Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #31 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Chiastolite crystal meanings, including:
Working with Chiastolite Crystals during Samhain & Beltane
Harnessing Higher Truth with Chiastolite
The history of cross-stones and the magic of the crossroads
Tune in now for a deeper look at Chiastolite meaning!
Podcast Episode 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 a casual chat about all things crystals.
Nicholas Pearson: Hello, and welcome back to Crystal Confab. It's Nicholas, and I'm joined by Adam and Kyle. Our crystal bestie, Ashley, is elsewhere in the universe today, and she'll be joining us again soon. And this week, we have, I think, another really underappreciated gemstone that we're gonna be confabbing about, and this is a stone that I think is probably pretty recognizable. Maybe fewer people can pronounce its name or spell it, and even fewer have worked with it.
And that stone is Chiastolite, which is a really fascinating stone that has been confused with some other stuff throughout history. No surprise there. And it's a variety of a mineral species called andalusite. I happen to know that Kyle's a big fan of andalusite more generally speaking. So what do you have to tell us about this mineral species?
Kyle Perez: Well, of course, I was introduced to andalusite doing my gemology degree. You have to cover pleochroic stones, and andalusite is like the poster child of pleochroism in minerals. As you can see, it has this kind of innocuous brown color, but when they are cut and faceted correctly and you see the light correctly through them, they show the traffic light system of colors, yellow, red, and green or like an amber color. And it is incredible that you can turn this stone one way to another and see these incredible colors shift and change. And I was drawn into it immediately, and I find it incredible to shift our perspective.
I think anything pleochroic has that ability to perspective shift, and it helps you to see practical ways of looking at things, energetic ways of looking at things, and kind of cerebral ways of looking at things. It really gives us the ability to look at things in many ways and from many angles and that's why I really love it and that's why I think it leads into and is incredible with Chiastolite or ‘Chiastolite’ as it is supposed to be pronounced.
Adam Barralet: I'd love to actually just bring that up. I've always said Chiastolite, but it's the correct Chiastolite, is it Nicholas?
Nicholas: Historically, yes. So it's taken from the Greek letter, which in English, we often say Kai, but would be kind of a really guttural sound closer to that in Greek. So is marked with an x or shaped like an x, which is how it gets its name.
Adam: I love that. And it is a really interesting stone, is it? Because normally when it's cut and this is how we find a cut the most, it's, you know, that beautiful brown stone, really interesting having that black cross throughout it.
Nicholas: Yeah. And that phenomenon has attracted quite a lot of attention over the years. So the earliest textual references, we have to things objects just called cross stones appear in the very late, fifteenth century, so toward the end of the 14 hundreds. And around this time frame, we might encounter an occasional illustration, and they're mostly just pebbles that are crisscrossed with veins of quartz or calcite in them, and they were known as cross stones or some version of that. There's like a million permutations of this name, lapis crucifer, from lapis meaning stone and prox brass, ferere, tecere, so literally cross bearing stone.
We have lapis cruciatis. We've got the crucis lapillo,
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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
a casual chat about all things crystals.
Hello, and welcome back to Crystal Confab. It's
Nicholas, and I'm joined by Adam and Kyle.
(00:24):
Our crystal bestie, Ashley, is elsewhere in the
universe today, and she'll be joining us again
soon. And this week, we have,
I think, another really underappreciated
gemstone that we're gonna be confabbing about, and
this is a stone that I think is
probably pretty recognizable.
Maybe fewer people can pronounce its name or
(00:45):
spell it, and and even fewer have worked
with it.
And that stone is Chiasdolite,
which is
a really fascinating stone that has been confused
with some other stuff throughout history. No surprise
there. And it's a variety of
a mineral species called andalusite.
(01:05):
I happen to know that Kyle's a big
fan of andalusite
more generally speaking.
So what do you have to tell us
about this mineral species?
Well, of course, I was introduced to andalusite
doing my gemology degree.
You have to cover pleochroic stones, and andalusite
is like
(01:27):
the poster child of pleochroism
in minerals.
As you can see, it has this kind
of innocuous brown color, but when they are
cut and
faceted correctly and you see the light correctly
through them, they show the traffic
light system of colors, yellow, red, and green
or like an amber color. And it is
incredible that you can turn this stone one
(01:49):
way to another to another and see these
incredible colors shift and change. And
I was
drawn into it immediately, and I find it
incredible to shift our perspective. I think anything
pleochroic has that ability to perspective shift, and
it helps you to see practical ways of
looking at things,
(02:09):
energetic ways of looking at things, and kind
of cerebral ways of looking at things. It
really gives us the ability to look at
things in many ways and from many angles
and that's why I really love it and
that's why I think it leads into and
is incredible with chias delight or chias delight
as it is supposed to be pronounced.
(02:30):
I'd love to actually just bring that up.
I've always said chias delight, but it's it's
the correct chias delight, is it Nicholas?
Historically,
yes. So it's it's taken from the Greek
letter, which in English, we often say Kai,
but would be kind of a a really
guttural
sound
closer to that in Greek. So is
(02:51):
marked with an x or shaped like an
x,
which is how it gets its name.
I love that. And it is a really
interesting stone, is it? Because normally when it's
cut and this is how we found find
a cut the most, it's, you know, that
beautiful brown stone, really interesting having that black
cross throughout it.
Yeah. And and that phenomenon
(03:12):
has attracted quite a lot of attention
over the years. So
the earliest textual references,
we have to
things objects just called cross stones
appear in the very late,
fifteenth century, so toward the end of the
14 hundreds.
(03:32):
And
around this time frame,
we might encounter an occasional illustration, and they're
mostly just pebbles that are crisscrossed with veins
of quartz or calcite in them, and they
were known as
cross stones or some version of that. There's
like a million permutations of this name, lapis
crucifer,
(03:53):
from lapis meaning stone and
prox
brass, ferere,
tecere, so literally
cross bearing stone.
We have,
lapis cruciatis.
We've got,
la
the crucis lapillo, the little stone of cross,
the lapis cruciformis,
and and so on and so forth.
(04:14):
But eventually, we get chastelyte
taken from the Greek root, but but appearing
in print for the first time in German.
And these stones were initially discovered
in,
a region of Spain, in the Northern part
of Spain,
and they occur
on the Camino De Santiago De Compostela, 1
of the world's most famous Christian pilgrimage sites,
(04:36):
arguably one of the most famous pilgrimage sites
of any religion found worldwide.
And,
allegedly,
the the destination of this pilgrimage is said
to house the remains of Saint James or
Santiago,
we call him in Spanish, who was, the
very first apostle to be martyred.
When these stones were discovered in this region
(04:56):
in this early sixteenth century, they were immediately
kind of taken as a
teenth century.
They were immediately kind of taken as
tokens of the pilgrimage,
and they were worn and carried, adopted by
these pilgrims.
And from about the fifteen fifties onward, they
began to circulate
throughout,
(05:16):
a wider part of Europe.
However,
if we
go to a neighboring country,
we find another cross bearing stone that was
also given the same name, cross stone, in
in several different languages, and that is staurolite.
So
staurolite
and andalusite
(05:38):
are both things that are,
indicators of metamorphism. They're what we call indicator
species in metamorphic rocks.
They are both
aluminosilicate
minerals. They're both pretty darn dense.
It just so happens to be that they
can both be twinned in a way that
is cross like. Although, I mean, we hold
(05:58):
them up side by side today, and we're
gonna notice they're not the same thing. But
imagine
you're a sixteenth century layperson picking up a
rock, and it has
a cross in it, you're probably going to
think it's the same thing that, you know,
a country or two over someone else is
finding. And so these these two rocks have
gotten,
(06:18):
conflated,
quite a bit over time.
But
what I find really interesting is that the
the folklore around
the cross stones at large is often related
to some
kind of event
portraying divine intervention.
In
some
versions of of the the myth of cross
(06:40):
stone, it said that the,
chasteolite
variety
sprang out of the earth where the blood
of Saint James or Santiago,
touched the earth.
We've got
other examples
of maybe the tears of fairies or the
tears of the souls of the dead reaching
the earth and becoming cross stones. So we
(07:02):
get this kind of magical
interface, this this
event.
And truth be told,
we we recently talked about fossils for the
last two weeks.
But
cross stones are kind of lumped into the
same category as fossils. They were called formed
stones just like them because they bore these
(07:23):
unusual shapes. And so there were a lot
of very similar
attempts to reconcile
how this
seemingly
perfect, seemingly lifelike, seemingly,
human inspired imagery could appear in stone.
In some cases, they fell from the sky.
In others, it was,
(07:43):
you related to the the water of baptism.
But what I really find magical about these
rocks that relates back to that
initial instance of discovery
along a pilgrimage site
is, for me, they depict the crossroads in
miniature,
and that makes them really magical stones for
(08:06):
me.
If we think about
the imagery
of the crossroads, when you stand in the
middle of it, you're you're betwixt and between.
It doesn't matter if you're headed in this
direction or that direction. You can be
in on both and neither at the same
time.
It is the kind of magical sight that
(08:26):
we find in folklore
connected to,
deals with the devil to procure magical powers,
success, wealth, fame, glory.
It's also the place where we might historically
dispose of things or bury problematic
people we don't, want returning in the afterlife
because they'd be trapped in that kind of
liminal space.
(08:47):
In folk magic in several parts of the
world, we find that dirt from a crossroads
is a really common ingredient. It's often used
to change the course of direction our life
is taking for a reversal of fortune
for, you know, harnessing the magic of the
in between.
The crossroads is also thought to be a
kind of portal to the other world and
(09:08):
links it to the fairy folk and to
the ancestral abode. And when we see how
all of these motifs kind of recurringly point
towards the acquisition of power, towards the the
ability to, like, open a doorway, a gateway
beyond ordinary perception.
I find that the cross stone, whichever variety
(09:29):
we're working with,
becomes this perfect talisman for accessing that same
liminal space, that same in betweenness
wherever we are.
We can make new connections.
We can sever them if we need to.
We can jump from one reality to the
next. We can dream up new and magical
(09:49):
things.
And just as
the medieval and early modern pilgrims carried the
stone for safe journeys in the material,
we can also use them for safe journeys
in the more metaphorical, whether it's our kind
of big picture journey through life,
or those journeys that we take in meditation
(10:09):
and in dream time or in ritual or
trance
to commune with other planes of being, other
realities,
whether or not we we believe in entities
like spirits
and fairies and other kinds of unseen forces.
This stone can still metaphorically
open a way to connect with
(10:32):
the more than human world. And so when
we work with it, when we carry it,
when we place it on the altar, use
it in ritual,
it's like having that portable crossroads with you.
Wherever you are
is the center of the universe,
is the space beyond time and place.
It is
the the doorway
(10:53):
to manifesting whatever our heart desires.
And I think just there is a spiritual
stone. You know, when we think about spirituality,
a lot of people use spirituality to help
them when they come to any crossroads in
their life, plus there's also an interest in
connecting with the other realms. And as you
just mentioned, Nicholas,
Gastelite is perfect for both of those different
(11:15):
functions. So
being a bit of a maybe a boring
brown stone that people overlook sometimes, what you
just shared kind of is a really good
case on why everyone should possibly, if they're
not already working with this stone, do that.
Would you agree?
Yeah. Absolutely. I I think it is such
a magical and charming stone, and and I
think the same of storulite as well. And
(11:36):
if you're lucky enough to find cruciform twins
and and other mineral species, we can symbolically
treat them very similarly as these kind of
doorways into the crossroad space.
Is can you explain a little bit, Nicholas,
how that cross actually forms within the
stone?
Yeah. Absolutely. So when we are looking at,
(11:58):
the the variety of andalusite that we know
as castellite,
what we have is,
this fairly
dense
mineral.
It is a silicate of aluminum,
and
what we get are tiny little inclusions of
graphite that are oriented along the twinned
(12:18):
planes of its crystal lattice.
And these patterns are
more concentrated in some zones versus other, and
they kind of change. So if we take
one of these crystals, they can be quite
quite long, in fact, and we slice them
in cross section, we're gonna notice that the
the shape of the cross changes from being
(12:38):
very dark at one end to with a
very, you know, thick, wide, black zones looking
almost like a maybe a Maltese cross,
to having very thin
like mine here has, you know, very, very
thin planes separating those those twin crystal zones.
And they can range in size from being
teeny tiny crystals to I I think the
(13:01):
largest ones that have been found are several
meters long.
Wow.
Yeah. That's awesome. And so I know when
we were were chatting beforehand, you have a
really interesting take on how you like to
work with this crystal. What what do you
find us really grateful?
Yeah. I think it sort of taps into
how I work with andalusite as well, like,
that perspective shift.
(13:23):
For me, with andalusite really comes to the
form of truth,
and finding your truth, finding the higher truth,
finding the big picture truth of what's happening
because we can get very much caught up
in
our own feelings. We can get caught up
in what's happening in front of us,
and we can kind of lose track. As
(13:43):
Nicholas was saying, finding ourselves at a crossroads.
What I find I found
useful with it, another pair that I have
here, and this one really shows the example
of, like, the dark thick sort of at
one end, and then this one has a
really soft cross
on it. So you can really see that
difference here.
It has been about that Japanese saying that
(14:04):
there are the three truths. There's your truth,
there's my truth, and then there's, like, the
whole truth, the higher truth. And I find
Chastelite Chastelite
is like this combination
of a judge
and a director.
Both of them need information to create a
picture.
The judge works like backwards, forwards
(14:25):
before it gets to the judgment, whereas a
director sees the picture first and then, like,
has to piece it together along the way.
And I find it brings both of these
ideas together into one stone, together into one
energy. You find yourself more able to direct,
know where to put your energy, know where
to face things, avoid things, leave things, not
(14:48):
spend too much energy, bring things inwards, and
you know when to gather information, when to
listen as a judge, when to be, like,
taking on things and putting things in accordance
with the laws of what are what's happening
around you. It takes that kind of
really emotional side, I think, out of things.
It doesn't mean you can't be creative and
have a bit of heart in it, but
(15:09):
I feel like it takes out that feeling
of, like,
being in the way of yourself because you
can't make a decision because of what your
emotions are saying. And it helps you to
see that bigger picture. It goes, okay. This
person is behaving in this way because of
x y zed. I know that we're having
this interaction,
but there's also all of this happening around
that person. So I'm going to have a
(15:30):
bit more compassion. I'm gonna detach myself a
little bit. I'm not gonna take on what
this person is saying. Even though they're saying
it to me, I know it's not about
me. Right? It helps you to see that
people's actions are often
much bigger
than the episode, than the thing that you're
seeing, than the thing that's in front of
you. It's often that we find ourselves stuck,
(15:51):
but maybe we're not stuck. Maybe it's a
pause. Maybe we are literally at a crossroads,
and it's about making the right choice with
where your truth is now. As we evolve,
our truth evolves. As we learn more,
we become hopefully more authentic, more comfortable with
ourselves. We know ourselves more. We can make
more grounded decisions. We evolve. We want newer
(16:11):
things, different things. We are
ever evolving and changing creatures, and I think
that's what Kiester Light has really aided me
in
constantly being able to reset my truth,
constantly being able to
figure things out again, evolve, go, okay. I've
now been presented with more information. I can
now make a different decision. I can now
(16:32):
evolve and grow and change.
I love I have a couple of really
cute pieces of Western Australian,
Andalusite, castellate. One of them goes into the
cross. The other one doesn't.
It has this really
groundedness.
It really gets your feet into the earth.
It stops
me personally. Like, it really forces me to
stop and look at things. And I think,
(16:54):
again, when you go hark back to that
director energy, if you stop and you go,
okay. How can I play this? How can
I do this? How can I use my
energy? It's not about manipulation,
but it is
about being able to get the right thing
out of everyone for you. Like, we're allowed
to try and get the best out of
everyone for ourselves. We're allowed
to be our inversion of ourselves and do
(17:15):
what we are here to do. Right? The
director's not in their acting. The director's not
in their filming. The director's not in their
but directing. Right? The judge is there judging.
The judge is there watching. The judge is
there taking it all in. And I think
when we are able to separate ourselves, stop,
and look,
we can then take better action. We can
then
do more with better intention. And as someone
(17:37):
who is a feet first person,
like,
jump in, think later,
I realize that doesn't get you everywhere in
life. It's often a hindrance. It can often
really
block things and hurt you. And I've been
hurt too many times to wanna do that
again and hopefully can guide you as well
in the same way. Allow yourself to have
(17:57):
enthusiasm,
creativity. Absolutely.
But know that there are times when, like,
we need to stop and read the room.
When we need to, like,
take in what's actually happening and go, okay.
It's not all about me even though my
life's all about me.
Let's be a little less attached,
see the big picture, and then take some
action.
(18:19):
I wonder if we could possibly nickname this,
crystal the scrolling stone because I'm thinking when
you're talking about truth, you know, a term
that's kind of come up in our consciousness
over the last few years or so is
fake news,
and we know that anything can be put
on the Internet these days. And I find
it really interesting, you know, having a partner
(18:39):
who has never lived in the West, who
grew up in Asia and lived the last
thirteen years in The Middle East,
and even just looking at what comes up
on the algorithms of our social media is
very, very different. And the perspectives
on what is true,
is often the conversation
that, you know,
comes up in this household type of thing.
And I really love that idea of being
(19:01):
able to see the different perspectives. And like
you said, that Japanese,
principle of my truth, your truth, and the
whole truth type of thing. And maybe this
with with it being a brown crystal as
well and being quite grounding
is just to, like, kinda ground ourselves because
sometimes we get really help in it. I
know the truth.
And do we?
Not necessarily. So it could be great just
(19:23):
when we're at scrolling as well.
I think it's all about that word discernment
in the end. Right?
Whatever you're seeing, be discerning about what you're
absorbing,
where it's coming from. Like, do a bit
of research.
Right? Even with us, and I say it
all the time in my readings, like, don't
take everything I say as gospel. Go out
(19:44):
there and do your own research. Find what
works for you. This is why we're all
confabbing. Right? Because none of us are perfect.
None of us know everything. We're all learning
from each other along the way, and hopefully,
you are too.
Very much so. Kyle and I have been
saying she has to light for a few
decades, and we just had to change it
in the last fifteen minutes or so. So,
yeah, very much so. So, yeah, I I
(20:06):
love that idea.
Well, I'm really enamored with, you know, that
cross and, you know, I I've got a
few little pieces of it just whether carved
into those little discs, little pendant in the
same way.
And, you know, here in
Australia at the moment, we're falling into,
the autumnal season. And Kyle and I live
in around the same area. So, Kyle, I'm
(20:26):
sure you're noticing as well. The mornings are
a little bit chilly now, and, you know,
the evenings are a little bit cold, although
the days are still quite nice in temperature.
This is a really and I really find
this is a really great time to work
with brown crystals. And sometimes I find brown
crystals do tend to, you know it's brown.
It's not a very thrilling color, but it
is a really comforting color. And, you know,
(20:48):
smoky quartz is one crystal I've been working
with, but chia sola is another one that
I find really great.
I find this really
has a strong connection to the wheel of
the ear. And I guess you could also
if you're involved in tarot, it the wheel
of fortune might be a crystal
card kind of correspondence there as well.
But
(21:09):
we're about to go into what would be
known as our or
Halloween.
Now people often go, well, hold on. Isn't
Halloween October the thirty first for everyone?
But if we go back before it was
kinda taken over by the Christian church, it
was one of the eight pagan festivals. We
have our equidoxes
and we have our solstices
(21:30):
when it's we have our long day, our
short day, or our equal days, but then
we have what is known as the cross
quarter festivals, which are exactly halfway between.
Now I will get on my bandwagon for
a little minute, and I have arguments with
people normally around,
the sour wind or the Halloween of, the
Northern Hemisphere when people start celebrating on October.
(21:51):
Now that's a bit of a
there there was a a habit, let's say,
of the church when it came into Europe
and came into the influence in Europe,
laying their festivals over the top of pagan
festivals beforehand. And we see that with Christmas.
We see it with Easter, and we also
see it with Samhain,
which then kind of evolved into Halloween.
(22:12):
And they declared it being on that October
31
date.
But if you actually look and there's some
really great websites out there that will tell
you that the equinoxes or solstices is shipped
to each year a little bit. That's why
we have to have a leap year because
we our calendar year isn't exactly in alignment
with the sun's rotation
or our rotation around the sun. And so
(22:34):
you will find this little shift in south
wind. So for us, if October 31 is
traditional in the Northern Hemisphere,
April 30 would be the traditional
in the Southern Hemisphere,
but it's actually on the May 5 this
year. And this is a really great time
to help us work with that energy of
Samhain. Samhain
(22:55):
is a time when we honor our ancestors,
and there's many different practices that I could
go on forever about that. But I think
this is a really great one to help
us to deal with the cycle and the
wheels of life.
And I find it really interesting
at Samhain, which is basically,
you know,
to to put it really, really, really simplistically,
(23:17):
it's a death festival, and it's a time
of honoring death.
And
we see it in nature. We see things
dying around us, trees letting go on their
leaves and that type of thing as well.
But I think chias or chiasala is a
really great crystal to help us
deal with change in our lives. And especially
as we get older, we don't like things
(23:38):
to change. We like that reliability
and that
steadiness in life as well. I think
we also struggle in many western cultures of
what are we meant to do with death.
There are so many other cultures that have
big celebrations
or rituals or or practices in different ways
that they,
(23:59):
do things, but we don't see that in
in common you know,
I believe, you know,
and I may be very wrong about this,
but the Jewish have a bit more of
a procedure, you know, when when someone passes.
But for that kinda Christian based countries,
they die. No one knows what to say.
You go to a funeral for half an
(24:19):
hour, and that then you're done.
And I think this is a really great
crystal to help you ground and comfort and
let go of death of someone who's passed
away.
I love the simple,
candle ritual of lighting a candle, holding a
castor light,
thinking about the light that that person brought
(24:39):
into your life, and then as you're ready,
extinguish that candle and just it's not about
forgetting them, but it's about letting go of
that energy. It's a really beautiful thing to
do about, and you may need to do
that for several nights in a row or
any time of the year as well. But
I find
with its brown
grounding comforting energy,
(25:00):
this allows us to just feel comfortable
that everything changes.
We see things changing
with life, with death, with relationships beginning, ending,
life beginning, ending,
political cycles beginning, ending,
money
coming and going, all those different things. And
I find this helps us to find comfort
(25:20):
because we often do find ourselves in ever,
I guess, ever changing in the wheel and
ever changing in the,
in the crossroads of life as well. So
I really, really like it for that kind
of point. And I think whether we'd be
celebrating Sao Wien down in the Southern Hemisphere
in the coming week or Beltane, which is
kind of the opposing one, which for a
(25:42):
rough example, it's kinda like Valentine's Day. It's
more celebrating new life and that,
that beginning and creation of life instead of
the ending of life. I think Chiasalah is
a really nice one for honoring that all
the time. And I love the saying,
this too will end.
And I think that's a really reminder. It
can be a really
(26:03):
kind of it may be taken morbid of,
like, oh, well, everything's gonna die. Everything's gonna
end. But it also reminds us to cherish
things. You know? We often see that,
there was a tragedy recently in the news
of, you know,
a a car going through and killing lots
of people in Vancouver.
Now those people who knows what was happening
with the the
(26:23):
hours before with their family? Did they have
an argument with their partner? You know? Did
they just meet someone that they were going
on a first date with? We never know
when things will change, and I find Kia
Sedolite helps us to be okay with that
change and to really ground in that. Does
that make sense?
Everything is temporary.
Right?
We are attached
(26:44):
as humans. We get attached to things as
humans, but nothing is forever. Everything is evolving
and changing and growing and
we are like
the smallest blip
on this planet of how long we've been
alive living
and doing right compared to how long this
planet's been going. So things are always changing.
Cycles are always happening, and
(27:06):
it is evident every day outside of our
window. And I think to be connected to
whatever cycles are happening wherever you're you are
in the world
is really important.
I think that is totally, totally necessary and
one of those things that we should all
do wherever we are. Like here in Perth,
I always like to connect to the Noongar,
Whadjuk Noongar seasons, which connects to the native
(27:27):
Aboriginal
indigenous people, and they have six seasons. And
we're currently in,
the season of adulthood, which is like autumn,
but it's like it's broken down differently. So
I always find it really nice to work
with what's happening around us. So I think
it's important
to always be aware of where you are.
I was wondering just I was also thinking
(27:49):
of I've seen a bit of feng shui,
use of castellite as well. Is this idea
of, like, it it yes. It's the crossroad,
but it's also about summoning energy from the
four directions
as well.
And, you know, we're talking about we have
to deal with these crossroads. Sometimes I'm wondering
whether a simple meditation and actually positioning a
keister light, making sure it's exactly pointing to
(28:10):
the four directions
and and drawing that in, whether you're creating
a magic circle or just doing a meditation.
You might see the different
realms bringing, you know, different creatures, different angels,
that type of thing. You could actually use
it as a really empowering stone in the
crossroads rather than
a,
how do I navigate this stress, couldn't you?
(28:32):
Yeah. This is this is a stone that
I have used quite a lot in, like,
ritual and spell craft.
You know, historically, it was carried for travel
safety, so it makes a really great amulet
that way. I love it as a talisman
for grief as well when we are
going through that kind of emotional journey. I
think it's a phenomenal ally.
(28:52):
We could couple it with a little bit
of some dirt from a crossroads
and use it as an open roads
talisman to clear obstacles from our path to
make sure that every time we come to
an intersection in life, we have free rein
to choose,
what that is gonna look like.
(29:13):
I love that. So I think, yeah, feeling
really empowered amongst our yeah. Amongst the changes
is
is a good thing to do. And I
guess that's what we're looking for when we
are working with crystals is
we we reach for them because we we
need a friend. We need support in helping
us with something, don't we? And this is
a great one for that.
Just literally, that made me think of a
crystal grid that you could do with a
(29:35):
gaslight in the center,
a crystal for air, water, earth, and fire
at each of the points, and then a
clear quartz on top
to represent the other, the ether, everything else.
And that would be a really great thing
to stand over or to sit with, to
connect to the different elements and to the
different directions, bringing things in, and I'm going
(29:57):
to do this
soon.
Also, I have to follow you on on
Instagram to see how that turns out. Another
suggestion I've seen is actually placing one in
the center of the home
to bring those blessings from the four corners.
And, you know, I know people that love
to even when they get a cement slab
put down for the base of the house,
they're kind of, you know, putting different crystals
(30:18):
in the slab and that type of thing.
Maybe smack bang in the center aligned perfectly.
A castellite could be a really great tip
as well.
I wanna go off for a little tangent
just for a moment before we wrap up
today because, Kyle, you send a word that's
sprung something that when I was out out
on one of my bushwalks this week, I
was like, oh, I have to ask the
confabbers about this type of thing. And you
(30:39):
said the word attachment.
Now there are three crystals in my life
that
I well,
I haven't I feel I have a strong
attachment to all of my crystals, and I
just wanted to kinda get yours versions of
this as well. There are two crystals that
are broken for me in a major way
throughout my life. One was this beautiful
(30:59):
lithium quartz point. I'd been to the Tucson
gym fair, and then I have to sneakily
get all the crystals back into Australia, like,
to all the people from customs watching.
And everything came back perfectly apart from this
big,
beautiful lithium quartz wand that had broken in
half. It just I just mustn't have wrapped
it enough for that thing as well. The
second one is a beautiful Asengite crystal that
(31:22):
when I was living in Bahrain,
I took the selection of crystals over there
with me, and they're on on its top
shelf in a wardrobe,
and that shelf gave way. And every crystal
fell two meters onto the ground. It was
one of two crystals to break, and I
really miss that as well.
And the final one is my favorite ever
ring that I've ever had. It was a
(31:42):
super seven. It was cut in a diamond,
shape. And when I was in Salt Lake
City One Year. So if there's anyone watching
from Salt Lake City as a diamond shape
super seven ring, it's mine.
But,
silly, I lost that ring five years ago.
That that lithium quartz broke
eight years ago, and they I think it
(32:02):
was over a year ago. But whenever they
come into mind, I I really grieve that
loss of them. And I was really interested
whether either of you have had that experience
where
I don't know, it's like I like I
lost a child type of thing. Kyle?
One hundred percent, and I grieve it regularly
because I bought it in Glastonbury, and it
(32:24):
was a pendant with what cab a little
cabochon and a little natural point
of unheated tanzanite, and they were together on
a little pendant. And I bought it at
that magical crystal shop in Glastonbury,
and I was wearing it as an earring
pendant, like and I ran for a train,
and it fell, and I've lost it, and
I've never gotten it back. And I think
(32:45):
about it often and regularly even though my
TENS and NETs have upgraded. I have bigger
pieces now. Like,
I bought that on a really special trip
in a really special place,
and, like,
it still hurts. It still hurts. Where whereabouts
were you running for the train car? Maybe
this should be a lost and found episode.
Where were you running? Carambine
(33:07):
Train Station
before it was renovated,
unfortunately.
It's since been
made over, so I don't even know it
could be buried in the earth.
Yeah. Oh, well, if anyone knows either of
those crystals but meanwhile, I'm back. What about
yourself, Nicholas? Have you got any lost and
founds or any crystals that have just broken
that you still feel for?
(33:27):
You know, I think probably the closest to
this is a really wonderful piece of this
frosty white quartz, gem clear on the inside,
but just dusted with a layer of dreues,
and either a clay or feldspar minerals on
top. And and nestled
amidst that dreues were little pockets of specular
hematite,
(33:48):
and this was from
a discovery of them in Inner Mongolia and
Hong Kong, the same mines that have produced
these really stellar preys or green quartzes and
and other fun stuff. But this I I
loved this.
It it was a, like, singing wand. So
if you tapped it, it would ring.
And
I took it
up north for a series of workshops that
(34:10):
I was doing. And on the way home,
admittedly, I didn't pack it as well as
I could have, but it was in my
checked bag, which was sturdy.
And
I had the notice when I opened the
bag that TSA,
the travel authority here, had inspected my luggage.
So they they, you know, got into it,
unlocked it,
opened everything up, repacked it, and they repacked
(34:31):
it worse than I did, and it was
broken into, like, a million pieces.
And that I I I bought a replacement,
but it's not the same. It it the
the replacement was,
like, only 75%
as as big and nice and cost me
more than twice as much,
because in the amount of time that had
(34:52):
elapsed,
they dried up on the market.
Yeah. Wow.
Horrible.
So, so sad.
This this leads me to another question that
I I I've I get occasionally, and I'd
love to know your opinions on it as
well, is
when a crystal breaks, am I meant to
bury it?
And my answer to this is always, well,
(35:14):
no. As we've kind of talked about, I've
got some crystals that are worth several hundred
dollars and that type of thing just because
it gets a a chip or a,
you know, breaking it. I'm not necessarily ready
to hand that back to the earth yet.
What I like to explain is that
pretty much every crystal that we have in
our collection is broken.
A lot of them come from larger specimens.
(35:37):
They may have been cut off.
They may have been tumbled, polished, or faceted,
all the different things. And what makes the
crystal powerful
is its actual, you know, on a molecular
level of what actually is within it. And
that's what we like to explore here in
the confab at the start, talking about all
this kind of chemistry and structure, and that's
what makes a crystal powerful.
(35:58):
So if it gets a chip, if it's
broken in half, that kind of thing,
aesthetically, it may not be right, but I
don't think it that you need to give
it back. I think the only time really
when a crystal does lose a bit of
its effectiveness
is if you do have a wander point
where the point actually becomes damaged.
But how do you two feel about that,
Kyle?
I will show you an example
(36:19):
of the very tragic nature
of what can happen. A beautiful carved Lemurian
quartz dragon dagger
traveled safely,
went from Brazil
to Tucson
to Scotland
to Australia. And when it arrived, I was
like, it's gonna break. It's gonna break. And
I was careful with it and I was
(36:39):
careful with it and I was careful with
it and I was careful with it. And
one day I was working with it and
I placed it down and it touched another
crystal and went, ding,
clean in half. Like, handle, dagger, clean in
half. And I was instructed not to go
back together.
I tried and failed,
but I was told to keep it. Like,
(37:00):
it still works. I now have one for
each hand. I now have two pieces of
amazing crystal that I can work with, and
I plan to
put it back together with something that is
like leather or something. Like, I actually have
a plan to actually put it together when
I can. But
do not throw away really special pieces. Reinterpret
them. Reuse them. Right? That Japanese thing where
(37:22):
they put the gold into a broken pot,
like, things can still be beautiful.
We can break bones and still be beautiful.
Right? Like, don't necessarily throw away crystals.
What about you, Nicholas? If we go in
your backyard, you've got tons of crystals that
you've accidentally broken throughout the years?
No. You definitely wouldn't find that. Have I
given some things back to the earth? Sure.
(37:44):
They've never really been large or valuable things.
You hit the nail on the head that
the majority of the
crystal objects people are gonna have are not
complete
bodies of geologic material pulled out of the
Earth in exactly that shape and just cleaned
up a little bit.
There are, of course, fine specimens that come
out like that.
(38:05):
If I break one of those, I sure
as heck am not burying it.
But
the the only real loss is aesthetic.
And the other piece of this that I
I like to caution people about
is
the next question, of course, is, well, what
does it mean when this happens? And
almost all of the time, it means
(38:27):
crystals are delicate and humans are clumsy. And
there's there's no further
interpretation because when we try to attribute meaning
to this,
when we try to
make sense of the senseless
and
and over ascribe power and influence where there
isn't any, we're actually taking that power and
influence away from ourselves because it means we
are now powerless to do anything about it.
(38:49):
And the truth is, sometimes shit just happens.
It's not nice, but it but it does.
And if I try to make it bigger
than it really is,
then I go into that fear place, and
then I spiral, and then all of a
sudden, the universe is out to get me,
and everyone's trying to curse me. And, you
know, I don't know if there's a big
enough castor light in the world to break
(39:09):
those kinds of curses
because they're all in here and and
you gotta work on that from the inside
out.
I think that's so true. And I'm glad
you brought that up. And I think that's
especially true with jewelry. People go, I was
just wearing it one day and it broke.
But if we think about when we're wearing
either a ring or a pendant, you know,
we're banging rings again things all the time.
Pendants are hitting things all the time. It
(39:31):
may just be little hits time after time
after time, but as we know, eventually, that's
weakening the structure. And with Kyle's,
dagger there, you know, there's just one little
touch, and that's the final straw that breaks
the camel's back. So I I love that
you shared that, Nicholas. That was amazing.
Well, from
the show has become a little bit morbid,
and we've been talking about loss and death
(39:53):
and things changing. But, luckily,
we all have chiasalite to let us realize
that things move on, and this is the
wheel of the year, and we can be
empowered by that.
So we will see you next week for
another confab. I think we're rather excited about
the crystal we're gonna be talking about next
week. So until then, take care and 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
a casual chat about all things crystals.
Hello, and welcome back to Crystal Confab. It's
Nicholas, and I'm joined by Adam and Kyle.
(00:24):
Our crystal bestie, Ashley, is elsewhere in the
universe today, and she'll be joining us again
soon. And this week, we have,
I think, another really underappreciated
gemstone that we're gonna be confabbing about, and
this is a stone that I think is
probably pretty recognizable.
Maybe fewer people can pronounce its name or
(00:45):
spell it, and and even fewer have worked
with it.
And that stone is Chiasdolite,
which is
a really fascinating stone that has been confused
with some other stuff throughout history. No surprise
there. And it's a variety of
a mineral species called andalusite.
(01:05):
I happen to know that Kyle's a big
fan of andalusite
more generally speaking.
So what do you have to tell us
about this mineral species?
Well, of course, I was introduced to andalusite
doing my gemology degree.
You have to cover pleochroic stones, and andalusite
is like
(01:27):
the poster child of pleochroism
in minerals.
As you can see, it has this kind
of innocuous brown color, but when they are
cut and
faceted correctly and you see the light correctly
through them, they show the traffic
light system of colors, yellow, red, and green
or like an amber color. And it is
incredible that you can turn this stone one
(01:49):
way to another to another and see these
incredible colors shift and change. And
I was
drawn into it immediately, and I find it
incredible to shift our perspective. I think anything
pleochroic has that ability to perspective shift, and
it helps you to see practical ways of
looking at things,
(02:09):
energetic ways of looking at things, and kind
of cerebral ways of looking at things. It
really gives us the ability to look at
things in many ways and from many angles
and that's why I really love it and
that's why I think it leads into and
is incredible with chias delight or chias delight
as it is supposed to be pronounced.
(02:30):
I'd love to actually just bring that up.
I've always said chias delight, but it's it's
the correct chias delight, is it Nicholas?
Historically,
yes. So it's it's taken from the Greek
letter, which in English, we often say Kai,
but would be kind of a a really
guttural
sound
closer to that in Greek. So is
(02:51):
marked with an x or shaped like an
x,
which is how it gets its name.
I love that. And it is a really
interesting stone, is it? Because normally when it's
cut and this is how we found find
a cut the most, it's, you know, that
beautiful brown stone, really interesting having that black
cross throughout it.
Yeah. And and that phenomenon
(03:12):
has attracted quite a lot of attention
over the years. So
the earliest textual references,
we have to
things objects just called cross stones
appear in the very late,
fifteenth century, so toward the end of the
14 hundreds.
(03:32):
And
around this time frame,
we might encounter an occasional illustration, and they're
mostly just pebbles that are crisscrossed with veins
of quartz or calcite in them, and they
were known as
cross stones or some version of that. There's
like a million permutations of this name, lapis
crucifer,
(03:53):
from lapis meaning stone and
prox
brass, ferere,
tecere, so literally
cross bearing stone.
We have,
lapis cruciatis.
We've got,
la
the crucis lapillo, the little stone of cross,
the lapis cruciformis,
and and so on and so forth.
(04:14):
But eventually, we get chastelyte
taken from the Greek root, but but appearing
in print for the first time in German.
And these stones were initially discovered
in,
a region of Spain, in the Northern part
of Spain,
and they occur
on the Camino De Santiago De Compostela, 1
of the world's most famous Christian pilgrimage sites,
(04:36):
arguably one of the most famous pilgrimage sites
of any religion found worldwide.
And,
allegedly,
the the destination of this pilgrimage is said
to house the remains of Saint James or
Santiago,
we call him in Spanish, who was, the
very first apostle to be martyred.
When these stones were discovered in this region
(04:56):
in this early sixteenth century, they were immediately
kind of taken as a
teenth century.
They were immediately kind of taken as
tokens of the pilgrimage,
and they were worn and carried, adopted by
these pilgrims.
And from about the fifteen fifties onward, they
began to circulate
throughout,
(05:16):
a wider part of Europe.
However,
if we
go to a neighboring country,
we find another cross bearing stone that was
also given the same name, cross stone, in
in several different languages, and that is staurolite.
So
staurolite
and andalusite
(05:38):
are both things that are,
indicators of metamorphism. They're what we call indicator
species in metamorphic rocks.
They are both
aluminosilicate
minerals. They're both pretty darn dense.
It just so happens to be that they
can both be twinned in a way that
is cross like. Although, I mean, we hold
(05:58):
them up side by side today, and we're
gonna notice they're not the same thing. But
imagine
you're a sixteenth century layperson picking up a
rock, and it has
a cross in it, you're probably going to
think it's the same thing that, you know,
a country or two over someone else is
finding. And so these these two rocks have
gotten,
(06:18):
conflated,
quite a bit over time.
But
what I find really interesting is that the
the folklore around
the cross stones at large is often related
to some
kind of event
portraying divine intervention.
In
some
versions of of the the myth of cross
(06:40):
stone, it said that the,
chasteolite
variety
sprang out of the earth where the blood
of Saint James or Santiago,
touched the earth.
We've got
other examples
of maybe the tears of fairies or the
tears of the souls of the dead reaching
the earth and becoming cross stones. So we
(07:02):
get this kind of magical
interface, this this
event.
And truth be told,
we we recently talked about fossils for the
last two weeks.
But
cross stones are kind of lumped into the
same category as fossils. They were called formed
stones just like them because they bore these
(07:23):
unusual shapes. And so there were a lot
of very similar
attempts to reconcile
how this
seemingly
perfect, seemingly lifelike, seemingly,
human inspired imagery could appear in stone.
In some cases, they fell from the sky.
In others, it was,
(07:43):
you related to the the water of baptism.
But what I really find magical about these
rocks that relates back to that
initial instance of discovery
along a pilgrimage site
is, for me, they depict the crossroads in
miniature,
and that makes them really magical stones for
(08:06):
me.
If we think about
the imagery
of the crossroads, when you stand in the
middle of it, you're you're betwixt and between.
It doesn't matter if you're headed in this
direction or that direction. You can be
in on both and neither at the same
time.
It is the kind of magical sight that
(08:26):
we find in folklore
connected to,
deals with the devil to procure magical powers,
success, wealth, fame, glory.
It's also the place where we might historically
dispose of things or bury problematic
people we don't, want returning in the afterlife
because they'd be trapped in that kind of
liminal space.
(08:47):
In folk magic in several parts of the
world, we find that dirt from a crossroads
is a really common ingredient. It's often used
to change the course of direction our life
is taking for a reversal of fortune
for, you know, harnessing the magic of the
in between.
The crossroads is also thought to be a
kind of portal to the other world and
(09:08):
links it to the fairy folk and to
the ancestral abode. And when we see how
all of these motifs kind of recurringly point
towards the acquisition of power, towards the the
ability to, like, open a doorway, a gateway
beyond ordinary perception.
I find that the cross stone, whichever variety
(09:29):
we're working with,
becomes this perfect talisman for accessing that same
liminal space, that same in betweenness
wherever we are.
We can make new connections.
We can sever them if we need to.
We can jump from one reality to the
next. We can dream up new and magical
(09:49):
things.
And just as
the medieval and early modern pilgrims carried the
stone for safe journeys in the material,
we can also use them for safe journeys
in the more metaphorical, whether it's our kind
of big picture journey through life,
or those journeys that we take in meditation
(10:09):
and in dream time or in ritual or
trance
to commune with other planes of being, other
realities,
whether or not we we believe in entities
like spirits
and fairies and other kinds of unseen forces.
This stone can still metaphorically
open a way to connect with
(10:32):
the more than human world. And so when
we work with it, when we carry it,
when we place it on the altar, use
it in ritual,
it's like having that portable crossroads with you.
Wherever you are
is the center of the universe,
is the space beyond time and place.
It is
the the doorway
(10:53):
to manifesting whatever our heart desires.
And I think just there is a spiritual
stone. You know, when we think about spirituality,
a lot of people use spirituality to help
them when they come to any crossroads in
their life, plus there's also an interest in
connecting with the other realms. And as you
just mentioned, Nicholas,
Gastelite is perfect for both of those different
(11:15):
functions. So
being a bit of a maybe a boring
brown stone that people overlook sometimes, what you
just shared kind of is a really good
case on why everyone should possibly, if they're
not already working with this stone, do that.
Would you agree?
Yeah. Absolutely. I I think it is such
a magical and charming stone, and and I
think the same of storulite as well. And
(11:36):
if you're lucky enough to find cruciform twins
and and other mineral species, we can symbolically
treat them very similarly as these kind of
doorways into the crossroad space.
Is can you explain a little bit, Nicholas,
how that cross actually forms within the
stone?
Yeah. Absolutely. So when we are looking at,
(11:58):
the the variety of andalusite that we know
as castellite,
what we have is,
this fairly
dense
mineral.
It is a silicate of aluminum,
and
what we get are tiny little inclusions of
graphite that are oriented along the twinned
(12:18):
planes of its crystal lattice.
And these patterns are
more concentrated in some zones versus other, and
they kind of change. So if we take
one of these crystals, they can be quite
quite long, in fact, and we slice them
in cross section, we're gonna notice that the
the shape of the cross changes from being
(12:38):
very dark at one end to with a
very, you know, thick, wide, black zones looking
almost like a maybe a Maltese cross,
to having very thin
like mine here has, you know, very, very
thin planes separating those those twin crystal zones.
And they can range in size from being
teeny tiny crystals to I I think the
(13:01):
largest ones that have been found are several
meters long.
Wow.
Yeah. That's awesome. And so I know when
we were were chatting beforehand, you have a
really interesting take on how you like to
work with this crystal. What what do you
find us really grateful?
Yeah. I think it sort of taps into
how I work with andalusite as well, like,
that perspective shift.
(13:23):
For me, with andalusite really comes to the
form of truth,
and finding your truth, finding the higher truth,
finding the big picture truth of what's happening
because we can get very much caught up
in
our own feelings. We can get caught up
in what's happening in front of us,
and we can kind of lose track. As
(13:43):
Nicholas was saying, finding ourselves at a crossroads.
What I find I found
useful with it, another pair that I have
here, and this one really shows the example
of, like, the dark thick sort of at
one end, and then this one has a
really soft cross
on it. So you can really see that
difference here.
It has been about that Japanese saying that
(14:04):
there are the three truths. There's your truth,
there's my truth, and then there's, like, the
whole truth, the higher truth. And I find
Chastelite Chastelite
is like this combination
of a judge
and a director.
Both of them need information to create a
picture.
The judge works like backwards, forwards
(14:25):
before it gets to the judgment, whereas a
director sees the picture first and then, like,
has to piece it together along the way.
And I find it brings both of these
ideas together into one stone, together into one
energy. You find yourself more able to direct,
know where to put your energy, know where
to face things, avoid things, leave things, not
(14:48):
spend too much energy, bring things inwards, and
you know when to gather information, when to
listen as a judge, when to be, like,
taking on things and putting things in accordance
with the laws of what are what's happening
around you. It takes that kind of
really emotional side, I think, out of things.
It doesn't mean you can't be creative and
have a bit of heart in it, but
(15:09):
I feel like it takes out that feeling
of, like,
being in the way of yourself because you
can't make a decision because of what your
emotions are saying. And it helps you to
see that bigger picture. It goes, okay. This
person is behaving in this way because of
x y zed. I know that we're having
this interaction,
but there's also all of this happening around
that person. So I'm going to have a
(15:30):
bit more compassion. I'm gonna detach myself a
little bit. I'm not gonna take on what
this person is saying. Even though they're saying
it to me, I know it's not about
me. Right? It helps you to see that
people's actions are often
much bigger
than the episode, than the thing that you're
seeing, than the thing that's in front of
you. It's often that we find ourselves stuck,
(15:51):
but maybe we're not stuck. Maybe it's a
pause. Maybe we are literally at a crossroads,
and it's about making the right choice with
where your truth is now. As we evolve,
our truth evolves. As we learn more,
we become hopefully more authentic, more comfortable with
ourselves. We know ourselves more. We can make
more grounded decisions. We evolve. We want newer
(16:11):
things, different things. We are
ever evolving and changing creatures, and I think
that's what Kiester Light has really aided me
in
constantly being able to reset my truth,
constantly being able to
figure things out again, evolve, go, okay. I've
now been presented with more information. I can
now make a different decision. I can now
(16:32):
evolve and grow and change.
I love I have a couple of really
cute pieces of Western Australian,
Andalusite, castellate. One of them goes into the
cross. The other one doesn't.
It has this really
groundedness.
It really gets your feet into the earth.
It stops
me personally. Like, it really forces me to
stop and look at things. And I think,
(16:54):
again, when you go hark back to that
director energy, if you stop and you go,
okay. How can I play this? How can
I do this? How can I use my
energy? It's not about manipulation,
but it is
about being able to get the right thing
out of everyone for you. Like, we're allowed
to try and get the best out of
everyone for ourselves. We're allowed
to be our inversion of ourselves and do
(17:15):
what we are here to do. Right? The
director's not in their acting. The director's not
in their filming. The director's not in their
but directing. Right? The judge is there judging.
The judge is there watching. The judge is
there taking it all in. And I think
when we are able to separate ourselves, stop,
and look,
we can then take better action. We can
then
do more with better intention. And as someone
(17:37):
who is a feet first person,
like,
jump in, think later,
I realize that doesn't get you everywhere in
life. It's often a hindrance. It can often
really
block things and hurt you. And I've been
hurt too many times to wanna do that
again and hopefully can guide you as well
in the same way. Allow yourself to have
(17:57):
enthusiasm,
creativity. Absolutely.
But know that there are times when, like,
we need to stop and read the room.
When we need to, like,
take in what's actually happening and go, okay.
It's not all about me even though my
life's all about me.
Let's be a little less attached,
see the big picture, and then take some
action.
(18:19):
I wonder if we could possibly nickname this,
crystal the scrolling stone because I'm thinking when
you're talking about truth, you know, a term
that's kind of come up in our consciousness
over the last few years or so is
fake news,
and we know that anything can be put
on the Internet these days. And I find
it really interesting, you know, having a partner
(18:39):
who has never lived in the West, who
grew up in Asia and lived the last
thirteen years in The Middle East,
and even just looking at what comes up
on the algorithms of our social media is
very, very different. And the perspectives
on what is true,
is often the conversation
that, you know,
comes up in this household type of thing.
And I really love that idea of being
(19:01):
able to see the different perspectives. And like
you said, that Japanese,
principle of my truth, your truth, and the
whole truth type of thing. And maybe this
with with it being a brown crystal as
well and being quite grounding
is just to, like, kinda ground ourselves because
sometimes we get really help in it. I
know the truth.
And do we?
Not necessarily. So it could be great just
(19:23):
when we're at scrolling as well.
I think it's all about that word discernment
in the end. Right?
Whatever you're seeing, be discerning about what you're
absorbing,
where it's coming from. Like, do a bit
of research.
Right? Even with us, and I say it
all the time in my readings, like, don't
take everything I say as gospel. Go out
(19:44):
there and do your own research. Find what
works for you. This is why we're all
confabbing. Right? Because none of us are perfect.
None of us know everything. We're all learning
from each other along the way, and hopefully,
you are too.
Very much so. Kyle and I have been
saying she has to light for a few
decades, and we just had to change it
in the last fifteen minutes or so. So,
yeah, very much so. So, yeah, I I
(20:06):
love that idea.
Well, I'm really enamored with, you know, that
cross and, you know, I I've got a
few little pieces of it just whether carved
into those little discs, little pendant in the
same way.
And, you know, here in
Australia at the moment, we're falling into,
the autumnal season. And Kyle and I live
in around the same area. So, Kyle, I'm
(20:26):
sure you're noticing as well. The mornings are
a little bit chilly now, and, you know,
the evenings are a little bit cold, although
the days are still quite nice in temperature.
This is a really and I really find
this is a really great time to work
with brown crystals. And sometimes I find brown
crystals do tend to, you know it's brown.
It's not a very thrilling color, but it
is a really comforting color. And, you know,
(20:48):
smoky quartz is one crystal I've been working
with, but chia sola is another one that
I find really great.
I find this really
has a strong connection to the wheel of
the ear. And I guess you could also
if you're involved in tarot, it the wheel
of fortune might be a crystal
card kind of correspondence there as well.
But
(21:09):
we're about to go into what would be
known as our or
Halloween.
Now people often go, well, hold on. Isn't
Halloween October the thirty first for everyone?
But if we go back before it was
kinda taken over by the Christian church, it
was one of the eight pagan festivals. We
have our equidoxes
and we have our solstices
(21:30):
when it's we have our long day, our
short day, or our equal days, but then
we have what is known as the cross
quarter festivals, which are exactly halfway between.
Now I will get on my bandwagon for
a little minute, and I have arguments with
people normally around,
the sour wind or the Halloween of, the
Northern Hemisphere when people start celebrating on October.
(21:51):
Now that's a bit of a
there there was a a habit, let's say,
of the church when it came into Europe
and came into the influence in Europe,
laying their festivals over the top of pagan
festivals beforehand. And we see that with Christmas.
We see it with Easter, and we also
see it with Samhain,
which then kind of evolved into Halloween.
(22:12):
And they declared it being on that October
31
date.
But if you actually look and there's some
really great websites out there that will tell
you that the equinoxes or solstices is shipped
to each year a little bit. That's why
we have to have a leap year because
we our calendar year isn't exactly in alignment
with the sun's rotation
or our rotation around the sun. And so
(22:34):
you will find this little shift in south
wind. So for us, if October 31 is
traditional in the Northern Hemisphere,
April 30 would be the traditional
in the Southern Hemisphere,
but it's actually on the May 5 this
year. And this is a really great time
to help us work with that energy of
Samhain. Samhain
(22:55):
is a time when we honor our ancestors,
and there's many different practices that I could
go on forever about that. But I think
this is a really great one to help
us to deal with the cycle and the
wheels of life.
And I find it really interesting
at Samhain, which is basically,
you know,
to to put it really, really, really simplistically,
(23:17):
it's a death festival, and it's a time
of honoring death.
And
we see it in nature. We see things
dying around us, trees letting go on their
leaves and that type of thing as well.
But I think chias or chiasala is a
really great crystal to help us
deal with change in our lives. And especially
as we get older, we don't like things
(23:38):
to change. We like that reliability
and that
steadiness in life as well. I think
we also struggle in many western cultures of
what are we meant to do with death.
There are so many other cultures that have
big celebrations
or rituals or or practices in different ways
that they,
(23:59):
do things, but we don't see that in
in common you know,
I believe, you know,
and I may be very wrong about this,
but the Jewish have a bit more of
a procedure, you know, when when someone passes.
But for that kinda Christian based countries,
they die. No one knows what to say.
You go to a funeral for half an
(24:19):
hour, and that then you're done.
And I think this is a really great
crystal to help you ground and comfort and
let go of death of someone who's passed
away.
I love the simple,
candle ritual of lighting a candle, holding a
castor light,
thinking about the light that that person brought
(24:39):
into your life, and then as you're ready,
extinguish that candle and just it's not about
forgetting them, but it's about letting go of
that energy. It's a really beautiful thing to
do about, and you may need to do
that for several nights in a row or
any time of the year as well. But
I find
with its brown
grounding comforting energy,
(25:00):
this allows us to just feel comfortable
that everything changes.
We see things changing
with life, with death, with relationships beginning, ending,
life beginning, ending,
political cycles beginning, ending,
money
coming and going, all those different things. And
I find this helps us to find comfort
(25:20):
because we often do find ourselves in ever,
I guess, ever changing in the wheel and
ever changing in the,
in the crossroads of life as well. So
I really, really like it for that kind
of point. And I think whether we'd be
celebrating Sao Wien down in the Southern Hemisphere
in the coming week or Beltane, which is
kind of the opposing one, which for a
(25:42):
rough example, it's kinda like Valentine's Day. It's
more celebrating new life and that,
that beginning and creation of life instead of
the ending of life. I think Chiasalah is
a really nice one for honoring that all
the time. And I love the saying,
this too will end.
And I think that's a really reminder. It
can be a really
(26:03):
kind of it may be taken morbid of,
like, oh, well, everything's gonna die. Everything's gonna
end. But it also reminds us to cherish
things. You know? We often see that,
there was a tragedy recently in the news
of, you know,
a a car going through and killing lots
of people in Vancouver.
Now those people who knows what was happening
with the the
(26:23):
hours before with their family? Did they have
an argument with their partner? You know? Did
they just meet someone that they were going
on a first date with? We never know
when things will change, and I find Kia
Sedolite helps us to be okay with that
change and to really ground in that. Does
that make sense?
Everything is temporary.
Right?
We are attached
(26:44):
as humans. We get attached to things as
humans, but nothing is forever. Everything is evolving
and changing and growing and
we are like
the smallest blip
on this planet of how long we've been
alive living
and doing right compared to how long this
planet's been going. So things are always changing.
Cycles are always happening, and
(27:06):
it is evident every day outside of our
window. And I think to be connected to
whatever cycles are happening wherever you're you are
in the world
is really important.
I think that is totally, totally necessary and
one of those things that we should all
do wherever we are. Like here in Perth,
I always like to connect to the Noongar,
Whadjuk Noongar seasons, which connects to the native
(27:27):
Aboriginal
indigenous people, and they have six seasons. And
we're currently in,
the season of adulthood, which is like autumn,
but it's like it's broken down differently. So
I always find it really nice to work
with what's happening around us. So I think
it's important
to always be aware of where you are.
I was wondering just I was also thinking
(27:49):
of I've seen a bit of feng shui,
use of castellite as well. Is this idea
of, like, it it yes. It's the crossroad,
but it's also about summoning energy from the
four directions
as well.
And, you know, we're talking about we have
to deal with these crossroads. Sometimes I'm wondering
whether a simple meditation and actually positioning a
keister light, making sure it's exactly pointing to
(28:10):
the four directions
and and drawing that in, whether you're creating
a magic circle or just doing a meditation.
You might see the different
realms bringing, you know, different creatures, different angels,
that type of thing. You could actually use
it as a really empowering stone in the
crossroads rather than
a,
how do I navigate this stress, couldn't you?
(28:32):
Yeah. This is this is a stone that
I have used quite a lot in, like,
ritual and spell craft.
You know, historically, it was carried for travel
safety, so it makes a really great amulet
that way. I love it as a talisman
for grief as well when we are
going through that kind of emotional journey. I
think it's a phenomenal ally.
(28:52):
We could couple it with a little bit
of some dirt from a crossroads
and use it as an open roads
talisman to clear obstacles from our path to
make sure that every time we come to
an intersection in life, we have free rein
to choose,
what that is gonna look like.
(29:13):
I love that. So I think, yeah, feeling
really empowered amongst our yeah. Amongst the changes
is
is a good thing to do. And I
guess that's what we're looking for when we
are working with crystals is
we we reach for them because we we
need a friend. We need support in helping
us with something, don't we? And this is
a great one for that.
Just literally, that made me think of a
crystal grid that you could do with a
(29:35):
gaslight in the center,
a crystal for air, water, earth, and fire
at each of the points, and then a
clear quartz on top
to represent the other, the ether, everything else.
And that would be a really great thing
to stand over or to sit with, to
connect to the different elements and to the
different directions, bringing things in, and I'm going
(29:57):
to do this
soon.
Also, I have to follow you on on
Instagram to see how that turns out. Another
suggestion I've seen is actually placing one in
the center of the home
to bring those blessings from the four corners.
And, you know, I know people that love
to even when they get a cement slab
put down for the base of the house,
they're kind of, you know, putting different crystals
(30:18):
in the slab and that type of thing.
Maybe smack bang in the center aligned perfectly.
A castellite could be a really great tip
as well.
I wanna go off for a little tangent
just for a moment before we wrap up
today because, Kyle, you send a word that's
sprung something that when I was out out
on one of my bushwalks this week, I
was like, oh, I have to ask the
confabbers about this type of thing. And you
(30:39):
said the word attachment.
Now there are three crystals in my life
that
I well,
I haven't I feel I have a strong
attachment to all of my crystals, and I
just wanted to kinda get yours versions of
this as well. There are two crystals that
are broken for me in a major way
throughout my life. One was this beautiful
(30:59):
lithium quartz point. I'd been to the Tucson
gym fair, and then I have to sneakily
get all the crystals back into Australia, like,
to all the people from customs watching.
And everything came back perfectly apart from this
big,
beautiful lithium quartz wand that had broken in
half. It just I just mustn't have wrapped
it enough for that thing as well. The
second one is a beautiful Asengite crystal that
(31:22):
when I was living in Bahrain,
I took the selection of crystals over there
with me, and they're on on its top
shelf in a wardrobe,
and that shelf gave way. And every crystal
fell two meters onto the ground. It was
one of two crystals to break, and I
really miss that as well.
And the final one is my favorite ever
ring that I've ever had. It was a
(31:42):
super seven. It was cut in a diamond,
shape. And when I was in Salt Lake
City One Year. So if there's anyone watching
from Salt Lake City as a diamond shape
super seven ring, it's mine.
But,
silly, I lost that ring five years ago.
That that lithium quartz broke
eight years ago, and they I think it
(32:02):
was over a year ago. But whenever they
come into mind, I I really grieve that
loss of them. And I was really interested
whether either of you have had that experience
where
I don't know, it's like I like I
lost a child type of thing. Kyle?
One hundred percent, and I grieve it regularly
because I bought it in Glastonbury, and it
(32:24):
was a pendant with what cab a little
cabochon and a little natural point
of unheated tanzanite, and they were together on
a little pendant. And I bought it at
that magical crystal shop in Glastonbury,
and I was wearing it as an earring
pendant, like and I ran for a train,
and it fell, and I've lost it, and
I've never gotten it back. And I think
(32:45):
about it often and regularly even though my
TENS and NETs have upgraded. I have bigger
pieces now. Like,
I bought that on a really special trip
in a really special place,
and, like,
it still hurts. It still hurts. Where whereabouts
were you running for the train car? Maybe
this should be a lost and found episode.
Where were you running? Carambine
(33:07):
Train Station
before it was renovated,
unfortunately.
It's since been
made over, so I don't even know it
could be buried in the earth.
Yeah. Oh, well, if anyone knows either of
those crystals but meanwhile, I'm back. What about
yourself, Nicholas? Have you got any lost and
founds or any crystals that have just broken
that you still feel for?
(33:27):
You know, I think probably the closest to
this is a really wonderful piece of this
frosty white quartz, gem clear on the inside,
but just dusted with a layer of dreues,
and either a clay or feldspar minerals on
top. And and nestled
amidst that dreues were little pockets of specular
hematite,
(33:48):
and this was from
a discovery of them in Inner Mongolia and
Hong Kong, the same mines that have produced
these really stellar preys or green quartzes and
and other fun stuff. But this I I
loved this.
It it was a, like, singing wand. So
if you tapped it, it would ring.
And
I took it
up north for a series of workshops that
(34:10):
I was doing. And on the way home,
admittedly, I didn't pack it as well as
I could have, but it was in my
checked bag, which was sturdy.
And
I had the notice when I opened the
bag that TSA,
the travel authority here, had inspected my luggage.
So they they, you know, got into it,
unlocked it,
opened everything up, repacked it, and they repacked
(34:31):
it worse than I did, and it was
broken into, like, a million pieces.
And that I I I bought a replacement,
but it's not the same. It it the
the replacement was,
like, only 75%
as as big and nice and cost me
more than twice as much,
because in the amount of time that had
(34:52):
elapsed,
they dried up on the market.
Yeah. Wow.
Horrible.
So, so sad.
This this leads me to another question that
I I I've I get occasionally, and I'd
love to know your opinions on it as
well, is
when a crystal breaks, am I meant to
bury it?
And my answer to this is always, well,
(35:14):
no. As we've kind of talked about, I've
got some crystals that are worth several hundred
dollars and that type of thing just because
it gets a a chip or a,
you know, breaking it. I'm not necessarily ready
to hand that back to the earth yet.
What I like to explain is that
pretty much every crystal that we have in
our collection is broken.
A lot of them come from larger specimens.
(35:37):
They may have been cut off.
They may have been tumbled, polished, or faceted,
all the different things. And what makes the
crystal powerful
is its actual, you know, on a molecular
level of what actually is within it. And
that's what we like to explore here in
the confab at the start, talking about all
this kind of chemistry and structure, and that's
what makes a crystal powerful.
(35:58):
So if it gets a chip, if it's
broken in half, that kind of thing,
aesthetically, it may not be right, but I
don't think it that you need to give
it back. I think the only time really
when a crystal does lose a bit of
its effectiveness
is if you do have a wander point
where the point actually becomes damaged.
But how do you two feel about that,
Kyle?
I will show you an example
(36:19):
of the very tragic nature
of what can happen. A beautiful carved Lemurian
quartz dragon dagger
traveled safely,
went from Brazil
to Tucson
to Scotland
to Australia. And when it arrived, I was
like, it's gonna break. It's gonna break. And
I was careful with it and I was
(36:39):
careful with it and I was careful with
it and I was careful with it. And
one day I was working with it and
I placed it down and it touched another
crystal and went, ding,
clean in half. Like, handle, dagger, clean in
half. And I was instructed not to go
back together.
I tried and failed,
but I was told to keep it. Like,
(37:00):
it still works. I now have one for
each hand. I now have two pieces of
amazing crystal that I can work with, and
I plan to
put it back together with something that is
like leather or something. Like, I actually have
a plan to actually put it together when
I can. But
do not throw away really special pieces. Reinterpret
them. Reuse them. Right? That Japanese thing where
(37:22):
they put the gold into a broken pot,
like, things can still be beautiful.
We can break bones and still be beautiful.
Right? Like, don't necessarily throw away crystals.
What about you, Nicholas? If we go in
your backyard, you've got tons of crystals that
you've accidentally broken throughout the years?
No. You definitely wouldn't find that. Have I
given some things back to the earth? Sure.
(37:44):
They've never really been large or valuable things.
You hit the nail on the head that
the majority of the
crystal objects people are gonna have are not
complete
bodies of geologic material pulled out of the
Earth in exactly that shape and just cleaned
up a little bit.
There are, of course, fine specimens that come
out like that.
(38:05):
If I break one of those, I sure
as heck am not burying it.
But
the the only real loss is aesthetic.
And the other piece of this that I
I like to caution people about
is
the next question, of course, is, well, what
does it mean when this happens? And
almost all of the time, it means
(38:27):
crystals are delicate and humans are clumsy. And
there's there's no further
interpretation because when we try to attribute meaning
to this,
when we try to
make sense of the senseless
and
and over ascribe power and influence where there
isn't any, we're actually taking that power and
influence away from ourselves because it means we
are now powerless to do anything about it.
(38:49):
And the truth is, sometimes shit just happens.
It's not nice, but it but it does.
And if I try to make it bigger
than it really is,
then I go into that fear place, and
then I spiral, and then all of a
sudden, the universe is out to get me,
and everyone's trying to curse me. And, you
know, I don't know if there's a big
enough castor light in the world to break
(39:09):
those kinds of curses
because they're all in here and and
you gotta work on that from the inside
out.
I think that's so true. And I'm glad
you brought that up. And I think that's
especially true with jewelry. People go, I was
just wearing it one day and it broke.
But if we think about when we're wearing
either a ring or a pendant, you know,
we're banging rings again things all the time.
Pendants are hitting things all the time. It
(39:31):
may just be little hits time after time
after time, but as we know, eventually, that's
weakening the structure. And with Kyle's,
dagger there, you know, there's just one little
touch, and that's the final straw that breaks
the camel's back. So I I love that
you shared that, Nicholas. That was amazing.
Well, from
the show has become a little bit morbid,
and we've been talking about loss and death
(39:53):
and things changing. But, luckily,
we all have chiasalite to let us realize
that things move on, and this is the
wheel of the year, and we can be
empowered by that.
So we will see you next week for
another confab. I think we're rather excited about
the crystal we're gonna be talking about next
week. So until then, take care and blessed
be.
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