Honoring the Stones

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by J.A. Kent, PhD, author of the new Goddess and the Shaman.

In his seminal book Voices of the First Day (1991), Robert Lawlor writes about an experience he had while visiting Arizona in the company of a Cherokee man. The man—Willy Whitefeather—sat playing his flute to a nearby group of large rocks. When Lawlor asked why he did this, Willy replied that the stones were like tired, lonely, and sad old people that lived in a hollow world because the white world had become so blind and selfish. White people did not understand that all things have consciousness—even stones. Willy explained that rocks contain silicone crystals, through which they could hear. The stones were waiting to be sung to. He said that the Cherokee had always honored the stones for their strength, beauty, and endurance. To the white world, they were inanimate, unloved objects that had no vitality, feelings, or consciousness. They were, however, valued in Western cultures for their ability to make money for careless profiteers.

I understand that the Cherokee way of respecting and honoring the stones was also a way of respecting and honoring the “Great Spirit” that had created them.

Crystal healers know that crystals and stones, like water, can take an imprint, and that their energy can be radiated and used for healing. The way to motivate the stones to share their energy in this way is to project love to them and ask their compliance—to show respect and gratitude and to honor them.

If you have stones, rocks, or crystals in your possession, please realize that they have consciousness, feelings, and inner ways of knowing. They are growing in consciousness and learning, as are all other life streams. They respond to love and care and have the potential to be helpers and healers to other life forms, including the human life streams.

If you have them in your home, play some lovely music for them; put them within the proximity of indoor plants or flowers, or burn some beautiful incense for them. They also benefit from smudging with white sage or other purifying plants.

They also, from time to time, like to be outdoors in the wind, sun, and rain, or to be buried for a time back into the earth to reconnect with the matrix that was their original nurturing environment (or mother, if you like).

They are the bones of the Earth mother upon everything in nature is built—the plant kingdom absorbs nutrients and minerals from bones of the Earth and the animal kingdoms either directly or indirectly absorb nutrients and minerals from them as well. Human life would not exist without them, yet we ignore them or treat them with disdain. We blow them up, or poison them, or treat them as commodities.

They are the “Earth” of the four directions in magical ritual Let us bring them in from the cold as an honored part of our world community and as part of our human role as stewards of the planet and all its planetary life forms.

Our thanks to J.A. Kent for her guest post! For more from J.A. Kent, read her article, “The Politics of Divinity.”