A Brief History of Metaphysics and Crystals

Sometimes I feel like I want to opine about crystals, but not just about how cool they are (spoiler: they are), but rather how humans have interacted with them throughout the ages and assigned, and still do assign, mystical properties to them.

Think of this little write-up as the late, late night show. You know, that talk show that airs at 2 a.m. Yeah, it’s kinda entertaining, but do you really want to stay up that late to see some B-roll actors talk about their latest movie, “Giant Beetle vs. Mega Mom”? To be fair, I’d watch that.

Quick aside here: This isn’t meant to be a full breakdown of the entire history of humans and crystals. It’s just a few parts of that history that I found particularly intriguing.

We humans have been attributing magical powers to rocks for as long as we have been picking them up. The ancient Egyptians are one of the oldest cultures we have concrete proof of that saw magic within stones. Amulets were worn by the living and placed with the dead. Their supposed power could come from a combination of the material, color, shape, inscription, and rituals performed over them. So something like red jasper would symbolize blood, vitality, or protection. Protection is probably what I would have gone for there. All of the Nile crocodiles, poisonous snakes, and hippopotamuses. Egypt has some crazy wildlife. Hippos in particular. They look super goofy but are extremely territorial and rank among Africa’s most dangerous large mammals.

The Greeks and Romans saw what the Egyptians were doing and promptly said, “Hold my wine.” They actually wrote down these properties of stones and minerals in manuscripts we call lapidaries. They pretty much had a use case for everything when it came to crystals and minerals. Gems could be associated with gods, planets, health, protection, fertility, victory, prophecy, love, how to style your hair, and all kinds of other things. They also had, let’s say, an interesting belief revolving around amethyst. The Greeks, and later Romans, believed amethyst had some connection to preventing or counteracting intoxication. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder discusses amethyst in Natural History and specifically mentions the belief that it could prevent drunkenness, although he was skeptical of magical claims made about gemstones. Heck, even the name reflects this. The name itself comes from the Greek amethystos, essentially meaning “not drunk” or “not intoxicated.” Methyein relates to being drunk, with the prefix a- meaning “not.” There are stories about how they would drink out of cups made from amethyst to prevent getting hammered, but there’s not a ton of evidence to back that up. That would make a cool cup, though.

Moving away from the Greeks and Romans, we get into the Middle Ages. You would think that the rise of Christianity at this time would put an end to all of this magic stone talk, seeing as the Bible isn’t keen on magic and sorcerers, but you’d be wrong. They used a bit of a loophole here and classified this under Natural Magic, or, “God made these, and thus we are using his creation.” They also had a habit of taking the older Greek and Roman lapidaries and, using some creative licensing, changing them to ascribe these properties to God. For instance, the Liber lapidum, or Book of Stones, describes dozens of stones and their supposed powers. Sapphire was said to benefit the body and bring divine favor; amethyst could protect against drunkenness (back to that again…), and other stones could protect their bearers from enemies, disease, poison, or evil spirits. These properties could be understood as virtutes, natural powers inherent in things created by God. 

The Renaissance and Victorian eras took a hard left turn when it came to crystal metaphysics. The Scientific Revolution gradually separated mineralogy and medicine from magical stone lore, but it never really disappeared. Personally, I think people want something spiritual and maybe a little bit fantastical to believe in. Science is cool and all, but magic rocks are cooler. During this time, spiritualism, occultism, mesmerism, séances, ceremonial magic, and a ton of other “you’re a wizard Harry” movements were enormously popular. Scrying in particular was the new hot thing. That’s where we get crystal ball fortune tellers from. Unlike the Middle Ages, these powers weren’t necessarily something that came from God, but something else. There were a ton of differing ideas about where this energy was originating from during that time, but a lot of it eventually became a merger of Western occult traditions and interpretations of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religious traditions.

And, finally, here we are today. Modern crystal metaphysics is essentially the latest chapter of a very old human habit. We find a cool rock and decide, “Something this pretty has to have something beneath the surface, right?” To be fair, I couldn’t tell you if it does or not. The history of how we got here is the most interesting part, in my opinion. Humans have changed a lot over the years and are somewhat unrecognizable by ancient standards, but, like all things, there’s always something of the original piece within.

If you made it this far, thanks for taking the journey with me. Tune in next week as I ramble about something else. What will that be? I don’t know yet. Unlike the late night show above, I don’t have a producer which is probably a good thing. It’s all flying fast and loose here.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my 2 a.m. talk show.
- Harrison