After two years of vowing not to buy any new stones, last year I decided to take on a practice of ‘stone rematriation’: basically returning the precious bodies of rocks back to the earth. I have become increasingly heartbroken and disturbed by the mining, stealing, and selling of what so many traditional people understand to be the bones of the earth. This destructive, grueling labor is mostly done by people in the global south, poor folks, people of color who are exploited, underpaid, and subjected to toxic and dangerous working conditions. Land is deforested. Water is poisoned. Children as young as seven work in the mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a lot of tourmaline, smoky quartz, and citrine come from.
In this moment, when the commodification of all things witchy is so real and so big, crystals have become a glittering symbol of this brand of earthy wellness chic; you can find hunks of citrine and amethyst almost everywhere you look (even the classic grandma bathroom text Reader’s Digest had an article about crystal healing!) So much consumption, and yet so few people are talking about the impact of the mining of these precious stones, which is surprising given the conversations around ethical wildcrafting and organic food and eco-conscious everything else. I was so grateful (and disturbed) when this article about crystal mining came out last year, which one million people sent to me. While there are some smaller mines and rockhounds who can provide information about their sources and who practice ethical mining, most large retailers and even folks who sell at gem shows have no idea where the stones are coming from and under what conditions they are mined.
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love stones. I have loved rocks my whole life. As a little rock collector growing up in L.A I gathered them from wherever I could- the dog park, wild edges of parking lots, the dirt patch behind my elementary school. (Surely many of you also picked up hunks of cement and called them “diamonds”?) I was in the Geology Club in high school (this was not exactly something that made me super cool when I was 16, so I’m enjoying the coolness of it now.) I literally won the Rock-a-thon, where you have to identify 25 rocks in 10 minutes, 2 years in a row. I was also a teenage witch (another thing that was very not cool then), so learning about stone magic was world opening/colliding for me, and has continued to be an essential part of my healing practice thirty years later.
I dove deeper into my love for stones in my early twenties when I met my mentor, Cybele, a wise and raven-ish older queer witch who offered a breath and bodywork groups for survivors in the Bay Area in the late nineties. We worked together individually for years- sometimes I would hold a stone while we talked, sometimes she would place them on or around me, sometimes she would lead me on a journey into the stone, where I would meet the spirit of the stone. I then joined her circle of “Stone Priestesses”, which was basically twenty- something me and a bunch of beautiful crones doing some deep stone magic once a month – which we did together for over a decade. Through an incredible divination practice, we would choose, but really be chosen, to hang out with one stone for a year. I spent an entire year in a kind of monogamous relationship with rose quartz- I carried it around in my pocket and my purse, I slept with it curled into my palm, dreamed with it under my pillow, I took baths with it, meditated with it, sang to it, and charged it in the moonlight. I did this with seven different stones over seven years including turquoise, aquamarine, rhodochrosite, carnelian, garnet, and lapis. I know their bodies and their magic like I know my best friends/lovers. These days, I’m very polyamorous with my rocks. We also spent a bunch of time diving into stones and astrology, stones and organs, stones and chakras – it was like neverending crystal grad school. I learned how crystalline structure, geological formation, and chemical composition translate into the healing qualities of the stones. I connected with stones to support myself through cancer, insomnia, dancing with sexual trauma history, and thriving with my Venus in Aries and Cancer in my midheaven (need all the help I can get, thank you). Mostly, I learned to listen to the stories the stones carry. Through all this stone work, and thanks to Cybele’s connections to rock hounds and gem fairs and let’s be honest, gnomes, my rock collection grew. I didn’t have those enormous amethyst caverns or anything (you know I dreamed about it), but I did amass a hearty altar full of rocks. I’m a fancy femme lady. Beautiful things that sparkle is my love language.
After I rounded the Saturn return bend and felt like I had put in enough time with the stones to start incorporating them into my healing work, I too began laying stones on people, placing them in their palms, and guiding people on journeys with stones. This is what I do now: community based intuitive healing with plants and stones, ancestral healing, queer magic, collective liberation witchcraft. Sometimes I feel more like a matchmaker when I send someone home with a new stone friend or when I make a formula that is filled with gem essences. Stone medicine is so powerful and supportive – I’m endlessly grateful to the rock friends who so generously hold us in our healing. I really believe we need to collaborate with everything we can for healing and support- remembering and including the more than humxn in our support networks is essential. But it is also essential that we find ways to connect and heal that do not cause more harm or replicate empire culture, which is extractive, reductive, and oppressive.
We are so steeped in this culture, so saturated in neo-colonialism, it creeps into every corner, and sadly too into our healing and spiritual work. Many of us who have not been raised in traditions that honor the earth learn to look for anything that is outside ourselves to fix or cure or help us. When we internalize the messages of capitalism and carceral culture – that we really aren’t enough, that we’re innately bad, that we must exorcise and punish and ostracize whatever is wrong with us- we become desperate and hungry to feel better and find the remedy. And when we’re not connected to a root tradition that holds us and guides us to rituals that reconnect us with source, or self, or earth, we grasp and mine and appropriate wildly.
So what are we really doing when we buy a $65 stone for protection or balance? Listen, I’m not saying don’t buy the stone. I’m saying slow down and listen. Listen: where did this stone come from, what is it’s story, what is the impact? Listen: what is hurting? what are you really needing? Listen: what is the most life-sustaining, life affirming way to meet that need? Also, what makes us think that only rocks we buy have healing powers? What about those dirty nuggets I found as a child? Like dandelion, like moss- sometimes the rocks right under your feet are your medicine. These days, when I listen to the stone stories, I hear profound grief. Can you imagine being a beautiful citrine being hanging out in the Urban Outfitters at the mall next to the Palo Santo and white sage indigenous activists are demanding not be sold by anyone who is not native? I can barely go into rock shops- it’s like everyone just wants to go home. I do believe there are some stones that are like puppies who just want to be adopted and be pet and hang out with humxns, who maybe want to be of service to our healing and just like us, but for the most part, rock shops and museums of natural history with their magnificent stones behind glass just fill me with grief. As more people began to call for witches to “de-colonize our magic,” I couldn’t help but see this massive consumption of stones as an expression of neo-colonialism and empire.
So I started returning stones to the earth. I re-matriated one stone a month for 12 months. I would just kind of know which stone wanted to go home. Saying goodbye was incredibly tender and bittersweet- like parting from a beloved. Before I released them, I spent time loving on them, holding them close and then made a gem essence of each stone. Gem essences are energetic or vibrational infusions of stones. I see essences as an exquisite possibility for affordable, accessible, low-impact ways to engage with stone medicine. It means that we all don’t have to own every kind of stone! (You can read much more about what they are and how to make them in a piece I wrote here.)
Some stones I buried myself and some I sent to friends or strangers to bury in their original lands or lands that called for stones. I sent a ruby to Afganistan, via a stranger I met through Instagram. I sent a beloved piece of malachite I’ve worked with for over a decade to a friend who lives in Boriken (also known as Puerto Rico) after the hurricane and she buried it with the intention of bringing more healing to the land. I sent a hunk of ocean jasper to my friend, the incredible healer Shayne Case, who will bury it on her ancestral land, the Cheyenne Sioux reservation, by the Cheyenne River. This river is fed by the Missouri River, which is threatened with pollution by the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline. In many ways, letting go of the stones actually strengthened my connection to them. I still call on them, like an ancestor or spirit, for support and healing and I feel right in my heart and bones knowing they are resting in the earth. I’m pretty sure Marie Kondo would be very pleased with this.
I still have around 18 stones. For now they are staying with me, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like to give them all back. I wanted to share a little about this practice since it seemed to resonate with so many people, but I’m definitely not interested in policing anybody’s joy or practices, so if you’re looking to me for wisdom, my first pearl is: let’s not police or shame ourselves or each other. Let’s learn together, hold ourselves and each other in integrity and responsibility, be curious, and let this stretch our imaginations and creative possibilities. What magic is possible when we are awake to the realities of this crisis we’re in and commit to living within certain restrictions that bring us into greater alignment with life? I sometimes find that having limits invites me into more wild dreaming and expansive imagination! When I’m trying to decide if I need something, a question I ask myself, especially as a way to not get into should-ness or a kind of moral brittleness, is “what brings me more aliveness?” or “What give me life?” If a stone, or anything else, gives you life and you feel that mutual joy and aliveness, go towards that! The idea is that our healing is connected to everyone and everything’s healing and I’m learning how good it feels to give shit away, especially shit that was never mine to begin with. I’m learning that the magic is not in the thing, but in the relationship, and I don’t need the thing to be in relationship. I’m learning that practices of generosity and reparation and justice can be deeply pleasurable and I’m so into the sympathetic joy that comes when anyone and anything feels free. I’m still learning, always learning, and I’m grateful to be learning with all of you.
Here are some other ideas:
–Play with the practice of stone rematriation. try returning one or some of your stones to the earth. Find out where they came from and return them to their homeland, or ask them where they would like to go.
-Commit to not buying any new stones. If you really need a stone, ask to borrow one (see below for starting a stone lending library!), buy one used or find the gem essence. If you do purchase stones, do the work to find out where they are from and as much as you can about the mining practices and environmental impact. Pay reparations to the peoples of that land.
–Make or buy stone essences! Your local apothecary or witchy shop should carry some.
-Start a stone lending library. I have this dream that we’ll liberate all the stones from the natural history museums and fancy private collectors who use stones as decor and put them in stone libraries where we can check them out when we need them. The stone librarians will be responsible for cleansing and clearing and charging them. If I wasn’t already doing my dream job being a witch, I definitely would want to be a stone librarian.
–Love on the stones in your life. Bathe them in moonlight. Dote on them with gratitude. Kiss them! Ask them their stories. Tend to your relationship like you would with a being. They are beings!
