Crystals for energy cleansing
(Global Heart | Nicholas Pearson) Crystal healing teacher Nicholas Pearson explores how to partner with the mineral kingdom for protection, cleansing, and countermagick.
Crystals for energy cleansing
Before discussing the methods for cleansing your space and yourself, let’s examine which crystals are useful to employ in energy-clearing techniques. These crystals possess the ability to draw out, discharge, or transmute misplaced, discordant, and negative energies. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective crystals for clearing the energy of other stones, your space, and yourself.
Cleansing powers of crystals
First, let’s consider the cleansing powers of crystals classified as salts and halides. In chemistry, a salt is formed when a positively charged ion and a negatively charged ion come together to form a compound with a neutral charge. Halides are usually classified as mineral salts, and they form when a negatively charged halogen ion (for example, fluoride, chloride, or bromide) bonds with a positively charged ion. The most famous of salts is halite (sodium chloride), or common table salt. Many salt minerals form in arid environments as water evaporates. Some other examples of salts and halides include fluorite, selenite, and hanksite. These minerals scrub the energy field and neutralize dissonance and negativity. Grounding stones, particularly those rich in metals like iron and manganese, are also excellent choices for cleansing. Iron minerals are sometimes described as initiating a descending flow of energy—in other words, they help discharge unwanted or harmful energies by grounding them so the earth can transmute them. Grounding stones that help purify energy fields include hematite, black tourmaline, garnet, magnetite, ilvaite, pyrite, and marcasite.
Some rocks and minerals have a porous structure that enables them to draw out harmful and stagnant energies. These include shun- gite, sugilite, and zeolite minerals such as clinoptilolite, stilbite, thomsonite, and natrolite. Fibrous selenite, better known as satin spar, is also adept at drawing out unwanted energies on account of its porous nature. Cyclosilicates—minerals with ringlike structures of silica in their makeup—are also great for cleansing. These include mem- bers of the beryl family (aquamarine, emerald, goshenite), iolite, and tourmaline.
Lithium-based minerals have a special affinity for the movement and flow of energy, and they also help transmute disharmony. Lepidolite, some tourmalines, sugilite, petalite, and kunzite are lithium-bearing minerals. Wearing, carrying, or gridding with lithium crystals prevents stagnation and allows you to release whatever doesn’t serve. Similarly, sulfur compounds are effective scrubbers of the aura and energy field; consider partnering with native sulfur or with sulfide minerals (like pyrite, marcasite, galena, and sphalerite) or sulfate minerals (such as selenite, celestite, and barite) to clear your energy field.
Some crystals have certain unique cleansing actions. Amethyst invokes the alchemical power of transmutation to transform negativity into positive energy. Citrine vitalizes processes of elimination and unwinds the tension that holds old patterns in place, thereby allowing you to release unwanted or old patterns. Smoky quartz works a bit like an etheric vacuum cleaner to draw out dissonant or harmful energies. Aquamarine symbolizes the ebb and flow of the tides and eliminates stubborn, calcified energies.
You can use any of these crystals for cleansing to support practices of personal and environmental purification. Use them in grids, layouts, and elixirs to help transmute and clear the energies all around you. You can also wear or carry these crystals with the goal of letting the crystals slowly work toward releasing energies you might pick up throughout the day. As discussed earlier in this chapter, crystals that cleanse energies still need to be cleansed themselves—much like how you need to wash a sponge after using it to wash your dishes. Be sure to cleanse them frequently so they can better support your spiritual hygiene.
Cleansing your space
Where you spend your time is one of the biggest influences on your spiritual hygiene. One’s home is meant to be a safe space, a refuge from the outside world. Clear, cleansed spaces are integral to building and maintaining protective shields in your home, office, or other spaces. Cleansing is necessary prior to protective work because you don’t want to build an energetic container that traps toxic, disruptive, or harmful energies inside.
Many of the methods used for cleansing crystals can be applied to cleansing your space. Sound, smoke, sprinkling saltwater, prayer, and visualization can all be used to clear a space. We’ll cover some foundational practices like cleansing with smoke and elemental cleansing in this section. Regular cleansing can easily become part of your house- hold routine. After clearing clutter, dusting, or sweeping the floors, perhaps you can try cleansing the energy of your space with smoke and refreshing your crystal grids.
Clear as crystal
Though it might be a cliché, it is true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. To maintain your physical well-being, it’s easier to prevent illness by first washing your hands and avoiding pathogens rather than having to treat infections with medications. In the same way, practicing good spiritual hygiene and regular shielding is far easier than trying to remove toxic energies or avert a psychic attack once it’s taken hold.
In this chapter we will look at various methods for clearing your space and cleansing yourself. You don’t have to cleanse in this order— I just find that it is easier for most people to learn cleansing principles first on objects and spaces before moving on to self-cleansing. But regardless of how you engage in spiritual hygiene, if you use these techniques regularly they will help you maintain your balance and prevent psychic attacks and other kinds of psychic harm, making you feel crystal-clear.
The importance of spiritual hygiene
Cleansing isn’t merely a matter of releasing or neutralizing negative energies. Effective spiritual cleansing removes all energies that don’t belong—positive, negative, or neutral. When an energy, entity, or frequency occupies the wrong space it can impede the free flow of energies that are beneficial or otherwise helpful. By way of analogy, consider making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: if you get peanut butter on your hands it isn’t inherently bad, but since it doesn’t belong there, it can impinge on anything else you may need to do with your hands. Thus cleansing removes whatever doesn’t belong, not just the energies we classify as negative or harmful.
It’s also good to remember that we don’t just wash our hands once and expect them to stay clean forever; cleansing is an ongoing process. Likewise, spiritual hygiene isn’t something we attend to once and then forget. We are perpetually exposed to sources of psychic harm and disruptive energies that can interfere with our optimal sense of balance and well-being. Regular cleansing practices, along with other funda-mental psychic hygiene practices like grounding and meditation, help us return to a state of balance no matter what we are experiencing in the world around us.
Maintaining spiritual hygiene takes practice and diligence. How often should you cleanse yourself, your tools, or your home or work- space? The answers vary from one person to the next. If I’m working from my home office I generally practice cleansing less frequently—and less intensively—than when I’m on the road. A good rule of thumb is to cleanse more often than you think you need to. For the most part you can’t cause any harm from cleansing too often, but cleansing too little sure is a recipe for trouble. It’s worth noting that sensitive people, especially empaths, often find themselves in need of more regular cleansing than others.
I recommend daily self-cleansing and somewhere from once a month to once a week for cleansing your space. A well-fortified home is less permeable by outside influences, so you’ll probably only need to cleanse once a month. Your crystal tools usually require cleansing before and after use, though this also depends on context. A gemstone bracelet that I wear all day when I’m running errands gets cleansed as soon as I take it off at night, whereas the fluorite that sits on my desk beside the computer only gets cleansed once a week or so. When you’re just getting started or when you have reason to believe you are experiencing psychic harm of any kind, it’s imperative that you cleanse frequently and practice effective grounding, shielding, and warding techniques.
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Crystals for Psychic Self-Defense
This excerpt is from Nicholas Pearson’s new book:
Crystals for psychic self-defense — 145 Gemstones for Banishing, Binding, and Magickal Protection by Nicholas Pearson. Published by Inner Traditions International and Bear & Company, © 2025. All rights reserved. Innertraditions.com Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
About the author
Nicholas Pearson has been immersed in all aspects of the mineral kingdom for more than 30 years. The award-winning author of several books, including Crystal Basics, he offers classes online and in-person around the globe. He lives in Orlando, Florida.
Source: Global Heart
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