Cleanse Your Crystals of Stagnant Energy

It’s incredibly important to cleanse your crystals often. Crystals can collect various forms of energy from emotions, thought, touch, geopathic (earth) stress, and many other sources. When other people handle your crystal, they leave their energy imprint on the crystal. This isn’t a bad thing, but to help ensure your crystal is resonating fully with you, it is best to get rid of those stores energetic imprints. This is known as clearing or cleansing your crystal. It helps your crystal work optimally, producing the strongest vibrations and energy, and makes sure there’s less interference between you and your crystal. We suggest that you cleanse your crystals when you first get them. You should also cleanse your crystals after you use them for healing work, and when they have been around any intense or negative energies, people, or situations. It’s helpful to cleanse your crystals often, to keep their energy vibrant and powerful. Use your intuition to determine when your crystals need cleansing. If you sense a decrease in its energy, cloudiness, stickiness, darkness, heaviness, it’s definitely time to clear them. We discuss several methods for cleansing your crystals (and methods we do not suggest) below.

Using Water to Clear Your Crystals

Not all crystals can be put in water, as water damages some crystals. Be sure to find out whether your crystal is safe to use with this method before trying water to cleanse your crystals.
  • Use cool water – rapid temperature changes can effect crystals negatively.
  • Hold your crystal in your hand and point your fingers toward the drain.
  • Run cool water over your crystal for 30 seconds, envisioning all negative energy being pulled off your crystal and rinsed down the drain.
Regular tap water works in a pinch, but it’ s better if the water is filtered. The most ideal water cleansing is, if that water comes from a natural source. Holding your crystal under a running creek or bubbling brook (or even pouring spring or well water over your crystal) is the most optimal method for cleaning your crystal with water.

Clearing Crystals with Salt Water? No!

We absolutely DO NOT recommend this method. Using salt water to cleanse your crystals can severely damage them! Softer crystals, or crystals with cracks or fissures in them, especially, are prone to damage. While soaking, everything might appear to be okay (again, for crystals which are safe in water to begin with), but the dissolved salts will leach into any gaps in your crystal. As it dries out, the salt will recrystallize, leaving salt deposits that are difficult (if not impossible) to get out, and can discolor, crack, or break your crystals. Additionally, make sure you do not use this on other salt minerals or crystals you can’t get wet, since the process of getting the salt off the crystal can damage it. There are a few exceptions to this where the crystal will be unharmed, but since even the exceptions have exceptions, Crystallography Gems does NOT recommend salt water for cleansing your crystals.

Crystal Cleansing with Salt

The dry salt method is much safer, and incredibly effective for clearing energy from crystals. Salt is well known to be a clearing, cleansing, protective agent. Any good witch worth their weight in salt (har har) knows that it can be used to bless a space, as well as cast out dark energies and evil spirits, or set protective “force fields” around homes. Start by purchasing the right kind of salt. You can purchase Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt in most health food stores, and in some supermarkets. Any natural salt will do – avoid the processed salts that have additives like iodine. You want as close to natural salt from the earth as possible. Bury the crystal in Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt for one to three days, preferably in a ceramic or glass container. Wood, or porous materials could be damaged by the salt over the course of several days. You can also add rosemary, bay leaves, garden sage, mugwort, or any other clearing herbs for added strength to your crystal clearing salt. Once your crystal feels sufficiently cleared, wash off all the salt (using filtered water if possible) and let your crystal dry.

Using Smoke Cleansing

One way to clear energy from your crystals, your space, and you is by burning plant material. Whether you’re using smoke cleansing to spook ghosts or negative energies out of your home, to ground and clear your own energy, or to reset and clear your crystals, it’s an incredible and powerful metaphysical tool. Additionally, it has been scientifically proven to reduce the amount of viral and bacterial load in the air. The benefits from smoke cleansing are numerous; it is great for cleansing your crystals, auras, and environments.

How to Smoke Cleanse

Before you light your smoke cleansing bundle/wood, open up your windows and doors. When energy is released from things, it needs somewhere to go, else it can settle right back down somewhere else in your home. You’ll want to catch the ash and embers by holding it over a dish of some sort, to avoid damage and unplanned fire; We like to use Abalone shells. Light one end of your smoke cleansing bundle. Once it starts to get going, put out the fire and let it smolder. You can re-light it as many times as needed. This smoke is what you’ll use to do your smoke cleansing. You can pass your crystals through this smoke trail, waft the smoke around yourself, or move around your home with it, pushing the smoke into the corners of the home, under the bed, and into every nook and cranny. Michelle Ferris, the owner of Crystallography Gems, likes to envision her arm as a wing, fanning the smoke to where it needs to go. See what visualization works for you. As you’re moving the smoke around, ask the old energies to please leave, and invite in blessings, abundance, joy – any positive intentions are wonderful to add to this mantra for new and refreshed energy. Through smoke cleansing, you will find that you are more grounded, centered, calm, and your space feels lighter and brighter. If used to clear energy from crystals, their vibration will be more resonant, active, and start working more efficiently.

Smoke Cleansing Plants & Properties

There are many types of materials that can be bundled and/or dried to use as a smoke clearing tool. The most powerful medicines are ones that are close to you. Using herbs and plants that are from that area you live in or ones that are tied to your ancestral roots are the most powerful. You can even add things like thinly sliced, dried orange slices or cinnamon sticks to your bundles for a special blend and warm inviting of new energies. Some suggestions for herbs and plants you might use for Smoke Cleansing are Culinary (garden) Sage, Desert Sage, Cedar, Mints, Rosemary, Thyme, Juniper, Lemon Balm, Lavender, and Roses. Many of these are easily found or grown in your own backyard. See our blog post for a comprehensive list of herbs & their healing properties. If you harvest your own herbs, be sure to ask the plant first whether you may harvest (trust your intuition about what the plant says in reply). Be sure to give thanks to the plant afterward. The practice and energy of gratitude is important for all spiritual work.

Sustainable v Unsustainable Smoke Cleansing

The most popularized material for smoke cleansing is White Sage, though it is now endangered due to incorrect, and unsustainable harvesting. White sage is a traditional Indigenous smudging material, and we do not suggest it’s use unless you are yourself Indigenous, or have purchased it from a tribe, as they know how to harvest safely and sustainably. Culinary Sage and Desert Sage work well as replacements for White Sage, and using them does not appropriate the medicines of other cultures. Palo Santo is another popularized smoke cleansing tool, but as this is in danger of being over-harvested, should be sourced from someone who collects sustainably, from naturally fallen (already dead) wood. Unsustainable practices have decimated Palo Santo, and this sacred medicine needs to be protected and preserved. Crystallography Gems highly encourages you to find medicines which work for you that are non-appropriative, abundant where you live, and can be easily harvested sustainably. Cleansing your crystals is a wonderful practice to maintain, but should be done ethically and sustainably.

Smudging

You are likely familiar with the practice of smoke cleansing being called “smudging.” We avoid using the word “smudging.” Being located in Seattle, Washington, we are very aware that we occupy the traditional land of the first people of Seattle –  the Duwamish Tribe – and do our best to live in honor and with gratitude to the land, and for the Duwamish People, past, present, and future. As “smudging” is an Indigenous spiritual practice,  we honor both the word and the medicines of Indigenous people as a closed practice.

Using Your Breath

Your breath can carry your intention to clear your crystal. You are a powerful being, and have the power to cleanse your crystals on your own. That said, for some people, this visualization comes for easily than others. ​ To clear a crystal using your breath, hold your crystal in your dominant hand (both hands if it’s a large crystal). Focus your thoughts on the crystal, with the intention that it will be free of all negative energy. Breathe in through your nose, and breathe out through your mouth, visualizing your breath carrying light down your arm(s) to the crystal. Let the light gather and increase in the crystal with every breath, until it bursts, clearing all of the negative or stagnant energy out.

Using the Sun to Clear Your Crystals?

The sun is a very powerful ally, but it can be extremely destructive, as well. Make sure you educate yourself before you cleanse any crystal in the sun. Many do not do well in the UV rays of the sun, or in the heat. Depending on the crystal, exposing it to sun can cause it to fracture (Obsidian & Tourmaline), lose color (Amethyst, Citrine, Lapis Lazuli, Aquamarine, and more), turn black (Vivianite), dissolve (Chalcanthite), or release toxic components when heated (Cinnabar releases mercury). The examples listed are just a few of many, so make sure you do your research before opting to cleanse your crystals in the sun.

Burying Crystals in Earth

For a crystal who’s attached energies are extremely stubborn, clearing by burial is the most effective method. Put it back into the earth from whence it came. Notes on burying crystals:
  • Find a location that has unadulterated earth (no pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals).
  • Wrap your crystal in a cloth. Bury for at least 2-3 days.
  • Mark your spot so you can find them later.
  • For the most energetic cleansing and charging, do so under a full moon.
  • You can bury them without a protective cloth, as well, but if you do, make sure it is a crystal that can be easily and safely washed off in water afterward.

Using Crystal Clusters or Other Crystals

You can utilize other crystals to cleanse your crystals, as well.  Some stones that work well for this are: ​
  • Quartz crystal clusters
  • Amethyst clusters
  • Satin Spar (“Selenite”) charging / clearing plates
  • Selenite slabs
Place the stone to be cleared on the “clearing” stone, and leave for 24-48 hours. ​Some say these crystals never need to be cleansed. However, we feel every crystal needs a little love now and again, so we cleanse these crystals, too.