The conversation continues, and today I’m sharing a few more things I wish I’d know before I started to work with crystals. (Did you miss my first blog on this topic? Click here).

This was a popular topic and you wanted to know a few more things to avoid pitfalls, wasting time, energy, and money. So here we are!

And you know, just like everyone else I made a ton of mistakes when I first started to work with crystals.

I’ve since then done research, worked through a lot of stuff, gathered data for my clients and students, and this information can save you a lot of time, and energy, and of course money with what I’m about to share with you today.

The question of the day …

What about working with crystals confuses you?

It appears that there’s a little bit of confusion for some people. If this happens to you, please share your answer with me in the comments at the bottom of this page. Now let’s get started!

Citrine

This has been coming up a lot lately.

I need you to know, most citrine out on the market is fake. Most commercially available citrine on the market is heated amethyst.

My students did an experiment, and they took some amethyst and put it in their oven. They put their home oven in the kitchen on the highest setting possible and turned it into citrine.

This is what most sellers do. They take a very lightly colored amethyst and bake it into citrine. Perhaps the amethyst is not very vibrant, it’s pale and it’s not considered aesthetically pleasing and therefore wouldn’t normally sell that well. So, they put it in an oven and heat it.

The longer they heat it the darker it gets. When it’s dark, it’s called Madeira citrine, and it’s quite beautiful actually. It’s got that deep, rich iced tea color. But one thing you’ll notice with these is, they’re very brittle and friable.

Those pretty orange, the glittery stones are usually not the real deal.

Recently I’ve talked a lot about how the baked variety of citrine seems to have diminished concerning its power. Regardless, the baked variety of citrine is the one that’s most widely available; it’s most affordable. It has more of that orange tint to it. You just won’t find a large geode that’s real citrine. You will find baked citrine geodes.

Made in Mother Earth

I prefer to stay away from man-made, or tainted, altered crystals as much as possible. It’s not always possible, it’s not always practical and it’s not always affordable, but I try to.

Now, there’s Congo and Brazil citrine (which are the most popular places where natural, real citrine comes from)

It’s a completely different animal. Completely natural and not baked, and it’s going to be lighter in color, not orange.

I’ve found their power to have increased recently with a shift in energy on our planet. In our solar system most likely. I mean (I don’t know that for sure)… but it’s a theory I have.

Brazil citrine is an excellent crystal to pick up. Plus, it’s a little less expensive than the Congo citrine. But for some, Brazil citrine can be harder to identify from the fake.

Congo citrines often will have all these babies around the base. We call that an abundance crystal, some people call it a manifestation crystal.

Congo citrines have a lot of unique characteristics to them, so they’re easier to identify. Sometimes the color is a bit darker and some might even call it a smokey, but what makes it citrine is that it has a yellow undertone. Especially if you take it out into the sunlight. If you see a yellow undertone that’s citrine.

Tumbled Citrine

Now, with the tumbled stones it’s much harder to figure out, “Is that a baked citrine? Is that a natural citrine?”

But you got to use logic in this. Someone who has natural citrine and knowing its value is highly unlikely to tumble it and turn it into a tumbled stone. Therefore I would venture to say 95% of the tumbled citrines are baked amethyst.

As we’ve discussed, it’s not always an easy task to tell the difference, but here are a few pointers.

If it’s a heat treated citrine:

• the color is going to be mostly concentrated at the tips, and white at the bottom.
• Also, heat treated citrine will be sort of crumbly and easily break apart, especially when you have little points on a geode. We call that friable – which is a direct result of the high, high temperatures they use in the oven. It seems to weaken the stability of the crystal matrix at the molecular level.

I used to think that baking the citrine doesn’t technically change the molecules, but it does weaken them. It does weaken those bonds because they become for friable, so it does change it on a certain level.

Personally, I prefer not to work with the baked amethyst variety of citrine, but that’s a personal choice. You have to test it out and see for yourself.

I just want people to know out there that most of the citrine out there is baked amethyst. It’s not actual, real citrine. And sellers have been really good about telling people up front that, that’s what they have for sale.

But for a long time … (it’s not really like pulling the wool over anybody’s eyes so much because this is something that’s been going on for hundreds of years probably, and it’s just never really been disclosed up front), “Oh, this is baked amethyst.” It’s just, “That’s citrine. That’s what we’ve always called citrine. We’ve always baked it.”

There’s kind of a little debate going on with that.

Crystal Books

The next thing I want to discuss to save you time, energy and money when you start to work with crystals … is books. Because how many of us love to buy crystal books by the truckloads?!

I’m one of those people (no longer though, because most of the books out there say the same thing over, and over. They might vary it a little bit, but when you’re looking up books for crystal correspondences a lot of them say the same things. You’ll see a lot of commonalities, or you’ll find that one book might contradict another book but that doesn’t happen as often)

As I accumulated stacks of crystal books I slowly realized that much of the info is just repetitive.

And like I said, some of it can conflict and confuse you even more. So, I’ve learned. I realized which books had sound geologic data and are going to give scientific info. I always prefer those books that have a little bit of scientific info.

And I do know my way around the scientific info so sometimes when they’re saying stuff that just isn’t true I just kind of push that book to the side.

In my course, I teach that I don’t like relying on the books 100%. However, I do like having them as a guide and support.

Work With Your Crystals

Now, I’m very selective with the crystal books I use, and refer to, and recommend.

I feel it’s good to have a couple highly recommended crystal reference books on hand. Then most importantly, you’ve got to get in there and work with your crystals.

Work with your stones, find out what they do for you on an individual level.

No book can ever tell you that so don’t rely on them too heavily.

Two book recommendations I am going to give you right now are …

1. One is The Crystal Healer by my friend Phillip Permutt. This is an excellent book, I’ve always recommended it. Its got sound crystal correspondences and it’s a great book to just reference your crystals. Its got great pictures … not museum quality pictures so that makes it easy to identify the crystals that you have.

Plus I like that he gives scientific info, metaphysical info, where the locals or common source is, astrological associations, the chakra associations. Also, it’s color coded so if you have an orange or a yellow crystal you can just turn to the yellow section and easily identify your crystal.

So, if you’re looking for a book that’s going to help you ID your crystals, The Crystal Healer. Highly recommend it.

2. Another book is The Book Of Stones by Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian. This is an excellent book. It’s mandatory in my Certified Crystal Healer Course; it’s an excellent reference book.

Lots of information and sound scientific information. Plus it has a great reference in the back for looking things up.

The only drawback to it, is the pictures are mostly museum quality specimens. Therefore, it’s not as easy to identify some of the crystals. Still, this book, I highly recommend it.

Crystal Correspondences

The third thing I want to deliver to you today is a common misconception.

A lot of people that come to work with crystals thinking that before they start doing anything they need to memorize a whole bunch of crystal correspondences and remember, “What crystal’s good for this?” And, “What crystal’s good for that?”

There is no need to memorize crystal meanings. None.

When I first started on my crystal journey that’s what I thought I needed to do.

I thought, “Oh, I’m not ready yet. I need to learn more, I need to memorize these meanings and see if there’s a perfect crystal for this or that before I actually start doing anything.” That couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

The result … I wasted so much time trying to memorize things.

Do you know how many crystals and minerals there are? Over 4,500.

So, forget that idea, that is just ridiculous. There’s no reason for it memorizing everything as you begin your work with crystals. Where is the reasoning for having to do that? A lot of people come to it thinking that, that’s what they need to do.

The other thing about this is … say you memorized 100 crystal correspondences? This is something else I’ve been talking about a lot lately…that information, a lot of it is no longer relevant. Energy is shifting and some crystal energy and meanings are changing too.

This is why I teach my students, “Don’t rely too heavily on that stuff. There are other more important things you need to do when working with crystals than memorizing correspondences.”

If you think you know your crystals really well and at the same time things haven’t been working as good as usual, it’s a good idea to relearn how to interact with your crystals moving forward now in this new energy that we’re in.

Dive In

I encourage you to spend some time getting to know your crystals all over again.

Maybe just choose four crystals and spend a good amount of time getting to know them all really well. I’m doing this right now and I’m loving the experience of doing this.

And that’s really all it comes down to, that’s exactly why I don’t teach my students to memorize crystal meanings or correspondences. First of all, because it’s not necessary to do that to move on, to move forward. And secondly, a lot of this information is not relevant now.

Thinking back to when I first started, I eventually got tired of waiting around and trying to memorize meanings, and I began digging in and working with my crystals. Doing that made me wish that I had started the whole process way sooner, because I was getting immediate results, and I felt confident and so empowered.

There’s no perfect method, and there’s no perfect stone or a perfect time to begin your crystal practice.

You’re never going to know enough like, “Okay, now I know enough. Now I can go ahead and begin.”

Keep Growing, Keep Learning

Personally, I’m on a perpetual learning and growth path, and I’m out there teaching crystal healing.

You just need to go for it and start.

You don’t have to wait to take a course, you don’t have to wait to be certified, or read all the crystal books and certainly you don’t need to wait to put the work and effort into memorizing tons of names and correspondences, and meanings.

So, my best advice is just to dive in, start working with them, just get to it.

I hope this information was helpful to you! Tell me in the comments which of the three things I shared was most helpful to you OR share another tip you’ve found useful on your crystal path.

Your info could further help others in our Crystal Family avoid wasted time, energy or money on their crystal path

 

Crystal Blessings,