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The Secret Life of Stones with Nicholas Pearson · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What?
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: What's going to happen? Something wonderful. What? I understand how
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: you feel. You see, it's all very clear to me now.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Occult Rejects. Today we are getting into
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: something human beings have been fascinated with for thousands of years. stones, crystals,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: and the strange possibility that there may be more happening
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: in our relationship with them than simple geology. We have
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: carved stones into sacred objects, carried them for protection, used
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: them in healing and divination, built religious traditions around them,
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  Speaker 1: and eventually discovered physical properties in crystals precise enough to
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: make them essential components of modern technology. Somewhere between mineral
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: science and thousands of years of magical tradition is a
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  Speaker 1: question we're taking seriously. What exactly have human beings been
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  Speaker 1: responding to in stones? My guest tonight is Nicholas Pearson,
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  Speaker 1: an author, researcher, educator, and long-time student of the mineral
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: kingdom who has spent more than 30 years working with
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  Speaker 1: crystals and studying their physical, historical, and spiritual dimensions. He
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  Speaker 1: studied mineral science at Stetson University and later worked at
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the Gillespie Museum, giving him a background in actual mineralogy
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  Speaker 1: alongside his work in Reiki, occultism, and crystal practice. Nicholas
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  Speaker 1: is the author of numerous books, including Crystal Basics, Stones
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  Speaker 1: of the Goddess, Crystals for Karmic Healing, The Witching Stones,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and Flower Essences from the Witch's Garden, and his newest work,
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  Speaker 1: Crystal Divination, written with Devin Hunter, explores scrying, dousing, lithomancy,
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  Speaker 1: and other methods of using stones for divination. So tonight,
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  Speaker 1: I want to get beyond the metaphysical gift shop version
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  Speaker 1: of this subject and ask harder questions about mineralogy, history, consciousness, ritual, divination,
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  Speaker 1: and what people actually mean when they say a crystal
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  Speaker 1: has energy. Are stones simply objects onto which human beings
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  Speaker 1: have projected thousands of years of meaning, or is there
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  Speaker 1: something about matter, consciousness, and our relationship with the mineral
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: world that we still do not completely understand? Before I
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  Speaker 1: introduce Nicholas, let me introduce Eric. We've got Eric Arcadian
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: with us again. My man, thank you so much for
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: joining me. I always appreciate it when you do. Let
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: everybody know what is up with you and your amazing show.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, what's up, everybody? Nick, thank you for having me here.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: It's always a pleasure. And Nicholas, it is great to
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: see you again. I'm happy to sit here while someone
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  Speaker 3: else picks your brain, and we can all hear what
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  Speaker 3: you have to say. I am Eric Arcadian. Guys, if
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: you are watching on YouTube, hop on over to my
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: channel as well, at Eric Arcadian. Subscribe, watch a video,
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: like or comment on something, and while you're here on
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: the occult rejects, make sure you comment and like, and
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: do all those things as well. I just, if you
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: don't know, that is the way you tell the algorithm,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: AKA the internet gods that this is good content and
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: that it should recommend it to someone else who we
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: might not otherwise be able to reach. So if you
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: enjoy this kind of stuff, Make sure you support by
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: liking and commenting and interacting with the videos. Anyway, this
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: weekend I will be in Tallahassee, Florida at Swamp Mystics.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: So if you are in the neighborhood, come on and
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: stop by. I will be doing a presentation on fluid condensers.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: I'll also have a bunch of my books there if
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  Speaker 3: you'd like to pick up a copy. Other than that,
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  Speaker 3: I'm just excited to hear what Nicholas has to say today.
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  Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you so much, Eric. I want to almost
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  Speaker 1: like clip that whole thing, that introduction you did. I
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  Speaker 1: got to reuse that for myself. That's amazing. Thank you
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: so much. Definitely go check out his stuff. Like, you know,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: if you haven't really, or you've just recently come to
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: know this man, I mean, if he's on the show,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: odds are the stuff that he has on his own
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: channel is going to, you know, interest you. If you're
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: interested in the show, this was my opinion. So please
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: go check out his stuff. Amazing, amazing work and really
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: enjoy the guy coming on the show. Finally, Nicholas Pearson,
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  Speaker 1: please let everybody know anything that maybe I didn't mention
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: that you would like to include or promote or let
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: people know what's up with you.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much to
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  Speaker 2: both of you, actually, for having me. These days, I
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  Speaker 2: often describe myself as a professional nerd. I wear a
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: lot of hats. I have a day job in collections
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  Speaker 2: management and mineral science, which is a fairly new development
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  Speaker 2: in my life. When I was in college... I went
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: to school for music, but I was purportedly, according to
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the paperwork, I was randomly assigned to work in our
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  Speaker 2: earth science museum. And I now work for that same
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  Speaker 2: museum 20 some odd years later. And it's really super
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  Speaker 2: cool that I get to have this outlet, this connection
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  Speaker 2: to rocks that doesn't have to be all about the woo.
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  Speaker 2: I still love the wood. Don't get me wrong. But
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  Speaker 2: every now and then it's nice to just sit down
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  Speaker 2: and appreciate an object for its natural history, for its
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  Speaker 2: mineralogical oddities, for all those other little aspects. And then,
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  Speaker 2: of course, that serves as inspiration for the rest of
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  Speaker 2: my practice. So, yeah, if anyone wants to learn more
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  Speaker 2: about the work that I do beyond this conversation, you
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  Speaker 2: can find me at theluminouspearl.com. I'm at theluminouspearl on most
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: social media sites. There are a bunch of books, like
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: you mentioned. I just submitted my 12th one. So keeping
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: things going.
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  Speaker 1: That is great. Thank you so much. And, you know,
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  Speaker 1: I totally agree with like what you were saying, too.
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  Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't take the woo out of the crystals.
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  Speaker 1: For me, looking at it this way, you know, that's
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  Speaker 1: still there. If anything, I think it can help actually
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  Speaker 1: add to it because you're like, this is actually real.
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  Speaker 1: You know, there's science behind this. It's almost kind of
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  Speaker 1: taking science fiction and making it real with proof of it.
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  Speaker 1: So for me, I'm glad you said that because sometimes
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  Speaker 1: I think some witches, when you kind of come at
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: things from a scientific or an academic angle, they think
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  Speaker 1: you're trying to remove that, and that's not what I'm doing.
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  Speaker 1: I think it can make it a much deeper kind
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  Speaker 1: of story in a sense. For sure. Thank you again
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  Speaker 1: for coming on. I'm very excited. You were also suggested
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: by Ashley with the Big Crystal Energy podcast. Huge fan
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: of yours. So between her and Eric both suggesting you,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I was like, I got to have this guy on.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And once I checked out your stuff, I was like
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  Speaker 1: totally right up my alley. So sorry about that. You
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: want to say something?
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I was just saying that's awesome.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just like I asked all my
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  Speaker 1: guests at the beginning, what was it that got you into, uh,
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  Speaker 1: got you into this stuff? And I'm just wondering, were
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  Speaker 1: you kind of interested in the stones and crystals before
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  Speaker 1: you kind of got into like witchy stuff or was
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  Speaker 1: it witchy stuff and then crystals?
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  Speaker 2: You know, I think it's probably like co-evil evolution. They, they,
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  Speaker 2: they happened around similar times in my life, but maybe
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  Speaker 2: not for the same reasons. Um, Yeah, like a little
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  Speaker 2: thumbnail sketch. My dad was raised like super Catholic, like
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: parochial school, you know, all of this stuff. As a result,
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  Speaker 2: I wasn't raised anything. He'd had enough of that. It
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: was just him and me for like the first six
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  Speaker 2: years of my life for the most part. So when
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  Speaker 2: other families did church on weekends, we went to the library.
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  Speaker 2: And early on, I started reading well above my grade level.
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  Speaker 2: I'd like dive into any topic that interested me. And
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: there were a few areas that really kind of outshone
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  Speaker 2: all the others. I was, for example, really interested in
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  Speaker 2: anything involving natural sciences and natural history. And so whether
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: that was ecology or marine biology of something I almost
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: went to school for, geology and all the kind of
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  Speaker 2: natural sciences or something that I really loved. But at
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  Speaker 2: the same time, it was really big in mythology, world religion,
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  Speaker 2: folklore and fairy tales. And as a relatively young person,
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  Speaker 2: I kind of saw that I'd read the kind of
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  Speaker 2: mythic explanation for what a volcano was or where thunder
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  Speaker 2: came from. And then, you know, I'd read about the
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  Speaker 2: actual science behind it and go, okay, well, this is
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  Speaker 2: just a metaphor for that. This is just a way
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  Speaker 2: that human beings have tried to extrapolate something and make
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: sense of the world around them. And that's exactly what
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: we're doing in science anyway. So I've never found them
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  Speaker 2: at odds with one another. It's just two different lexicons
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  Speaker 2: for describing the same phenomena and our relationship to them.
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  Speaker 2: So rocks were just kind of this thing that I
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  Speaker 2: instinctively had a pull towards. I mean, if, you know,
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  Speaker 2: heaven forbid we pass a gravel driveway or, you know,
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  Speaker 2: a pile of rubble in a state park or, you know,
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  Speaker 2: take a walk along the seashore, my pockets would be
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  Speaker 2: full of rocks by the end of the day. And
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  Speaker 2: my grandfather must have, like, clocked this behavior over and
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  Speaker 2: over again, and he gave me my very first piece
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  Speaker 2: of quartz. And that was probably around the age of eight,
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  Speaker 2: and it was, like, game over at that point. I just...
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  Speaker 2: so enamored that you could take this kind of inert
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  Speaker 2: piece of the landscape that I already loved and already
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  Speaker 2: found interested in, and we could like transfigure it into
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  Speaker 2: something different, something angular and regular. So there's something kind
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  Speaker 2: of rhythmic about a crystal structure. In that particular piece
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  Speaker 2: of quartz, the way it played with light, the way
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  Speaker 2: it acted as both a prism and a lens, depending
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  Speaker 2: on the angle at which one was viewing it, I
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: really thought I had a piece of magic like I
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  Speaker 2: read about in fairy tales. It turns out that I did,
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  Speaker 2: but this kind of growing interest made me want to
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  Speaker 2: explore the mythology of crystals and gemstones and rocks and minerals.
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  Speaker 2: And up to a certain point, I was only reading
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  Speaker 2: about it as a historical belief, as a practice from
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  Speaker 2: times before. And it would be like my early teens
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  Speaker 2: when my grandfather, again, still saying that I loved my
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  Speaker 2: crystals almost 10 years later, gave me a book on
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  Speaker 2: crystal healing. And I was like, wow, this isn't just
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  Speaker 2: a historical practice, isn't just a thing that people did before.
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  Speaker 2: People are still doing this. And from that moment, I
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  Speaker 2: had to pursue every available text. The internet was still
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: kind of in its infancy, so you didn't have a
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: lot of reliable sources online, but I found what I could.
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  Speaker 2: These were back in the days when you had maybe
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  Speaker 2: three or four crystal vendors on the internet at all.
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  Speaker 2: That was it. You can buy crystals anywhere on the
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: internet today. There were four people with dedicated websites to
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: doing crystal retail in that era. The accessibility of information
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  Speaker 2: was a lot more difficult. Because of that, I would
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: just have to sit with the rocks and figure stuff
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: out for myself. And I was invited to teach at
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: my local metaphysical store in Southeast Florida at the ripe
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  Speaker 2: old age of 18. And I was teaching about crystals
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: at that age. And when I went away to school,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I got this kind of divine, perfect, synchronistic, fortuitous, insert
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  Speaker 2: your word of choice here, opportunity to study mineral science
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  Speaker 2: up close and personal, even though I was ostensibly going
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: to get a degree in music, which didn't happen. I
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: just kind of stumbled into this job where I got
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: to do collections management. It started as like just being
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: a docent as a student. And then because I had
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: this aptitude and love for minerals already, I started getting
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: special privileges as far as the collection goes, building new exhibits,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: doing independent study. I was so burnt out with music.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: And I was just rapidly figuring out that I didn't
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: want to be a high school band director for the
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: rest of my life. And my boss's boss in the museum,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: who was at the time the department head and the
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: curator of the museum, they've changed all that kind of
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: bureaucracy and the roles around now. But that was a
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: position back then. He said, you're so good with science.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: You love the rocks and minerals. Why don't you come
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: to the dark side? Like leave music and come to science.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I did before I ran out
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: of money and did other things with my life. But
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: I've always had this really great love. And I found
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: in that era of my life, I was doing a
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: lot more reading about crystals, both in contemporary writing and
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  Speaker 2: in historical texts. And I'd find that mystics and healers
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: and saints and scientists would describe minerals of similar composition
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: with similar language. Even when it was apparent, they didn't
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: have access to that information because either they wrote before
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: the birth of the science of geology or because they'd
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: clearly never picked up a field guide to rocks and
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: minerals in the modern era and were just doing it
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: totally on vibes. So you find like descriptions of things
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  Speaker 2: that are iron rich described remarkably similar across time and
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: language and geography. You find discussions of things that have
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: similar formation processes or crystal structures, even when it was
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: unbeknownst to the writers. And it made me start thinking, okay,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: if there are these patterns that are emerging, maybe there's
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: something more objective behind the phenomena of crystal healing, behind
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: the phenomena of crystal energy. And ever since, I have
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: been digging, no pun intended, into figuring out what that is.
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  Speaker 1: That is awesome, man. I really love that story. That's great. Eric,
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  Speaker 1: was there anything you wanted to ask before I start going?
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: Actually, I'm kind of curious. Nicholas, when you pick up,
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  Speaker 3: and I know obviously you wrote, like a definitive guide
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: to crystals, but when you are picking up a book
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  Speaker 3: to reference somewhere, do you usually lean towards something like ancient?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, maybe not ancient, but like old, old texts.
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  Speaker 3: Would you go for something kind of around like when
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: Wicca first started becoming real popular, like a Scott Cunningham
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: type of book, or would you go with something like,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: very recent, like that was written within the past few years? D,
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: all of the above.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: So behind me, these two bookshelves top to bottom, you know,
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  Speaker 2: overflowing are just books about things related to crystals. They're
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: also piles that you can't see off screen because they
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: don't fit in these two bookcases. I have to figure
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: some more stuff out around that. I consider... Okay, I'm
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: a smart guy, I'm a nerd, but my real skill
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: isn't just being smart, it's pattern recognition. And so what
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: I like doing is meta-analysis. I like looking at as
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: many different perspectives as possible and trying to reconcile what
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: the common thread is. I am constantly seeking contrary evidence. Oh, well,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: so-and-so is actually an outlier. What is something that explains
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: the trend and the outlier simultaneously? And sometimes you can't
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: figure that out. But at the end of the day,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: we've got a few different streams of crystal knowledge that exist.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: We have tradition. And I'll avoid getting into the weeds
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: on the semantics of what actually makes a tradition. We'll
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: say like traditional folkloric kind of practices. The tradition of
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: writing books on crystals is so old that the earliest
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: text written about crystals is stamped in clay in cuneiform.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: And it may be the prototype of the first book
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: ever written, the first, at least, prose book ever written.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Poetry is older. And so we have a lot of
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: texts from all eras related to rocks and minerals. And
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: if we look at those early sources, we have inherited
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of those beliefs in the kind of modern
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: world about crystals. We see that... The challenge with these
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: texts is because geology, mineralogy, crystallography, petrology, like all these
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: things related to the scientific study of rocks and minerals
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: didn't exist. The way we define things back then is
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: very different to how we define them now. So to
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: figure out what a medieval manuscript is actually talking about
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: when it is describing a given rock or mineral, you
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: have to be part geologist. You have to be part linguist.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: You probably need to be part geologist geographer.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: And have an idea of the ethnography involved so that
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: way you can figure out this word doesn't mean what
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: it does today and kind of parse the evolution of
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: all that out.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Because you read descriptions of something like moonstone and you're like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: that does not resemble a moonstone. Or this opal is
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: clearly jasper. Or that diamond is really magnetite. but we
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: have to kind of view things in the cultural and
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: historical context. We get tradition, but it's confusing. And then
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: we get people's lived experiences with crystals. In the last 50,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: 60 years in particular, we start to see vestiges of
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: this kind of inherited from tradition beginning to mix with
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: people's observations. It starts really, in terms of crystals, with
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: folks writing about using crystal balls before they're using actual
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: crystals for healing. They're talking about divination and crystalomancy. But
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: by the 70s and 80s, you really start to see
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: crystal literature emerge as a separate genre. And it really
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: falls into two camps in this era. I experimented. I
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: observed what was happening with clients. I corrected course. Whether
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: or not they treated it with the scientific method, I
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: view it as collecting data. It is still a kind
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: of data, even if it is very subjective and qualitative.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: And then the other kind of modern stream is people
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: have inspiration through their crystals, whether they call that channeling,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: whether they are using some form of clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: they're tapping in intuitively. A lot of that intuitive, information
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: is then kind of put through the trial and error
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: and a lot of it is not. So what I
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: aim to do with kind of meta analysis is look
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: at all of these streams and go, none of these
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: is inherently better than the other. They are all flawed
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: because humans are flawed. There's always a bias. And, and
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: what I do through meta analysis is try to remove
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: as much of those authors bias as possible by, by
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: looking for a trend. Now, of course I have my
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: own bias. I can't completely remove that either being human.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: That's kind of part of the package deal. Um, but I,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I try to look at all of those streams fairly
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: in fairly equal measure, depending on the project. You know,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: when I was writing the witching stones, I was looking
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: at more of the traditional stuff as opposed to like
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the channeled heely feely stuff, um, because it was a
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: different kind of project with different applications. Uh, when I
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: wrote crystal basics, I, I, I used mostly my lived experience,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: the work I've done with students, clients for a very
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: long time.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And then.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: The source material that I did use was mostly like
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: people who had a therapeutic practice as opposed to a
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: mystical or magical practice. So I do kind of vary
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: my sources being cited depending on the nature of the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: project in front of me. But ultimately, the Nicholas that
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: you're speaking to has read it all.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: That's awesome. And I had no idea that the text
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: went back that far, like to clay tablets and stuff.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: I also, I love that you consider all of the
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: sources and that you don't just like dismiss one. Cause
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: all that's like to new age or, or that's too old.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: That's too ancient.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: They didn't know what they were talking about. You try
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: to reinterpret and reevaluate the things that other people said.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Hmm. You know, something that I have kind of gone into, like,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: covering herbs from, like, from an aspect of, like, how
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: it affects your nervous system, especially your 12 cranial nerves
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and the stuff that it does in your brain, depending
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: if you inhale it, ingest it, or whatever. And there's
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: been times where, like, some of the effects I could
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: easily see. I'll use Scott Cunningham as an example. How
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: even how, like, what it actually does to you physically
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and with your nervous system I could see how that
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: could translate into like a banishing of this and doing
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of that to where I have even wondered, like maybe
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: they didn't quite understand how it worked, but I wonder
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: if they did back in the day actually realize that
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: these things could maybe actually help with removing or banishing anxiety,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you know, or something like that or calming you down.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And they just didn't have the ways of explaining it
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: or understanding it. So I wanted that too. So I
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: think that there is, I'm sorry to finish what I
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: was going to say. I think that it's useful to
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: still look at even the older and the newer because
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the older might be explaining something that's being explained now
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: in a scientific way to understand it.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I am pro polyperspectivalism. Being able to hold
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: two perspectives or more at the same time can be
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: a challenge. But just because one thing works... doesn't mean
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: something else doesn't also work. Just because this was someone's
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: end result of working with a crystal, an herb, a
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: magical or spiritual practice doesn't mean that we can't observe
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: it through a different lens and achieve a different outcome.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, this idea that our language and
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: understanding also evolves is part of the challenge as well. Disentangling,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: is this a metaphor or is this their understanding through
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: their worldview? And would I, as a modern person, achieve
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: the same results because my fundamental worldview is different. And again,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: I can't remove my bias entirely, so I have to
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: write through it and kind of lean into it at times.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: And at other times, just step back and do an
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: observation of what we find in literature and draw my
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: conclusions out loud from that. But I think all of
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: these things are interrelated. We can't view them as existing
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: in a vacuum because we live in a globalized world today.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: whether we're talking herbs or crystals or literally anything else,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: there is so much exchange of information that we have
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: a kind of tendency to universalize today. And I enjoy
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: unpacking how we got to this universalized worldview through all
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: those separate streams of tradition and thought and practice.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. You know, we're just, like you mentioned now, like,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: something just made me think of, like, you know, how even, like,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: alchemy and chemistry and science really came from the Middle East.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And they kind of, like, you know, mingled and kind
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: of talked to Europeans about, you know, and how that all, like, got,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: you know, put together. So, yeah, a lot of, like, cross-pollination,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I think, helps, in my opinion. Oh, Eric, anything before
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I ask another question? All right, sir. Something I did
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: want to ask, and you kind of like mentioned the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: school just recently with this last question or prior. Was
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: there anything, and this has happened to me kind of,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: which is why I'm asking you. When you were in
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: kind of like with the school and studying more, I guess,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: from the science aspect, did things ever start popping out
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: to you that almost actually kind of made the magic
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: aspect like more understanding or kind of helped build upon
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that in a sense?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yes and no. When you're studying hard science, there are
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: certain circumstances where you kind of have to put your
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: blinders on and just do one thing at a time.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: And I didn't finish a degree. I ran out of
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: money and put all my stuff in storage and almost
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: immigrated to Japan. It's a whole story beyond what we
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: got time for today. When I switched from music after
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: a year and a half in a music program to
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: earth and environmental science, the challenge became separating my more
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: mystical worldview from the empirical stuff that I was studying.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: In the beginning, it was hard because I had.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Not learned really good boundaries in any sense of the word.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: My social boundaries, my emotional boundaries, my energetic and psychic
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: boundaries were very permeable and very volatile in this stage
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: in my life. I was also a teenager. We haven't
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: figured ourselves out yet, so surprise that I'm having difficulty
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: switching channels, as it were. But over the years, I
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: find it much easier to compartmentalize. and as a result,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I can just study the science for the sake of
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: the science. Oftentimes, though, when I do, I encounter something
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: that at least metaphorically relates to the more mystical work
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: that I do. I can see something as a symbol
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: for something else, and this is one of the great
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: conversations that I have with folks who are skeptical. First
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: and foremost, if people don't believe in crystal energy and
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: only want to talk about the science of rocks, That's
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: all we have to talk about. I'm not here to
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: convince anyone. I am not proselytizing. When I'm at my
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: day job, I'm only talking science. When people bring up
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: the mystical stuff, I'm like, you know, there are lots
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: of traditions around the world here. I'm here to represent
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: mineralogy here. I am representing the history of this collection.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: But that's a great conversation. Maybe we can talk about
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: it through the historic and cultural lens. But, you know,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not there to talk crystal energy per se. But
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: when people who are skeptical want to have that conversation,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite ways to do it is kind
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: of framed in this idea of mineral as metaphor. Like
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: we don't have to believe in a concrete identifiable and
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: measurable mechanism at play, but we can view it through
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: this lens of this becomes a touchstone, a symbol, a
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: stand in for something else, whether that is a kind of,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: you know, cultural lexicon that we're reading it through, whether
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: it is a personal one. And when we start to
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: think of it in terms of metaphor, then all of
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: a sudden the language of geology is helpful. You know,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: if we start looking at the primary processes through which
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: rocks and minerals are generated as igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: we can see maybe a kind of relationship to their
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: effects in healing. Now, I'm not going to say that
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I can objectively measure that if a mineral is formed
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: through secondary or sedimentary processes, it has this specific energetic
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: outcome that I can measure and test and repeat in
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: a lab. Nobody can do that. That's not a thing.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: But I can say, when I look at people's descriptions
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: of things, and they're writing about their personal experiences or
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: their channeled messages from minerals of secondary origin, wow, doesn't
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: it seem to correlate to what we know about the
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: formation process. Couldn't we read that as a metaphor, as
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: a symbol? And so if I view it through that lens,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: it becomes really inspiring. And I love kind of figuring
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: these little things out, whether it's, you know, aha moments
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: about something's crystal structure. And there are some like bizarre
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: ones that pop up all the time. Beryl, for example,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite mineral science, like, crystallography kinds of
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: facts that I learned. So barrels, when they're different colors,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: we know them as like emerald, morganite, aquamarine, helidor, gaussianite
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: are a few different varieties of barrel. Barrels belong to
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: a category of silicates we call cyclo silicates. So cyclo
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: means ring. So we have like a little circular structure
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: of silica and then all the other stuff, aluminum, beryllium
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: attached around that. And some cyclo silicates stack up. So
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: the rings are all in line with one another. They
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: form kind of like these almost like molecular tubes or
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: channels in their crystal structure. And some have a spongiform texture. So,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: you know, they kind of alternate them. So there's not,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: you know, clear channels through which things move. From the
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: beginning of like people writing about crystals, when aquamarine is
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: defined and when barrels generally, greenish ones, are written about,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: we see them related to water, you know, safe travel
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: with water They're used in healing practices where they're placed
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: in water or water is poured over them. There's this
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: like strong link to water and the word aquamarine means
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: sea water because of its color. But beryl is unusual
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: because almost all beryl, aquamarines in particular, have non-essential water
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: not part of their crystal structure but trapped in their
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: crystal structure. So single free flowing molecules of water can
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: move in those channels created by their cyclosilicate structure. And
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: we have for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, connected barrels broadly,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: but aquamarine in particular, to water, maybe because of its color.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: But then there's this hidden water in there. Aquamarine is
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: associated with movement and flow. It was carried for safe travel.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Think about mercury and movement and travel being interrelated. We
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: think about the way water flows. It is shaped by
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: its container. And these are things that translate to modern
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: energetic interpretations of what the healing properties are There's this
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: constant through line. And it's like in the last decade,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: someone figured out with powerful microscopy that there is not
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: essential water in almost any piece of barrel you're going
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: to pick up. It's not part of the chemical formula.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: It's like your free gift with purchase. It just happens
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: to be in there as long as the barrel formed
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: in the right environment. And it really feels as if
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: that free flowing molecule or two of water that could
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: be in a given channel is doing the same thing
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: that people have been saying about Aquamarine for so long.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I love that. That was awesome. I love that type
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: of shit, though. Maybe that stuff is the stuff that
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: makes me scratch my head. I'd be like, oh, did
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: they know this? I don't know. That's cool, though. Eric,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: do you have anything before I keep going?
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: I kind of do, yeah. Nicholas, something you said just
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: kind of triggered a thought in my mind, and I
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: guess when you were talking about the formation process, how
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: do you feel about, like in practice and ritual or
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: in energy work, if someone were to use like a
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: man-made diamond versus a natural diamond found within the earth,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: or even a little bit further, something that's completely... man-made,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: like goldstone or something like that? Can you tell the
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: difference energetically?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: To answer this question effectively, I think we have to
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: address something else first. So let's start with this piece
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: about what is crystal energy? What do we mean when
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: we use this expression? Because it's going to kind of color,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: I think, so much of this answer and maybe kind
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: of open up to the rest of the conversation. So
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: crystals by definition have very rigorous chemistries, compositions, structures. They
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: have a regular and repeating composition. It's the same ingredients,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: more or less, you know, tiny imperfections, but we have
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: a repeatable and predictable formula that it's going to be
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: made from. So quartz is always alpha silicon dioxide, SiO2.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Quartz is never something else. It's always going to be that.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Now that, that little bit of silica is also arranged
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: in the same shape all the time. It creates a
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: symmetrical and repeating structure that we call a crystal lattice.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: This property of repetition is sometimes known as periodicity, but this,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: this like combination of always the same ingredients, always the
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: same structure yields something that is geometrically and chemically very perfect,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: very coherent or harmonized. And so, if we take a
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: step back and we think about like, what is matter?
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: What is energy? You know, most matter is, I mean,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: all matter is mostly empty space. The little bits of
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: solid things that are in it are not so solid.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: First off, they're not stationary. They're moving. Every particle of
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: everything is in constant motion. We've got, you know, our, our,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: cloud of electrons which exist more as probabilities rather than
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: you know mappable orbits in the center we've got these
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: nuclei in our atoms that are filled with protons and
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: usually neutrons and the interaction of these things in the
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: motion they're in generates electromagnetic fields everything with form generates
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: an electromagnetic field this is a non-negotiable this is just
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: the way it is. The more organized something is in
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: its makeup, the more organized its electromagnetic field. Can I
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: prove that has anything to do with crystal energy? No,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: but I do think it serves as a helpful model
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: for explaining what could be happening. Our non-physical makeup, so
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk only in terms of energies we
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: can measure, is highly variable. It is influenced by everything
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: around us, who you're talking to, the temperature of the room,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: what you're thinking about in the back of your mind,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: what you last ate, what you might eat next, the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: smells around you. I mean, we are very fickle, volatile creatures.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: The kind of rhythm of everything in our body doesn't
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: always sync up either. So we're not just one single vibration.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: We are many, many, many of them put together. And
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: on a good day, they might be kind of organized.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: But the energy of a crystal is highly organized. Energy
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: itself has a really open-ended definition. Energy is the capacity
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: to do work. We have kinetic energy, energy that is
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: in motion. We have potential energy, energy that is stored
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: for later. We have energy in the form of electromagnetism
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: and photons and all these different ways we can think
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: about energy. And then importantly to us in the occult
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: and magical and metaphysical spheres is the difference between the measurable,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the gross energies and the subtle or immeasurable energies. And
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: crystals have not always been written about in terms of
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: energy because this kind of adoption of scientific language is
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: really something that has happened in the last century. It's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: not something we see before because energy is not the
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: language of mystics prior to that. Power, phenomena, maybe invisible force.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: In the 19th century, magnetism was all the craze in
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: our occult literature. Everything is defined as a kind of magnetism.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And earlier than that, it's light. And earlier than that,
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: it's other things. And if we go back far enough,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: it's the language of spirit, of intelligence, of invisible forces
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: that are embodied or organized in some other way. But
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: the through line through it all is that crystals have
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: a really defined kind of indwelling force, phenomena, process, energy, spirit.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Insert your word of choice here. So For me, my
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: experiences after doing this work for decades is that a
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: crystal's energy is a result of its formation process, its
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: crystal structure, its chemical composition, as well as to a
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: lesser extent, other ingredients in its kind of defining features.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: How it interacts with light. Is it translucent, transparent, opaque?
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Does it refract singly or doubly? Does it fluoresce? What
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: color is it? What is its luster? What is its cleavage?
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: And all these things that relate to its physical, chemical,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: and optical properties also kind of influence its energy. So
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: when we're talking about man-made things, so here's where we
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: take that kind of background. You know, a piece of quartz,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: as long as it is actual quartz, whether it's a
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: natural one like this or one that is synthetic grown
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: in a lab, it has the same physical, chemical, and
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: optical properties because it always has the same chemical formula
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: arranged in the same crystal structure. So hypothetically, the kind
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: of base resonant frequency, if we could pretend that there
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: was a single sine wave we could draw that is quartz,
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: whether it's pulled out of a mine in Arkansas or
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Brazil or China or South Africa, it is still going
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: to be quartz. There's going to be variation. That's a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: separate conversation. Maybe we'll get to. But the same also
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: holds true if it's grown in a lab. but this
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: is where having a kind of animistic worldview, I think
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: explains where the materialistic leaves off. There is a palpable
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: difference for most people when they pick up a, a synthetic,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: you know, lab grown piece of quartz or Ruby or
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: whatever it might be. There is energy to it in
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: the same way that everything has energy. My, my mug
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: has its energy. My wireless mouse has energy, my mobile device,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: They all, again, the particles, the motion, the electromagnetic fields,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: without a doubt, there's energy involved in that equation. But
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: when we start talking about synthetic crystals versus natural ones,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: we think about the life cycle of a rock or mineral.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: A crystal this large has spent eons forming, probably stayed
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: in the earth for more eons after that. It has
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: seen some stuff. the spirit, the indwelling intelligence of it
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: has witnessed so much, has been entrained by the field,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: by the heart, by the essence of the planet we
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: live on. And something that we grew in a lab
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: in a matter of weeks or months doesn't have that.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it's not quite
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: the same. It doesn't quite have... the same, we'll say,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: experience and authority. Its resume is very short, like it
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: was made, that's its whole resume. So there is something
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: else to that. And then when we start to maybe
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: open the door to things that are simulations, rather than
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: things that are synthesized. So, you know, goldstone and opalite
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: and the so-called reconstituted quartz, which is inevitably just ordinary glass,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: as well as, you know, yttrium aluminum garnets and, you know,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: other things that we grow in a laboratory that are crystals,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: but have no natural counterparts. There is, of course, an
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: energy to these things. Is it the same as a
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: natural crystal? No, that's not a good thing or a
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: bad thing. It's just a thing. If people want to
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: use a piece of goldstone Embrace it for what it is,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: but don't try to sell it to me as a
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: substitute for something natural or more valuable. I think the
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: market has kind of gotten some agreement on some of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: these things, but in the early days of opalite becoming popular,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: there were a lot of people mistakenly using it as
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: a substitute for either moonstone or opal because its optical
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: properties vaguely resemble those things. But it doesn't match the composition,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: the structure, the formation process of those materials. So how
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: can we expect it to do the same things as
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: those materials? And this is where, you know, we can
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: view it only as a metaphor. It is a touchstone.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: It is a symbol. But if we are also viewing
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: the world through the animistic lens, the inspirited lens, and
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: if we want to kind of embrace a scientific rather
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: than scientific language of metaphor, we can't, like all three
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: of those categories, categories don't translate to an object that
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: only resembles something else. If I buy a piece of
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: banded green resin sold to me as malachite, it does
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: not contain any copper carbonate. It doesn't have a monoclinic
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: crystal structure or any crystal structure. It doesn't do the
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: same things because it's essentially plastic. So I would maybe
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: be able to use it as a symbol for something
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to manifest in But do I think it
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: has the same indwelling intelligence as an actual piece of Malachite? Oh,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: hell no.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I never thought about the energy it could acquire throughout
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: its lifetime. I would think that could be, you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: if people put that into consideration, I would think that'd
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: be a big difference between something being made recently. Never
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: thought of it that way. It kind of like sent
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: me like, you really got me thinking on that one.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, because I mean, I could be wrong.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, isn't like obsidian kind of like formed from
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: volcano eruption?
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, lots of rocks and minerals are so.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Obsidian is categorized as a type of extrusive igneous rock.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: So igneous rocks are those that are formed by the
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: cooling of molten rock and its byproducts. We won't complicate
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: it today. So they're intrusive if they're like granite and
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: cool while the magma is still inside the earth. They're
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: extrusive like basalt or pumice or scoria or rhyolite or
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: obsidian when they come out through eruption or extrusion. So
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: in the case of obsidian, Its composition is remarkably similar
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: to that of granite. It's the same basic ingredients. But
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: whereas granite gets a long time to cool and very
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: large crystals form, and we can see the individual grains
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: of feldspar and quartz and biotite and garnet and whatever
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: else might be in there, with obsidian, it cools so
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: rapidly that there's no time for any crystallization, any significant
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: crystallization to take place. And so it is categorized as
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: a glass, but it is a very mineral dense glass.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: It is not the same as the glass in our windscreen.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: It has a different composition. It definitely has a very
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: different formation process. And yeah, it is often really young.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I can, I remember it was maybe like the second
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: month I had this university job in collections management. I
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: opened a random box of rocks in the attic to
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: assess the number of problems in storage and And I'm
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: carefully pulling out geological hand specimens. These are like rocks
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: that are palm-sized or hand-sized that you can use as
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: teaching tools. And a lot of them have had their
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: labels separated from them, so I'm carefully trying to marry
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: them back together. And I come across a piece of obsidian.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: And this is probably one of the single events that
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: has made me feel my age or older. There's a
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: handwritten note beside it. And it was from a volcanic
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: eruption in 1989. And I am made before 1989. So yes,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: I'm older than rocks. Not very many rocks, but I
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: am older than at least some rocks. I'm older than
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: this rock. And it was just this wild reconciliation that
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: we think of geology in terms of deep time. We
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: think in terms of millions and billions of years. Sometimes
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: the oldest extant rocks on Earth are billions of years old.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Somewhere in this room, I have a very small piece
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: of Acasta Nice, which is the oldest still extant rock
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: on the planet. And it is billions, plural, of years old.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Crazy to me. And then also, you can pick up
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: a piece of obsidian from 1989 and be older than
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: a rock. You can witness a volcanic eruption. and see
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: rock form before your eyes. But, you know, where were
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: all the raw ingredients for that? They were inside the mantle.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: They've been part of the earth since the beginning of
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: the earth, which does feel very different to, you know,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: I collected some materials and melted it down myself and
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: made a new rock. Those, those don't quite carry the
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: same processes, the same weight, the same, we'll say kind
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: of experiential birth.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: That's how I was going to get out with, picking
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: this one just because of how long it's been around
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and just the way it was created you can't tell
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: me you're getting the same thing out of a fake
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: version I just I don't know sorry to cut you
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: off but that's exactly where I was going with why
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I even asked just to make sure wanted to make
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: sure I was talking about the right.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Thing yeah totally that's it spot on the money I think.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah really interesting I never would have thought
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: of that honestly I don't know why I haven't before Um, Eric,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: was there anything you wanted to ask?
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: I'm still digesting his last.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: It was funny. Your question ended up, uh, him going into, uh,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: ended up answering a few of my next questions. So
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: they're like, throw me off to a perfect timing though.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: That was amazing. How you pull that over. Cause that
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: was actually, my next thing was to start asking about energy.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: So, uh, sometimes, sometimes we got to, Sometimes we really
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: have to take this step back and lay that down
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: and work to better understand it. I do see some
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: chats coming in about using faux crystals and other applications.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is totally it. We grow quartz in
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: a lab because we can make it at a higher
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: rate of precision than mining it. We can ensure that
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: our electronic devices are more consistent when we grow it
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: in a laboratory. And I have a few observations you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: autoclave style pieces of quartz in my collection. I almost
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: grabbed one for this too. And I thought, what are
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: the chances we're going to spend much time talking about
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: lab-grown quartz? And here we are. And it's like fascinating.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I think a really good analogy that I learned from
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: one of my gym therapy mentors is that it's like
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: having a stained glass window with no light behind it.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: It is still a stained glass window. It is, you know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: we still observe the pattern. We still experience an energy
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: to it. But without the light behind it, you're not
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: getting the full experience. And for me, that light behind
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: it is the kind of accretion of intelligence from it
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: having been part of the earth for whatever amount of
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: time it has been, by being formed by the earth.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: But if we want to view this through an occultist's lens,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: that can actually be an advantage. Crystals have their own
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: innate intelligence. Every rock or mineral or stone or fossil
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: or gem that you pick up by virtue of its,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: of its life, you know, metaphorical life, um, has a
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: spirit inside it. But if you're in the habit of working, uh,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: with like creating artificial servitor spirits or other kinds of,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: you know, thought forms and things, and you want them
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: to have a spirit vessel and you want it to
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: be a kind of inconspicuous one, um, that looks like
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: a crystal or happens to be a crystal for some reason,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: you want to link it to crystal energy. I actually
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: think lab-grown crystals are really good options for this because
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: there's not much it's got to compete with to take
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: residence there. It is more or less unoccupied. So there's
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: a great way that we can kind of use the
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: lab-created and the simulated stuff in those regards. Are natural
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: crystals good spirit vessels? They certainly can be, but I
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: think we have to be more conscientious about the nature
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: of the spirits we're working with. and how we want
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: to marry those things together. If I get a piece
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: of lab-grown quartz from the local crystal store or online,
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: it is a very blank slate. It is very easy
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: to program. It is very easy to kind of install
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: that intelligence, that spirit, that purpose in. but then I
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: am responsible for maintaining it I think a natural crystal
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: because of its kind of energetic resonance and soundness is
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: going to do a lot of the hard work for
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: me if I can work in a way that is
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: already congruent with with what it does.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Something I wanted to ask, I was even
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: thinking about it a little bit with even stuff being
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: older and not, you know, man-made. Crystals, you know, do
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: you touch on it about like how it could actually like,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: you know, they say it can store energy actually, not energy,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: store code or information in them. I mean, do you
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: think that's kind of like it can also be, you know,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: a difference between being around a thousand years or, you know,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: 10 minutes?
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. So there are a couple of points of
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: interest here. So the grandfather of the modern crystal healing
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: movement was a gentleman by the name of Marcel Vogel.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: And Vogel was a research scientist with IBM. He worked
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: in R & D for 27 years. He was basically
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: a self-taught genius, taught himself to read before kindergarten, like
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: crazy intelligent. By the time he was a teenager, he
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: was one of the world's experts in bioluminescence and cold
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: phosphor pigments. And it created some of the first commercially
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: viable cold phosphor pigments. In other words, things that glow
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: in the dark without being exothermic, without having a heat-inducing reaction.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: And as a grown-up, got recruited to work in IBM
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: and do R & D for computer stuff. When he
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: retired from that, He founded an organization called Psychic Research International.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: And although he was exploring psychic phenomena, his thing that
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: he was most famous for was crystal healing. And he
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: developed specific tools. They were quartz crystals cut with a
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: very precise kind of geometry to achieve very precise kinds
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: of goals. But his background of working with quartz as
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: oscillators and silicon chips, which are crystalline, but they are not,
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: Silica silicon is you know an element on the periodic
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: table silica is a compound made from different elements on
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: the periodic table So but he he found what he
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: believed to be the underlying mechanism for why crystals can
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: store energy or information And it so far we've talked
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: about the perfection in crystals They have a perfect and
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: regular and rhythmic composition and structure and all the rest
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: but it is because nature is perfectly imperfect and or
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: imperfectly perfect, take a pick, that crystals have this ability
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: to store information. And the reason we use a lab-grown
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: kind of silicon as opposed to other things is because
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: we can dope it with certain kinds of defects in
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: the crystal lattice. And these defects are almost like you
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: get one ion that moves somewhere else or is missing altogether,
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: or a pair of ions retain the right Ionic charge,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: you know, net neutral in the crystal structure, or you
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: get electrons that wander away and squeeze someplace else. It's
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: like taking a book off a bookshelf. You leave an
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: empty place for something to come in there. And so
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: little packets of energy, electrons can be kept in there
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: temporarily or long term. And this was how he described
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: what is essentially responsible for crystals being programmable, the way
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: they can store or be imprinted or charged with a
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: given intention or energy or vibration. And this is, I think,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: part of what we experience with the kind of inherent wisdom,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: the kind of ancient vibe that a crystal has is
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: because it has stored a lot. It has seen a lot.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: It has witnessed a lot. We can also maybe kind
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: of overlap a little bit with this idea of like
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: the stone tape theory. The original proponent of which I
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: can't remember his name, but it was an attempt at
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: reconciling why old structures, particularly stone structures, are filled with
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: paranormal phenomena. and that it might actually be the kind
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: of crystal lattice of the stones, their electromagnetic properties and
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: other things, their acoustic properties, kind of replaying these moments
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: in time. And in the late 80s, there was a
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: material scientist and solid-state chemist who took this idea and
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: specialized it further with the lattice of quartz with a
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: book that he called The Secret Language of Stones. And
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: you can really see the connection between Marcel Vogel's original
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: theories behind crystal lattices as data storage and this stone
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: tape theory. So when we experience that indwelling spirit, intelligence, perspective,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: whatever it might be coming from the crystal, some of it,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: I think, is a reflection of us. Crystals are natural
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: reflectors of things. So we're experiencing a relationship. It's a dialogue.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: we're also tapping into this stuff that is stored, that
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: is intrinsic to the crystal because of its geological history,
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: its social history, because of all of those other components
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: to it. And we can learn to work with that
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: in several ways. We can store and imprint our own energies,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: our own magical goals, our own kind of occult frequencies
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: that we want to use for later purposes. We can
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: use that as a collaborative method of almost like partnering
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: with the indwelling spirit of the stone. Hey, this is
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: what I'd like to imprint because this is what we're
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: working on. And then we can also use it to
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: maybe even tap into and extract from the wisdom, the
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: memory that's inherent to the stone that is now a
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: kind of immovable part of its personality, so to speak.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: And all of this kind of comes together. And when
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: we use that really kind of clinical energy healing perspective
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: of programming a crystal, we can view it through one lens.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: But if we also take that animistic lens, we can
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: see how it also kind of explains the inherent life
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: or consciousness in a crystal. And so I like to
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: kind of keep a foot in both worlds simultaneously and
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: see them parallel to one another.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: That was awesome. Thanks for explaining that whole history behind that.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I had no idea, actually. That was great. My pleasure. Eric,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: did you have anything?
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: I have so many questions, Nick. I mean, I could
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: just ask questions all day long. Nicholas, I think if
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: there was one crystal that has been mentioned most frequently
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: during this conversation, it has been quartz. And A lot
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: of people say that quartz is the universal crystal. It
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: can do everything. It can do all the jobs. Why
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: do you think that is? Is it because we have
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: so much of it? It's just the most common thing
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: we always come across? Or is there something particularly special
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: just about regular quartz that lends itself to be able
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: to do all these things?
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I think we have to... kind of accept the fact,
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: embrace the fact that it's a little of column A
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: and a little of column B. Quartz is the most
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: common single mineral species in the Earth's crust. If we
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: view things by category, by closely related families, feldspars are
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: actually collectively more than quartz, but they are many different
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: species together in that family. So there is a lot
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: of quartz available. Quartz is an essential component of a
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: lot of really important rocks in our history. We can
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: think about flint and sandstone and rhyolite and granite and,
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: you know, all these things that we use for industrial
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: and agricultural and scientific and architectural uses. You know, these are,
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: these are like essential elements that have quartz in them.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: They're just part of human history. So we have a
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: long relationship with it, but I think there's also something
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: very different to picking up a piece of quartz rich sandstone.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe, maybe you're lucky enough to go visit
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Stonehenge and you see the big giant, um, standing stones
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: out there with a big lentil stones on top and they're,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: they're massive. They are like 97% quartz. That's a lot
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: of quartz, um, But it doesn't feel the same as
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: getting a transparent stone like this. When you find a
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: piece of natural quartz, imagine you know nothing about rocks
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: and minerals. Imagine the science of geology has not yet
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: been birthed and you're digging through a place and you
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: stumble upon a loose piece of quartz or the outline
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: of one embedded in stone. Or you crack open a
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: rock that feels unusually light and it's hollow and lined
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: with quartz crystals inside. There is something really remarkable about
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: quartz that has made it stand out in our kind
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: of collective unconscious. There is a preternaturally large, we'll say
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: mythic language and poetic language specifically about quartz or quartz
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: crystal or rock crystal or any of the names. that
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: it has been given over the eons. And so I
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: think part of the universalism is that it is common,
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: it is accessible, it's everywhere, but it's also really freaking magical.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: Like if I pick up a piece of and another
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: common mineral like feldspar. Most feldspar is, to someone who's
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: not a geologist at least, a lot less exciting. You know,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: moonstones and labradorites and sunstones notwithstanding, but they're like a
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: tiny percentage of what most feldspar is. They're not gonna
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: do much for you, but the kind of beautiful symmetry
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: that hexagonal structure, it's like holding a three-dimensional mandala. There's
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: something that I think humans have always found innately mystical
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: about this, and then add to it its unusual physical
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: and structural properties. Quartz is piezoelectric, so when it's put
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: under stress, it generates a tiny electrical charge. It is triboluminescent,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: so if I took two pieces of quartz I didn't
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: care very much about in a dark room and rubbed
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: them together briskly or struck them together, they're going to
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: emit green flashes of light. They're not sparks, They are
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: just photons being released from stressing out its crystal structure.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Quartz has a number of other really remarkable properties. And
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: as a result, it's been kind of regarded as something
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: sacred and holy and other since humans have found it.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: There is really compelling evidence that the earliest evidence of
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: hominids using quartz crystals might be something like quarter of
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: a million years old or older. So we're looking at
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: not Homo sapiens. We are looking at our ancestors intentionally
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: collecting quartz crystals, intentionally transporting quartz crystals, intentionally burying the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: dead with quartz crystals. They had access to so many
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: other geological materials, but the fact that they would collect
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: things from someplace else and trade them or carry with
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: carry them or travel with them or, you know, whatever
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: it might be, meant that they regarded it as something
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: mystical and other. And I think we as modern humans
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: are not very original. We've inherited that trait, like it's
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: stuck with us. I think the kind of universality of
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: quartz is in part its ubiquity, but also in part
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: the baggage. We have worked with this crystal for so long,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: above and beyond just about any other species. Even if
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: you look at the earliest stone tools, which I've Very, very,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: very recently, there's some new and very compelling evidence that
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: shows that as early as Australopithecus afarensis, although scientists don't agree,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: but it might be upwards of 3.3 million years ago,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: hominids were using stone tools. The stone tools they were
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: using are flint, and flint is mostly quartz, almost entirely quartz.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: So this connection we have to the geological substance that
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: is alpha-silicon dioxide goes back to before the birth of
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: our species. It's in us to have this connection to quartz. Now,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: if I want to also maybe find something in the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: scientific side, other than its unusual properties, Marcel Vogel is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: a name that is going to keep coming up. He
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: is the father of liquid crystal systems. If you've ever
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: used an LCD screen in your life, you can thank Vogel.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: And Certainly the three of us grew up in an
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: era when everything was an LCD screen and now you
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: have to find an archaic calculator to interact with one.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: But the term liquid crystal was coined by Marcel first
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: hypothetically and then to explain actual scientific phenomena he was
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: investigating and technology he was creating. And when he began
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: to extrapolate from that and apply it to his work
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: with crystals, he was looking at quartz, alpha-silicon dioxide, SiO2,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: Although if we actually look at a molecule of it,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: it's more like O-S-I-O. And he found that it is
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: almost like, we'll say enharmonic to, to use a musical term,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: it is related to almost like a different octave of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: maybe another very common molecule on earth, H2O or H-O-H.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: And so he started exploring the relationship between quartz and water,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: the ability that quartz's field has to entrain water. He
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: is like long before Dr. Emoto was taking beautiful pictures
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: of ice crystals, Vogel was exploring this in the IBM labs.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: He was just for fun teaching courses on creativity to
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: like the younger generations of scientists coming up in research
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: and development for IBM. And they were doing experiments with
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: water and consciousness and breath and projecting platforms. And I mean,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: it's incredible, but he found that there is something about
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: quartz and its kind of anharmonic structure to water that
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: makes them so willing to interact. And we are mostly water.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: Water is in every part of us. And if it's not,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: we've got a problem. We think about our makeup as
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: being about 70% water on average, more when we're in utero,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: less when we're very old, but Here is a really
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: fun statistic. If you tally up all of the molecules
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: that you're made out of by molecular count, the number
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: of each kind of molecule in your body, water molecules
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: are extraordinarily small. You want to take a guess what
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: percentage of all the molecules in your body are water molecules?
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, don't they tell us it's like 70%?
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: That's by mass. But by molecular count... more than 99%
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: of all of the molecules that you are made out
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: of are water molecules. It just takes that many of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: them to equal 70% by mass. So if you take
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: a tally of every individual discrete particle that you are,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: most of them, almost all of them, in fact, are
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: water molecules by count. So imagine what happens when we
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: bring something that is anharmonic to that, that has a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: similar kind of structural resonance also behaves in remarkably similar ways.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: There's got to be some kind of resonance, some harmony,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: some coherence between the two, and that I think is
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: also part of why we as humans resonate with quartz
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: in particular.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: Something I wanted to ask or kind of bring up earlier,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: and this is an even better time to ask now.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I have heard multiple times, I'm probably sure
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: I've done it myself multiple times as well, when, you know,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: doing stuff with crystals, that if you want to kind
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: of like remove any residual energy or, you know, kind
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: of cleanse it before you use it, you know, running
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: it underwater or, you know, putting it out in a stream,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: somehow water's involved. And I was wondering because I know
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: like water is also known for being able to like
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: hold information or code in it. So I was like,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: if you're doing water, you know, running water or putting
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: water on those crystals, could you possibly actually be doing
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: something to the crystal?
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So cleansing crystals is a means of kind
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: of discharging the accumulated memories, information, energy, whatever you want
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: to call it. And there are a lot of methods.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Water is great as long as the crystal itself is
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: water stable. So perfect for quartz, bad for halite. You
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: can do it with your agate, but if you do
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: it with your chalcanthite, you'll have a toxic bowl of
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: blue liquid. So we always want to make sure that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: we're cleansing things in a way that is safe and sane.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: But as far as water goes, I think water is
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: this universal solvent, both physically as well as energetically. Think
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: of how many rituals of ablution, of cleansing, of purification
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: around the world use water. Think about holy water. Think
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: about baptism. Think about cleansing in holy rivers and springs.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: So there is this kind of universal purificatory quality that
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: it has. but there's also a deeper relationship that I
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: think crystals and water have. And it's this ability they
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: have to inform one another, to organize one another. A
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: lot of quartz, not all of it, but a lot
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: of quartz is made through hydrothermal processes where we have
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: this super heated, super pressurized water. It is much hotter
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: than boiling, but because it's in the earth, there's no
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: open space for it to expand. So it never boils.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: So it dissolves silica and other stuff. And eventually as
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: it gets room and cools off, loses energy, it starts
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: to deposit those minerals. So a lot of quartz forms
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: out of relationship with water. In fact, the word crystal
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: refers to the fact that in ancient Greece, there was
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: a school of thought because quartz could be found in
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: the mountains where ice and snow existed perennially, that when
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: they brought this hunk of cold, clear stuff down from
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: the mountains, it never melted, that it was somehow permanently
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: congealed water. And so the word crystal was, in Greek
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: is related to the same root as cryos, meaning ice
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: or frozen. So it was something made miraculously solid. And
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: they weren't entirely right. They also weren't entirely wrong. Water
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: was involved. Those kinds of deposits, as alpine type fissures
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: are hydrothermal um production zones but um they they didn't
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: quite get it and there were actually some contemporaneous writers
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: that were like but we also find quartz in very
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: hot places like in the levant so this theory can't
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: can't be true because there wasn't any ice there um
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: so uh we still have seen however this kind of
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: morphological and poetic relationship between crystals and water. So I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: think water is a really wonderful way to cleanse our crystals,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: but we can also use crystals to kind of charge
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: our water up. And this is not just a new
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: age practice. This is a very, very ancient practice. You
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: read any medieval lapidary, a text about stones, and they're
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: going to show you a bunch of different ways of
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: obtaining the curative powers of crystals. Oftentimes it involved soaking
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: them in water or wine, which, you know, contains a
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: high percentage of water in it. And then using the
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: resulting infusion for whatever the method might be. They will
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: also tell you to do that with a lot of
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: things that are unsafe to put in your water, so
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: please don't poison yourself. If you don't know the chemistry involved,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: don't put your rocks in water. It's just a general
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: rule of thumb. When in doubt, leave it out.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: That was great. That was awesome. We got a lot
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: of these history lessons from you today. Thank you very much.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: My pleasure.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, this is great. Eric, do you have anything
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: before I keep.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: Going? No, I've asked many questions. I'll leave you some
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: room to ask some questions.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Too, Nick. All right, well, you kind of, I was
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: going to get into activating or programming. I mean, I
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: think you kind of talked on that a little bit.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else you think you could add to that?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe about like with like activation programs on crystals or
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the idea of that and programming them?
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Let's, let's like get a little deeper into things
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: here and talk about processes. So, you know, at a
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: high level we can understand that programming crystals is imbuing
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: them with a kind of energy or intention. You know,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: maybe it's outcome focused, maybe it's process focused. Our, our
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: practices are going to look different. That's fine. I'm not
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: here to tell anyone they're right or wrong unless it's,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: unless it's science. And then like, No, actually that doesn't
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: form that way is, is what you're going to get
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: out of me. Not, it doesn't form that way. And
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: your magic doesn't work. Those, those are two separate phenomena.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: So no one's going to come and police your magic. But, um,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: as far as like how we do this, there are
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of different methods. So if we look in
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: the kind of new agey metaphysical Healy Feely traditions, a
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: lot of it is thought-based. We might generate a specific idea, image, intention,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: short phrase or affirmation, and we are somehow transmitting that
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: into the crystal. So, you know, we might hold it
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: to the brow or to the heart or some other
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: place that is a good focal point for our consciousness
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: and visualize or recite if we're using an affirmation and
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: kind of project it in. Marcel Vogel taught a technique
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: that used the breath, which I absolutely adore. And we
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: kind of do this internalizing of our intention and whatever
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: that might be. So, you know, being a bestselling author
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: or just manifesting more peace in our lives or making
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: it through highway traffic without road rage, you know, whatever,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: whatever real world application you need, start with something practical
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: and like visualize that outcome. Or if you're a more
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: verbal person, formulate a short word or phrase that you
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: can use. And then imagine that with the breath, you're
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: inhaling that intention. You're inhaling that image or outcome. Let
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: every cell of your being resonate with that. Then and
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: only then are you prepared to transmit it to the crystal.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: And he taught a method of using the breath for this.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: You kind of use a short burst or pulse of
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: air through the nose. It was a yogic breathing technique
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: that he learned and borrowed and modified for this. So
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: you'd hold the crystal up. With his fancy faceted crystals,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: you'd like very specific ways you'd touch the faces. But
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: if you have an ordinary piece of quartz, I don't
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: think it really matters. If you've got a polished stone,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: just hold it however you want. You're going to imagine
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: filling your lungs, not just with air, but with that energy,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: with that intention, with that vibration, and then release it
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: in a short burst of air through the nose. If
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: you do this with enough diaphragmatic force, but not so
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: much that you're going to burst something, please don't rupture
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: a blood vessel or an eardrum or anything like that.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: you actually generate a tiny ionic charge. You ionize the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: air molecules coming through your nose because of the resistance
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: of them passing through your nostrils. And that, according to
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: Marcel at least, would interact with the crystal lattice due
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: to its piezoelectric properties. I don't know if we can
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: actually prove that, but breath as a vehicle for consciousness
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: is a very, very ancient thing, very ancient idea. So
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: I think it's a really great way to do it.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: But you could also program something with a particular astrological
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: or astronomical transit or phenomenon, putting your crystals under the
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: full moon, under an eclipse, at a specific conjunction. You
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: could program them in a sacred place, taking a crystal
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: with you when you go visit Stonehenge, because you cannot, unfortunately,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: put a piece of that sarsen in your bag without
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: ending up in jail. Bring the vibes back by programming
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: a crystal with it. If you do a spell or
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: a ritual or a deep meditation or journey work, you
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: can have a crystal as part of that to be
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: kind of charged up. And this is essentially the art
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: of like talismanic magic is, right? We're harnessing some kind
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: of force, personal or cosmic, and we're imbuing it into
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: an object, almost like it's a battery holding onto that.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: Like it's a USB thumb drive that's now gonna retain
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: that imprint that you can distribute as much as you want.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: If we think about our crystals being as open and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: receiving as that, it's great. But my little caveat is this.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: I use the expression like a feral animist in that
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of rules, but I do
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: acknowledge that there's an inherent agency or intelligence to all things.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: Instead of viewing this as an inert piece of matter,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: it's not just a thumb drive I'm going to download
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: or upload something onto. actually going to use the mental
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: framework that I'm inviting the intelligence of this stone to
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: collaborate on this project. I guess the stone has the
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: option to reject that at any point, but it's very
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: rare in my experience for that to happen. And as
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: long as I'm willing to think of it as extending
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: an invitation instead of imposing my will, I'm probably going
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: to get more out of that relationship than just trying
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: to make it happen.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: That was great. I love all those. I did not
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: know about that thing with blowing through your nose. That
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: is wild. I even saw, like, Eric's face.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: Like, what?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, but he's going to get lost
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: on that one, too. That just blew me away. I
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, I've never heard of that. That is wild. Uh,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: one thing I did want to kind of get into,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I think you kind of slightly mentioned like scrying earlier.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: And that is, uh, this is very interesting. Um, I
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: think when you start getting into the crystals and then
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: like other stuff with it, I know I have, uh,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: I covered scrying and I didn't really touch on the whole, like,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: cause I do think, and that's kind of what I
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: want to ask you that there could be a lot
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: more play even with the crystal, but like, even when
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: it comes to scrying, um, And knowing how the brain works,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: and if you're, like, adding smoke or dim light and candles,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: your brain is going to start somehow producing an image
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: for you to grasp. Anyway, and sometimes it can be
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: a little off, and you may start thinking you're seeing
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: something different than what's really there. Can the crystals actually
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: start playing into that? Because, like, I understand, like, there
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: could be, first off, there's expectation in whatever you're doing,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: so that could already kind of, like, formulate an outcome. But, like,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming, like, these crystals, you know, because of color,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: color can affect, like, a certain mood or give a
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: certain feeling. The structure, the way light reflects off of that,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: is there, like, a bunch of stuff that even the
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: crystal itself could even be, I guess, maybe even aiding
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: with understanding how we're having these visions or these experiences
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: with crystals and the incense and all that?
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, scrying is a truly ancient
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: art form.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: And we find humans doing some sort of divination by
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: looking at, into, or beyond a reflective object going back
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: pretty darn far. Crystals don't actually become the popular medium
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: until like medieval and even more popular in the early
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: modern period. Some of the earliest scrying tools are like
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: bodies of water, natural or in miniature crystals. But people
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: would scry in everything. Silver spoons, polished fingernails, gemstones set
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: in rings. You can get super creative when it comes
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: to scrying. So there are a lot of techniques, a
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: lot of methods, and different traditions have different rules around it.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Because I don't belong to a particular tradition of scrying,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: I can DIY a lot of methods and just explore firsthand.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: And I think you've touched on some really salient points.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: The human mind is pretty darn hardwired to recognize patterns,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: and we really like seeing figures and faces and stuff.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: The phenomenon of pareidolia is certainly part of it. If
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: you're looking in a flawless sphere of transparent glass as
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: your crystal ball, there's less optical phenomena to look at. Sometimes,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: for some people's brains, that's actually ideal. There's no background
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: visual noise to distract you. other folks like myself prefer
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: to have this kind of internal landscape of stuff to
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: look at, whether it's a natural crystal or a polished sphere,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: same end result, really. But the material we choose is
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: going to influence the outcome in a lot of ways.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: There's the kind of social and psychological way, the symbolic way,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: but I also think we have to embrace the kind
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: of energetics that crystals bring to it as well. polishing
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: a mirror of obsidian, which has no kind of overreaching
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: crystal structure, is a very different mood than scrying with
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: a piece of transparent quartz or a polished slab of
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: iridescent labradorite or whatever else it might be that we're
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: working with. But when it comes to scrying, I actually
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: think there are three different mechanisms responsible for how we
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: get whatever the vision or We'll say information might be
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: because we don't all see things when we scry. Some
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: people are wired a little differently. And, you know, first
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: and foremost, from the kind of psychological model, scrying becomes
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: a means of externalizing the subconscious. Whatever's happening below that
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: kind of subliminal threshold can be projected. The abstract things
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: we're looking at or experiencing, we interpret through the lens
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: of whatever's happening there. And that can be a really
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: powerful means of achieving information. First off, our subconscious is
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: recognizing and storing so much information that we are never
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: consciously aware of ever. You know, our consciousness is said
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: to be aware of something like five to seven bits
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: of information at a given time. And, and our brains
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: are processing like in the like megabytes level of information
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: in any given second. So, Some of that stuff could
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: be coming forth when we engage any kind of psychic, divinatory,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: or intuitive skill. So that externalization is one option. We
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: can also view the crystal as a kind of antenna. Crystals,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: by virtue of some of their other kind of physical
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: and structural properties, work almost like antennas in that they
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: send and receive on a variety of wavelengths. Think about
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: that crystal lattice in comparison to the antennas we use
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: in our devices. If we go back in time, if
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: you had a mobile phone, it had an external antenna.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: And for that antenna to work, it was like three
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: feet long. And I'm dating us, I think, I'm sorry.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: And I remember when I got my first cell phone,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: it was like the first generation that did not have
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: a visible external antenna, except for like this much. You know,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: think of like the Nokia bricks. And eventually that was
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: phased out entirely. They still had antennas, but they were
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: analog antennas. They just got smaller because they quilled them up.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: Where's the antenna on this? It's inside. It takes about
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: as much space as my thumbnail. And it's what's called
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: a fractal antenna. It's based on a repeating, tessellating, periodic,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: geometric structure used to fill in all the space. It's
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: like a 2D crystal lattice. And comparing what our devices
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: do today, you can be writing an email, listening to
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: a podcast, you know, put yourself on mute on a
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: conference call all on the same device at the same time.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: It is sending and receiving on many different signals simultaneously.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: I remember when my college era cell phone, just before
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: I got a phone call or a text message, it
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: would interrupt the radio, you know, make this kind of
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: interference pattern because it could only do one thing at
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: a time. Crystals are these kind of like multi-wavelength receiver transmitters.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: So I think they work as means of extending our
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: kind of psychic antennas to receive signals from the universe,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: to transmit signals out from the universe. And so there
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: is this kind of phenomena taking place that enhances our
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: ability to receive some kind of impression or information through it.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: And then thirdly, there's the spirit model that we are
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: either invoking a spirit into, an intelligence into, or the
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: indwelling essence or intelligence of the spirit in the stone
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: is actually providing the information. And this is the model
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: we see in our kind of occult manuals of scrying,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: the kind of grimoire traditions. You've got the crystal setup,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: you've got your triangle of the art, you've got the
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: specific incense that corresponds to the planetary spirit that you
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: want to invoke. And I do believe in the reality
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: of spirits, but I don't think that it negates or
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: precludes the other models. So what is happening when we scry?
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Maybe one, maybe two, maybe all three of those could
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: be taking place at the same time. So for me,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: I like to know what the options are, but when
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: I'm actually engaging in the practice, I'm not super worried
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: about which mechanism is happening. If I just observe and detach, well,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: I guess in the opposite order, if I just detach
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: and then observe, I'm going to get something. I don't,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: I don't really care if it was an angel appearing
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: in my stone that brought it to me or my
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: subconscious going, look at this visual white noise. Let me
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: create meaning out of it. If, if there is a
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: ring of truth, especially if there's an objective and measurable
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: truth in there, that's all I need. And that's good
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: enough for me.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: That was great. That was awesome.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: Nichols.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate that.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Eric, is there a, is there anything you want
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: to ask from the, all that or anything?
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: No, I think I'll save my remaining questions for a
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: future conversation.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was even thinking that too, unfortunately,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: because of the time. We do have to wrap it
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: up soon. But I would like, I would definitely have
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: to get you on again, if you don't mind, Nicholas,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: in the future. There's so many questions I didn't even
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: get to. Absolutely. Luckily, I mean, a lot of the
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: things I think we did talk about kind of on
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: the show, I do think from what I'm getting out
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: of it, from what I got out of it, is
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: also included in your book, so. At least we did
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: kind of touch on stuff on that. One thing I
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: do want to ask you, though, about specifically about the
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: book is what do you think– what was the reason
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: you put this book out? What were you thinking at
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: the time is missing from the community or just from
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: humanity about crystals that you thought was important to put
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: a book out?
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I started my first book– I started writing
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: it in like spring 2014 as kind of a, an
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: intellectual exercise. I was challenging myself to write the book. I,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: I kept saying I was going to write, I didn't
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: actually write the book. I thought I was going to write,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: I wrote something else very, very different. Um, and that,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: that ended up coming out, um, almost 10 years ago.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: It was, uh, fall 20, uh, 2016 is when it
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: came out. That was called the seven archetypal stones, their
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: spiritual powers and teachings. It was like very niche, very esoteric, uh,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: very deep. Um, And it was a fun experience, but
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: I wrote it because it was a topic I wanted
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: to explore. And then I started to pick topics that
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: I taught about frequently, workshops essentially that I had grown
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: to know and love and convert those into books because
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: I could fit so much more in a book than
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: I can in a two-hour class that it seemed like
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: a great kind of model. But it occurred to me
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: that I had never actually written like foundation text for
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: working with crystals. And so by the time my sixth
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: book came around, that was when I pitched this idea
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: for Crystal Basics. And I wanted to be part hands-on
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: and part encyclopedia because oftentimes with at least modern crystal books,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: there's always a compromise. You either get an encyclopedia of
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: crystal properties or you get a working guide for working
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: with crystals. And if there is both, it's always one
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: part of it is truncated. It's really a short list
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: of crystal properties with a deep working guide or a
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: short how-to introductory section before the big giant encyclopedia. And
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: I wanted to make both of them like pretty healthy
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: sized books. It's like 200 pages of activities, of theory,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: of practice, of technique, of grid and elixir making and
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: layouts and that kind of stuff, as well as about
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: 200 pages with 200 crystals A to Z full color
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: throughout in there. That kind of details the physical, psychological,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: and spiritual healing properties. There's a little quick reference guide
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: at the back and an index of healing properties in it.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: So I wrote it because I saw, one, Lacuna in
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: my own catalog. Hey, I've never actually written a foundation book.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: All of mine are very niche topics. What if I
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: just wrote a foundation book? And two, I wanted to
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: provide a really solid reference guide that did both things
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: effectively rather than you having to carry around different books
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: to achieve different goals so that's that's where it came out.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: Of that's great yeah it's an amazing book i've kind
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: of thought of like because i've done a series on
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: the on herbs and then kind of like tied in
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: like the whole science aspect of it i've thought about
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: eventually trying to put that into some sort of like
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: almost very close to what this is really so you
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: know when you sent me this and I saw this,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is like right up my alley. Yeah, very,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: very awesome stuff, man. Thank you very much for coming on, Nicholas.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: I'm really so happy I had you on. You know,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that Eric and Ashley both suggested you as
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: a guest. I couldn't be happier with the discussion that
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: we had today, and I'm very happy I was able
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: to bring that to the listeners and fans of the show.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: Definitely have to have you back on in the future
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: and nerd out on some more stuff. Again, I probably
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: didn't even get through half my questions, honestly. It's because
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: you have such in-depth answers. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Before we wrap it up, is there anything, Eric, that
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: you would like to promote or whatever or let people
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: know about again before we end the show? Yeah.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, let me just say, First of all,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: you guys were making me feel left out because I
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: left my copy of Crystal Basics across the room so
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: I couldn't hold it up with you. But it is
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: an amazing book, and every time I open it up,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: there's just something cool that I find. Like, oh, look
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: at this crystal grid, or look at this aspect of
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: amethyst or something. There's just so much knowledge in there. Nicholas,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: I really... appreciate this conversation again just like the last
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: time i spoke to you you have left me with
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: so much that i'm gonna just sit and think about
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: when i'm in my downtime or when i'm falling asleep
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: i'm gonna be thinking about this stuff so um i
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: love this kind of conversation but yes guys i will
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: be in tallahassee this weekend so if anybody again wants
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: to stop by swamp mystics and Check out my fluid
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: condenser workshop. I will have books there you can buy.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: Or if you are not in the area and you
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: want to grab my book, you can do that on
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: Amazon or through my Etsy shop, which is Spoonful of Magic,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: by the way, if you want to go check out
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: my incense or whatever other weird stuff I make. Other
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: than that, please hop over to my YouTube channel at
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: Eric Arcadian. Like I said earlier, watch a video. comment, like, subscribe,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: do all, click all those buttons.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: I love it. Thank you so much, Eric, for coming on.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Like for sure, just from this show, I'm probably going
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: to be like thinking about so many things that Nicholas
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: brought up. I'll probably end up going down rabbit holes
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: and looking up crazy stuff now. Nicholas, please remind everybody anything,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: you know, remind everybody of anything that you like to
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: promote the book, other books, you know, where they can
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: contact you, anything, please. Yeah.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Thank you to both of you.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: for having me on, for joining me today. Thank you
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: to the audience who's listening. If you want to learn
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: more about my work, theluminouspearl.com has your one-stop shop for
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: all things Nicholas. You can sign up for my newsletter.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: You can check out my upcoming calendar of events. I
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: love to learn. I also love to teach because I
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: love to learn. So I've got classes coming up on
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: crystals and magic during planetary retrogrades. And working with poison
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: plants and Reiki-related topics. So I've got a pretty diverse
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: curriculum that I offer, and you can find all of
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: that on the website. My 11th book, Crystal Divination, just
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: came out with Devin Hunter. If you're interested in that
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: scrying conversation we had, there's so much more in the
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: book that you can check out, but you'll find all
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: the books and ways to contact me over on the website.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you so much again, Nicholas. Uh, look forward
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: to definitely having you on, um, you know, awesome discussion
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: really got me thinking, blew my mind and you're very thorough, man.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: I really, I really appreciate it. Like again, a lot
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: of the history, a lot of the backstory. I mean,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: that was, that was great in itself. So, uh, and
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: everybody else in the chat, they really seem to have
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: really thought you were a great guest. So thank you.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Everybody seems to have thought this
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: was an awesome show. Um, And that's the end of
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: another Occult Rejects. And until the next one, everybody be well. Later.