What to do with Your New Crystal Wand

A friend texted me a picture of her recent purchase. It was a really impressive magic wand, made of crystal, wrapped in copper with a piece of malachite, with feathers on one end and the crystal point on the other.

She confessed that she had spent an astronomical amount of money on this acquisition at her local new age shop after lusting after it on the shop’s shelf for more than a year.

She knew it was for her, and she knew she had to take it home, no matter the price.

The problem was, once she got it home, she had not a single idea what to use it for, or what to do with it.

I was introduced to magic wands when I first discovered the New Age. In the 1980s I mined crystals in Arkansas and fashioned some of them into wands. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time.

A crystal shop keeper wanted to buy some of my crystals but not any of my wands. He shared with me the same concern that my friend, the new crystal wand owner, seems to have.

“No one can tell me what a wand with a crystal, or made of a crystal, actually does,” he said to me. “Does the wand amplify the crystal, or direct the energy of the crystal? People are making beautiful wands, but we have no idea what to do with them.”

Back then we didn’t have all the wisdom in the world at our fingertips and in our pockets.

Most of us associate magic wands with Disney, or with Harry Potter, or Hitachi. A simple Google search brought up some amazing resources for the history of magic wands, as well as their uses.

As a tarot person, I associate magic wands with the suit of Wands in the Minor Arcana of tarot. In tarot, the suit of Wands is most often associated with the element of Fire. You can also find a few decks that associate Wands with the element of Air instead.

In elemental magic and Wiccan circles, the wand is used as a tool to summon and banish either the element of Air or Fire at the beginning and end of ceremony.

Crystal wands may be made of all crystal with metal, stone, or feathers attached, as is my friend’s. They may simply be a piece of crystal or stone, either intentional fashioned or naturally occurring. I have a natural selenite wand which I absolutely love. Some crystal wands have a crystal point affixed to a metal or wooden rod.

Magic wands do not always incorporate crystals or stones. Some are fashioned of wood or metal. I have a natural wood wand which was given to me by a friend. It still has its bark; the rough ends have been sanded down.

I once had a teacher tell me that, in the absence of a wand, you can use the index finger of your right hand to summon, focus and direct energy.

Wands like the one my friend has purchased may include intentionally selected wood, stones, and metals that can be used for specific purposes. For example, the malachite on her wand  makes it very good for working with the heart chakra. If one were making a wand for a specific purpose, one might carefully choose the type of wood, stone, metals and feathers. Yet, I think it is fair to say that, with proper intention, one could use any wand for any number of purposes. I even know serious young magicians who have purchased Harry Potter wands and consecrated them for magical uses.

Whether handmade, found in nature, or purchased, I have found many uses for wands in my own practice. The beautiful object d’art that my friend just had to have should be more than an expensive tchotchke on her coffee table.

Here are some ways I commonly use wands as a magical tool. There are countless others which you can find in books and on the internet.

First, as mentioned earlier, I use wands to summon the element of Fire or Air. Typically, I use my wood wand for Fire and my selenite wand for Air. I do this when creating a formal circle for healing or meditation. I also do it if I need a quick burst of energy, inspiration or clarity.

For example, if I need to have a difficult conversation, I may take my selenite wand and point it to my throat chakra and breathe with it for a moment, focusing on bringing energy to clear and activate my throat for positive and effective communication.

If I need to shake off feeling tired or drained, I might take my wood wand and point it at my solar plexus, breathing with it to ‘turn up the fire’ in my internal furnace.

We can use wands to clear and activate all the chakras. Sometimes when doing chakra healing, I feel inclined to move the wand over each chakra in a tight circle as a way of clearly, healing and activating. To me it feels as though I am stirring up the energy.

I also use wands as part of energetic cleansing and blessing. I will wave a wand, with focus and intention, over a new tarot deck as part of the dedication process. I will walk with a wand through my home, tracing the windows, doors, and walls, with a focus on cleansing and blessing.

When I work with a wand, I first ground myself to the earth and consciously raise my own energy. Then I send that energy down my arm and into the wand. I feel that the wand amplifies and focuses the energy I have raised. I can place a specific intention into that energy and use the wand to send the energy to its destiny.

When I first acquire a wand, I do a simple ceremony to bless it and consecrate it for my use. This usually includes anointing it with oil and speaking a dedication.

When I hold a wand, very often I feel like it is guiding me in how I should use it.

If this all sounds like a bunch of New Age mumbo-jumbo, well, maybe it is. Yet, consider that the use of magic wands predates the birth of Christ, and is evidenced in many early magical cultures around the world.

Fire Meditation to Transform Anger to Motivation

Fire Meditation to Transform Anger to Motivation

Anger is something we all deal with, on a personal level and on a societal level. Everyone struggles with the anger that comes from feelings of powerlessness, unhappiness and injustice.

Anger can be a necessary and helpful motivator. A slow-burning anger is what inspires and maintains the fight for social justice. Anger can help us remove ourselves from unhealthy situations. Anger can motivate us to do better and rise higher in life.

Yet, anger can also be debilitating. Anger turned inward becomes depression. Misplaced anger can hurt our ability to have healthy relationships. Even justifiable anger can cause us to be victims in life, rather than survivors.

Certain mental health diagnoses have anger as part of their symptoms. For many people, it is imperative that, in order to be healthy and happy, they learn to manage their anger.

Sometimes anger management isn’t effective or enough. Spiritually, there is a way to transmute our anger into a more helpful energy.

In elemental studies anger is related to the element of Fire. In tarot, that would be the suit of Wands, as well as a large group of Major Arcana cards (Emperor, Strength, Wheel of Fortune, Temperance, Tower, Sun, Judgment). Fire is also related to our creativity, our passions, our motivation, our sexuality, our spirituality and our humor. This gives us an important tool in learning to turn the energy of our anger into something more useful and helpful.

When we ignore our anger, it can fester. When we express our anger inappropriately, we can damage relationships. When we transmute our anger, we can use the power of that vibrant energy in a useful way.

Anger easily transmutes into motivation. We can also transform anger into creativity, or into pursuing any healthy interest about which we are passionate.

Like all four of the classic elements of life, Fire is an energy we can work with in a meditative state. We can identify the Fire within us. When we feel that Fire as anger, that energy can feel uncomfortable. We can acknowledge the Fire and work to transform it into something that feels more helpful. Then, we can often experience a sense of healing from the anger, as well as greater motivation toward something that helps us in life.

Certainly, traditional methods such as psychotherapy are also helpful, and sometimes necessary, in healing our anger. Yet, working with the Fire energy can speed our healing, and inspire us to do great things.

If you want to try a Fire meditation to transmute anger, first consider what you want to direct your Fire energy toward. Would you like to be more creative? If so, what sort of creative activities would you like to pursue? The more specific you can be, the better.

If you prefer, you can direct your energies toward athletic motivation, career advancement or spiritual development. All of these pursuits are related to and inspired by the element of Fire.

Once you have a clear idea of where you want to focus your energy and attention, spend a moment visualizing what your life will look like, and feel like, when you are creating that achievement in your life. The more you can hold that vision in your mind and see it and feel it in the present tense, the more successful you will be with this exercise.

Form a specific picture and feeling in your mind in vivid detail. Picture yourself writing a book, or running a marathon, starting a business or accepting a promotion. Once you have that image, and that feeling, you are ready to begin your meditation.

It will be helpful to have a lit candle, or the Ace of Wands from your tarot deck, or both. You will use the candle, and/or the card, to help you connect to the Fire within you, as you redirect it, moving it from anger to the more constructive motivation you have chosen.

Begin your meditation by focusing on your breath. Breath into the root chakra at the base of your spine and ground yourself to the earth.

With your breath, bring your energy up your spine, stopping at the third chakra, the solar plexus, just below the ribcage. The third chakra is the Fire chakra, and it is the center of your will and self-determination.

Breath into this area as you gaze upon your candle, and/or your Ace of Wands.  See your third chakra as your body’s furnace. As your breath, feel that your breath is like a set of bellows, stoking the flames in your inner furnace.

Feel the Fire within you building, rising up and becoming hotter. Reflect for a moment on the things that have made you angry. Understand your right to your anger, and then affirm your desire to turn that anger into something more productive.

Bring your attention to the image and feeling you have created as your goal. As you breathe, see your furnace as the energy that supports that goal. As your raise the flames of your furnace, you fuel that goal.

You may finish your meditation when you feel ready. Simply return your breathing to normal and once again feel yourself grounded to earth.

You can return to this image, and to the action of stoking your inner furnace to fuel your goals, whenever you feel anger, or lack of motivation. Over time, you will find that you experience less anger, and more motivation toward achieving your goals.

Stop Trying to be a Good Person!

We often mentally divide our world into “good people” and “bad people.” We want to be good people. We fear bad people. We try to raise children that turn into good human beings.

We struggle with self-esteem, worried that those around us will discover that, underneath our attempts at goodness, a bad person lurks.

When our kids are small, we teach them good behavior, but “being good” and “good behavior” are not the same thing as being a good person.

The idea that people, rather than behaviors, can be good or bad, is a harmful myth that is long overdue for busting.

What makes a person good, or bad, in our opinions? It’s pretty subjective, and entirely related to culture and context.

You can’t be good or bad at being human. You simply are human, capable of amazing courage, creativity, kindness, generosity, greed, callousness and cruelty.

There will always be people we like, and people we don’t like.  There will always be people who do things we like, and people who do things we don’t like.

There are hurt people, ignorant people, and fearful people. We call these “bad people.” Sometimes they do things we don’t like. Sometimes they do things that hurt others.

There are healed people, thinking people, and charitable people.  We call these “good people”. These people do things we like, and try to help people.

 We can be good at the things we do. We can do good things for the world. We can handle situations badly. We can do things that have bad consequences.  We can have good intentions that result in bad outcomes. None of that is the same as being a good person, or a bad person.

Instead of striving to be good, and worrying that we are bad, let’s strive to be authentic. Let’s work to release the things that hurt us. Let’s cultivate joy. Let’s raise our children to be curious, appreciative and responsible.

Rather than fearing the people that we believe to be bad, or fearing that we, ourselves, are bad, let’s recognize that fear itself is the source of most of the badness in the world.

We are all good humans, because to be good at being human, you simply have to be born.

Perhaps we would all do better at living on the planet if we accepted the flawed beauty of our humanity as the miracle that it is. Perhaps if we stop trying to be “good” and instead focus on being “healed” we’ll have fewer hurt people in the world.

“Good” and “bad” are subjective judgments that don’t mean much of anything, especially in describing people.  When we strive to be good, we are striving for a meaningless and unattainable goal. When we strive for healing and growth, when we work to be authentic, to be kind, to be strong and to be creative, we become capable of doing great things.  We succeed, and we become the people that help the world evolve.

The Blame Game

When addressing problems large or small, there is a difference between finding a cause and finding fault. Finding a cause helps us fix a problem. Finding fault distracts us so we can't fix the problem.

It seems to be human nature that, when a problem is discovered, the first thing we want to know is "Whose fault is this and how can we punish them?" Sometimes we might have better outcomes if we focus more on solutions and less on casting blame.

I wonder what evolutionary goal we are serving when we are more interested in blame and punishment than knowledge and solutions.

There seems to be something in our nature that divides us. It’s us against them, the good guys versus the bad guys. The truth is, there is more that we have in common than there is that divides us.

Our need to play the Blame Game, and our need to divide the world into good and bad, us and them, doesn’t seem to be serving us.

It doesn’t serve us in our personal lives, and it doesn’t serve us on a global level.

What if we worried less about punishing people, and more about healing people?

What if we assumed that the majority of people with whom we disagree aren’t inherently evil?

What if we came to understand that life is just life? Sometimes things happen and it’s not anyone’s fault.

What if we learned to forgive our own mistakes, and the mistakes of others?

Now, more than ever before, we, as individuals and as communities, have the opportunity to practice conscious evolution. We can pick a path and grow in that direction. What might happen if we chose to grow away from blame and punishment and grow toward healing and acceptance?

Seven Rules for Personal Happiness

There are lots of ways to be happy, and lots of ways to define “happiness.” Whatever happiness means to you, here are seven ways to help you get there.

1. Use your tools, resources and skills.
   Know what you’re good at doing. You’ve got to have a true inventory of your resources. You’ve got be able to know where your talents lie. Sometimes our talents come to us so easily that we don’t realize their value. Sometimes we are so busy worrying about the resources we don’t have that we forget to utilize the resources we do have.

2. Don’t use fear as an excuse.
   Fear is a natural human emotion. If you wait for a time when you are not afraid to step outside of your comfort zone you may wait forever. Maggie Kuhn said “Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.” If you want to be happy you have to do what is in your mind, even if all of you shakes.

3. Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness.
   It’s great to have friends, a life partner and children. But we can’t make the people around us responsible for our happiness, and we can’t use a lack of people around us as an excuse to be unhappy.

4. Life isn’t fair so don’t expect it to be.
   Inside most of us is a six-year-old stomping feet and yelling “That’s not fair!’ If we let our indignation at the large and small injustices in the world rule the way we see the world we will be victims and not survivors.  Survivors are happy, victims are not.

5. Don’t make happiness a goal.
   Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Happiness isn’t a goal, it’s a by-product of a life well-lived.” Even the Declaration of Independence refers to “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right, not happiness itself. People who say "I just want to be happy" have missed the point completely. Don’t try to be happy. Try to be passionate. Try to be compassionate. Try to be creative. Try to be involved. Happiness will come naturally.

6. Don’t compare yourself with others.
   Max Erhmann said it best in his famous poem “Desiderata.” “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Tend your own garden without worrying about what your neighbor is growing. Your garden is what will make you happy if you let it.

7. Appreciate the small things in life.
   A great cup of coffee, a beautiful sunrise, a bird’s song – it truly is the little things that make a difference. When we appreciate the little things the big things seem to fall into place. Those small moments of happiness often add up quickly.

The Crystal Controversy

It would be hard to be involved in metaphysics or New Age philosophy and not learn the power of crystals. Crystals and gemstones are a cornerstone of New Age and metaphysical thought, practice and business. We use crystals and gemstones for empowerment, healing, chakra balancing, storing energy, meditation, divination, magick and manifestation. We use them for personal adornment as well, but most of us believe our jewelry serves a double purpose. Our crystal pendants are lovely to wear and also provide healing and support. Every New Age merchant stocks crystal and gem jewelry, as well as some pieces for healing, divination, magick and collections.

I first learned about the power of crystals and gemstones in the 1980s when the New Age movement was in full swing. I would use adhesive tape to affix gemstones to specific parts of my body and would swear they brought me healing. I would make medicine pouches for my friends complete with stones to offer the specific type of healing I thought they needed. I learned to make jewelry and, for a while, supported myself by stringing beads and wrapping crystals.

I went to Arkansas to mine crystals a few times. When I first arrived at the mines I was shocked at the damage we were doing to the Earth. It is, after all, a mining enterprise like any other. I learned from the locals that we had another choice. The local sheriff was also the preacher. On a Sunday morning we could break the law and go into the woods to mine crystals as the Native Americans had. Since the sheriff would be preaching there would be no one to arrest us. While the idea of mining in a more natural way appealed to me I understood the reason to protect the forests. I declined and went back to the commercial mines.

Unlike the “rockhounds” who were simply fans of geology my friends and I prayed and meditated before, during and after the mining process. We believed the crystals we mined were healing to those who would buy them, even as we hurt the Earth to get them.

Years after my time as a crystal miner and jewelry maker I successful pursued the calling that would become my life-long career – tarot. When, in the 1990s, I ran Christiana’s Psychic and New Age Fair I was happy to have a few wonderful vendors of crystals and gemstones, including the well-known Ed Mondazzi of Discount New Age Books.

When Ed heard I was planning surgery to be a living kidney donor he gave me a beautiful and very large quartz crystal. I still have that crystal today and I treasure it. After the surgery the crystal was by my bedside. Its energy was so strong it disturbed the machines that were attached to me. One nurse wanted to take the crystal away. The doctor (an internationally known transplant surgeon) wouldn’t let her. “Shield the machine.” The doctor ordered. “That’s her healing crystal. She needs it.” Whether the doctor truly believed in the healing power of crystals or was simply pandering to my belief system I do not know. The nurse shielded the machine and I recovered.

I believe in the power of crystals and gemstones. I believe in their ability to help us be healed and balanced. I believe that crystals store power. I believe that crystals and gemstones attract positive energy to us.

Indigenous people all over the planet used the medicine of stones in one way or another. But indigenous people did not rape the Earth wholesale to procure the stones. I’ve come to wonder if we are really in our integrity as spiritual people when we contribute to the destruction of the planet so that we can have this particular medicine.

There are other problems, too. Over the years we learned that the politics in certain countries were such that some gemstones came to us figuratively soaked in blood. Of course we knew that about South African diamonds, but some of our healing stones might be similarly tainted.

I love my small but potent collection of crystals and gemstones. I use them regularly. Many of my friends are jewelry makers. I treasure the gifts they have given me and wear them with pride. But I don’t go to the gem shows the way I used to. And I don’t think I’ll ever mine again.

I’ve come to wonder, too, if we could use the power of the crystals and gemstones without removing them from the Earth. If we simply ground ourselves to the Earth and focus on the crystals we know are there could we avail ourselves of that healing energy without doing such damage?

The metaphysical community claims to love the Earth. Some of us are Pagans, vegans and environmentalists. We are healers. We are organic farmers. We walk lightly on the Earth. We pray, chant, drum and dance for the healing of Mother Earth.

Am I the only person who sees a conflict here?

I’m not sure how to reconcile my love for crystals and gemstones with my love for the Earth. I don’t have any particular solutions, except these two.

Let’s work on developing meditative techniques that harness the power of gems and minerals without having to mine them from the Earth.

And let’s start a conversation about how we can heal ourselves without causing so much harm to Mother Earth.

Elementing

A few months ago I posted about the new trend of "Earthing." Earthing is a practice of consciously connecting to the Earth. In that post I recognized the importance of making that connection, but was dismayed for two reasons. First, I hate it that we have grown so apart from our planet that we have to teach people to do what should come naturally to all of us. Second, I am always suspicious of New Age fads. Connecting to the Earth shouldn't be a fad; it should simply be part of life.

Today I have another point to make. Not only do we need to connect to the Earth; we need to connect, both physically and spiritually, to all the four elements.

I can't imagine that we would call connecting to Fire "Firing," or connecting to Water "Watering." Firing, watering and airing all mean something else.

But just as we need to make a conscious connection to the Earth, we need to connect with Fire, Water and Air.

I've often wondered if some of our common addictions might be exacerbated by our lack of connection to the four elements. If we could dance around a fire every night would we still feel the urge to smoke? If we could skinny-dip in a lake, river or ocean every day would we still drink too much?

Every day in our modern world there are many ways to connect with the elements. Burn candles, fly a kite, and take a shower. We do these things anyway. If we do them consciously, we will make that important connection to the elements. By making that connection to all four elements we will be more balanced, happier and healthier.