Do crystals really heal?
Precious and collectible stones have ceased to be a luxury item and the lot of the elite. It is an industry that involves many different professions, from geologists and cutters to gemologists. Most readers have an idea of who geologists and cutters are, but most likely few know about gemology. Gemology is the science of examination and evaluation of precious stones. Scientific and practical status GG GIA (certified gemologist of the Gemological Institute of America) is highly authoritative in this field of knowledge. Science and life // Illustrations
Crystals for lithotherapeutic practices. Tucson (USA)
“Cleansing” a natural prehnite crystal using rice.
Lithotherapeutic devices designed to impart “healing” properties to water.
Schematic of a simple radionic device, absolutely useless from any point of view.
Hackmanite in quartz (pale lilac pyramidal area). Burma.
The same hackmanite under the influence of UV radiation.
Irradiated Hackmanite a few seconds after UV exposure ceases.
Greenland tugtupit after long-term storage in the dark.
It dulls under the influence of ultraviolet radiation.
The irradiated tugtupitis a few minutes after the cessation of exposure to ultraviolet radiation.
Afghan scapolite under natural conditions.
Scapolite exhibits bright peach-orange luminescence when exposed to UV light.
Scapolite exhibits bright peach-orange luminescence when exposed to UV light.
Irradiated scapolite a few minutes after cessation of ultraviolet exposure. The largest event in the world of precious stones is the annual exhibition in Tucson (Arizona, USA). At the beginning of February, this small town on the west coast of the United States turns into a buzzing hive: thousands of gem collectors and jewelry lovers flock here from all over the world. It is believed that any professional gemologist should visit Tucson at least once in his life. This year I was lucky enough to visit the iconic place for the first time. The sea of precious stones, the many exhibition pavilions scattered throughout the city, and the general atmosphere of friendliness made an indelible impression! I was surprised by the Americans’ passion for mysticism and miracles. In our memorable 1990s, Kashpirovsky treated everything for everyone, and Chumak, with a mystical message, “charged” water in any available containers, and life in the country froze during their television sessions. It seemed to me that such “magical tension” manifests itself in society only in cases of instability and uncertainty about the future. Prosperous America dealt a hard blow to my worldview. An Indian magician, officially on the staff of the Marriott Hotel, mobilizes guests to celebrate the sunrise together: the ritual includes an appeal to the four cardinal directions and the magical burning of sage leaves as a sacrifice. One could simply smile at people’s craving for miracles, if not for the conversations with the participants in the action – it turns out that many have been coming to the “magician” for several years. The topic of “magical” healing with the help of rare gems is a real surprise that the States gave me! In addition to the industry of jewelry and collectible stones, there is a whole parallel world where people are “treated” with the help of stone paraphernalia in a wide variety of ways. In general, on the one hand, this is the choice of free citizens in a free country – what and how to be treated. On the other hand, the widespread nature of the phenomenon and the obvious opposition of “magical” methods to traditional medicine are alarming. The country that gave the world Silicon Valley and the personal computer welcomes shamans and sorcerers with delight! Of course, this is their business and their difficulties. But it should be remembered: all newfangled trends come from abroad and to Russia with a delay of 5-15 years, from which we can conclude that interest in “stone therapy” will sooner or later spread to us. That’s why I took some time to study this parallel world. He who is armed with knowledge at least has an idea of how to confront the enemy. What did it turn out during a small private investigation? “Stone” therapy has not one direction, but three: stone therapy, or massage with ordinary stones, heated or cooled; lithotherapy – mystical healing with the help of precious, semi-precious, and also ornamental stones and so-called radionics (a special case of lithotherapy) – a special type of pseudoscience that uses, in addition to stones, electrical components. Stone therapy (massage) does not claim to be a panacea for all the most terrible diseases and, accordingly, cannot greatly harm a person. The situation with lithotherapy is more serious – healers in this area promise to cure anyone of anything, as long as the necessary amount of money is found. Lithotherapy, in turn, is divided into two directions: historical and modern. The historical trend of healing with precious stones is probably more than five thousand years old, but this type of “healing” received its greatest development in the Middle Ages. In addition to the use of the minerals themselves, historical lithotherapy requires mastery of many “sciences” of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages, the use of ritual magic, spells, calling on all kinds of spirits and other incorporeal astral entities. The combination of various properties of minerals with their astrological aspects, magical rituals, protocols for working with the descent of light (Kabbalah) is described in magical treatises of ancient times. One of the first known manuals on the use of precious stones in healing in Europe comes from the pen of Isidore of Seville (approximately 630). Many later works have survived, among them: “Lapidarium” by Marbod of Rennes (1035-1123), “Physics” and “Book on the Art of Healing” by Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), “De mineralibus” (“On Minerals”) by Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280) and Gemmarum et lapidum historia (History of Gemstones), published in 1609 by Anselm Boethius de Booth, court physician to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. There are also many medieval magical manuscripts whose authorship has not been established. A healer acting in line with the historical direction of lithotherapy must master a truly gigantic amount of knowledge: from Latin and ancient Greek to the Kabbalistic instruments widely used in the Middle Ages, such as gematria, notarikon and temura, which requires enormous time. Apparently, for this reason, representatives of the “healing business” working in the field of historical lithotherapy are rare. The second direction of lithotherapy – healing with crystals – appeared in the middle of the 1990th century and was fully realized in the late 1995s. Its founder is an American writer who wrote under the pseudonym Melody. She has academic degrees (BA in Mathematics and Master of Fine Arts). Melody’s book “Love is in the Earth,” published in XNUMX, is a “hodgepodge” of Indian philosophy, numerology, cosmology and crystallography, and does not neglect references to the work of psychologists. In this work, references to the syngony of crystals are adjacent to chakras, and information about DNA and the basics of superstring theory is combined with clairvoyance and weather control. It is clear that this explosive mixture is designed to not give the reader any chance to doubt the “truthfulness” of the methods and techniques presented by the author. Well, the scientific-magic mix looks convincing to superficial people who are not used to reading critically and are ready to take everything on faith, as long as scientific terms are mentioned in the text. Unfortunately, there are many such people. Melody’s book became so popular that it caused a real “rockfall” of new works on this topic. However, the “recipes” from Melody and her followers look, to put it mildly, strange. For example, a quartz crystal attached to a car’s gas pump can “mystically” reduce fuel consumption by 50%. However, despite the obvious absurdity of such advice, people were ready to follow them. According to world therapists, working with minerals includes cleaning stones by soaking them in salt water or in a container with rice, fumigating the stone with the smoke of sage, juniper or incense. Awakening the crystal occurs with the help of the sounds of Tibetan bells or a meditative gong. And so on and so forth. Gradually, lithotherapy has reached such popularity in the United States that the production of a whole arsenal of magical devices has been mastered, which includes all kinds of “actualizers” for water and decanters for wine. For several years now they have been successfully sold at jewelry exhibitions in Tucson and Las Vegas. You can’t help but think: if lithotherapy is such a wild success, then it’s probably not without reason? It can’t be that hundreds of thousands of people blindly follow something that obviously doesn’t bring any real benefit? Here we come close to the issue of scientific substantiation of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of lithotherapy. The unscientific nature of “historical lithotherapy” with all its spells, pentagrams and other magical attributes is beyond doubt. But the modern direction, as we have already noted, is more dangerous. It attracts many people precisely because it refers to science. Let’s start with the little things. Pay attention to the photo showing lithotherapeutic devices. All stones are in sealed glass capsules. It is obvious that contact between stones and water, which should “change its properties under the influence of stones” and “heal the patient,” does not occur under any circumstances. Chemistry states: if there is no contact between interacting media, then there is and cannot be any interaction between substances! Physics is not so categorical. From a physical point of view, there are at least several ways of remotely influencing matter, each of which is capable of changing the properties of the recipient material. We talk, for example, about radiation and microwave radiation. These phenomena are well studied, but neither one nor the other is involved in lithotherapy. According to “healers,” the beneficial effect of stones on water and subsequently on the human body is carried out in a non-contact manner due to certain “crystal vibrations” that “change the properties of water.” Mineralogy and crystallography are sciences that are over two hundred years old, and during this time not a single scientist has discovered stones that show signs of any “natural vibrations.” Minerals that can at least somehow be associated with vibrations are piezoelectrics. Plates made of these stones, when compressed or stretched, create an electric charge on their surface and, conversely, when electric current is applied to such crystals, they themselves begin to compress or bend. Such minerals include quartz, tourmaline and some other natural or artificially grown materials. Piezoelectrics made from quartz (mostly synthetic) have found wide application in radio electronics. This effect is the basis for the operation of several classes of electronic devices – from quartz resonators to piezoelectric speakers. However, if “healers” use electricity in their work, it is for very specific purposes. Representatives of radionics (a special direction of modern lithotherapy) work with quartz – treatment at a distance. The founder of the method, which appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, was Albert Abrams (1863-1924). He and his followers believe that if quartz crystals exhibit a piezoelectric effect, then by putting an inductor on them and connecting it to a generator of certain frequencies, one can achieve such effects as the fulfillment of desires, healing from illnesses or gaining wealth. You say, how is this A wild thought: could anyone even think of connecting the piezoelectric effect, inductance, a pulse generator and magic? However, by selling radionics devices, Abrams became a millionaire at the end of his life. From an electrical engineering point of view, the radionic device circuit is meaningless for many reasons, ranging from lack of power and incorrect use of variable resistances to the fact that the quartz does not interact with the inductance. In order for a crystal to begin to exhibit the piezoelectric effect, direct contact of the quartz with an electrical conductor is required. Despite all the obvious delusion of radionics, whose adherents believe that they are getting in touch with no less than the “cosmic mind” itself, devices assembled according to similar schemes or even “improved ones” are sold these days for huge amounts of money! Healers who are far from radionics explain their “work” with stones more simply. No electricity! The conversation is only about the existence of certain “unconditional natural vibrations” in absolutely all minerals. It is impossible to register with any physical instruments, but these mysterious properties of stones supposedly manifest themselves remarkably in the presence of people with paranormal abilities. Since not everyone has such abilities, the positive effects of “mineral healing” can only be demonstrated by a select few! Modern science is merciless in this case too. If a certain physical phenomenon cannot be reproduced in any other laboratory in the world under approximately similar conditions, such a phenomenon does not exist in nature. The most spectacular demonstration of a healer’s lithotherapeutic abilities, as a result of which the client is shown “the cosmic connection between the internal vibrations of a crystal and a person,” looks like this. The “master” takes a certain mineral in his hands, enters a state of “trance”, “connection with the cosmos” or “deep meditation” and – a miracle happens! The crystal in the hands of the healer suddenly changes color! A pale pink stone turns bright red, and a gray stone turns bright purple! Well, what other proof does the client need that magic exists? It’s all about a hidden source of ultraviolet radiation and a phenomenon observed in some rare minerals, which is called “tenebrescence” or “photochromism.” This effect is a reversible change in the color of a mineral under the influence of ultraviolet radiation, that is, actually under the influence of light beyond the visible range perceived by the human eye. Exposure to ultraviolet radiation causes temporary atomic rearrangements in certain minerals, which are expressed in changes in the population of electronic levels. As a result, the optical properties of the mineral change. After some time (10 minutes or more), the excited atoms return to their ground states and the color of the stone becomes the same. The phenomenon of tenebrescence is observed in such rare semi-precious stones as tugtupite and hackmanite. Sometimes the phenomenon of photochromism can be observed in some samples of the mineral scapolite. The most striking representative among tenebrous stones is hackmanite. It is a silicate, a type of sodalite, whose formula is Na8Al6Si6O24(Cl2S). Greenland hackmanite from the Ilimasak deposit and Canadian hackmanite from Saint-Hilary in Quebec, being freshly extracted from the rock, have a bright lavender-violet hue, but under the influence of ultraviolet sunlight they fade quite quickly, changing the color to a smoky gray. Hackmanites from Afghanistan and Burma, on the other hand, change color from gray to bright lavender or pink-violet when exposed to sunlight. Greenland tugtupite – aluminum-beryllium silicate, Na4(AlBeSi4O12)Cl, changes color under the influence of ultraviolet light from gray-pink to bright red. Tenebrous scapolite from Afghanistan is another representative of the silicate group. Its chemical composition can be different: (Ca,Na)4(Al6Si6O24)(SO4, CO3), Ca4Al6Si6O24CO3Na4Al3Si9O24Cl. Scapolite is found less frequently than all other stones, but it demonstrates the most beautiful transition from a complete absence of color to a bright blue hue, reminiscent of sapphire in saturation. Not everyone is familiar with mineralogy and is able to guess that a source of UV radiation can be hidden in a room. Therefore, seeing with their own eyes the “obvious change” in the color of the stone, those present perceive such a phenomenon as “a miracle of establishing a connection with one’s spiritual origin through cosmic vibrations”! But the most important mechanism of the work of lithotherapists lies not even in tricks, but in the placebo effect – a complex psychological phenomenon that can be explained “on the fingers” by the fact that a person is not treated by the medicine itself, but by a deep inner conviction of the effectiveness of the drug used against the disease. The placebo effect is sometimes so strong that official medicine is forced to conduct scientific experiments on volunteers before declaring that a new chemical formula is actually useful for humans. The famous German geologist Hermann Fühner in 1902 in the book “Lithotherapy. Historical Studies of the Medical Use of Precious Stones” wrote: “If we talk about lithotherapy today, it is quite obvious that the healing effect that can be observed and which follows from precious stones is suggestion, and lithotherapy is psychotherapy.” Numerous confirmed examples of cures with stones in 100% of cases are based on the placebo effect. In 1999, English psychologists Christopher French and Lyn Williams conducted a formal comparative study of the “healing” capabilities of gemstones. Eighty volunteers took part in the experiment. They were divided into two groups. Half meditated with quartz crystals according to Melody’s methods, the others received a placebo stone (plastic imitation), outwardly indistinguishable from quartz. None of the volunteers had any idea who had a real quartz crystal and who got a fake. Participants in both groups reported feeling “healed by crystals” regardless of whether the crystals were real or fake. In 2001, the same researchers, along with psychologist Hayley O’Donnell, repeated the experiment on another group of volunteers and obtained the same results. Despite the fact that cartoons refuting the effect of lithotherapy and accusing “healers” of fraud appeared already in the 16th century, in the 21st it continues to be a popular area of “alternative” medicine. The healers themselves claim that “healing with stones” is good because it does not cause direct harm to patients. This is wrong! It’s not even that some minerals are poisonous or radioactive. In our time, it is not so easy to get “all-healing” cinnabar beads or a thorite bracelet, as is recommended in some lithotherapeutic publications. The main trouble is that a patient who is keen on alternative medicine and “stone treatment” is guaranteed to waste time, which in some cases can lead to complications and even death. Illustrations provided by the author. In recent decades, a form of alternative medicine has become popular in Russia and the West, which states that diseases can be treated with the help of stones and crystals. Let’s see if there is any truth to this This material is published as part of the Mythbusting project, where we talk about controversial phenomena, the authenticity of which has not been proven in the academic environment. We are trying to figure out what is truth and what is fiction. When writing articles, authors think critically and use a scientific approach to avoid spreading false information.
A little bit of all religions
Proponents of crystal healing claim that this practice dates back to Mesopotamia 6 thousand years ago. In ancient Egypt, gemstones were supposedly used to “ward off disease and negative energy.” In fact, the philosophy behind this technique is a mishmash of Asian religious teachings. There are both the Chinese “vital energy concept” “qi” and the Hindu “chakras” – “psychoenergetic centers of the human body.” The crystals supposedly interact with them to give the wearer “physical, emotional and spiritual wellness.”
Popularity of crystals
Crystal healing gained popularity as part of New Age philosophy in the West in the second half of the 20th century. Although the practice of this movement has become less common in recent decades, many celebrities believe that the stones can have healing properties. For example, singer Katy Perry notes that they help her find partners. In an interview with Cosmopolitan, she stated: “I carry a lot of rose quartz with me, which attracts men.” Actress Megan Fox uses crystals to clear her head of bad thoughts, and singer Adele claims that the worst performance of her life was caused by improperly placed stones.
closer to the body
According to the concept of crystal healing, different stones improve the functioning of individual parts of the body. For example, amethyst is good for the intestines, aventurine (a type of quartz) is good for the heart, and ruby is good for the chakras. During a “healing” session, a “specialist” places stones on the person lying down, including on the forehead, throat, chest, abdomen and genitals. After the “procedure”, you are invited to purchase the crystals you like in order to wear them on yourself and place them under your pillow to expel negative energy.
Lack of evidence
The effectiveness of crystal treatment has not been proven in any studies. However, in one scientific paper, scientists demonstrated that the “treatment” often causes a placebo effect—an improvement in the patient’s condition after taking a substance without medicinal properties. The head of the Psychotherapy Center of Dr. Chitlova is a psychotherapist, Ph.D. Victoria Chitlova explains that suggestible people are most prone to experiencing the placebo effect. According to her, “suggestibility is formed due to such personality characteristics as gullibility, impressionability, gentleness, kindness, social orientation; 5 to 10% of the Earth’s population are especially susceptible to suggestion.”
A lesson for evidence-based medicine
Despite the apparent lack of evidence, it is often difficult to argue with those who truly believe that stones can have healing powers. Some scientists believe that this interest in pseudoscience demonstrates a growing distrust of official scientific institutions. Edzard Ernst, MD and alternative medicine researcher at the University of Exeter, said: “The current popularity of alternative medicine shows that we are not meeting the specific needs of patients – not taking the time, not showing compassion and empathy.”
