Crystal Therapy

Crystal Therapy - was Universal Interfaith Symbol

Of course some people don’t feel anything from crystals. Some
people can’t even smell when a cat lives in a house. Some people
are capable of discerning the differences between rare vintage red
wines, and others can’t tell if it’s lite beer or regular.

You can “say” that it is a matter of belief if you want. Some
people believe that one laundry detergent cleans better than
another; some people believe that there is a difference between a
Honda Passport and an Isuzu Rodeo. It really doesn’t matter because
people can believe what they want to believe.

Some people, like myself, become more sensitive to many things after
a long-term illness. I think it is all a matter of how sensitive a
person’s nervous system is. I easily “taste” all different sorts of
things in tap water (chlorine, salts, sulphides) but other people
say it tastes just fine and that all water tastes the same.

I can “feel” “energy” when I put my hand inside what people call an
amethyst cathedral. (It’s a huge geode-like thing filled with
amethyst crystals.) I think most people can. I can “feel” a "beam"
of “energy” when I hold my hand over the point of a quartz crystal.

But I beleive that you can believe however you want to believe and
that it is up to your own discretion.

–Terri

Yes, you can “believe” whatever you want to - but it’s rather
dangerous!

Some people “believe” that all blacks-homosexuals-women-Jews are
lesser beings. We can’t stop them believing this sort of thing.

Likewise some people “believe” that crystals-holy water-faith
healers etc. can cure illnesses.

In all the hundreds of years of human thought, enterprise and
experimentation there has never, not once, ever, been any evidence
that these sort of beliefs have any veracity at all.

We tend to believe what we want to believe - because it makes us
feel special, or makes us less frightened.

What angers me above all is when people try to make money from these
all too human frailties. We all get sick (me? Oh, just pancreatic
cancer) and when charlatans try and sell cures (crystals, prayers,
special bee stings etc.) my blood boils!

Tony Konrath
Key West Florida 33040

Long ago and far away I once had some Amethyst crystal clusters for
sale. This was at the very beginning of the Crystal craze. A lady
comes up and spends some time handling the clusters. Finally she
asks me, “Do you believe that these crystals really have power to do
something?” I said," Yes, I do." She responds,“What do you really
think this cluster has the power to do”? “I believe that that
cluster has the power to move a ten dollar bill from your wallet to
mine.” I said, thinking that my life expectancy is now down to
milliseconds. She looks at me, looks at the crystal cluster, looks
back at me, and we both start laughing. After the tears were wiped
up, she gets out her wallet and hands me a ten dollar bill. She said
the story alone was worth ten dollars. Far be it from me to argue
with the power of a crystal.

Some day I will tell y’all how I use a foldformed Scepter with a
crystal that lights up to meet women.

Tony, my hope is that this will bring some laughter to you too. That
is the best medicine I have found yet. That and friends who care.

Bill

    Of course some people don't feel anything from crystals.  Some
people can't even smell when a cat lives in a house.  Some people
are capable of discerning the differences between rare vintage red
wines, and others can't tell if it's lite beer or regular. 

I am wondering what varying levels of the physical senses of smell
and taste have to do with detecting a non-physical and unverifiable
energy. You are making an interesting comparison.

I propose an experiment for all ‘Crystal Therapy’ practitioners that
say they can detect crystal energy. An experiment similar to the one
done by Emily Rosa of Therapeutic Touch claimants.

http://www.eclecticon.net/CatEcumen/touch.html

Maybe at a gathering, such as SNAG or Orchid’s Tucson dinner, put
crystals in a couple rooms. Then guide those persons (blindfolded of
course) that can detect, feel, or are sensitive to the crystal
energies to rooms. Rooms that do and do not contain the crystals. Let
the ‘crystal energy sensitive’ person feel (determine) which rooms
contain the crystals and which do not.

For the ‘energy sensitives’ that will claim that having a powerful
crystal in the building will effect their ability to determine which
room a crystal is in, put the crystals in different buildings around
the city. Drive them to the different sites to feel which building
the crystal is in. My experience in these experiments has shown that
the ‘crystal energy sensitive’ are much better at formulating
excuses, for what may be interfering with their ability to detect
the energy accurately, than they are at actually detecting any energy
or the presence of any crystal (healing stone) in the area.

Anybody ever hook two wire and a voltmeter to a crystal and explode
it’s mass inward? It releases one heck of a dose of energy at that
moment… would that be akin to it’s spirit? perhaps nor as we know
it but energy in any form seem to have a sense to follow the least
resistance and what is left after? just food for thought or
ramblings from a guy around to many crystals…Ringm,an

A really interesting way to get a handle on the “mystical” powers of
crystals is to make a collection of literature dealing with the
subject and collate all the attributes of various crystals. You will
find that there is little agreement amongst the authors. As a matter
of fact, some crystals are ascribed with so much power that one
ought to be able to solve all the world’s problems with one
miserable wave of the rock !

I have known people who wrote some of these mystical sales pitches
while trying hard not to bite their tongues when grinning wickedly.
Basically the pitch is one of saying what the potential buyer wants
to hear while stealthily removing money from his wallet. Ron
Mills at Mills Gem Company, Los Osos, Ca.

We are an international list of many like minded creative souls with
a direction towards Jewelry and its peripherals.

We are many diverse cultures, with thought processes influenced by
our surroundings. Many never leave home to venture into other
unfamiliar areas, exposing themselves to different belief systems.

Generally this list is accepting of all that freely share their
expertise. There are a few with a rather rigid view, we accept them
also, as they are the ones tethered to that credo, not us.

To challenge one’s belief publicly online with a bent towards
ridicule is not acceptable online behavior. Your views are your
personal views. This is not the place to play one upmanship.

Cultural beliefs in the protection or power of stones are as old as
mankind, how can anyone set themselves up as the destroyer of this?

I for one, apologize to the person on this particular hot seat.

Sincerely,
Teresa

Ok, I’ll go along with this. Some crystals can be made to resonate in
the presence of an electrical current. Maybe some people
"resonate"along with it. My mother did the crystal thing. She said
that black or dark crystals did different things than light or
crystal clear crystals. Maybe if a large enough crystal with a large
enough power supply run through it could do all manner of things. I
read one time that Atlantis had a large crystal , used it and sunk.

Metalqwerkx, A couple of years ago my girlfriend, Peggi, her son,
Max, and our friend Adrian (who is a “crystal sensitive”), were
playing in the park after a severe rainstorm. The park had flooded
along the creek, creating a pond of muddy water about a foot deep
where the grassy meadow had been. After splashing around for about an
hour, Peggi noticed that her ring was missing: a particularly
valuable paraiba tourmaline. There was no hope of finding it. Adrian
simply looked over the flooded park, then waded out into the water,
reached down, and retrieved the ring. Adrian seems to be
particularly gifted, although he claims that anyone can do this. I
have known others to be “sensitive” to a lesser extent, and I have
known a few who claimed to be, but could not produce verifiable
results like Adrian. I have been working with “energetic materials”
for years, but I don’t make energetic claims for my work, nor do I
have the abilities that my friend has. I have been in the presence of
VERY large crystals, and definitely noticed an energetic “shift.”
Trying to explain it is sort of like trying to explain a “near-death”
experience. At the core of our existence are electrons orbiting at
high speed around a nucleus. The distance between the nucleus of an
atom and it’s electron rings is (relatively) vast, making all of
matter mostly empty space. Anything is possible, and EVERYTHING is
possible, as physicists will argue. Check out this web site:
MkzdK.org Fascinating stuff.

I’ll have to ask Adrian about whether his physical senses are
related to his “extra-physical” senses. I do know that he is very
selective about how food and wine taste, and he is an avid
gardener…

Doug Zaruba

G’day I have actually attached foil with wires to a large crystal of
Rochell’s Salt (sodium potassium tartrate) and connected the wires
not to an ordinary voltmeter but to a cathode ray tube set up for
high resistance voltage measurement. Why won’t a voltmeter work?
Because it uses too much current and the electrical resistance of
the crystal is extremely high - millions of ohms - so an ordinary
voltmeter won’t detect the change in potential. But if the sides of
the crystal are sharply compressed, the crystal will produce more
than a thousand volts - at virtually no current. I have a
commercially made gas lighter containing one of these crystals and
no battery - and when squeezed it produces a small spark hot enough
to light a propane torch. Had it for about 15 years. Still works.

Stand in front of a mirror in a dark room and crunch a sugar cube
with your mouth open; the inside of your mouth with light up
momentarily, but you will detect only the crunchiness and sweetness.
And so on. No mystery; the energy of sharp pressure distorts
the crystal structure releasing the energy in the form of light or
an electrical voltage.

Which all has little to do with the ‘healing’ power of crystals.
That in my opinion is akin to faith healing; it works when the
person believes it sufficiently. Which is why 8 sessions of
acupuncture did not affect my rheumatic pains - I didn’t believe it
would.

Hey!! what’s all this got to do with a jewellery forum??

Cheers for now,
John Burgess; @John_Burgess2 of Mapua, Nelson NZ

Teresa, That was well said. We ALL need to respect difference of
opinion. I am a ‘skeptic’ regarding that which I consider to be
’pseudo-science,’ BUT I am willing to accept that there may be things
which I reject, but which are true for others.

David Barzilay
Lord of the Rings
607 S Hill St Ste 850
Los Angeles, CA 90014-1718
213-488-9157

        Of course some people don't feel anything from crystals. 
Some people can't even smell when a cat lives in a house.  Some
people are capable of discerning the differences between rare
vintage red wines, and others can't tell if it's lite beer or
regular. I am wondering what varying levels of the physical senses
of smell and taste have to do with detecting a non-physical and
unverifiable energy. You are making an interesting comparison. 

I’ll concede that modern science knows more about the receptors for
smell and taste, as well as vision, hearing, and many forms of
touch, than it does about other less understood forms of human
perception. Science has not yet identified physical cellular
receptors for the energy people feel off of crystals. It does not
mean that they don’t exist.

Truly, historically, only recently are we able to say that these
senses (of smell and taste) even come close to being both physical
(assuming that you are meaning that there is physical causation –
actual physical bombardment of particles, not remote detection; AND
not that the sense is “felt” physically – since those who are able
to “feel” crystal energy definitely “feel” it physically) and
verifiable (assuming that you are meaning detectable by some
man-made machinery; not in the way something is “verified” by
numerous credible experiencial witnesses – like in a court of
law…).

In fact, if you understood a little more about science, you might
want to watch how you throw around the terms “non-physical” and
“unverifiable energy”, as if they negated possibility of existance.

Take “non-physical” for example – that would mean that the thing in
question would not exhibit (as per definition) “having substance or
material existence; perceptible to the senses”. That would negate
huge amounts of the electromagnetic spectrum in wave form that can
only be detected and de-scrambled by man-made devices, a small
example being wave forms detected and de-scrambled by radio and
television. Do you “feel” these wave forms in the air? They are
all around you.

And what about “unverifiable energy”? This one is a little more
tricky, because I love science, and the ability to recreate results
in controlled experiments is a tenet of scientific method. I just
have to point to the past, and remind you that nothing is
scientifically known until it is proven and scrutenized; and
historically all energies were unverifiable until someone created a
device to detect them. Otherwise and until then, those energies
were unverifiable except by antectdotal evidence.

“Life energy” would have to be one of the current “unverifiable
energies” that science struggles to comprehend. Science can only
verify the symptoms (like in the definition: “1 The force of will
which strives to coalesce a dynamic organism from inanimate matter.
2 A force which demonstrates a purposeful intentionality to feed,
process matter into energy, grow, and reproduce.”). What is this
force that can “coalesce a dynamic organism from inanimate matter”?
Science doesn’t know yet – do you? And can you verify it by
anything other than antectdotal evidence?

I compared the abilities to smell and taste to the ability to
perceive energy off of a crystal or crystals because all require
some kind of human perception, and all also present a continuum of
responses. Most people can sort of understand the ability to smell
or to taste, and most people have experienced the continuum of
responses to different smells or tastes in different people (“That
stinks!” “I don’t smell anything.” – “That food is too spicey.” “I
can hardly taste it.” – “I can feel the energy off that crystal.”
“I don’t feel anything.”) This doesn’t prove or disprove the
validity of personal claims, it just indicates that variances exist
even in accepted perceptions.

I personally believe that what I feel off of a crystal is either its
torsion field (I’m pretty sure you need to learn more about physics
before I want to even try to explain this one to you), or that I
feel a reflection and amplification of my own energy field (which I
would assume that you don’t believe exists).

It would definitely be fun to do a clinical double-blind test on the
ability to “feel” the energy associated with any particular crystal
or crystals, but that is hardly what you suggest.

The person and experiment you cite as an example for the “test” you
would like to conduct was a nine year old girl creating an
“experiment” for her fourth grade science fair, whose parents both
have a vested interest in her “proving” the fallacy of Theraputic
Touch. (Both parents are quite active in Anti-Theraputic Touch
organizations. I didn’t even know that there were Anti-Theraputic
Touch organizations – as if voluntary participation in Theraputic
Touch were somehow harmful to the participants and that they needed
to be protected from it?)

I do not ask that you believe that others can “feel” crystals, you
are entitled to believe what you wish. I just ask that you please
learn what real science is, and distinguish it from what it is not.

My experience in these experiments has shown that the 'crystal
energy sensitive' are much better at formulating excuses, for what
may be interfering with their ability to detect the energy
accurately, than they are at actually detecting any energy or the
presence of any crystal (healing stone) in the area.

I would love to read your clinical trials. Can you please post a
link, or tell me how to obtain your notes? I only ask because you
have posted a link to what you consider a “real” experiment, only to
find that it was done by a fourth-grader.

–Terri

I fully support these views. Too many problems in this world have
been, are and will no doubt continue to be caused by the inability of
people to accept and respect the beliefs of others.

There is plenty of evidence to substantiate the theory that
sufficiently strong belief alone is able to achieve remarkable
results (the best known being the placebo effect). It is not our
place to ridicule or undermine the beliefs of others.

Pat

   Cultural beliefs in the protection or power of stones are as
old as mankind, how can anyone set themselves up as the destroyer
of this? 

There are those who believe in the power of stones to heal, enhance
spiritual or psychic powers, etc. Most are well-intentioned, and I
would not ridicule them for their belief. For those of us who are by
nature skeptical, OTOH, it is rather a large pill to swallow, unless
someone can demonstrate that these powers are measurable,
predictable and reproduceable.

As Ron Mills correctly pointed out, there are also those who take
advantage of these beliefs in order to make a fast buck. I have
visited websites touting the incredible spiritual powers of each
and every stone in each and every piece of jewelry sold. On one
page, the stone is said to raise the kundalini. elswhere on the same
site, a similar stone, possibly cut from the same slab, does
something entirely different, protects from negative influences,
opens the third eye, etc. At some point, it becomes obvious that
some people are simply concocting metaphysical blather about their
stones because it sells. Isn’t it far less objectionable to question
the healing powers of stones than it is to cynically exploit the
credulity of those who believe in such powers?

Lee Einer
Dos Manos Jewelry
http://www.dosmanosjewelry.com

Ron, I do believe you are maligning some very honest shop owners and
dealers who simply have another belief than yours. Of course you
disagree, but must you be so disagreeable in your response.

Chinese culture has used Jade for protection for many centuries.
Would you deny that population their belief simply because it is not
yours? Teresa

Terri, as far as I know, clinical trials are not required to
disprove the existence of something which has not been proven to
exist. By your logic, I can legitimately claim that the stones
which I sell, and only those which I sell, are infused with Blorg
Energy, an energy which I know by my incredibly fine intuition to
exist, and which nobody has yet disproven. My intuition also tells
me that Blorg Energy is ten times more powerful than Viagra, twice
as good as Paxil, and triples the value of all stones which I cut
and sell. Nobody else cuts stones containing Blorg energy; my
intuition tells me this also, and it is irrefutable without
scientific evidence.

Let me know when you can produce a peer-published study to the
contrary.

I would not be this outspoken if this were a trifling issue. The
fact is that many millions of dollars per year are spent by gullible
people on substances and devices which are not proven to have a
beneficial effect. I have a family member who is suffering from MS,
and who has spent good money on things like “tachyon creme” which
science says is double-talk and nonsense. A “tachyon” is a particle
which travels faster than the speed of light, and which can
penetrate an entire planet; it does not come to a complete stop to
confer healing powers on a tube of vaseline. There is no such thing,
truly, as a “tachyon creme.” She has wasted thousands of dollars,
over the years, on such quackery and nostrums, out of fear and
desperation. I have a sibling who has been diagnosed with terminal
cancer. He has been sold a machine (for roughly $2000.00) which
allegedly generates electro-magnetic fields that kill the microbes
which cause cancer. Microbes have not been established as the cause
of his cancer, and the $2,000.00 device which he purchased has been
identified by anti-fraud agencies as a hoax assembled out of
roughly $15 in electrical parts. The electro-magnetic field which
this device produces does not even penetrate the skin, let alone
kill cancer cells. lying deep within human tissue.

People who suffer from such conditions are willing to pay for
foolish things, because they are willing to grasp at any straw to
spare themselves from horrible chronic pain, debility, or an early
death. People who make such false medicinal claims for their
products in order to sell to these sick and desparate people, well,
is there really a level of hell so low that they would not run down
the neighborhood by being assigned there?

 No mystery; the energy of sharp pressure distorts the crystal
structure releasing the energy in the form of light or an
electrical voltage. 

On a side note. Some years ago, after chipping an amethyst, that I
found difficult to find the fracture on, it occured to me that it too
flashed when I broke it. I haven’t seen the same in all other stones.
ANyone made a list?

To all: I don’t jump in often, but couldn’t help it on this one. I
have a background in science and was suprised when I suddenly began
seeing auras a few years ago. I also have picked up a few crystals
and with some I do feel an energy like mild static electricity. In
researching questions related to the verifiability of such energy I
ran across two things of interest. One is Kirlian photography which
is able to record at least one type of human energy field. There are
several Internet sources available. The other is work being done by
Gary Schwarz, Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. Dr. Swarz founded
the Human Energy Systems Laboratory and after an internationally
renowned career as a psychology researcher, turned to evaluating
paranormal studies. One study I found striking. Schwarz began by
measuring background levels of gamma radiation. He then observed
that human beings naturally transform gamma radiation into high
frequency x-ray radiation. After determining these levels, he
observed that when a subject intentionally attempted to direct mental
energy toward another person, the subject’s level of high end x-rays
increased measurably.

I am reminded of Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolution. Kuhn says that scientists accept a new paradigm when
they are able to detect and measure phenomena they could not
previously measure. He cites the telescope as the example for the
paradigm shift in astronomy from earth centered to sun centered
astronomy.

We may be near such a paradign shift with unseen energy that some
claim to be able to detect.

Cheers!
Mike

And only in America can this belief be used to profit from.
Attributing power to a rock , and hoping or wishing they have some
magical power, rather than realization that we as conscious beings
have been imbued with consciousness, something that rocks do not
have., We have creative minds that can think of something, and make
computers, or bombs. Rocks cannot. Theoretically, we can evolve in
consciouness, although it’s painfull to watch present events like in
Iraq and Spain and think we have made any progress. Rocks do not
evolve. We can. Changing your thoughts, changes your behavior,
changes what you experience. This is being proven in quantum
physics.The observer influences the outcome. Thought is a creative
process. If you need a rock to believe in to accomplish this, God
Bless you. Wishing and hoping something is true does not make it so.
Rather than thinking of it as destroyer, consider enlightenment.
Jesus, Bhudda, ect. did not use advocate use of rocks for spiritual
transformation. “What we are looking for, we are looking with”.

Richard Hart

John, I have a similar gas lighter that I have been using for over 30
years, also still working.

Joel Schwalb
@Joel_Schwalb
www.schwalbstudio.com