‘Healing’ crystals are having a pandemic moment
Science says they’re just pretty rocks
When my friend, a massage therapist, learned I was pregnant over the winter, he gifted me a stunning large, clear piece of quartz he had bought during a recent crystal-foraging trip to Brazil. I welcomed the gift and the positive protective energy my friend said he could feel with his hands. I even placed it on the dinner table the night of my induction.
Although the market for diamonds has seen a decline during the pandemic, “near-gemstones” (crystals and minerals) have maintained their appeal among consumers, making it a $1 billion business. Even classy art giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s have joined the mom and pop incense-burning shops in selling crystals. Singer Katy Perry claims her rose quartz helps her attract men, and Adele swears crystals decrease her anxiety onstage. According to trends on Google, there has seen a steady climb in searches for “crystal healing” in the past year, including “crystal healing shops near me.”
Purchasing crystal merchandise is not just a basic shopping trip anymore; it’s an experience. You can sign up for a crystal-mining adventure at Sweet Surrender Crystals in Arkansas or attend a crystal altar offering to Mother Earth (Pachamama) led by a shaman at the Sumaq hotel before ascending to Machu Picchu. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand, Goop, offers a “medicine bag” complete with crystals to encourage clarity, creativity and emotional strength. There is also water with youth-energizing crystals: VitaJuwel’s Forever Young Gem-Water bottles have you covered. For centuries, these enigmatic rocks have captivated artists, writers, healers and religious leaders, many of whom believed the crystals contained a certain concentration of the earth’s energy. Egyptians sometimes carved crystal sarcophagi to protect the body from evil spirits on their way to the afterlife. The word “crystal” comes from the Greek “krystallos,” meaning ice. Crystal divination was described by Pliny the Elder, a Roman author and naturalist, in the first century.
Science does not back the idea that crystals have special powers. “I am not aware of any [National Science Foundation]-supported studies into the healing powers of crystals,” Peter Heaney, a mineral sciences professor at Pennsylvania State University, said via email. “Such a proposal would frankly never survive peer review, because there is not any theoretical reason to expect crystals to have healing powers.”
Heaney recounted a story from his days as a graduate student, when his adviser was asked whether crystals have energy. “It is a tricky question,” Heaney wrote, “because the answer is ‘yes’ with respect to Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence or with respect to thermodynamic conceptions of free energy in crystals. But as my advisor noted, crystal healing posits that there is an energy transfer between crystals and people ... and there is simply no scientific foundation for those assertions.”