the sort of
wit and wisdom,
intellect, and clarity that the air element brings
with that connection
to love and relationships,
partnership and cooperation that we see with Venus.
These really create this interesting
dynamic during the full moon in Libra.
(39:38):
So
during this time, and I would say this
is, you know, for the few days before
the day of or evening of that full
moon and for the few days after, it's
really important to be super mindful of your
interactions
with others.
This is
an important time for relationships of all kinds,
(39:59):
not just our romantic partnerships.
This could be business partnerships. This could be
friendships. This could be relationships with your neighbors,
with your community members, friends and family, all
the way to acquaintances and coworkers.
Look at those dynamics that are presenting themselves
during this time and really getting your attention,
especially
(40:20):
the people that you already sort of have
a difficult time seeing eye to eye with.
Be extra sort of vigilant and aware of
what's going on
with those relationships because these opposing energies during
this time can create
a little bit of competition
or cooperation,
and you get to choose. And this is
(40:41):
one of the things where bringing sapphire in
can really support you. Right? It can turn
those competitive energies
on their head and help create and foster
an environment of cooperation instead.
So
think about
working with this stone
in whatever way that will support you, in
whatever way you're gonna be able to have
it
(41:01):
near you, on your person, around you. So
put some on your desk if you're worried
about those relationships at work. Wear it as
jewelry if it's gonna be, you know, potentially
a fiery time
with the people that you're closest to to
sort of cool things down.
Cooperation is always gonna be so much more
pleasant than that competition,
(41:23):
So make an effort to really,
put your best foot forward in your relationships
and take time to
smooth things over. Keep a cool, calm, collected
head. That's gonna be really important.
So Blue Sapphire
is one that really promotes a lot of
peace and harmony,
(41:44):
especially
among bigger groups.
So if you have any type of group
project,
any type of,
cooperative project,
this is going to be like your best
friend during this time.
If you've been dealing with any sort of
tumultuous
situations,
Blue Sapphire can help you just sort of
take your personal
(42:05):
feelings and pet peeves and ego and sort
of set it aside.
You know, not that you don't have to
go tend to that later on, but during
that interaction with other folks, set it aside
and find the common ground. So if you
feel like your toes are getting stepped on,
you can go journal about that later. You
can vent to your bestie. There are things
(42:26):
that you can do to sort of be
a little bit more tactful, and Blue Sapphire
is going to help you let that cool
mindedness sort of prevail.
So in order to use this stone at
this time, and this exercise comes
from my book From Cosmic Crystals, this is
what it looks like if you're watching.
You can get some paper,
(42:48):
a bowl, some colored pencils, some scissors,
and
a one, two, or three blue sapphire stones.
You can trace the bowl on the piece
of paper to create a circle and cut
it out and then draw some lines dividing
it into eight equal sections.
So you're going to label the eight sections
(43:10):
of your circle with some different archetypes.
The artist, the dreamer, the fool, the healer,
the leader, the scholar, the servant, and the
warrior.
Then you're going to make yourself comfortable. Take
your one to three sapphires,
hold them in your hands just a couple
inches above that casting board that you've created,
(43:30):
and drop them into the circle. So, what
you're going to do is
pay attention to where these stones have landed.
Those are the particular
archetypes that you really need to embody
during this full moon in Libra time. So,
if you have a crystal that falls on
the line between two areas you want to
(43:51):
make sure that you're acknowledging both of those
archetypes.
If you have a stone that falls outside
of the casting area you'll just disregard that
one, but especially in an area where you
have more than one stone fall that one's
going to be really, really important. And if
you've casted a stone and it's fallen right
in the center then to some extent a
(44:11):
little bit of all of those are going
to play a role. So this is a
great way for you to just sort of
pay attention
to those areas of your life that you
need to focus on, that you need to
call upon, those strengths that you need to
bring in during this time, and, you know,
really sort of embody to,
make sure that you are connecting with people
(44:33):
on the right way, that you're acknowledging
those relationships, but also that you're creating whatever
boundaries you need to create in those relationships
as well.
I love that, Ashley. And
I'm not competitive at all, but I do
wanna throw some extra astrology in here because
remember a few weeks. There's a few different
things that are happening around this full moon,
(44:55):
which are really, really important that will I
I've noticed it playing out in people's lives.
So I'm kind of been getting on my
bandwagon on Instagram and everything like that and
talking about it as well. So on exactly
the same day as the full moon,
we talked about in turquoise a few weeks
ago Venus going into retrograde.
This is when her loving energy goes away.
We start to feel a bit unloved.
We start to consider the relationships in our
(45:17):
lives, and this is the lesson to start
giving yourself some love rather than relying on
other people. But what I've noticed this retrogrades
are also times of introspection.
So I've noticed a lot of people are
ending relationships
or breaking relationships, not necessarily romantically,
but working relationships. They're quitting jobs. They're doing
(45:38):
other things. They're not this other work.
We're meant to use the retrograde to learn
the lesson,
and then when it goes direct, we apply
the lesson. So be careful that you haven't
broken something too early.
And but what I do like is the
lessons finish on the thirteenth,
which is then the same night as the
full moon. So you can then use that
(45:58):
full moon as Ashley is, beautifully described
to,
to then go, well, what do I wanna
bring in in my new relationships, whether it
be the current ones or existing ones?
You've also got Juno still in retrograde. She's
very much about loyalty and devotion and being
the best partner you can be. And my
favorite crystal for her is Blue Sapphire. So
that's a really good one. It's about focusing
(46:19):
on rather than keeping score,
you just being the best person you can
be rather than, you know, go, oh, they
did that, so I'm gonna do that and
so on.
Then we also have on the seventh no.
Sorry. The April 8,
Ioxon
going into retrograde. Now Ioxon's a bit of
a rebel. And normally what happens when Ioxon
goes into retrograde,
(46:40):
when people do you wrong,
you're like, stuff it. I don't care. And
you wanna you you rebel. And that might
happen in all different
types of situations.
But Ioxon actually wants you to listen to
your heart and go hold on. Am I
just rebelling just because I'm angry? Am I
dropping into a lower emotion?
Or is there a reason that I'm actually,
you know, am I upset? But what is
(47:01):
gonna be best for myself in the long
term and for everyone else in the long
term as well? So if you put them
all in a bloomin' big pot,
relationships are gonna be a little bit rocky
at this time. And I would recommend
Blue Sapphire is perfect, and
I'll,
I think it's a great way of helping
you to remain loyal to what's important.
(47:21):
And, you know, maybe you need, as Kyle
spoke about, that real energy of that sternness
and that devotion and that you know, just
withdraw a little bit and and analyze things
and wait till the month kind of unfolds
a little bit more for that to unfill.
But actually, I am so excited to go
draw my circle and divide it into eight
quadrants.
That I really, really love that.
(47:44):
Is there any other applications you've used for
that? What that
divination tool?
I honestly use stone casting
so often. I love cardamancy, so I love
working with tarot and oracle cards, but stone
casting is probably my next go to. If
you don't feel as comfortable with that, you
can use that circle also as, like, a
(48:05):
pendulum chart if that is something that you
align with a little bit more. I personally
really struggle to use a pendulum effectively.
It's just not, like, not in my wheelhouse.
I feel like I'm a little too strong
willed, and I'm always influencing,
like, the movements, you know, very unintentionally,
but subtly.
So I really love stone casting because I
(48:25):
can just get in that zone, hold my
stones, hold them above,
let go, and and see what really needs
my focus and attention.
But you can use this
for anything. You can create, you know, a
a little circle with three sections, or it
could just be on a sheet of paper,
divide it into different sections. The circle is
(48:45):
is nice because it's a little bit more
whole and complete
and, a little bit easier to sort of
break into different areas,
but, you know, do this with with different
themes in your life. Do this with
different decisions, right? If you have a really
difficult decision and there are different paths you
could take, put each of those in those
little areas and cast those stones and see
(49:08):
what calls your attention. I have this little
kit I've been collecting for ages
of tiny those little tiny crystal gemstone chips.
They're all in a pouch. I assign each
one of those a one word meaning
just to give me some focus and direction
for what that stone is representing.
I will often use those little gemstone chips.
(49:28):
I'll reach in at random, pull some out
of the pouch. Whatever I'm pulling out, I'm
trusting, you know, these are the options that
the universe is presenting for me. Drop them
on whatever casting board I've created
and go to town interpreting. And this is
something that's a little bit more fluid, a
little bit more free form than some other
divination methods. And, Kyle,
(49:49):
what did you wanna share about that?
You literally just finished like, I was just
gonna ask, could you just pick different stones
with those different archetypal meanings and then throw
them onto a piece of paper and just
see what's just you're drawn to or pick
one out of a bowl and see which
one is the one that speaks to you?
You literally just said what I was gonna
ask.
Yeah. I think especially for more advanced,
(50:12):
stone casters or lithomancers,
you can definitely do that, and you can
use a blank casting board at that point.
Have each stone represent a different archetype.
Cast those onto your cloth, your board, your
space, whatever it is, and let them tell
a story. Which ones are near each other?
How are they grouped together?
You have to be really
(50:33):
creative and and really, I think, discerning and
open to sort of seeing the picture that's
painted and the story that is told
among the stones,
but that is one of my absolute favorite
ways to do this work.
Consider it added to my repertoire of things
I'm going to be doing regularly. Thank you
very much.
(50:53):
Well, you've come to Crystal Confab every week
for answers, and this week, we've even shown
you how to get the answers yourself. So
thank you very much for joining us for
another week of Crystal Confab and Craft Corner.
We'll be back next week when we dive
into another gift of mother earth. Until then,
go and find the answers you seek. We'll
see you then. Blessed be.
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