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Join Adam Barralet, Kyle Perez , Ashley Leavy and Nicholas Pearson in Episode #26 of the Crystal Confab Podcast as they do a deep dive into Ruby meaning, including:

• Ruby and lookalikes throughout history
• Ruby for confidence
• Emotional strength with Ruby

Tune in now for a deeper look at Ruby meaning!

Podcast 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 four crystal nerds, healers, workers, and lovers for Crystal Confab, a casual chat about all things crystals.

Ashley Leavy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of crystal confab where I’ll be confabbing with my crystal besties about one of our collected favorite stones, as we always say. This week, Adam, Nicholas, Kyle, and myself are chatting about Ruby. I am so excited about this episode. I actually just got this brand new Ruby palm stone from the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show about two months ago, and it has just been sitting on my desk, kinda letting me hold it, drawing some inspiration. So, how is everybody doing today?

Adam Barralet: Really well. And I’m really wrapped up in talking about Ruby. It is one of my favorite crystals, especially when it comes to, like, red crystals. I find it really empowering as well. And I really am enthusiastic to have this conversation because I think sometimes people forget about, like, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds because they kind of think of them as being, like, jewelry.

And so there’s probably people that have a Ruby and don’t realize that the Ruby because it’s their engagement ring. It’s not a tumbled stone in that way. But in saying that as well, you know, I’d love to know how much you paid for your palm stone. Rubies don’t have to be that expensive. They are gonna be more than your amethyst or your rose quartz, but this is a piece I paid, 50 Australian dollars for this type of thing.

It’s just a tumbled stone. Obviously, it’s of the quality that can be turned into a ring necessarily, but I think it’s a real powerful crystal to have in your collection.

Ashley: That’s a great point, Adam. And so often when we’re talking about, you know, crystals, we’re especially in the crystal healing community, we’re not necessarily thinking of fine jewelry. We’re not necessarily thinking of precious gems. And those precious gems, the Ruby, sapphire, emerald, and diamond, are kind of in a class of their own, and then we have all the semi precious gems kind of that we see more commonly in the type of jewelry that, you know, we’ve been showing, frankly, in quite a lot of these episodes now. This Ruby palm stone, it’s a good size.

It’s a very nice quality. It has a good color. I think it was about 55 US dollars, so not too bad.

Adam: That’s yeah. I’m very, very jealous of that. It’s also interesting when we talk about those top four that we both listed, with Ruby rubies and sapphires, they’re actually the same stone, aren’t they? They’re both corundum, but just different colors, which is quite that really interesting. And, you know, as I was learning throughout the years, I realized, oh, wow.

We always think of sapphires as being blue, but, no. You can get them in orange, yellow, green, white, black, every color. The only color that ain’t come in is red. Well, they do, but we just call that a Ruby. And, Nicholas, do you know by any chance why that is?

Is that just through tradition before they realized it’s all the same stone?

Nicholas Pearson: Yeah. So, you know, sapphire once used to mean more or less any blue stone, and Ruby literally comes from Latin, Ruby as red red colored gems. So, you know, they got some disambiguation over time. Like, the original sapphire, as we’ll talk about another week, is not even remotely geologically related to what we think of as sapphire today. That is another semiprecious gem, Lapis Lazuli.

But, you know, rubies have been conflated with lots of other red gems over the years. If they were cut the right way, we knew them as carbuncles. If they were cut other ways, we’d call them other things. And we’ve kind of kept the designation over the years even though we had to attribute a name to all those other color varieties of corundum.

Adam: Yeah. Really, really interesting with that.

Ashley: Well and we started talking a little bit before the show started about not just, corundum, but we also were talking about rubies that grow in other things. Like, we have Rubyzoosite, Ruby fuchsia. We have so many things that we can see, these little bits of Ruby growing in. We even have, there are a number of things that I’ve seen coming out of India as well, which have been labeled Ruby, but I have, through a little experimentation, learned that they’re actually spinel. So we’ll see them in some, like, limestone or granite matrix.

And I think, Kyle, do you wanna chime in on that one?

Kyle Perez: I am obsessed with the Ruby Spinel confusion. And, like, from when I got my Gemology degree, I went on holiday to Europe for a month. The one class that I missed over the whole time I did my Gemo degree was Spinel. And when it came up in testing, I was like, oh, it’s Ruby. It was spinels.

And I love that there are crown jewels around the world that have rubies, but are actually have been defined as spinels by modern technology. Like, I just love it. I love that little niche thing.

Nicholas: Yeah. One of those really famous cases of a misnomer is the black princess Ruby, which is actually a giant spinel and is said to bring misfortune to any male who wears the crown it’s set in. And, curiously enough, before the last coronation, that was not a gem that appeared in it. So is it a little piece of superstition, or or was it just not fashionable to wear the spinel? We don’t really know.

Kyle: I love it. I love it. That’s so, so cool.

Adam: One other thing I wanted to clarify as well, you did notice I noticed you mentioned a couple of combinations actually that Ruby comes in. Now I’ve always had Fuchsia. But then recently, I believe that the guy who found its surname was actually pronounced Fook. So it is Fuchsia. She’s always fine.

It’s like saying urinals. So, which is, you know, it really but it is especially everywhere around the world. You do hear them, don’t you?

Ashley: Yeah. So, I mean, it’s definitely. I have honestly just changed my pronunciation over the years, which I know I shouldn’t give in to popular whims. But, honestly, I was tired of people looking at me funny. So, yes, Fuchsite, Ruby Fuchsite.

Now one thing I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if all of you have dealt with this as well, but people tend to get these two confused all the time because they’re bits of Ruby with a green sort of matrix, right? So one way for those who are watching to sort of tell these apart, the zoocyte will actually have lots of little black dots in it. You don’t really see that with the Fuchsite. So you’ll see more usually like a little white ring around the Ruby or sometimes you’ll even see little bits of blue kyanite in there, But if it has black dots, you’re looking at Ruby zoasite. If it doesn’t, then you’re not.

Kyle: Yeah. Can I also throw in that, like, Fauxite will generally sparkle? Like, generally, your Ruby and Fauxite because Fauxite’s a mica, generally it has a sparkle and I have managed to acquire a this is Ruby fuchsite and kyanite and it comes from India and I just think it’s some of the most beautiful material that I’ve ever seen And I just love that sparkle that you get from the fuchsia that’s so glittery. Like, it just adds something whereas I find zoisia a bit, like, denser. It’s a little bit more serious.

Ashley: Actually, I have a quick question. The white that we see that usually surrounds Ruby, is that calcite in there? I’m trying to remember off the top of my head. Nicholas, you know.

Nicholas: Those are actually kyanite rich zones. So it’s like really pale green kyanite. So what we’re seeing are the various indicator species of regional metamorphism in these rocks. So the annulite or the Ruby in zoisite as well as the Ruby in fuchsite and the Ruby in kyanite and Ruby in cordy. Right?

They’re all examples of rubies that are formed by metamorphic activity, and the stuff that they’re around with tells us kinda how much it got squished and or heated by that metamorphic process.

Ashley: That is super cool. I saw somebody who had a palm stone once. It was a local guy who did lapidary work here on the Ruby Fuchsite, and he had actually carved away the little white ring of, I guess, what we now know as kyanite with because it’s softer. Right? And Ruby is so hard.

So he had just, like, slowly carved that away and carved that away. So there was this little, like, moat around the Ruby, and I don’t know why I thought it was so fascinating. It just looked very cool, like, a little bit kind of ruined the palm stone arguably, but it was very cool looking. So it was neat. He was trying to dig the Ruby out of it.

Nicholas: Yeah. One of the other kinds of combinations I’ve seen kind of mislabeled as Ruby and albite are these kinds of gneissic, probably metagranites. So there is albite in there, but they’re they they have a little hexagonal cross sections of Ruby, not to be confused with those metamorphic rocks or, I’m sorry, igneous rocks that have the spinels in them. The nomenclature gets a little too fuzzy on the market sometimes.

Adam: So, Kyle, I can’t ask you this question because you skipped this class. But if someone’s got a stone at home, and they’re like, oh, now would this be Spinel or would this be Ruby? How could someone tell?

Kyle: Well, what I realized and what I learned was that there’s a density difference, which is, I think, quite important. Corundum has denser heavier energy and literally will be heavier in the hand than your spinels. And if you have them raw spinels are cubic which they form in beautiful little diamond shapes and all of that sort of stuff. Rubies are hexagonal, and what’s really important about these two crystal op crystal groups is Ruby will show two colors under a microscope and spinel will only show one zone of red and one shade of red only. With your rubies, you’ll see a red pink and a red or two different shades of your reds together if you have that especially.

Even in the sun, you’ll actually see it shift with sunlight as well and that is the main differentiation, and it is stuck in my head forever because I didn’t learn it the first time, and I had to learn it secondly.

Adam: There you go. There’s a life lesson right there. Mistakes can be great because then you go back and learn the lesson harder, don’t you?

Ashley: What about UV reaction in Ruby versus spinel? Can that be relied upon for identification?

Adam: We’re getting people shaking their heads there. Yep. Kyle and he’s also shaking their heads off camera. So, no, I guess not.

Nicholas: Yeah. So, like, the deal is and there’s a little bit of misunderstanding about this I see frequently on the Internet, where people will talk about the absence of iron is what causes Ruby to fluoresce, and that’s half true. The presence of chromium causes Ruby to fluoresce, but the presence of iron quenches fluorescence. So not every Ruby will fluoresce. It depends on the distribution of those two, you know, very, very nominal amounts of trace elements in them.

And then spinels fluoresce differently depending on their trace makeup and also where they come from. So, there is a particular, we’ll say, recognizable chromium induced fluorescence in many rubies. If you know that shade, I think you have a statistical likelihood you’re looking at a Ruby. But also if there’s just a little too much iron in it, you get virtually no fluorescence, and it could still be a Ruby.

Adam: Now, actually, you always had some really interesting insights on how Ruby’s have, like, been used in lore and different things like that from the past. Have you got anything great that you can share about this, though?

Ashley: I mean, Ruby has a really long history of use. But, you know, one of the things I love about working with this stone is that it is such a great stone for, like, boosting vitality and boosting motivation and enhancing your energy, your drive, your passion. Like, it is that stone that if you are just in a funk, if you are in a slump and you need something to pick yourself up out of it, this can be a really, really wonderful stone to work with. It’s so fiery. It’s so vibrant.

It just really kind of lifts you up. And we can see some of that when we look at some of the legend and lore. So we know we’re just talking about, you know, rubies or maybe not rubies included in crown jewels. This is a stone that has a history that was thought to make kings invincible. I mean, can you imagine feeling that level of power?

And there’s something to be said for the level of, like, wealth and opulence and probably good protection and guard that someone would have had if they were special enough to have one of these pieces of Ruby in their crown in their crown jewels. So it was said that it was kind of a king’s best friend, supposed to help instill a certain level of confidence and kingliness and being able to, you know, make those big decisions and guide your kingdom. So we can look at how that translates in our own lives, us mere peasants. Right? Where do we have the ability to sort of rule over our domains?

How can we make decisions that will impact our homes, our livelihoods, our neighbors, our communities in a way that is beneficial, but also in a way that sort of empowers us, that emboldens us to sort of push the envelope in what we think, we are capable of and what is possible for us. This can be a great thing to drive us forward and put ourselves outside of our normal comfort zone. So let this kind of motivate you to take those actions that even feel big and scary because they can often lead to bigger, better things. Now Ruby also has an interesting history as a stone that was known to staunch bleeding, which we know medically is not the case, right? We do not advocate that.

But if we look at the symbolism of that, when we are bleeding, when we are wounded, it is a stone that can heal us. So if we’re dealing with some emotional wounding, some emotional trauma, some things that need some really deep healing, Ruby can be a great companion for us to do that work. So if you wanna sit with that Ruby, if you feel comfortable exploring those things, if you don’t, don’t do it. If you’re not in a place where that feels comfortable or productive, you don’t have to go there. But if you’re like, okay, I’m in this space where I feel like that’s something I need to explore so I can work on that deep healing, hold your Ruby.

Do a bit of journaling. Do a bit of self reflection. Maybe even have it in your hands as a little fidget while you’re talking things out with a trusted loved one. This can be a stone to sort of staunch that emotional wounding that you may have experienced. It’s also said to kind of help you resist the effects of poison, which we’ve talked about in previous episodes with other stones.

Again, not reliable medical advice. I don’t think any of us would turn to our Ruby if we had been poisoned. But if we think again about the symbolism, kind of releasing, removing, dissolving, extracting those things that are a poison in our lives, those toxic environments, those toxic people, toxic workplace, toxic relatives, whatever it is, you may want to turn to Ruby for some support because of that sense of power that it provides. It also helps you with your discernment, be more confident in your choices and your decisions. Sometimes we need to make a decision that’s really difficult.

Maybe there’s someone that we love very deeply that we care for, but we know they are not a positive influence in our lives. And so it can help us set some firmer boundaries. It can help us sort of mitigate the effects of that poison, of that toxic person or toxic environment, especially if you wanna pair it with a really protective crystal like black tourmaline or a really cleansing crystal like selenite. I think these could be great pairings for helping you move forward in that. Finally, it is a crystal that has this history of helping you sort of live peacefully, even surrounded by enemies.

So it is one that can sort of put up those walls or barriers that creates a bit of space and therefore protection. So that is also something we can do in our own lives. Carry it around in your pocket, wear it as a piece of jewelry if you just need that bit of space from things that are going on. Sometimes it’s so easy for us to get sucked into the drama and chaos that is really none of our business. So having some Ruby to keep that boundary, keep you out of it as sort of a distant observer can be really helpful.

Adam: One thing that I really love about what you’re sharing there, actually, is, you know, some of the words like the empowerment and kind of overcoming adversity and our inner pain and things that are caused by pain outside of ourselves. When it comes to the four main archangels, I know different people associate different stones, but I love, you know, when it comes to Archangel Michael, he’s often associated with this royal blue color, but he is also the guardian of the element of fire. And I find rubies and that fiery power. I think this is a great conduit for working with Archangel Michael. We often see, you know, that kind of traditional photo or that statue where he’s got that head on that demon.

And the idea of that is, you know, you know, we all have demons. Now they may not be these horrible, like, kind of grueling things, some of them, but we’ve got our own monsters that we have to deal with in our lives. And I think Ruby, really, you know, whether we want to work with Archangel Michael as a personification of that fiery empowerment energy, there are things that we have control over in our lives, but also things we can’t. But Ruby and Michael will help us to overcome them in a way that we don’t feel drained. As the king felt protected, we can sit on the throne of our life and be in control of our life rather than being swept off it.

Ashley: I really like that, Adam. And, you know, I have always associated Archangel Michael with Blue Sapphire. So how interesting that we have our corundum showing up in Blue Sapphire and in Ruby. It’s kind of like two sides of the same coin, so I really love that. Now I kind of talked about, you know, healing that emotional wounding with Ruby.

And, Nicholas, I know this is a stone that you’ve turned to really for some emotional strength.

Nicholas: Yeah. I think I think it’s so easy to focus on our precious, brilliant, fiery, crimson rubies, but it was my college years, some decades ago now, when I was reading what was then a hard to find book, but is now an even harder to find book, Crystal Journey by my my beloved friend, Jane Ann Dow, before she passed. And she talks about rock rubies, which are the inexpensive ones we’re gonna find usually tumbled, but also sometimes as little fragmentary bits or, you know, nice little cross sections of crystals. They might be more of a purpley brown than a proper red because they’re gonna have extra iron in them, but she describes them as the stone of easing emotional pain. And the particular mechanism that she discusses, I think, overlaps with my gemstone energy medicine training that came much later in life, in in some approaches to crystal healing, such as the stone medicine of, you know, traditional Chinese medicine or in this, you know, gem therapy, gemstone energy medicine, we associate that the brilliance of Ruby, the red ray that it carries with our physical strength.

And it is sometimes connected to the pericardium, that sheath around the heart, that membrane that envelops it and keeps stuff out, but still allows for the transference of nutrients, the expulsion of waste. It’s a kind of selectively permeable membrane, and Ruby gives us this sense of fortitude, this strength that we can drop into as we need it. It helps to kind of regulate and restore the health of our center of vitality, which is, you know, symbolically the heart, but also our metaphorical heart at the center of our being, I think, is a really good element of this. But Jane Ann describes these rock rubies as really helpful for when we encounter emotional pain. We can sweep it under the rug.

We can stare it down. We can kind of acknowledge it and move on, but none of those things really do much. So, what these rubies do for us, particularly the less pretty ones, is they invite us to kind of lean into the discomfort and to breathe through it. The only way out is through whether it is emotional pain, whether it is a spiritual burden, or whether it’s the pain in our physical body. Like, we can’t wave a magic wand and make that go away, but we have to find a way to cultivate resilience in the face of it.

We need to feel as if we have the resources to handle that amidst everything else going on. And for me, it feels like the hardness of Ruby being corundum, it’s a nine on our Mohs hardness scale. It is enough to break through the barrier, the threshold of it so we can keep moving forward. It can also help us divert our attention to the breath as a vehicle for doing that. With a laser-like focus, we can shift from what we don’t like to where we want to go instead of maybe only looking at the road bump.

We’ve got our eyes on the horizon. We still have to move over the road bump, but we have to remember why we’re doing it. And Ruby grants this sense of, we’ll say, poise and, a surprising amount of grace, flexibility. For for such a rough stone, I do find that, maybe it’s because of its frequent associations with things that, like mica schist and fuchsite, are are a lot more flexible or the softness of the Ruby matrix that we find in many parts of the world, which are in fact just calcite. We find these, like, metamorphosed limestones that have become marbles that are the host of some of the most brilliant rubies you’re ever gonna find in the world.

And these are matrices that are easily eroded, which is how we can get such great quality rubies from some of these metamorphic deposits. When we really embrace that, when we don’t shy away from our pain, our trauma, our troubles in life, we can prepare ourselves to maybe meet life with more honesty, more integrity. Ruby helps us by enabling us to kinda step into that unflinchingly. We’re not afraid of something just because it’s uncomfortable. That’s life.

Life is uncomfortable. Ruby is like the flame that lights the torch we use to see through those uncomfortable and unknown situations when we’re encountering new layers to our baggage. You know, the human psyche is funny like that. It gets really sophisticated. And just because we can put a label on it, we think we’re past it, but there’s a kind of cyclical nature to healing.

Just when you think you’re done, you’re gonna trip over some more we’ll call it stuff. That’s nice in the word I wanna use. And when we do that, we’ve got an opportunity to rise to the occasion again. And I particularly find that Ruby is great for excavating the stuff that’s buried really deep. The hardness of the stone, its connection to fire to help us illuminate the way that rubies are born from these metamorphic processes where we’re squeezing and heating and transforming the host rock to produce something so vibrant, so elegant, but yet still hidden in the earth.

When we dig through the rubble of the psyche, it’s not just to clear away debris. We’re mining for the gems that are in there. And Ruby represents that gem that we can find amidst the pain, amidst the challenge, amidst the baggage. There is so much power that comes through Ruby, and I think it comes back to this idea that, we’ve got this love that is not just an emotion or a human experience, but the love that is the glue that holds the universe together. It is the fuel that makes the cosmos tick.

It is the rhythm of everything. There’s love in that process too. And often, it is the love we cultivate for ourselves by learning to be gentler because we’ve been through pain, that we can then turn around and share with others. That torch we’ve lit to dig through our own dark tunnels, our own mine shafts, if you will, we can double that light by just sharing it with someone else. It doesn’t take anything away from us to hold the torch out and let someone else light from it.

And so I get this this expansion, this, like, magnification of emotional strength and resilience and compassion through Ruby because it reminds me that once I do the work, when I learn to show up for myself simultaneously, I’ve learned to show up for someone else, and I can give them the same grace and hold space for them just the same. So I think it’s this wonderful stone of emotional fortitude, and I think it’s a really timely stone as well.

Ashley: Nicholas, I just wanna say, like, thank you so much for saying this because I think so often in the wellness space, especially, we are really taught to turn away from or reject our pain or the things that we have gone through that are struggles, that are difficult, that are uncomfortable. And I love that you’re framing this stone as one to help us lean more into it because there’s a richness and a depth of character and of our personal journey and of our story that kind of lives there also. And it’s really what makes us whole ass humans. Right? Like, that is such a big piece of it.

So I wanna say thank you for saying that. And this is one of the things I love so much about these confabs is just getting to tap into the wisdom that each of us holds about these that each of us holds about these stones and hear what our experience has been. So, Adam, I would really love to hear a little from you about your experience with this stone.

Adam: Yeah. You know, one of the things I love working with is the chakras. It’s a basic energy system. I find that it’s, you know, a really accessible one for everyone no matter what level of spirituality they have. And one thing I’m really committed to with both my work with crystals and essential oils is not grouping them all together. Finding just like every individual person has their own specialness, each crystal in each essential oil has the same as well.

So, obviously, when it comes to the base chakra, we work with red crystals. And a lot of the time we think base chakra, it’s all about grounding. We may go for something like a red calcite or a red jasper. But, again, almost like Nicholas was talking about, that’s almost like just settle down and just don’t worry about it. Whereas I think Ruby, although some people love to work with it for the heart chakra for its passion, and I think that’s definitely justified, I do really like it for the base chakra as well because the base chakra is about feeling safe and secure.

It’s attached to our adrenal system, our nervous system, and how we’re able to handle things. And we know, as we’ve just been talking about, when we shy away from things or when we ignore things, you know, yes, we can grab a red Jasper and go and sit on the lawn and pretend everything’s okay. And that that may be what we need to do on certain days. But at the right time and in the right place, sometimes we’re like, right. If I don’t ever deal with this, this demon is gonna keep on haunting me as well.

So I think Ruby is a really beautiful one to empower you to look at these things, to explore these things. And we live in a world where there is a lot of chaos and a lot of doom and gloom that is being projected to us a lot of the time as well. So not only our everyday personal issues, but there’s this other stuff as well. I find I love that you started, you know, and we talked about kings and nobility and thrones. And I really love that analogy for Ruby that it does empower you to kind of I’m there are things that I have control over and things that I don’t.

But I find that Ruby really empowers you to decide how you’re going to deal with what you do have control over and maybe face it, not run away from it. And those things that you don’t have influence over, like what is happening in other parts of the world, how you can empower yourself not to be drawn into that as well. So I think this is if you want to feel that grounded and safe, you know, safety really is a perception. Yes. There are different dangers that come into our life that could be physical threats, but really how safe two people feel in the same.

I’m thinking of my partner. We’ve got to live out in the bush, and it’s all glass, and I love it. I feel really safe and secure and surrounded by nature. He’s convinced that murderers are watching us through the glass whenever we walk around. So I think, yeah, Ruby is a great one helping to empower you to go, how can I choose and make options, make decisions to actually feel empowered and safe in my base chakra?

So I think with base chakra work, it’s great. Do it with meditations. Get one of these small ones, pop it in your crystal pocket or your coin pocket, and really allow yourself to create your own safety rather than try and run away from danger. I think Ruby is really powerful in that way.

Ashley: I really like that. Thank you so much for, yeah, kind of giving us that healthy boundary that it’s okay to say there are some days where this is all I can handle, and so I’m gonna approach this situation this way. But overall, in the big picture of life, I know that it’s gonna take more than that. Like, I think it’s equally as important to give ourselves permission on the hard days to just sit outside in the lawn with our red Jasper. But, you know, then through that sort of bit of nurturing, we build ourselves up to where we go, okay.

Now I can deal with the big thing. Now I can be the king fighting the dragon or whatever it has to be, you know, and it’s kind of like we have to be able to get to that point. So I really like that, Adam.

Adam: I like you. And I inadvertently gave people permission as well so you need more crystals. You can’t just when your partner goes, do you really need another crystal? Well, Adam Barrelet said that we need all the different crystals because they all do different things. So there you go.

Get shopping and ignore your partner. There you go. Kyle, what about yourself? How do you feel? Well, Nicholas, you wanted to add something?

Nicholas: I I was just gonna say, can I get that in writing, and does it also apply to books and French horns?

Adam: I can say yes. The books French horns are my specialty, but, yeah, why why not? I’m feeling noble and kingly as I hold my big Ruby today. So go ahead. Get as many French horns as you like, Nicholas.

I’ll send you over the documents later.

Nicholas: Perfect.

Ashley: Alright. You’re here first. Nicholas just got a free pass for all the French horns he wants.

Adam: Yep.

Kyle: Next con fab con fab will be French horns all over the back wall. Yeah. It’s already possible.

Ashley: Kyle, we haven’t heard too much from you tonight. I know a little bit, but tell us about your experience with Ruby. I always love that you always bring this, like, personal anecdote into our confabs that I think is so relatable for people because, like, we’ve all had experiences like that. So tell us a little bit about your experience with Ruby.

Kyle: Well, Ruby for me has been deeply, deeply personal. So I’ve got a couple of ear plug crystal plugs that are actually Ruby. I have lots of little pieces. This sphere in particular is one of my absolute favorites and I’ve had it for about a decade now. And it’s one of my connectors.

I’ve spoken about this in the past. I have a twin sister in spirit. And this connection has allowed me to learn to love myself, but I wanna take it to another level when it comes to Ruby. For me, and I think we’ve all touched on it, it’s about being obsessed with yourself. And for me, don’t confuse obsession with vanity.

Vanity can be, you know, futile. Whereas obsession is constantly thinking about something or someone. And if you are constantly thinking about yourself, you’re actually benefiting yourself because you’re thinking about what you can do, which we’ve touched on. Right? I wrote all of my notes up and I actually finished on this point.

It’s quite an interesting thing that, like, I’ve got a few pages and that was, like, the ending point. And I love starting with it because it actually feels really important. I think knowing that we’re kind of oh, if you’re obsessed with yourself, you’re vain. You’re like, it’s not about, like, how do I look in the mirror? Am I pretty?

Blah blah blah. It’s about looking at yourself in the mirror and going, I look disheveled as all hell, but I love myself. I have slept like crap. So, of course, I’m gonna look average. I’m gonna do what I need to do so I can feel better.

Ruby for me is an empowerment of the leonine. Right? It is and we’ve talked about royalty being in charge of your kingdom. Leos and lions are in charge of their kingdom. They know when not to waste their energy.

They will sit. They’ll chill by the water pool. They’ll watch all the kerfuffle happening. They’ll look at those little guinea fowl and they’ll go, you’re not worth my time and energy. That’s not for me.

I was gonna say it’s below me, but it’s, you know, it’s not for me. And it’s important that I conserve my energy and take care of myself so I can go help the antelope plate up. That’s gonna take more effort. That’s gonna take more to do, and that’s gonna be a bigger kill, so I need to make sure I conserve. Right?

Ruby helps us to do the big job when we need to do the big job, but it also helps us to take care of ourselves when we need to take care of ourselves. And that’s where, for me, it’s about obsessing with you. I love myself and I know I need to rest now. I love myself and I know I need to go after this now. I love myself and I don’t care what other people think because they’re not living my life in my shoes with my thought processes and my pressures and all of the things that I have to deal with.

They can only see it from the outside in, and they have no idea what has brought me to this point. They have no idea the conflicts and challenges and difficulties and achievements and amazing things that I’ve done. They don’t know all of these. They only see what they see. And it’s up to you to go, I know I’ve done this, this, and this.

I’ve dealt with this, this, and this. I’ve achieved this, this, and this. Maybe I didn’t get that thing that I wanted. Maybe I didn’t do that. But this world doesn’t let everything just happen for you like that.

This world is pressurized. Right? So it pushes us to become the gems that we are meant to be.

Ashley: I gotta tell you, next time I find myself in, like, one of those swirling chaotic situations, I am going to think of the situation you just described of the lion, like, observing everything happening, and I’m gonna remind myself, oh, those are just guinea fowl. I don’t need to be bothered by the guinea fowl. I know about that.

Kyle: Honestly, if you watch those documentaries and you see them and then you see they’re like, what’s the point? And I married a Leo, so I am obsessed with that energy. Like, it has and he has taught me so much about how he is great at what he does, passionate. And the thing about Leos that are confusing is they have high expectations. It’s not that they are ego driven.

They have expectations of themselves so that those expectations are projected onto everyone else. And they think that everyone else should be doing what they do. And that’s where we need to put that side to bed. No. Not everyone is a Leo.

Not everyone can, but you are your own Leo. You are your own ruler in your kingdom. You are the one that needs to be focused entirely and obsessed with your life and what you’re doing so that you can make the decisions, achieve the goals, rid yourself of that which is no longer serving you, and not waste your time and energy. Right? Because who knows?

Maybe in a week or two, all of the young male Leos that were pushed out of the pride because they started to grow up are gonna start to come and you’re gonna deal with all these new challenges. So conserving and just doing what you need to within your life will actually prepare you for new unexpected things that may come into your life, new challenges. But it’s not that it’s challenging, like, this is the cyclical nature of things. This has come around. I’m gonna deal with it.

Push it away. Happy days. I think empowering yourself in that Ruby way is beautiful. And I think as we’ve mentioned, the heart and the base, the physical body and our emotional center coming together creates action, creates momentum, makes things happen in a way that changes our physical reality. I think that combination of energy is really, really important.

And so it allows us to feel good about our lives, have pleasure, have fun, but also be serious when we need to, have those boundaries, be protecting our own self worth, our own energy, and our own emotional needs too.

Adam: I I’m really interested to kinda compare notes with you about this Leo energy, first of all, Kyle, because, you know, I’ve got a doctorate in Leo as well because I was in a thirteen year relationship with someone who had their sun, moon, and Mercury in Leo. It had very high standards and was very professional in work. But one thing I found, you know, personally conflicting for me is I’d get home and they couldn’t possibly lift another finger. And it’s very Leo in that way of conserving that energy, for those things that they deem important other things. And as in a Gemini where there’s always a hundred more things to do, I was like, I couldn’t understand why you can’t get off the couch and do things.

But it does make sense for us all to work with Ruby to work out what is worth our while because it’s amazing how many you know, we all get phone calls from different companies these days. Like, they’re like, have you checked the filter on your gas heater? I’m like, I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now and that type of thing. And I’m thinking at the moment for someone who’s had a pretty big week just gone and feeling quite adrenally fatigued at the moment. You know, often our adrenals become fatigued because we’re trying to be everything to everyone.

And maybe Ruby is a really nice one for those that are feeling exhausted to kinda go, you know, like Ashley loves your guinea fowl analogy, I do too. Let’s work out what in our life is a guinea fowl, what is an antelope, and also what is an elephant? Like, what is it too big for us to even bother conquering that type of thing? And I think Ruby could be really powerful in that way for giving us that knowledge of what we’re gonna fuss about.

Kyle: I absolutely love that. I think it totally makes sense. It’s like, is this for me? Is it not for me? Is it worth my energy?

Is it not worth my energy? And that I’ve had that thing as well where it’s like, you’re really good at laying on the couch, and I wish I was as good at laying on the couch as you were. And after twenty years together, it’s something that I’m still learning because all of my fire Sagittariusness is like, oh, dude. Think. Like, it’s the same sort of thing, so I totally get it.

But I I don’t think of it as like the house needs to be clean. I think of it as like, when we need to clean the house, we’ll clean the house. Let’s rest. We both work really hard. We both have really intense work jobs.

Work jobs. Nice English. And we both are allowed to come home and rest, and we are the ones that have to give ourselves permission, which is absurd, to do that.

Adam: Yeah. No. No. Right. The universe is now there’ll be an Aries who’s just as fiery, but also loves to lay on the couch and, you know, will slowly start the day, and I’m like, but there’s so much.

You could’ve done it in that hour, that would be. So I’ll learn my lesson one day. One thing as we wrap up, I wanted to ask you. I alluded to before that there are stones like rubies that we find in, you know, classical jewelry, maybe engagement rings or you may have, you know, that type of thing as well. We often talk in the crystal world about, you know, things you can do with your crystals.

Like, we cleanse our crystals. We program our crystals and different things like that. Have you had discussions with people, customers, clients, and so on about what they should maybe do with you know, should their wedding ring be treated in a different way to other jewelry or other crystals? Ashley, you have, I believe.

Ashley: I love this question so much because sometimes, like you said earlier, Adam, literally, the only Ruby someone will own will be in a piece of jewelry. And they’ll say, well, is that gonna, like, mess things up? Is it the same as just working with a stone? I do think it’s a little different because I think we need to consider the energy of the precious metal that that stone is set in as well. So is it set in gold?

Is it platinum? Is it in silver? And then what energy does that bring? So I think for me, in general, those precious metals tend to amplify. They tend to act as conduits of energy.

But if you wanna work with Ruby or maybe emerald or sapphire or diamond in a crystal grid, right, in the center of your crystal grid, don’t hesitate to pop that engagement ring in there. But we also need to consider the energy of that metal that’s coming in. So platinum, gonna be super high energy. For me, usually very spiritually aligned. For gold, it’s very vibrant.

It’s very lively, energetic, has a lot of that solar quality to it. And then for silver, we have that lunar quality, that receptivity, connected with intuition, love. So just consider what that’s bringing to it. And then, also, depending on the specific piece of jewelry, consider maybe the symbolism. So if you are using a wedding ring, an engagement ring, there’s more to it than just the stone and just the metal that’s involved.

That is a huge important symbol of your love between you and your partner, your commitment to one another. So think of the energy that’s bringing in and whether or not that’s appropriate to what you’re doing in your specific grid or crystal work or whatever it is. But I see no reason why we can’t incorporate those things into our practice, especially in a piece of jewelry, like a simple act, like holding that piece of jewelry and saying an intention that connects with that stone and letting those precious metals sort of amplify that energy and amplify that intention. I think it’s a really beautiful practice, but I’d love to hear from everybody else too. What do you think about this idea of bringing in some of our jewelry into our crystal work?

Nicholas: I definitely think it’s a great way to make use of the tools we’ve got in our toolbox. I’ve definitely had many conversations with folks. In my very first book, the seven archival stones, the last gemstone is diamond, and that’s another one where we just hardly ever find it in the crystal healing market. You gotta go out of your way to find a diamond in a matrix or tiny natural diamond crystals. So you’re gonna find it in jewelry before you’re gonna find it almost anywhere else, but that doesn’t preclude us from being able to work with it.

And, in fact, there’s something to me about diamond in particular and its kind of makeup and its kind of structure that has quite a lot of memory to it. And I think we could be a little bit more conscientious of cleansing our diamond jewelry. And since we often find, you know, diamond accents with other precious and semi precious gems, if you’ve got a really nice Ruby and an engagement ring and it’s flanked by some teeny diamonds, give it a cleanse. But here’s the trick. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a chore because if you’re wearing that crystal as a gemstone, set in jewelry all the time, how often do you wash your hands?

What if we set that focus, we connect to the cleansing qualities of water? So as we’re physically cleaning ourselves, we’re also energetically cleaning ourselves and the stone. Just, you know, also make sure to take care of the physical well-being of them. Don’t let it get too grimy. Like, give it a proper cleaning.

Take it in for an ultrasonic bath if you need to. Like, go go make your beautiful things stay beautiful.

Adam: I think I’m proposing to some people, you know, we renew lots of people like to renew their vows each year. Maybe around that same time, that’s when you get your diamond, you cleanse your diamond and, you know, do a bit of a ritual of letting go of all the challenges the relationships had in the last year and then set your intentions. You know, this heart is the heart of one of the hardest stones in the world. Set your intentions and your commitment for another year type of thing. So make it maybe an annual practice if you do something with your partner.

How beautiful would it be if you and your partner were to charge your wedding rings together every year as well and to bring an extra bit of meaning to that crystal?

Kyle: My husband and I kind of have done that. Like, we basically so I designed our rings. We picked the stones that we wanted. He has black diamonds. I have orange sapphire with tanzanite.

We picked what we wanted to bring in. They are made in white gold. I have no diamonds because I don’t want diamond energy coming in because I’ve worn it before and it hasn’t been useful for me. My husband has just stepped forward to show off his ring with the black diamonds, and you can see his energy is needing to be a little bit more grounded and more settled. He doesn’t need to amplify that fire or bring in that energy.

Adam: Nice as Leo to get off the couch for a second.

Kyle: I know. On his one day off for me. That’s very, very generous. Very generous. See?

They can evolve, and they can do a little bit more. And that choice for me means I know what I’m bringing in every day. I feel better about it. He feels better about it. We have a little crystal grid that was filled with crystals from our wedding day.

We connect to it. I connect to it very regularly. We connect to it all the time, and I think it’s a really, really beautiful way of updating yourself. Pick what you feel drawn to. If Ruby is going to ignite that passion, bring it in.

Adam: Yeah. And one final little thing, I often get into conversations when people are talking about engagement of wedding rings. You know, diamonds, funnily enough, are a bit like cars. As soon as you take it out of the lot, it drops in value. I love that you’ve got tanzanite, and when I need to choose an engagement or a wedding ring, you know, tanzinite will only go up in value over time.

They don’t drop like a diamond. So, yeah, you didn’t think you’d get investment advice. You didn’t think you’d hear about French horns. You didn’t think we’d, you know, bash Leos all in this episode, but we’ve done it all today. So thank you very much for joining us on this confab.

We’ll be back next week to confab even on another amazing crystal and gift from mother earth. Until then, go cleanse your joy, and we’ll see you next week. Blessed day.

Are you interested in becoming a Certified Crystal Healer? Find out more about the CCH and Advanced Crystal Practitioner Program HERE!