Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in The Queen of the Underworld's LiveJournal:

Monday, July 7th, 2008
9:14 pm	Magic Rocks: Tiger's Eye If malachite is my long-time partner, then tiger's eye is the childhood sweetheart that I never really broke up with, but just moved away from. I have loved tiger's eye for as long as I have been working with crystals. For a long time, it was the stone I would inevitably pick up in a store, play with, and eventually buy. Other stones might catch my eye, but tiger's eye would be the stone to come home with me. I believe I have lost more tiger's eye than many other people have ever bought. It was with immense joy that I discovered both red tiger's eye and hawk's eye sometime in the early 90s. I began shifting away from the golden-brown stone and acquiring the red stuff and the blue-green stuff almost exclusively, and that began our long, fond estrangement. It has reached a point now where I don't believe I have any tiger's eye close at hand -- I'm not certain that even searching through my caches of stones would produce a single tiger's eye. I may have to remedy this situation. I find the energy of tiger's eye to be immensely soothing, comfortable, and easy to work with. As I sit here and consider my old friend at a distance, I am a little teary and emotional with nostalgic fondness. I'm not certain why I've stopped acquiring tiger's eye over the past 10 years or so, though I did notice that my eye was being drawn to it when I recently attended a rock and gem show. So maybe we'll have a little reunion, tiger's eye and me. In summary: warm, soothing energy that's easy to use. I seem to be very fond of a lot of the stones that are easy for me to use. Coincidence? Nah. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
12:27 pm	Magic Rocks: Hematite Hematite and I have had a long, bizarre relationship. I enjoy hematite a great deal: it is very attractive both visually and in a tactile way. I like the polished sheen of hematite, as well as a the silver-grey metallic color. I like the weight of the stone in my hand, and the smooth feel of the high polish. I like the look of hematite beads for jewelry. Yet I hardly own any hematite, and when I consider a piece of the stone, I rarely buy it. There was a brief period of time where I used a chunk of hematite as a grounding stone. The weight and density of it makes it feel like it ought to be an ideal grounding stone. It feels like it ought to be really useful for working the root energy nexus too. But there's something... slippery about the energy. My energy just sort of slides off the stone and continues to bounce around without grounding at all. This slipperiness also makes it difficult for me to use the stone for any other purpose. Maybe some people's energy has enough traction to use hematite for grounding. I know people who love the stone, and talk about how grounding or useful it is. More power to them. I'll probably continue to use the stone in jewelry -- sparingly -- and occasionally buy myself one or another polished chunk of it. I don't think it will get permanently added to my magic rock toolkit, except as something to use for someone who likes the stone, since I can't use it very well myself. In summary: nice stone, utterly unusable for me, probably usable for other people. I'd be curious to hear how other people like the stone and if other folks are able to use it for anything. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
2:42 pm	Magic Rocks: Carnelian Carnelian is another stone to which I have found myself attracted lately. This means that I've been thinking about it, though I haven't had a chunk easily at hand to play with, so I may end up with some impressions that I'll later change. (Of course, this caveat stands for anything I write; magic is nothing if not change.) One of the the things I enjoy about carnelian is that, like citrine, its color is highly variable and mostly come in shades that are sufficiently saturated to please my eye. Carnelian tends to be more opaque than citrine, so it has very different visual qualities, and when I can find one with a certain amount of translucence, I'm generally very pleased. This means, of course, that carnelian beads often catch my eye, since bead-quality stones are often translucent or even transparent. Just as I find that citrine warms and smooths energy, I find that carnelian warms energy even more, near the edge of too-hot. If citrine is the sitting down with a cup of tea, carnelian is the hot jacuzzi bath. It's an active heat, a moving heat, a flexible heat... a heat that effervesces and relaxes and refreshes. You want to get some energy moving fast without being jarring? That's carnelian. In terms of usability, carnelian is as flexible as its energy. I've used it for cleansing and for certain types of grounding. I've used it as a magical focus for anti-fire charms and as a meditative focus for speeding action in mind and/or body. I really like the feel of it for jewelry, though I still haven't found the Right Design for the stones I've bought for that purpose. I expect I'll stumble on it eventually. In summary: carnelian is another excellent all-purpose stone if you need active energy. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
10:42 am	Magic Rocks: Auras and Other Energy Work I had to cut this for length. Vaaaaast length. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
10:29 am	Magic Rocks: Pendulums When I was a child, I spent a great deal of time devouring the occult/weird things section of our local public library. Recall that this was the era of Leonard Nimoy and "In Search Of...", and do not wonder at the fact that I devoured every book about the Bermuda Triangle, every grainy photo of a purported UFO, and every dull Hans Holzer ghost story. I pored over the Patterson film stills when I reached the cryptozoology shelf, and boggled at stories of the orang pendek and similar spectacular cryptids. As I exhausted the resources, I started checking out the fortunetelling books (reading regular playing cards, for instance, or palmistry). And then on to the less flashy dregs of the books. When I was about 12 or 13, I found an extremely intriguing section of some book or other that talked about not only dowsing, but the use of pendulums, rather than forked sticks, for dowsing purposes. The book talked about how different lengths of the string/chain for the pendulum could be used for locating specific types of objects. My youthful empirical mind was engaged by this. I first needed a pendulum to use for my experiments. I could hardly ask my parents for such a thing, and certainly nothing so grand as the metal or crystal pendulums shown in the book. My father was not a fisherman, so no sinkers lurked in hidden corners of the basement. I finally settled upon a broken keychain I'd received in a comic/junk swap in 3rd grade, reputed to have a Real Piece of Petrified Wood as its fob. I fetched a length of string from the Unending Cone of String in the basement, tied it to the bale of the keychain, and off I went. I amused myself for a solid week working out lengths for detecting different items. I used a 14K gold baby ring as my source of gold, and spent a long time out in the yard, tracking the three lines of water that ran through my parents' 2 acres (I didn't really know about aquifers back then, and it seemed reasonable, given the fact that our well was behind our house, the neighbor's well was out near the street, and then there was a third one running under the hill in the back, I was certain). I think 31" was the length needed for detecting water. I can't remember the others, but I had a notebook full of notations. While I am uncertain now as to whether I was actually accurately dowsing the underground water closest to the surface, I continue to believe that pendulums are useful tools for magical work. My most recent use of the pendulum was to go over every box I moved when I left an abusive relationship. I was having problems because I kept finding things that belonged to or were written on by the Toxic One, and I would dissociate or otherwise react badly to the find. I used a pendulum to determine what boxes contained such items, and then, fortified by the presence of my significant other (now wife), I would delve into the box and root out the item or items in question. It worked very well; since that time, I have only encountered about 3 caches of such items (which were all paper with the Toxic One's writing on, and they were all used to line the catbox). I don't recall what, specifically, I used as a pendulum -- for all I can recall, I may have found my Genuine Petrified Wood keychain again. I have, over the years, thought about buying one of the very pretty pendulums tipped with some sort of magic rock -- fluorite is one of the most common stones I've seen used for the purpose. While fluorite pendulums are very attractive and shiny, I don't find the stone itself to be useful for what I occasionally need from a pendulum. I can't even remember if I finally caved and bought a magic rock pendulum. I don't think I have, because I don't really recall stumbling across one that screamed ME! ME! I AM THE RIGHT ONE!. I could have forgotten, I admit. What would I use a pendulum for? Well, there's a number of applications, but three leap to mind: - locating something (it could be anything, as long as I've got a good image of it in my head) - divination (I'd only really use it in a pinch, when I had no other methods of divination at hand) - ascertaining energy flow in a human body, particularly when working to determine the status of the main line of chakras What magic rocks might I like to use as a pendulum? I think it would depend greatly on my mood and what application for which I was using it. For chakra work, I would want a stone that I really liked and felt comfortable with -- probably a citrine crystal, because I'm fond of them and because I like the way that energy feels through them. Overall, I think the pendulum is an underrated and underused magical tool, and the association of a magic rock with a pendulum can facilitate any application of the tool. And if you're interested in a broken keychain with a Genuine Petrified Wood fob, let me know, I'll go looking for it. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
11:34 am	Magic Rocks: Citrine Citrine is one of the stones that I loved about fifteen years ago. I found it extremely calming, and so, when a chunk of it set in a cheap necklace called to me, I found a way to buy it. I wore that necklace for many years as a sort of personal focus, so I like to think I'm fairly intimately acquainted with the properties of citrine as they apply to me. There are innumerable versions of what citrine is good for: concentration, opening various chakras, healing, et cetera. I think that the takeaway message there is that it's good for whatever you need it for. If you find citrine calming and centering, then it will be useful for calming and centering. If you find that it opens your head chakra, then it'll open your head chakra. Citrine is an extremely versatile stone, like its more boring cousin, clear quartz. I find the energy of citrine (and energy filtered through citrine) to be warm and settling, and smooth in the sort of way that I sometimes describe types of sake as smooth: it goes down like pleasantly flavored water, but there's a power behind it. There's a floral feel to it, almost, in the same way that some excellent wines have floral overtones. It's rich, but hidden, just waiting to be pointed at a purpose. Still, I didn't find citrine very programmable back then -- it would take for a while, but then would wash clean after some use and time. It's useful, I think, for short-term magics that use it as a focus, but I wouldn't ever use it for the long-term. I like citrine for its variety of colors and the flaws often found in the crystals. Back then, I preferred the pale yellow types, but now, I find that only the dark amber colors draw my eye at all -- overall, I have a preference for richer colors now, though. I liked the flaws in the crystals for scrying or meditation. In my own mental magical toolbox, citrine is linked to the solar plexus chakra, which is the link between the instinct self and the emotional self. I also associate it with solar energy, so I guess that in a Tarot association, it would be with the card of The Sun. In summary: citrine is immensely useful for pretty much anything you need, but it will probably be useful for short-term magics rather than long-term installations of magic. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 19th, 2008
10:51 am	Magic Rocks: Rose Quartz Rose quartz is a stone that suffers from chronic overexposure. Whenever one walks into a store that sells any sort of crystals or inexpensive crystal jewelry, it is inevitable that one will find a pile of rose quartz hearts of various sizes, strung on rat tail if they're strung at all. Like any fad, the attraction and utility has faded into obscurity under the weight of kitsch or overfamiliarity. Despite the ubiquitous presence of rose quartz, I have found some utility in it. I use unworked chunks of it, which are generally fairly cheaply bought in larger sizes than most stones. My hardest-used piece of rose quartz was chipped off an enormous mass of it that had been dug up by the owner of a crystal shop in Virginia. It was a lovely rough pink piece with some smooth planes that fit nicely into my hand. I used it during a time when I was doing a lot of chakra work -- mostly self-balancing my chakras and doing very light trance work. My life was very rocky, and on many levels, I was aware that I was taking daily -- sometimes hourly -- damage in the emotional department. No wonder the rose quartz was so attractive and useful! Almost every night for a year or two, I would lie on my back with the piece sitting in the center of my chest, and I would focus on opening the heart chakra (front and back -- it's so easy to forget the back) and get energy flowing smoothly. I would also use it as a focus to relieve my menstrual cramps -- this was also a time of financial challenge, and I could not afford the pain relievers I needed every month. Interestingly, my memory of the stone makes it much larger and more vividly pink than it turned out to be, when I relocated it in my boxes several years later. I do feel that the very intense energy work has, in fact, altered the stone in some ways, but it has also altered my memory of the stone. I don't use it, and, in fact, do not enjoy handling it any more. I think I should probably put the stone outside -- return it to the wild, as it were -- and not have it around, but it's hard to make that decision about something with so much sentimental value. I have subsequently gotten some smaller pieces of rose quartz to work with, though I have very little attraction to the stone these days. My impression of the energy of rose quartz is that it is very much like any other opaque quartz piece -- a good deal of energy without any specific flavor that is easily directed. Rose quartz, of course, has the New Age cultural overlay of being good for love, emotions, and the heart chakra... mostly due to it being pink and therefore girly, I suspect. However, I cannot deny the usefulness of a cultural or psychological construct in terms of working magic, so I suspect that rose quartz can be very useful to people doing heart chakra work or making love charms. Because of my longtime exposure to this interpretation of rose quartz, I think of it as a stone for the suit of Cups in Tarot work. (Actually, thinking about it, a carved rose quartz chalice/goblet might make an interesting addition to the altar of someone who likes the stone.) In summary: rose quartz is as useful in a general sense as any quartz, and may be more useful in terms of emotional work due to its association with such work. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 18th, 2008
1:14 pm	Magic Rocks: Peridot Peridot is a strange stone for me to like. Its usual bright olive-green color is one that I generally avoid -- I am notoriously picky about my green colors, and generally prefer less yellow and more blue. I do, however, often find peridot to be a striking stone, and I believe in many ways I am reacting far more to the energy of the stone than the color. Many years ago, I read that peridot has the property of increasing the speed of change in one's life (being a scientist by training, I can't help but try to put this into a mental equation involving deltas and acclerations). I have since found that this is true for me, and is one reason I avoid peridot, even when I find it attractive! For I am even more notoriously averse to change than I am to olive-green. However, sometimes, peridot's attraction will not be avoided. During times when I apparently need change, I have, in fact, dreamt of the stone (or what I have interpreted as being the stone, even when, upon waking, I find that the stone in the dream didn't really resemble peridot all that much). One dream drove me to acquire two vials of peridot gravel, far more affordable than the usual stones available, under the pretext of using it to make a gift for a friend. I have never completed that gift, and I retain most of the gravel, as well as an urge to run my fingers through it. Peridot is possessed of a very subtle energy: it is neither immediately perceivable to my hands nor my internal envisioning of the energy. It seems invisible, as well as magnetic in the sense of attracting energy that requires its services (so one could think of it as being active energy attracted to more passive energy, I suppose). Its presence is catalytic, so I suppose that in addition to the magnetism metaphor, I could extend into an enzymatic metaphor, where it binds to energy that has the proper "antigen" on its surface and makes the reactions (changes) move faster. This metaphor would suggest a cascade of other energies interacting to further the reaction, and might account for my observations that peridot alone does not accomplish everything -- an attraction to peridot is often accompanied by other attractions to different stones. In my younger days, when I was more inclined to "program" my stones, I found peridot very amenable to such treatment. At one time, I gave a necklace to a close friend -- one of those very typical crystal necklaces of the late 80/early 90s, with the center piece carved and polished into a "proper" hexagonal, pointed crystal with a stone of a different type affixed to the front of the setting band -- with clear quartz as the main crystal and peridot as the smaller chip affixed to the band. I programmed it for travel safety (this was before my discovery of the usefulness of malachite in this office) and it seemed to take this directive very solidly. In fact, when I had the opportunity to observe the necklace again some years later, it still appeared to be in place, and that was my friend's observation as well. In summary: peridot is a powerful catalyst, but amenable to direction. Used with the right mindset, I think peridot could be used as a means of directing change in a specific part of one's life. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 16th, 2008
2:33 pm	Magic Rocks: Fluorite I have found fluorite to be an extremely high-energy rock. What I mean by that is, to me, fluorite appears to focus and collect ambient energy like a lens with light. The energy feels, to my impressions, cold, brittle, bright, and angular. When I try to envision the energy, I see sharply-delineated jagged lightning bolts as blindingly white as burning magnesium. There is no heat from this energy, just the overwhelming sensation that there is energy at hand. I don't mean to give the impression that fluorite's energy is bad in any way (which, I know, some people may think from my impressions of it as "cold" and "brittle"). I love having fluorite around. I love holding fluorite and tossing it up and down in my hand -- I find myself tossing this stone more often than just about any other kind of stone, as if I don't want to keep it quite still in my hand. When my own energy is dragging, I often want to pick up a chunk of fluorite. The variable textures of fluorite are also attractive. I have some highly polished pieces that I've kept for years. I have developed, however, more of an attraction for the matte-polished pieces that are fairly frequent in the stone trays in crystal shops. For a while, I had a real attraction for the octahedrons; I found that they were particularly useful as pendulums if one could find a way to attach a silver chain to one end (either by drilling or gluing a clamp in place on one of the points). I never managed to obtain one for myself, but I used one belonging to a friend, and I found the pendulum configuration very pleasing. Of course, another attraction of fluorite is the visual quality: it comes in a variety of colors, and sometimes, and individual stone may have several colors at once. I started out very attracted to the purple stuff, but as time has gone by, I've come to prefer the green (a trend, I have to say, that encompasses most of my stone choices these days). I have sometimes successfully used a well-polished piece of fluorite with many attractive flaws as a meditative/trance focus. Fluorite feels somewhat like a magical battery, and I frequently use it that way, whether I need to liven up my energy at the end of a long day or to help me focus power into a spell. As I said above, I think it actually works more like a lens through which one can focus and draw the ambient energy. One side effect of this drawing is like using the Sharpen filter on Photoshop: the energy becomes more fluorite-flavored, and other influences are hammered flat. You can then turn the energy toward your own intentions, though sometimes the energy may feel, to extend the metaphor to breaking point, a tad pixelated. Because fluorite is always energetic, it can, however, be irritating to frayed nerves, like too much caffeine. I can't use fluorite as a grounding stone -- it's too jumped up for that -- and if I'm too tired, it annoys me rather than allowing me to perk up my own energy levels. In summary: fluorite is an immensely energetically useful stone. But use with care, as the energy may feel too stark and/or sharp-edged on tender (or, as it were, tenderized) sensibilities. (Comment on this)
11:58 am	Magic Rocks: Malachite Malachite is one of my all-time consistent favorite stones. The rich greens swirled and mixed together, the high polish that the stone takes, and the voluptuous rounded shapes of many of the unworked stones combine to make this feel -- to me -- like a stone with a great deal of female energy. I am a texture fiend as well as appreciating bright, highly saturated colors, and malachite consistently feels marvelous in my hands. I like the weight of the stone, and the large chunks of it that are frequently quite affordable makes this a stone I often use for grounding. I have a large, flattish piece that sits atop my desk at home, and when I am scattered and having trouble concentrating, it's this stone that more often draws my eye and hand than, say, the slab of rhodochrosite that is supposedly specifically for such things. I will generally put a chunk of malachite in my pocket or my car before starting a road trip. A source I encountered long ago suggested that it was good for travel safety, and I have found it a reliable companion. The twisting lines of color suggest roads and paths to my mind, and so the symbolic association seems natural. Sometimes, I think about stones in the context of any number of magical concepts. When I consider malachite, I find myself thinking about the High Priestess card of the Tarot deck. My interpretation of the High Priestess -- female energy that is directed and directable toward any number of magical ends -- fits my "jane of all trades" feeling about malachite. I think that malachite is an excellent, all-purpose magic rock, useful for grounding, directing energy, storing energy, or as a talisman of just about any sort. For those people who prefer "programming" their magic rocks -- that is, visualizing and "implanting" a directive structure for moving the stone's energy at all times -- malachite is probably not a very good stone. I find that it is possessed of as much of an ego as a stone can be. It does not like to be directed or commanded for more than a single instance. Using it as a talisman is a very different sort of psychological/magical concept than programming. Talismans are associated with a particular purpose by the mental symbology of the magician, and therefore, the magician's subconscious is doing the work of moving the energy toward a given end. More of an asking of the stone than a commanding. In summary, malachite: excellent stone, particularly for providing and helping along female energy. Very much a stone that one could grab in a rush and be able to use for nearly any magical purpose, though much less biddable than, say, a clear quartz crystal. (Comment on this)