THE FORGOTTEN POWERS OF CRYSTALS

On the trail of crystal healing from antiquity to the present…
 
Besides archaeological evidence (the interpretation of which is generally rather speculative) and the still existing traditions of certain indigenous peoples (1), the oldest evidence reporting the healing power of crystals consists mainly of medical works from India (2), Chaldaea (3), Mesopotamia, Egypt (4), Ancient Greece (5) and Rome (6). A tacit belief in the healing power of crystals is evidenced by all of them, as well as an integrative approach to the healing methods used within each culture. Interestingly, these documented beginnings of the healing power of crystals are inseparably bound up with astrology (7). Crystals, just like the heavenly bodies, were seen as expressions of divine principles, as ‘practically useable planets’ through which the required divine powers could be involved in healing.

It is an interesting fact that the pantheons of India, Chaldaea, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Graeco-Roman antiquity were inhabited by divinities sharing very similar natures, so that the attributes of crystals were initially hardly altered (8). However, over the centuries that followed, the meanings and ‘truths’ of crystals were increasingly distorted through the continual re-copying and re-interpreting of names and terms.  This explains why it is very difficult to find concrete information about the healing power of crystals in ancient and medieval texts.

The situation did not change until the twelfth century and the appearance of the remarkable work of the Benedictine abbess, Hildegard von Bingen. Hildegard’s medical texts, Physica (9) and Causae et curae (10) differed considerably from the writings of her contemporaries and predecessors. In particular, the fourth book of Physica, called The Book of Crystals, presents completely new insights about the healing power of crystals, insights that are still influencing crystal healing today.

However, Hildegard von Bingen was rapidly forgotten again in the Middle Ages. Her original works and the few existing copies disappeared into monastic libraries where they sank into oblivion for centuries. But the chain of ancient traditions lived on, under the surface, and was revived once again in the Renaissance. And so it was that traditional crystal healing enjoyed a last literary expression. (11).

With the Age of Enlightenment, however, which began towards the end of the seventeenth century, crystal healing began a temporary demise owing to the fact that the mechanisms involved could not be explained scientifically at that time. Both chemistry and mechanically-orientated physics still lacked any kind of understanding of the concepts of radiation and energetic fields. Despite many success stories, the healing power of crystals was seen as simple superstition by scholars of the Enlightenment and the newly born sciences, and, as a result, crystal healing disappeared into secret societies.

Only a very few lines of traditional text survived into the modern age. A very small part of the original knowledge about crystals was preserved via alchemical traditions and anthroposophy; everything else has had to be newly researched and discovered. Only fairy tales and myths nowadays provide a lively insight into that ancient knowledge – but the key to such stories’ hidden content is often not so easy to discover either.
 
1 Christian Rätsch, Die Steine der Schamanen, [The stones of the Shamans], Diederichs, Munich 1997
2 J. Jolly, ‘Medizin’ [Medicine], in “Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie” [Outline of Indo-Aryan Philology], Strassburg, 1901
3 A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei [Superstition and Magic], Stuttgart, 1898
4 Dr. von Oefele, “Keilschriftmedizin” [Cuneiform Medicine], in Allgemeine medizinische Centralzeitung, 1899
5 Theophrastus, ’Über Steine’ [On crystals], in Fortschritte der Mineralogie [Progress in Mineralogy] VII, 1922 and Dioskurides, Arzneimittellehre
[Medical teachings], Berlin 1958
6 Pliny the Elder, “Natural History”.
7 Hermann Fühner, Lithotherapie, S. Calvary & Co., Berlin, 1902
8 Ruska, Das Steinbuch des Aristoteles [Aristotle’s Book on Crystals], Carl Winter, Heidelberg, 1912
9 Hildegard von Bingen, Naturkunde (Physica), [Natural History], Otto Müller, Salzburg, 1959
10 Hildegard von Bingen, Heilkunde (Causae et Curae), [On Healing], Otto Müller, Salzburg, 1959
11 Bernardus Caesius, “De mineralibis”, Lyon, 1636
 
© Original German text: Michael Gienger.
World © Neue Erde GmbH, Saarbrücken.
Used with kind permission of Michael Gienger and Neue Erde Verlag.
© English translation: Astrid Mick
Editing: Claudine Bloomfield

top | home