In the Defense of Crystals and their 'Energy'
As much as we all love to ridicule New Age women, their intuitions are more true than we would like to admit.
Introduction
This article is an unintentional byproduct of another article I am currently writing on the usage of gemstones and crystals in the Bible. My initial plan was to lay out the New Age view of crystals and compare it to the Judeo-Christian interpretation. But as I began writing, I realized there was too much to unpack for one article. The concept of crystals being spiritual or regenerative as been dragged through the mud so intensely by New Age spirituality that it requires its own article in order to reframe the subject entirely. I started doing some research into crystals and their physical properties and (as much as I hate to admit it) the New Age fixation on crystals is not as outlandish as I thought it would be.
The Archetype of the New Age chick
It has become a cliché trope at this point: the New Age “spiritual but not religious” white girl that is obsessed with crystals. She has unnaturally colored dyed hair, multiple face piercings, and arbitrary tattoos. She is obsessed with the aesthetics of Far Eastern spirituality, but she is completely ignorant of any actual religious tenets and the cultural milieu from which the religious practices arose. She evangelizes people regarding the endless benefits of yoga and fervently insists that the root of all your problems are blockages in your chakras. She is obsessed with astrology, but her knowledge of the study does not go any deeper than Sun signs and daily horoscopes. Her system of spiritual beliefs is a cobbled together mish-mash of bits and pieces taken from various religions, as if she was eating a metaphysical buffet.
Crystals, according to this caricature we just envisioned: can help cleanse your aura, unblock your chakras, and MOST importantly, increase your frequency so your positive vibrations can help you attain a higher levels of consciousness.
Most of us who aren’t in the New Age social scene have had a good chuckle by poking fun at this type of person. I think the reason why this archetypal New Age strawman is so deplored by the public consciousness is simple: this person is living a life that is not grounded. Even though these types of people often talk about the importance of “grounding yourself”, their worldview is anything BUT grounded. The spiritual framework that they operate on is entirely removed from the original cultures that it is synthesized from, cultures that are most likely grounded in hundreds or thousands of years of inherited tradition. Tradition is the most grounded thing we have as human beings; without tradition, our identities and ideas are just floating in the ether without any connection to the totality of human existence. Without a directly transmitted inheritance from the past, the human individual has to start entirely from scratch when constructing their metaphysical worldview.
But this is not the only reason why the New Ager is ungrounded. Not only do they typically lack a connection to some form of longstanding tradition, the immediate issues within their everyday lives are often neglected for the sake of pursuing some sort of “spiritual enlightenment”. I was one of these people for a semester or two in college. I would take psychedelics occasionally and smoke weed regularly, read a hodge-podge of philosophy or theology, and form my own schizo theories about reality. But at the end of the day my diet was getting increasingly worse, I was exercising less and less, my college house became messier and messier, and all of my speculations about metaphysical subjects were stuck in my head. What I NOW know about spirituality is this: living a spiritual life is like building a pyramid that requires a strong foundation. Brushing your teeth, doing the dishes, maintaining a healthy correspondence with your friends and family are far from mind-blowing spiritual experiences, but they are entirely necessary to attain higher and higher levels of spiritual understanding and wisdom.
If we are going to explore the spiritual significance of crystals and gemstones, we have to understand why the average person ridicules them and dismisses them as nonsense. The crystal itself has become the symbol of the New Ager, a microcosm that contains within itself all the reasons why New Agers are ridiculed as lunatics. The crystal does not serve as a tool to them, but rather, it serves as a psychological crutch. It serves as an escape from the hard realities of life, it is like a band-aid being slapped on wounds that require much deeper spiritual work to heal. If a New Ager is suffering from anxiety or depression, the answer to them is NOT addressing their foundational life problems, the answer is charging a rock in the sun and carrying it around. Often times the stereotypical New Ager struggles with unhealthy interpersonal relationships between their family and their lovers. They often struggle with substance abuse problems as well. If they were to address these life problems instead of run away into the local witch shop, they wouldn’t need the crystals in the first place.
Obviously I am painting extremely broad strokes here, not EVERYONE who is into crystals or other New Age stuff is a total dysfunctional mess. I am merely illustrating the stereotype that exists in the collective unconscious. If you are into crystals and you are even reading this article, you are probably alright. I personally know a few people in my life who are into this kind of stuff. Admittedly, I would much rather see them come to church because it would be extremely beneficial for them, but overall their lives are mostly in order. However, these ‘worst-case scenario’ New Age people do exist; one only has to examine the terribly depressing case of “Mother God” and her New Age cult to see the full actualization of this archetype. The HBO documentary about this cult blew me away, mainly because it excellently displayed how much of a limit case the whole situation was. The end of Amy Carlson and her cult’s story (warning: it is extremely disturbing) was the logical end of the New Age movement, the telos of the New Age worldview. It was the ultimate result of groundless spirituality which possesses no roots, fueled purely by hedonism and self-referential metaphysics.
In summary, there are many people who become trapped in spiritual delusion when it comes to crystals. But now that we have established the archetype that has caused crystals to become dismissed as pseudoscientific quackery, let’s separate ourselves from it and examine the qualities of crystals objectively. You don’t have to be a delusional hippie to understand that crystals and gemstones may actually have some sort of spiritual significance. In fact, it is reported that both Leonardo Da Vinci and Nikola Tesla believed in the energetic properties of crystals, which brings us to our next point.
The Scientific Reality
“In a crystal we have the clear evidence of the existence of a formative life-principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is none the less a living being.”
- Nikola Tesla, from ‘The Problem Of Increasing Human Energy’
We know for a fact that crystals have incredible electromagnetic properties and are used in all sorts of electronics. In fact, you are most likely using crystals to read this article right now. What do you think an ‘LCD’ screen is? It is a ‘liquid crystal display’. When I began writing my article on the gemstones in the Bible, I started doing research into the physical properties of the stones. But the more I researched the physical properties of crystals, the more astounded I became. Turns out that the New Age hippy claim of “crystals having energy” is not too far off.
Electricity is a physical phenomena which has been known since antiquity. In fact, I discovered that the word ‘electric’ comes from the Greek word ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron), which is the word for ‘amber’. Electricus in Latin literally translates to “resembling amber”. Amber, a stone which is comprised of fossilized tree resin, was known by the Greeks and Romans to be a source of static electricity when rubbed together. The ancients obviously didn’t have the same hyper-detailed scientific knowledge about electricity that we have today, but they were aware of it. The words we use to talk about electricity today come from them and their knowledge. Anything that is considered ‘electric’ today ‘resembles amber’, a type of gemstone, because amber is the first reference point in Western civilization for electricity.
Even more interesting are the phenomenon of pyroelectricity and piezoelectricity. I’m going to be lazy and just copy and paste from Wikipedia for once:
Pyroelectricity (from Greek: pyr (πυρ), "fire" and electricity) is a property of certain crystals which are naturally electrically polarized and as a result contain large electric fields.[1] Pyroelectricity can be described as the ability of certain materials to generate a temporary voltage when they are heated or cooled.[2][3] The change in temperature modifies the positions of the atoms slightly within the crystal structure, so that the polarization of the material changes. This polarization change gives rise to a voltage across the crystal. If the temperature stays constant at its new value, the pyroelectric voltage gradually disappears due to leakage current. The leakage can be due to electrons moving through the crystal, ions moving through the air, or current leaking through a voltmeter attached across the crystal.
Interestingly enough, all known minerals that possess pyroelectric properties also possess piezoelectric properties:
Piezoelectricity (/ˌpiːzoʊ-, ˌpiːtsoʊ-, paɪˌiːzoʊ-/, US: /piˌeɪzoʊ-, piˌeɪtsoʊ-/)[1] is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied mechanical stress.[2] The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure and latent heat.
If you have ever used a grill lighter, you have experienced the piezoelectric effect. The trigger on the lighter charges up kinetic energy in a spring, the spring launches a metal hammer into a piece of quartz, then the quartz releases an electric spark that lights the butane. Congratulations, you just harnessed the magical energy of crystals to conjure the element of fire! In fact, you don’t even need to use any technology to experience these effects. Your bones, tendons, and various other structures both generate pyroelectricity and piezoelectricity (interesting that Tesla regarded crystals as living beings).
When I learned about these scientifically demonstrable properties of crystalline structures, all of a sudden I realized that “charging a crystal in the Sun” is not such a ridiculous concept. What if we were to reframe the concept using scientific language? “Allow the crystalline structure to absorb UV radiation to generate an electromagnetic field.” Wow, all of a sudden this concept went from New Age quackery to a scientific hypothesis. The human body operates on electricity and produces electric fields, who is to say that a crystal that has sat in the Sun can’t have a tangible effect on us? I am not making any truth claims here on whether or not it does; all I am saying is that there is a legitimate reason why some people have an intuition that crystals have energetic healing properties. If it wasn’t for this intuition, the scientists that discovered the electric properties of crystals would have never inquired into them in the first place. In order to study something scientifically, you need to have an initial gut feeling that tells you what to study in the first place. Turns out the New Age crystal chick and the Enlightenment era scientists shared the same gut feeling, they just approached the subject in two completely different ways.
The magic doesn’t end with electricity. If you are at all familiar with pop-science topics, you have probably heard of the phenomena of quantum entanglement. It is when two objects, typically incredibly small particles, are ‘linked’ together at the quantum level. This means that if one of the objects switches to a different quantum state, the other object will remotely switch to the same state as the first object with no obvious physical causation. Typically, this extremely finicky phenomena can only be observed under hyper-engineered conditions. Because of the innumerable external factors that can interfere with the two objects entangling with one another, the objects are often subatomic particles being subjected to unnaturally cold temperatures. However, it turns out that diamonds are the only macroscopic substance that scientists have been able to quantum entangle together. Turns out that crystals are geometrically symmetrical right down to the molecular level, so symmetrical that they are stable enough to maintain a phenomena that typically only functions on the subatomic level. Hell, the article I am citing for this phenomena even talks about the crystals “vibrating together”. Sounds pretty New Age… since when were hippies studying quantum physics?
An Honest Attempt at Spirituality
Despite all of the very obvious faults that the ‘fast-food’ spirituality of New Age provides, I have sympathy for many of those who are in this milieu. Perhaps it’s because I see a piece of my past self in them. In a synthetic modern world where everything is soulless and manufactured, it is incredibly easy to ascribe faith to the first mystical thing you encounter. Crystals are truly a magical thing, and I don’t mean metaphysically magical (although they might be). They are captivating pieces of beauty, an exemplar of God’s divine orderliness made visibly manifest within creation. They are sparkly, shiny, geometrically proportionate wonders that can be found in the darkest depths of the earth. There is something inherently captivating about them; they are the epitome of nature’s beauty.
Is it really so hard to believe that someone who is desperate for meaning in their life would start ascribing spiritual significance to them? If anything, I think this is an incredibly normal impulse. In Orthodox Christianity, I know plenty of people who collect iconography in a similar manner (obviously I would argue that collecting holy imagery is superior to collecting rocks). We all want to fill our surroundings with beauty, and the beautiful objects we collect start to have deep spiritual meaning to us. As a matter of fact, I would argue that the New Age chicks who collect crystals are more admirable than atheistic reddit-browsing Funko Pop collectors. At least the New Age chick believes in something metaphysical; she believes that life is comprised of much more than what we can see and touch. Anything can become an idol, whether it’s pretty rocks or Marvel movie figurines.
Do I believe that crystals have healing properties? Potentially. I haven’t found any strong evidence to prove it, but I am open minded if someone can show it to me.
Do I believe that some people put way too much stock in these alleged ‘healing properties’? Absolutely. But I also think people put way too much stock in the Western medical establishment as well.
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle on this topic. I look forward to exploring the meaning of gemstones in the Bible. Hopefully, it will help us shed more light on the subject.
The difference in tone between talking vaguely of "energy" or "vibes" vs citing something scientific like the piezoelectric effect is striking, even though you're essentially describing the same thing. Great insights!
When I walked into the crystal exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, I was hit with a nearly physical "buzz." I don't know whether it was electricity or vibes alone, but standing in a room surrounded by the most beautiful stones I've ever seen all together was a magical experience for sure.