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Join Adam Barralet, Ashley Leavy, Kyle Perez, and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #2 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they discuss all-things Amethyst, including:
- Similarities & differences of Amethysts from different localities
- Getting back to basics with simple crystal practices
- Crystallography and twinning and their effects on Amethyst energy
- Amethyst and Jupiter Retrograde
Tune in now and dive into the magical world of Amethyst!
Podcast Episode Transcript:
Crystal Confab Podcast Introduction: Are you just starting with crystals? Or maybe you have a whole collection but aren’t sure how to use them? Join 4 crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for crystal confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.
Kyle Perez: Hello, and welcome to crystal confab, where we confab about crystals. I’m Kyle, the crystalline mage, and I have with us Adam Barralet, Nicholas Pearson, and Ashley Levy. And we are going to dive into amethyst, which I think we can all agree is an essential crystal and mineral for anyone working in and around crystals and minerals. I have, been blessed with, working with amethyst since I was a little kid when I was gifted my first piece from my grandmother. I think that’s probably a story that’s quite similar for everyone, whether it’s walking into a crystal shop, whether it’s being gifted a piece, whether it’s finding a piece.
I think Amethyst is often our first, and I’m excited to dive in with all of you about what Amethyst is amazing for in different ways. Maybe you haven’t thought about it before, and maybe it will confirm the way you do work with amethyst.
Adam Barralet: I love what you’re saying, Kyle, about it being your first crystal because it was my first crystal as well. When I walked into a crystal shop, that’s what I bought. And then I got a little sheet of paper that told you what to do with each crystal, and then that kind of spiraled out of this top mess than it is today. But, actually, Nicholas, was do you remember your first crystal?
Nicholas Pearson: Yeah. I know mine really intimately. It’s a piece of quartz that my grandfather gave me. I was you know, like a lot of us, I picked up rocks everywhere I went as a kid. I’ve never outgrown that, by the way, as Ashley can attest.
And, my my grandmother collected, like, vintage turquoise jewelry. So, like, I just had this fascination with rock and gem, and my grandfather gave me a piece of quartz from Hot Springs, Arkansas, and that in no uncertain terms, it changed my life 30 plus years ago.
Ashley Leavy: I have a similar story, of course, but my first crystal was fluorite. My grandfather was a huge mineral collector, and he specifically collected fluorite from Cave in Rock, Illinois in Southern Illinois, here in the Midwest in the US. And that fluorite in particular is so beautiful, displays this amazing cubic habit, fantastic color zoning, and he was so into it. And I can remember sitting in his office for hours while he would tell me about all these crystals. And when I was 8, I actually went to he had, like, a little cabin property in Southern Illinois, and I went down to visit for spring break over school.
And he took me to Cave and Rock. And although I’m pretty sure that mine had recently closed at that time, and that would have been back in the, like, early to mid-nineties because mold. We went and looked through the, like, dump pile of rocks that they had pulled out, and we actually found some fluorite. And I still have that piece of fluorite today, and it is my favorite stone. It’s pretty rough and ready.
It’s not like a gorgeous piece, but it’s so so special.
Adam: I love that. I love that. Now today we’re talking about amethyst, obviously. And I love people who are watching or listening to let us know in the comments what your first crystal was. But obviously, amethyst is found in many locations around the world, and that’s gonna impact identity, I’m guessing.
Do you reckon, Ashley?
Ashley: Yeah. I wanted to ask everyone what they sort of thought about this. So I’d love to share a little bit of what I think and then sort of ping pong and see what we what we all sort of experience with this. Because I feel like amethyst is one of those stones. It’s pretty common.
Right? We find it in lots and lots of locations across the globe. So most of us have at least a few pieces in our collection. And this is where sort of knowing the origin or locality of that stone gets really interesting. Because in my experience, I feel like all amethyst crystals share a set of qualities or properties.
Right? And they’re all gonna have a certain type of energy. Maybe you feel like they enhance your meditation. They help you connect more deeper with your spirituality. Maybe they help you really focus while you’re doing divination work.
There’s sort of this set, structure that we think of when it comes to amethyst. These set qualities are properties that most people can relate to, and these are pretty common. Some come from historical sources. Some are a little bit more modern, but many people have similar experiences and couldn’t sort of agree on this. But where I think it gets really interesting is where we start to look at specific localities of amethyst, like Veracruz amethyst, Brandberg amethyst.
And we start to see these subtle differences, and sometimes not so subtle even, in their properties, in their energetic qualities. And we kind of open the door to a whole new world. And I wanted to share a little bit about one of my favorite amethyst, and that’s Thunder Bay amethyst. I love Thunder Bay amethyst from Ontario and Canada. It has these beautiful red iron-rich caps or terminations.
And there’s something so stunning about that. To me, like, just the visual stimulation of the bright red and the vibrant, you know, purply violet coming together. But also, there’s this really inner interesting energetic quality where you have that really grounding iron combined with this stone that’s really usually connected with more spiritual type work. So you get this interesting juxtaposition and energy. And a few years ago, I think it was maybe 2018 or 2019, I went up to Thunder Bay and did some mining for the Thunder Bay amethyst.
There are a few different places where you can go and sort of dig for the crystals. It was such an awesome experience other than the midges that are all over and sort of tend to bite you when you go up there in the summer months. But it was a great experience of seeing where these crystals come from, getting to understand a little bit more about their formation, getting your hands in that soft earth, that clay that they sort of are birthed from. And there is nothing like sort of, you know, getting your hands in the soil and just, like, gently digging through and seeing what you can find and seeing those little terminations sort of peak up through. It was absolutely exhilarating and something that I’ll never forget.
But I love that specific energy of the Thunder Bay amethyst. I feel like it has that grounding iron, which brings a lot of these lofty spiritual ideas, this tendency toward connecting with spirit, connecting with the divine, and bringing it down into the everyday where we can make our connection really practical, really grounded in ritual and things that, we can experience. And then when you get to some of these other stones, like Brandberg, amethyst is one. I saw a lot of my, cohosts nodding like, oh, yeah. That’s a good one.
And, even some of the amethyst from India. Nicholas, you gifted me a beautiful piece from Ireland last year that has, like, been a game-changer for for what I thought amethyst could be. So I think it’s really fascinating when we start to look at these different localities and look at those subtle differences in the geologic process, how things were sort of formed, what happened, the trace mineral inclusions that they have inside of them, like, what else is happening in there? And also their their crystal habit, and some of the things that make each one unique. Think about a vera cruz amethyst, that really pale soft lilac tends to have a little bit of a softer, gentler energy, and then something that I think is really energizing like a chevron amethyst from Namibia or something like that.
So I would love to sort of see, like, does anyone have an amethyst that’s your favorite from a specific location? And, you know, would you like to share a little bit about it?
Nicholas: I’ve I’ve got, like, a long list of favorite locales. I’m, you know, such a geology nerd that I love, you know, as we talked about last week, I love solving the mystery and figuring things out. But, yeah, I think, the amethyst that are nearest and dearest to my heart are my very small collection of Japanese amethysts. I’ve got them from a few different prefectures in Japan. The Japanese mineral market is, like, it’s a roller coaster trying to get things that are Japanese outside of Japan because there’s such great population density and so little land being mined for high-end minerals that, there are a lot of high-end collectors there that very little of it leaves those, borders.
So my very first, like, proper Japanese mineral was an amethyst, from an undisclosed location. I still have never quite found something that matches it exactly, but, a lot of the amethyst that I have collected from Japan have this really tender, sweet quality to them. There are a few locations famous for, amethyst forming these little vesicles, like little pockets of gas in basalt or similar rock and so they form very teeny tiny crystals, some of which look like lotuses and, they’re just they just have this kind of sweet blossoming quality to them. I’m also really fond of amethyst well, rocks in general that have, like, weird origin stories. And last year, I fell in love with this amethyst from Cabarrus County, North Carolina here in the US, and they actually found this while doing construction.
They uprooted a tree and stuck in the roots of the tree where these little teeny mostly double terminated kind of the celestial amethyst that have these needles of mostly hematite inside them, and they’re they’re not super saturated in color. But, someone got a permit to pause the whole, like, project to go in and collect as much as possible, and then, like, the project had to continue. So the rest are, like, under concrete. We’ll never get them again. But, thankfully, quite a lot did come out, and they’re they’re super fun and sweet.
But, I mean, I’ve got amethyst from a lot of places in my collection, you know, lots of Central and South America, all through North America. One of my weirdest comes from Afghanistan. I’ve got, you know, some Irish amethyst and Cornish amethyst that I love, but, I really love getting to know and feel the different, like, personalities and characteristics that you get because, the ones from North Carolina that come from, you know, that discovery in the tree, they have these root-like crystals of hematite growing through them. Not just like a red cap or spot, but they look like they have really fine roots growing through them. And I just love how that echoes the imagery of how they were found.
And there’s something you know, grounding isn’t quite the word I would use, but there’s something like weaving, connecting about them that helps us kind of link up. It doesn’t weigh you down the way a grounding crystal might, but it does help you feel tethered to something safely so you can explore in whatever level that’s gonna be.
Ashley: Thank you so much for sharing that. Adam or Kyle, do you have, like, a particularly special amethyst that you really enjoy?
Kyle: Yeah. I absolutely. I’ll show it off. This is Western Australian amethyst that’s been hand-dug in the Pilbara. So, I don’t know, 2,000 kilometers north of where Adam and I are based.
You can see by the size of the crystals that, you know, it’s the size of the crystal generally means it’s taken longer to grow. That’s mineralogical. There’s something about these, if you can see the back, like, I don’t know what it grew off. Like, it was attached to something previously. It’s grown from something previously.
It’s taken a long journey. And because it’s been hand dug, there is this really nurturing, really supportive, really. It’s like it gives you space. Like, it allows you to whatever it is that you need to come through and to come forward. I found it very like, a therapist that waits for you to talk is kind of the feeling that I get from it.
Like, it waits for you and it’s allowing you to kind of bring through what you need to bring through, talk about what you need to talk about, let go of what you need to let go of, Bring forward. It’s very different every time I’ve worked with it as well. It’s been each time, it’s been a different situation. It’s been a different, energy, a different meditation. It has been, about 2 or 3 years, I got this piece, ago, and no experience has been it has been the same, which I think is really interesting when it comes to a piece in general.
But each time, I think it’s I’m ready to take on new knowledge or bring forward new knowledge or whatever it is. It’s like, whenever I’m ready for the next thing, it’s ready for the next thing, which I think is really cool and really, beautiful. And I love that I know who dug it, where it came from, like, the location. All of that means so, so much. If I couldn’t have dug it myself, I know that, like, I know the person that did, and I’ve been able to get it directly from them, which is really cool.
Adam: And one thing that I’ve been reflecting on as everyone’s been speaking is that I don’t I wanna be careful not to get too stereotypical, but does everyone find sometimes that where the crystal comes from, and we’ve been talking about amethyst. No. Nicholas is talking about the the the very kind of and this is a bad word to use, but the zenness of the Japanese amethyst. And Kyle was talking about this spaciousness and and this tranquility of Western Australia in which we have a lot of space here in Western Australia and that type of thing. Do you think, you know, what the influence of the land has on the people also has on the crystals, do you reckon?
Ashley: 100%. I definitely think that, which is why I really wanted to pose this question. Like, I think so many people think of amethyst because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s sort of common. Everyone has it.
It’s pretty easily accessible. A lot of people overlook it, I think, because it’s one of those more common stones. And a lot of people still love it, but a lot of people overlook it, and they overlook the depth that I think the stone really has. And that’s why I wanted to sort of pose this question today about that locality. There’s so much influence from the land.
There’s so much influence from that formation process of that specific group of crystals. What happened when that crystal was forming that translates really well into the energy in our understanding of that crystal. And I think that really cool experiment to do if you have multiple pieces of amethyst available to you, especially if you know their origins or localities. Most people have, you know, maybe a tumble from Brazil, a cluster from Uruguay, something like that. But if you have a few, take some time getting to know them and pay attention to what feels similar and what feels different.
What makes each piece unique and what do they sort of all share with one another? Because I think that really helps us understand more in-depth the relationship that we have with our stones and the relationship that those stones had with the land they came with, like Adam was saying.
Kyle: And Nicholas? That could be sorry. I think that could be amazing for just all crystals of your collection. Like, that is perfect advice for literally all crystals.
Adam: Do you think that maybe, you know, there’s obviously probably 2 different types of people that are watching or listening to this right now. There’d be those who are just beginning and have got their amethyst and they’re like, oh, I know about this crystal. Hopefully, I learned some things on how I can get started with that. And we’ll definitely talk about that. But I guess it’s gonna be those crystal connoisseurs.
People that have had crystals for a long time, they’ve they started with an amethyst, and then they’ve obviously moved on to other crystals. And I guess what we’re inspiring and hope or hopefully inspiring people to do is to revisit their amethyst and go, well, amethyst isn’t just amethyst. There’s a whole range. And we find this in you know, when I work with essential oils, where you grow lavender around the world changes the chemistry of it and you get different effects. So it’s gonna be the same with the crystals.
And like we said, that collecting crystals from around the world, I love Vera Cruz. That’s gonna be my favorite. There’s, you know I’ve got a few different amethyst pendants and I try and mix it up, but I keep on going back to the Vera Cruz one. I didn’t today, but, I love it. And I think you people find their own second level of amethyst.
Ashley: Well, Nicholas, you had some extra things to share a little bit about Amethyst with us also. Do you wanna jump in with some of what you had to say today?
Nicholas: Yeah. So, you know, kind of building on this idea that every crystal is unique to where it comes from, but there’s still gonna be trends. Right? So, you know, amethyst has a pretty strict definition. It has to be quartz, alpha silicon dioxide, and it has to be violet.
And and there’s not a lot of wiggle room on those two things, but, we can see so many different kinds of crystal habits and forms. I think, you know, we’re predisposed to finding lots of polished stuff and lots of clusters from places like mostly Uruguay and Brazil in our average crystal shops, but, so far we’ve talked about, you know, bunches of crystals that have lots of different habits from all over the world. And even though externally they can look different, they all have the same kind of stuff going on on the internal level when we talk about the crystallography, the way those molecules fit together. And amethyst is special among the quartz family, not just for its color, but for part of the mechanism that gives us its color. And for me, I feel like the story that tells, the picture that it paints really gives us a really good understanding like the deeper mechanism of amethyst’s energy.
So, amethyst, like most quartzes, crystal and quartzes will form in hydrothermal environments. It pretty much can only form in those circumstances. Other colored and non-colored varieties of quartz have like, we’ll say more options, but amethyst really doesn’t. And it gets its color from little bits of iron ions that get folded into the crystal structure and we’re gonna talk about how that happens in just a moment. But essentially, we’ve got these trivalent ions of iron.
So it’s Fe 3+ for anyone who’s like a big chemistry nerd, and that just means that it, you know, has lost some electrons there. And something is really remarkable because when that little bit of iron goes into the crystal structure, it’s totally invisible.
Nicholas: We cannot see it at all. It takes it’s totally invisible. We cannot see it at all. It takes something else to kinda turn it on, and that something else is ionizing radiation. So, a lot of extent rocks are filled with tiny and very tiny trace amounts of stuff that is radioactive, from the stuff that might be in your granite countertop to the stepping stones in the local park.
And this is like background radiation so small that it cannot harm us. But as they release these little ionizing particles, they’re going to bump into other stuff. And in the case of amethyst, when those little particles bump into, the iron ions that are in there. It, like, bumps it up to what we call tetravalent iron, and all of a sudden it, like, turns on the signal, hey. Now we’re going to absorb a different part of the spectrum and reflect back violet light.
So we have this process of, like, a surprise inclusion, a little bit of a extra wave of energy serving surging into it, but still we have to tackle the problem of iron being too large to substitute for the things that’s substituting in that crystal structure, which is my, like it’s the part that blows my mind the most. Nature has a way to make everything work. So if we try to plot that ion in place of, like, the normal chemical formula, it’s gonna, like, squeeze too many bonds. It’s gonna break things. It just doesn’t fit.
So among all varieties of quartz, amethyst has this condition that has to be met and it has to undergo a process of twinning called Brazil law twinning. Usually when we talk like in spiritual circles about twinned crystals, we’re talking about parallel growth. It’s just, you know, one or more points attached to another point. It’s not truly like reflected shared points in the crystal lattice. They’re just kind of overlapping rather than deeply connected.
But Brazil law twins are formed when the spiral shape of that crystal’s lattice is moving from left hand to right hand and back again or right hand to left hand, but we have these kind of like alternating layers of handedness, where that that spiral form of the little silica molecules are gonna go in the opposite direction. And in the space between, you know, that kind of between the zig and the zag, there’s a room for those extra large ions to fit in. And so that’s how we can manage to squeeze something that is not technically a part of amethyst chemical composition. It’s not, you know, formally part of silicon dioxide in a space that is otherwise too small for it. And it’s really hard to detect this unless we happen to get a really good example that just had all the conditions met where we see those zones being favored, but with the right kind of lighting and magnification or with acid etching, we can see some things sometimes that show us this kind of twinning property, things like Brewster Fringes, which look like almost like little in cross-section, if we have it lit right, we can sometimes see like little v-shaped patterns pointing in toward the center of the crystal underneath the rhombic faces.
Also, with some other devices, you can see the kind of spiraling nature of it forming what’s called an Aries spiral, and it’s not Aries as in the constellation, but it was named after German sir George Biddle Aries. And he discovered this phenomenon, but it creates this kind of like fourfold, almost like spiral when we find that optical phenomenon inside it. And it’s almost like there’s a labyrinth inside the stone, this zigging and zagging that coils back to the center and back out again. And so often, we focus on amethyst as being this, like, tool for achieving inner peace, serenity, finding the spaciousness inside us to practice our psychic development or our meditation. And it’s it’s a lot to me like walking that labyrinth.
It is encoded in that lab in in that crystal lattice to have that mechanism of helping us navigate our interior landscape to find that sense of stillness. I just think that is totally magical.
Ashley: I would love to ask you, Nicholas. For those of us who are not the most science-minded, although we try. We try. I’m trying to picture how these iron molecules fit in to give us this color. So, normally, when we have our quartz, the chemical bond is, like, pretty rigid, pretty solid.
But you’re saying because of this twinning and this zigging and zagging, is it just creating, like, a little bit more spaciousness and the iron molecules are, like, in the negative space somehow?
Nicholas: So what we’ve got is a case where quartz is kind of a special situation where, like, chemically, we define it as silicon dioxide, SiO 2. So it’s 1 silicon, ion for every 2 oxygen ions. But, structurally, it’s not an oxide like that. Structurally, it has to be in order for all the points to line up. It has to become, essentially a silicate mineral with an SiO4 group.
So every silicon with its two oxygen molecules is borrowing 2 oxygen molecules that it’s pushed up against from another one or 2 2 2 oxygens from a neighboring molecule rather. And where those things line up, it creates that beautiful, what we call it, a tetrahedron. It’s like a pyramid with a triangular base instead of a square one for anyone who’s never seen one before, and it is the, like, close packing of these, you know, silica bits that forms that kind of almost pyramidal structure and they rotate one way or the other, clockwise or counterclockwise to give us our right or left-handedness. But in the case of the the iron, when it wants to make that Fe 0 4 framework, it can’t fit in in the gaps of 2 spirals going in the same direction. So it has to, like, line up in the opposite direction just so there’s, like, a little extra bend in the monomolecular level.
We we tend to see it like most saturated in crystals right underneath, the large faces and the termination. I don’t know how well this is really gonna translate, but you’re gonna see, like, some of the zones on this cluster are a much darker amethyst than some of the lighter ones around it. And if we could take thin cross sections of each of those crystals and look at them under polarized light, we would see this kind of close packing of, like, little triangular forms where where they’ve settled in under those faces. But the good news is if anyone like wants to see diagrams of Brazil law twinning and any anything else that you might like when it comes to quartz, there’s a really great free online resource. It’s called quartzpage.de.
They’re based in Germany, hence de and not dot com or dot au. And it’s it’s purely scientific. There’s there’s no woo. There’s no metaphysics. But if you go, I wanna say if you look at the, left-hand bar and you find the little part on the tab that says crystals, it’ll, you know, expand more options.
Just go to the twinning section, and I have diagrams of what these Brewster Fringes look like with kind of stacked polysynthetic twins. You have those little v-shapes of different-handedness, kind of nestled together like a Russian nesting doll.
Adam: It’s quite interesting when you think about when we want to achieve balance in our lives. We kind of believe that that, you know, that’s when we’ve got it all away. Going to the gym and we’re eating right, we’re spending time with our partner and time with our family and time with our friends and enough time for work. We’ve got everything, like, we’ve got all our ducks in the row. But when we look at nature and whether it’s be looking at a crystal or looking at just going for a walk in the forest, nature isn’t stagnant.
You know, we’re looking at the difference now between what Nicholas is wearing and what Kyle and I are wearing. We’re rugged up to here as it’s colder here in the southern hemisphere, bit warmer in the northern hemisphere at the moment. Nature ebbs and flows, and I found it really interesting what you say, Nicholas, about, there’s almost like this ebb and flow happening within amethyst. Now, obviously, amethyst is a man for being a crystal that helps us define balance and peace. So do you think that plays into how it works?
Nicholas: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, like Ashley was talking about with this, in particular, the really iron-rich specimens that have lots of iron oxide or hydrated iron oxides or other things. We get that really strong kind of visual interplay between the red and the violet, but even at a molecular level. Even at just like looking at its chemical formula, there are tiny little bits of iron embedded in amethyst.
So we get this kind of expansive quality that silica has and we get that anchoring effect that iron has. So it’s always got this kind of give and take to it, that I find really, really poetic. Amethyst is so multi-dimensional. It has, we take among the most common mineral species on earth, quartz. We add a very negligible amount of another really common substance, iron.
And like, to give you an idea, if you have, like, a 1 foot cube of quartz and you wanna turn it into amethyst, you only need about as much iron as you have in the tip of a ballpoint pen. So, like, that little bit of steel, that much iron is in that whole block of quartz. I can’t tell you how saturated of a color that’s gonna be, but it will be perceptibly amethyst from there. So it’s it’s a really tiny chemical change. But, you know, our connection to color, the influence that optics have on us on a psychological level, on a vibrational level, on a cultural level, you know, that plays into it.
And so, like, we get this really fun, convergence of all of these factors coming together and, I really enjoy decoding a crystal story through all of these lenses. Looking at where it comes from the world like Ashley was talking about. Taking, a journey into its chemistry and its crystal habits and what’s going on to combine those specific things. And then most importantly, and probably before the rest, sitting down and just feeling it out for myself and maybe comparing it to what other folks have to say too. And that helps me paint a really clear picture of what amethyst is doing.
Not just what is the end result, but how did we get there? Because that’s what I love the most when we decode this stuff. We understand the why and the how of it.
Ashley: I think that sort of leads into a little bit about what Kyle wanted to share today. Yeah?
Kyle: Absolutely. I’m actually going to when Adam mentioned earlier about, the crystal connoisseurs, what can they learn from crystals as well as our people that are jumping in for the first time, I’m gonna sort of go back to basics because for myself personally, my journey with Amethyst has been, as with all of us, long. But very specifically, the last 4 or 5 years, I had a resurgence and an influx of amethyst into my life. And I had to get to know it again through not just the reset of the world, but my own personal reset that I went through. And I can I’ll show you them piece by piece.
Like, no small small feat of of man, as they say. Like, big clusters, they came to me one after the other after the other. No caves yet. No caves yet. And, of course, this one as well.
It was like every 6 months, it was like you need another piece, you need another piece, you need another piece. And it was because, as I was being told, things are going to be different. Things are already different. We’re not going backwards, we’re going forwards. And we’re needing to think differently, work differently, be different as people.
And during that time, I went through the loss of my father. He died of a sudden stroke and passed very suddenly. And that hit me more than the reset of the world as it were. That was 2,021, May. And that in itself was learning to live again because he and I were super, super close.
He was super close with all of us as a family. Very influential, very, very part of it. And realizing that something someone so important can go so fast and so suddenly left this sort of chasm in my brain that needed to be, refilled as it were. And it was always the simplicity of amethyst that I was drawn to. If it wasn’t something like, celestite or clear quartz, it was generally something like amethyst.
It was always really simple crystals, and it was this it wasn’t rose quartz. It wasn’t, like, loving crystals. It was quite interesting. It was more about, like, learning to, like, experience the world again, learning to take on his wisdom, what he taught us, what he taught me personally, my personal relationship, and how to incorporate that into the way that I live. I know that of my siblings, I have 3 other brothers.
I’m the one that looks the most like him, and I’m the most like him as well. So it felt quite appropriate that my journey is quite personal with it and how it works. And I found myself reflecting upon masculinity. I found myself ref reflecting upon parenthood, teaching. He was a policeman for 30 years.
So, like, the idea of protecting and serving and being of service to the community, I was reflecting upon all of these things that built me up as a person, but, like, they came they’ve been around since I was a kid. So I was, like, looking at them from a different perspective, Looking at the way other people interacted because of death. Looking at the way, it affected them and that then affected other people. Like, all of these things that I hadn’t looked at properly before or maybe I had in little parts, but it was all happening at once. It was like, alright.
Let’s go back to the beginning and look at how all of this stuff has influenced you as a person. How can you utilize this? How can you become all that he wished of us, as well as, you know, my own version of that. Like, it’s been a push and a pull, as you mentioned, with the crystal itself. Like, I realized my thing with iron as a mineral, as an element itself, is strength.
Like, it has its weight, and it has a strength to it. And the journey that it goes on to bring this beautiful purple-violet color is quite fascinating, and I think that is itself how it has reflected on my work with it coming back to basics is how can you incorporate all of these little things into your psyche, into your emotional body, into the way that you live every day? What’s that, like, saying of wisdom is you don’t realize the road to wisdom is realizing you’re not wise or something along those lines. Like, there’s many different variations of it, but it’s realizing, actually, I’m not all that I thought I was. Yes.
I’m a big adult, but I’ve been rocked to the core by the death of someone close to me. I need to, like, start again. I need to start fresh, and I need to work from the beginning. What brings me joy from the base level? What is easy for me to do?
Because I found really simple tasks very difficult. Really difficult tasks, no chance of doing them at all. It was like learning to exist again, learning to, be in a world without that whole thing that what’s happened is it’s just been incorporated into me in a new way. It’s just been incorporated in a way that has a different flavor of strength, a different flavor of wisdom, a different flavor of, spirituality for sure. But it’s been for me and I think that I am is so important in it, like, the practical implementation of what I’ve learned and what I’ve gone through.
The practical implementation of knowing that, like, death happens and it will affect us, but that’s just endings. Right? Endings are always going to be around us, so I find Amethyst something that I am drawn to at a lot of full moon time, a lot of, like, coming to the end of situations and times.
Ashley: It sounds like Amethyst has just been a really, really powerful teacher for you during a difficult time. Like, how would you sort of, what have those lessons sort of looked like? Because it sounds like you went through this deep, deep journey, like, through this process of grief and grieving into uncovering a lot of things about yourself, either that are new or just looking at them from a new perspective in a new light. Like, how has that sort of unfolded for you in the years since?
Kyle: It has been I have always been someone that moves quite quickly through life. And the first thing, as I mentioned, with this, Australian amethyst was the space to, like, slow down and let the new things come in, let the wisdom come in. And that’s been a huge, huge, thing for me to accept is the fact that I don’t need to know all the answers straight away. It doesn’t all need to be solved straight away. It doesn’t all need to, like I don’t need to always be thinking of the answer.
I don’t always need to be doing. I don’t always need to be solving the problem. Sometimes solving the problem is just sitting and watching. Sometimes it’s just being in your own space. Sometimes it’s just crying ugly for days on end and just letting that happen until I feel like not crying for a little while.
Like, it has been basically about just letting myself be myself. And through that process, it has come and flowed really, really easily easily. I found myself less reactional, and much more observant. And I’ve always been observant and a people watcher, and I’ve always loved the aspect of observing people in the world. But I didn’t realize how much I was missing until the last couple of years and really forcing the slowdown.
And, like, for me, I need tangibility. Like, I don’t wanna be a size queen or anything, but I love something big that I can hold sometimes that really forces me to stop because, otherwise, I don’t. And so I think that’s why the universe is like, we’re gonna throw you some pieces. You’re gonna listen, and you’re gonna stop, and you’re going to process all of this stuff because you need to, full stop, end of sentence. Like, it was that simple.
It was the universe forcing me. I kind of ended a job, had that happen, moved house, and then my husband had a heart attack as well, like, all within the space of about 4 or 5 months. And so the universe was like, slow down. Look at what’s happening around you. Slow down.
And this last couple of years since has been the slowest in my whole life. The slowest in my whole life, and it has been, wonderful and challenging. But I think, without the help of Amethyst, I probably would still be chasing my own tail.
Adam: Do you think emphasis comes into everyone’s life at that point when it is that message that we don’t need to keep up with the rat race, that we there’s more to life than this. You know, it is kind of one of the first tools that comes into our life when we begin our spiritual journey. Even if people doesn’t don’t become a crystal lover, they end up having a couple of crystals around and amethyst is always almost one of them. Do you think that amethyst is the spiritual messenger that comes into our life to go, it’s time to take that next chapter to slow down and stop trying to keep up with everyone else in the rat race?
Kyle: Absolutely. And if you think about, like, purple and violet on the color spectrum, like, it’s one end. Like, it’s right down one end, and most people, like, especially ultraviolet, you can’t even see. There’s like if you think about it, it’s not about the obvious. It’s not about everything else that’s going on.
It’s about, like, something that’s a bit special, something that’s a bit important, something that takes a bit of work to get to know and to be with. Like, it’s gonna be there. It’s gonna hang out. It’s gonna look pretty, but also if you want to, you can dive so much deeper and you can get so much more out of it. Them.
It. All of them.
Adam: All of them. I love, you know, what there’s a beautiful story about Amethyst that I love that really gives us a bit of an idea about how to work with it as well. And the Greeks had some amazing stories. So there’s the god Dionysus, who was known in Rome as Bacchus, and he was a fun god. He was the god of wine.
So he was always having wild parties. And there are variations in the story, but I’ll tell the one that I tend to share. Basically, this beautiful young maiden came along to the party and, Dionysosaur went, I want a bit of that. So he went up there and said, you know, how are you doing? She wasn’t interested at all.
There are a few more red wines and then basically tried again, and she still was not interested. And a few more red wines until he got to the other doctors. We probably all met that kind of guy at about once in a while type of thing, where he was getting really quite overbearing and Amethyst didn’t know how she was going to actually escape the the passions of Dionysus. So she prays to the gods who only way to solve this problem was to turn her into a statue of white quartz. Now, Dionysus had become so obsessed with Amathistus.
He’d become so drunk and with the idea of her that he saw the statue, fell upon it, and cried and cried and cried. Now because he drunk so much red wine, his tears were actually purple and it stained the white quartz turning up purple. And so often, the translation of the word amethyst comes from the words meaning not drunken. And amethyst has been used in the past. People smoke, drunk out of amethyst goblets so that they didn’t get drunk.
People wore amethyst rings to stop them becoming, intoxicated. And even in some alcoholic anonymous groups, they actually use amethyst as a bit of a power talisman to help support people through their journey as well. Now each person may not have a challenge with, alcohol, but I think we all have times where we become drunken or obsessed with something. It could just be a brand new crystal that we’ve heard about that we must have, and it’s it throws us off balance. And I think Amethyst is a really great crystal to just bring into your space, whether it be a big place like a big piece like Kyle was talking about or just wearing a pendant or holding a tumbled stone just to help us get back that yin yang energy to find that balance, that harmony, and that peace again.
And I think it’d be really a nice way to use it.
Ashley: I think what’s really interesting about the story that you just shared too is there is a bit of a practicality to, maybe where some of this myth comes from about, you know, the not drunken thing. Think about if you had a goblet carved of amethyst, your wine could be significantly watered down. And if poured into that goblet, would still appear purple because you have that purple vessel. And also and an old, old name for amethyst is also bishop stone because it would be worn in the rings of men of the church. And so we have this idea of of chastity, of, you know, staving off one’s vices that, you know, it’d be worn in a ring for, like, men of the cloth.
And so I think it’s really interesting that that history has sort of stayed with us as well. And then, you know, even in a lot of modern day crystal books, you’ll see that amethyst is supportive for people working through addiction of any type. Like you said, Adam, not just, alcohol, but, like, lots of different things. So I think it’s really interesting how we can sort of see those connections and, and how they have sort of unfolded. Because we I think we also think of especially in the case of the Bishop stone, when I first heard that association and saw it was, you know, worn in in rings a lot, I thought, well, maybe it was because of that spiritual connection.
But then I realized, oh, no. In fact, I think it’s much more this sort of tangible reminder to live in alignment maybe with the values that you’re trying to uphold.
Adam: So as we’re talking, I’m thinking this episode is gonna be quite popular for many people who are just starting their crystal journey. And, oh, I know amethyst. I’ve got an amethyst. Let’s listen to this, and let’s get some tips. So I wanted to ask each of you, what are some really practical they’ve got their amethyst.
It’s a pendant. It’s a tumbled stone. It’s a piece. What are some things you would encourage them to start doing, to just start experiencing the magic of crystals? Nicholas, what do you reckon?
Nicholas: Oh, I I have, like, so many different ways that I work with Amethyst in my everyday life, but, I think one of my favorite things to do is to use it as this physical tangible tool to kind of act as a bookend to my spiritual practice. So if I’m showing up to meditate or I wanna do, you know, whatever your practice looks like on a given day, spend time with that amethyst to get you centered, like you’re walking into the center of that labyrinth. Maybe you’ll engage all of your your physical senses with it, you know, feel feel it, see it, hold it up to the light, let the light move through and be transformed by it. You might even see some of those cool fringes and other phenomena that that, explain its color information. But, really just kind of attuning to it opens us up to the rest of the work that we want to engage in.
So, yeah, that that’s an easy add on to whatever your practice already looks like.
Ashley: I love that. One of the ways that I really love to work with the stone is to enhance divination. So for me, I love to make a charged water with amethyst. And, you know, so often we think of gem waters or crystal elixirs as something that we might use topically or take internally or drink our our charged gem water, something like that. I actually love to use this water for skrying.
So you can make it similar to how you would an elixir and preserve it and add just a few drops to a dish of water for scrying, or you can just quick charge some water with a tumbled amethyst, a little cluster, whatever, pour it in your scrying basin. And particularly at the time of the full moon, this is a great practice for sort of gazing and seeing what comes through in terms of some important messages for you.
Kyle: I love that. I think, on a simpler really simple level that people can work with, I love amethyst and journaling. And also another word that comes to me with amethyst is, like, reprogramming the mind. And so if you can journal in the evenings I like a candle to help, like, the letting go part. The evenings, you let go of the day, you let go of what’s going on.
You give yourself space to release. And then in the morning, you pick it up again. No candle. It’s about the day ahead. What’s coming, preparing for it, and it’s like, I am going to be doing this or tackling this.
I’m going to be utilizing these aspects of my mind to go forward. So you’re literally reprogramming your mind at the end of the day to let go of what you need to and to bring in what you need to to start the day and to go fresh into things.
Ashley: I think it’s really interesting how Kyle, you, and Nicholas each had this sort of book ending. You know what I mean? Like, beginning and start of a day, beginning and or beginning and end of a day, beginning and end of a practice. So I think that’s really interesting. There’s a really a good similarity there.
Adam: I think all these activities are really, really profound to work with especially in this week. So reason why we chose Amethyst this week is because Jupiter is going into retrograde. So we know a little bit about Mercury retrograde. It’s probably the the the most popular one, and we hear that that happens, and it’s all a little bit of chaos. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but actually all the planets go into retrograde.
So when a planet goes into retrograde, it’s not actually going backwards in the sky. It’s just an optical illusion. But what our ancestors have noticed is whenever a planet goes into retrograde, whatever it governs, it’s almost like I I like to think of the planets as their parents, and it takes its help away and leaves us on our own. So when we look at Jupiter in the lineup of the sky, Jupiter is the largest planet. And it’s really, really interesting because they believe that the gravitational pull of Jupiter actually keeps all the other planets where we are.
So if we didn’t have Jupiter where it is, we would have probably been sucked in the sun and we wouldn’t be sitting here having a confab right now. Quite interestingly as well, Jupiter said to keep the other outer planets out where they are. And when you think in even Greek and Roman mythology, that behind away from us is behind Jupiter is his father, his grandfather, and his two brothers, Poseidon or Neptune and Hades or Pluto, which govern. So he’s kinda got everyone in place, and he’s holding him where he wants him in that way. So what happens is he’s also known as the planet of expansion, of good luck, good luck, abundance.
And this can be expansion in our everyday life, but also our spiritual expansion as well. And often the color violet is associated with him. So what can we expect as Jupiter starts to go into retrograde is we get the opposite of that expansion, that opposite of that luck and that abundance. So for example, you may find socially, there’s less invites. You may find that money if you don’t have a regular income that somehow it’ll dry up.
And even if you do have a regular income, these unexpected bills will come. You have less money. If you do rely on clients or new people coming into your business, that may dry up a little bit. So all this kind of abundance slows down. Now with every, retrograde, we have 2 options.
We can either fall on the floor and cry and sobbing goes all too hard and I can’t handle it and blame the planets. Or we can put on our big boy or a big girl pants and go, ah, I’ve been left alone. My parent of Jupiter has left me to test me to see, can I stand up on my own 2 feet? Now how do I do this without burning the house down? So Jupiter retrograde is an amazing time.
I want everyone to try a really simple experiment right now. I want everyone to take a deep breath in. Now take another deep breath in. Now take another deep breath in. Now you can only see me on the screen at the moment, but the other 3 are about to pop.
Adam: And you’re probably doing the same thing as well. We can’t constantly expand. We must take time to come back in, and this is what Jupiter retrograde allows us to do. What I love about individuals like ourselves that work with crystals is that we stop and we review our lives regularly. And Jupiter retrograde is a time to go back.
Okay. I’ve got more time. What can I do now? I can finish off those projects that I haven’t got finished. I can refocus to make sure that I’m not wasting my time on frivolous things.
I can look at how I can be more thrifty with my money so that when I have more money, I don’t just blow that as well. So what Jupiter retrograde is, it happens for about 4 months each year. It’s the exhale so that we can then expand again. So I think it’s a perfect time to grab your amethyst, do some of these exercises, the scrying, the reflection, the journaling. You know, I I always love to pair amethyst.
Amethyst is that 1 on 1 in crystal, lavender is your 101 of essential oils. Diffuse your, lavender throughout the day and throughout the night. Lavender is actually really great for helping us slow down and also allow more abundance to come into our lives. If you love animal guide, I also love to pair amethyst with the owl because owl is about that quiet wisdom. And you’ve heard us all speaking today about how amethyst brings its contemplation.
And so you could hold your amethyst, inhale some lavender essential oil, and just imagine an owl in front of you. And if you find it hard to feel the personality of crystal, the personality of an Al talking to you, what would Al say if Al could give you some guidance? And I feel that would be very similar what Amethyst might, say as well. So this is gonna be a beautiful week to grab your Amethyst, work with your Amethyst, and just kind of reset your sales. Make sure that you’re going in the direction you are so that spiritually, you are living a life that you want to live rather than you just being kind of swept around down the river and ending up at the end of your life.
Gonna go, oh, this is where we’re plan to go at all.
Ashley: Thank you for sharing that, Adam. I love that. And I love how much it ties in with what Kyle was talking about earlier with his personal experience of needing Amethyst to be that teacher, that guy to help slow things down. And what a perfect time for us to all reflect on that during this Jupiter retrograde.
Adam: So, hopefully, this week, we’ve been able to share with everyone some of the magic of amethyst from what we can use it for, but also the I love learning today about the stories of why amethyst does what it does from a practical, physical, scientific, geological terms as well. Of course, we would love to know your favorite amethyst story, what you love to do with amethyst. Please leave that in the comments and share with us as well because one thing we love about crystals is that we all have different experiences, and we can all learn together. So thank you very much for joining us this week on Crystal Confap. We’ll be back next week when we dive into another amazing gift of mother earth.
Until then, blessed be.
Kyle: Bye.
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