Cleansing/Clearing your Crystals

I was all set to write about one of my favorite stones, labradorite, or maybe double-terminated quartz crystals, but in the last week I’ve heard variations on the following too many times to ignore:  “I read that you have to wash your crystals in salt water to cleanse them.”  “I heard you have to leave your crystals in a bowl of spring water in the sun for a week.”  “Someone told me you have to…” and the common denominator here (besides crystals, of course) is “you have to.”  We all know that old saying about there being only two things we all “have to” do, and we’re not going to talk about either of those things right now.

There is no one right way to cleanse your crystals.  There are several well-known methods, and as with choosing a stone, the one that feels right to YOU is the one you should use.   It is as far as I’m concerned, anyway, and it’s my blog.  😉  You might use different methods for different stones.  Once you start working with them (and listening to them), they may let you know.  If not, you get to choose.  See what feels right and what works for which stones.

Here are some of those methods:

Rinse your crystal in salt water.  CAUTION: some stones don’t take kindly to salt and salt water.  I would be careful with pearls in salt water.  Soaking some polished stones for a long time has been known to eat the finish right off; I’ve seen it happen to lovely pieces of jasper.  Angelite will get scratched and dinged if you merely look at it funny.  Use common sense.  Using the ocean as your salt water would be awesome; just keep a good grip on the crystal as you put your hand into the water.  Better: get one of those net bags they sell for washing lingerie, and use that.  You could dunk a whole bunch of stones at once with one of those.

Rinse your crystal in fresh water. Using a running stream or river would be very cool.  See above re: holding onto your crystals.  Definitely rinse with fresh water after you’ve used salt water.

Bury your crystal in a bowl of salt.  For how long?  I dunno.  How long feels right to you?

Bury your crystal in the earth.  For how long?  (See answer above.)  Don’t be afraid to put into the earth a crystal you feel has negative energy in it.  To the earth, it’s all just energy: fuel to be used as needed.  You’re not hurting the earth by doing that, and you’ll get a cleansed crystal back.  However, you’ll probably want to rinse it off after that, to clean it — literally.

Leave your crystal out in the sun for a day.  Or an hour.  Or somewhere inbetween.  Caution: leaving crystals in the sun for weeks on end may result in fading.  Amethysts are particularly susceptible to this.  Be sensible; anything left out in the sun for weeks may fade!  Some people will say that sunning your crystals doesn’t cleanse them but (re)charges them; more on that in later in another blog.

Run the crystal through sage smoke.   More on smoke later as well.

One of my faves: leave the crystal out in the sun for a day and in the light of the full moon that night.

How often should you cleanse your crystals?  I would say that if you work with them around, or on, or on behalf of other people (as a healer, for instance) you will want to cleanse them more often than crystals you just wear as jewelry. But how often is right, or enough, or too much?  Again, it’s something you need to feel and discover for yourself.  I’d love to hear from those of you who work with crystals as healers (and those who don’t work as healers too!) regarding how often, and how, you cleanse yours.

Once you’ve cleansed the crystals you probably will want to charge/recharge/activate them.  This fills up the crystals with the energy you want in there.  Using sunlight, moonlight,  smoke, fresh water, or your personal energy are all good ways of charging & activating.  But that’s another blog.

As always, these are my opinions and musings on what works for me.  Your mileage may vary.

Have fun with your stones!

*Please note each Blog is the unique expression of the Blogger and does not speak for The Green Man as an entity…but rather is one of the many diverse colours that make up our Green Man Tribe.