Crystal properties are what make each crystal special. In my previous blog choosing and buying crystals I talked about how to choose crystals. What, though, if you see a crystal you want to buy and you don’t know much about it? It’s easy to say ‘take a good crystal book with you’- but obviously you can’t have one available at any moment!

So what can you do?

As every crystal has properties in common with other crystals, it is useful to know the ‘basics’ to know what your crystal can do for you. Here’s some hints that could help you decide:

First property: colour
Colour is important in helping to distinguish crystals. If you are familiar, even a little, with colour therapy these properties are true also for crystals.

As a reminder:

• – Black: focus, absorbing extra energy, protection
• – Brown: security, protection, comfort, reliability.
• – Red: power, energy, strength, passion, stimulating
• – Pink: peace, sensitivity, simplicity, emotional
• – Orange: vitality, joy, harmony, creativity
• – Yellow: energy, happiness, self-confidence, contentment
• – Green: cleansing, inner peace, optimism, balance
• – Blue: calm, relaxation, honesty, inner strength
• – Violet: inspiration, spiritual freedom, inner calm, intuition
• – White/clear: clarity, purity, cleanliness, support

Second property: shape
You don’t need to be a gemologist or a geologist to know that crystals grow in particular shapes because of the arrangement of their atoms. I’ve already described the ‘ideal’ configurations and properties in rocks and crystals where I talk more about crystal and their shapes.

Of course you know that these are ideal shapes and crystals also grow in other non-standard ways or habits (if you wish, find out more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_habit).

You may wonder whether these ‘irregular’ crystals have the same properties as crystals growing in their ideal, regular configuration. I believe that this is the case and at times they might even have special uses (like in the case of some Quartzes).

Third property: hardness
This property is important because hardness is a factor when ‘cleansing crystals’. All crystals absorb energy and the harder the crystal the longer it will take to absorb energy. A soft crystal will get ‘exhausted’ faster than a hard one so when used in healing, it will need to be changed earlier. The Mohs scale help to ‘categorise’ crystals for their hardness. The higher the number the harder the crystal. (https://www.boothandbooth.co.uk/Mohs_Scale.htm)

Fourth property: innate properties
This is what you need to know about each crystal as these innate properties are what make a particular crystal more sought-after or useful. This factor is the most important you have to be aware of before you buy. It is useful to know when you are looking for something specific from a crystal.
Please remember that certain innate properties are common in more than one crystal: you don’t need to buy a particular crystal because only it has this property but if you do your research you might find that other crystals can help too! For instance Malachite and Black tourmaline are great for protection, Moonstone and Lapis Lazuli facilitate intuition and Calcite and Amethyst work miracles as energy cleansers.

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