Since we sell crystals here at Zenquility, I get to have a lot of conversations about how they work – or whether they work at all, when the occasional skeptic walks in.
This is one of my favorite topics because something I’m passionate about is finding the overlaps between science and spirituality. It’s where my engineering background meets my healer persona.
What’s true on one level of existence is always true on all levels of existence, which means that the connection is always there to find if we’re looking for it. When we’re not pitting science and spirit against each other, we can see that they are simply two different levels of our everyday experience.
Crystals are a great example of this, because despite what the naysayers say, there is a physical explanation to how and why they help us. And despite what believers say, there isn’t magic in the crystal – at least not more than in anything else. (Isn’t our whole world kind of magic?)
Let’s start with a practical use of crystals: Watches
Have you ever noticed the word “quartz” on the face of a watch? It means that watch contains quartz — what we would refer to as clear quartz. Millions of people are walking around with crystals on their wrists and don’t even know it.
Clear quartz is what allows watches to exist. Before this invention, a clock needed a pendulum to keep time. (Which would be quite unwieldy for the wrist.)
Then someone discovered that when electricity is sent through clear quartz, the quartz vibrates at exactly the same frequency, 100% of the time.
The inventor used this fact to create the first watch. The electricity from a battery passes through the quartz crystal, which vibrates in response and always at the exact same frequency. The rest of the watch is engineered to measure out the seconds based on the predictable, consistent number of vibrations per second in the electrified quartz crystal.
Why would I go through this explanation of how a watch works in a post about crystals? It’s to demonstrate that mainstream science already acknowledges that quartz vibrates when energy (in the form of electricity) passes through it.
Crystals, human energy, and resonance
Now we know that clear quartz responds to electricity from a battery.
You know what else are sources of energy? Thoughts and emotions.
Specifically, thoughts are measurable electric impulses running through our nervous systems, and emotions are measurable magnetic impulses running through the rest of our bodies.
When you hold a piece of clear quartz, it will vibrate in response to mental and emotional energy running through your body.
The next thing that happens is resonance.
Resonance is the physical principle which says that when two objects are near each other, they will naturally be drawn to match each other’s vibrations. In this example, the clear quartz is one object, and you are the other object.
If both objects can vary in vibration, then they might both change and meet in the middle. But when one object has a fixed vibration and the other is changeable, then the changeable one will come to match the fixed one.
Clear quartz is fixed, and humans are very changeable. (That’s how/why we experience so many emotions.) So if you hold the clear quartz long enough, you will come into resonance with it.
This is why clear quartz is described as having a calming and clarifying effect. It helps the ton of different, wildly fluctuating energies in your body (that is, your thoughts and feelings) steady themselves.
What about other crystals?
If the resonance effect that I described is true for clear quartz, then is it also true for other crystals?
Short answer: Yes.
Many of the crystals we use are forms of quartz. Citrine, for instance, is yellow quartz. Amethyst is purple quartz. They have a fixed vibration but at a different frequency. (Hence the different colors.)
What about non-quartz crystals? Those too.
This resonance explanation applies to all crystals, which are really just rocks. Physical science tells us that any hard substance is fixed in its vibration; therefore, no crystal will change its vibration when you hold it.
The emotional effects of crystals
Thousands of different books and websites talk about the healing characteristics of different crystals. How does this fit into the scientific explanation of how they work?
It comes down to emotion. Every emotion a human can feel is a unique vibration. When we come into resonance with a crystal, we experience a vibrational state that we’ve given a name to – that is, an emotion.
Rose quartz, for instance, is always associated with love. What this really means is, people who come into resonance with it reach an emotional state that is commonly described as “love.”
As for crystals that are said to have outward effects, such as “abundance,” it’s not that the crystals magically create anything. An “abundance crystal” will entrain you into an emotional state that feels abundant, and if you maintain that feeling long enough, you will attract what you feel.
Don’t let this explanation take the magic out of crystals for you. Just because something has a rational explanation doesn’t mean it isn’t also magic. It just depends on how you define magic.
And now when a naysayer tries to poo-poo your crystal collection, you can confidently say there is a scientific explanation for using them, and it’s all about resonance.