My personal thoughts are rocks can be treated as totems, much as animals, and as totems can be ascribed properties based on cultural lore (i.e. that found in Indigenous lore, such as the Finno-Ugric associations with malachite), UPG/personal experience and verified personal gnosis, and contemporary lore and story. The cat, of itself, doesn't actually teach people about meditation. It doesn't teach people about anything. It's a cat. We can teach ourselves things about the cat through observation, but the cat itself is just being a cat. As a totem, however, it becomes more than only its physical manifestation. It becomes the sum total of all of its physical manifestations and its cultural ancestry; present and future. For some this becomes archetypal, and for some it becomes literal, and for some it's a strange combination of both.
I have issues with people ascribing very fixed qualities to stones if they don't understand the culture history behind the properties (for instance, I believe amethyst is ascribed the property of 'being good for hangovers' because of a specific cultural connection in Greek mythology), or if they're just reading from a rock dictionary and have no ability to verify what they're reading. I can understand hematite being associated with blood flow and circulation if only because on a purely symbolic level, when cracked or broken, it has a dark redness about it within.
Does that mean it can literally help? I don't know, but I think placebo effects are one of the most effective healing tools in today's healing lexicons (especially for many mental and spiritual, as well as undiagnosed issues), and I also think that symbols and rituals are important stimuli for the human brain, and it doesn't hurt. But I also think the symbol loses power if people don't really understand where these meanings came from.
If someone had a piece of hematite and was told it was good for blood circulation and never understood why; then where is the story and the culture and patina of understanding that helps to give something mental power? I have problems with the lack of education, when it comes to gemstones; where they came from, how the tumbling process works, where the stones are found, was slave labour used to find these stones or mine them?, are they being taken from a geographically sustainable site?,are they irradiated or treated or dyed to resemble something more 'spiritual,' can a tumbled stone ever offer as much as the stone in its natural setting, not chipped away from its original source? These are things I wish people who worked with stones in a spiritual manner asked themselves and I don't think...often, that they do.
I don't like people blindly using anything without thinking about it; stones, animal totem dictionaries, and so on. I'm in a business of ascribing esoteric 'meanings' to animals, though many are extremely logical - the dingo represents extinction of something important in someone's life because it is going extinct, and that's a pretty straightforward symbolic interpretation which - imho - carries more power as a symbolic interpretation precisely because it can be traced back to the nature of the animal and the way it exists in our current world.
I don't actually work with tumbled stones, because I prefer to work with most stones in their natural environment (i.e. granite outcrops at Bell's rapids, instead of the rainbow rock informing my front pathway). But over the years I've been gifted with stones from people; labradorite, which I enjoy on a purely visual level (I love chatoyance), among others. The stone I actually do ascribe a very spiritually significant meaning to is eudialyte, as it's sacred in the shamanism I practice. It is connected to specific stories in folklore, and it's colour gradations are said to have come about due to specific reasons (kind of like how, in Aboriginal Dreaming, the raven turned black for specific reasons that are also sacred reasons or teach sacred lore).
I'd be the first person to call my practices crazy, y'know? They are. It's hard to explain journeying to the otherworlds, and totemism, and believing that animal spirits talk to me, without taking it all with a grain of salt myself - especially as someone who enjoys studying science and psychology (and anthropology and other things completely unrelated), and understands that where I see a real animal totem that manifests as a spirit, others see an archetype, and others see a burst of chemical creativity that is given meaning because humans like to create meaning from chaos.
And I also think that for now, it works for me. It's made me healthier as a person. I wouldn't ever push it on anyone else, because it might not always work for me, and it might never work for anyone else... but, yeah. Definitely not offended. It might make me a hippy that pisses you off, and I'm okay with that. Lots of things I do and believe piss other people off. It doesn't bother me. I'm not hurting them. I think I behave in a responsible manner to my environment and I'm trying to improve it. And that's the best I can do, and that's good enough for me. :)
/ramble.
PS: No, I don't think tumbled stones and so on cleanse auras by default. For a start, as an animist, I think stones are sentient creatures - why would they want to? Why would a certain colour or shape make them want to cleanse human auras? (Rhetorical, and something that a lot of people can't answer, unless they assume the world serves us, which is when I switch off) And then secondly, do they really know this? Or is it something a book told them? And was it a book that was well-researched, with references? Or was it a book published to appeal to laypeople for maximum profits? So... yeah, I think there are hippy elements to using stones that I disagree with as well. Mostly, about how people apply thinking to using anything relating to nature; and whether they do or not.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 04:03 pm (UTC)I have issues with people ascribing very fixed qualities to stones if they don't understand the culture history behind the properties (for instance, I believe amethyst is ascribed the property of 'being good for hangovers' because of a specific cultural connection in Greek mythology), or if they're just reading from a rock dictionary and have no ability to verify what they're reading. I can understand hematite being associated with blood flow and circulation if only because on a purely symbolic level, when cracked or broken, it has a dark redness about it within.
Does that mean it can literally help? I don't know, but I think placebo effects are one of the most effective healing tools in today's healing lexicons (especially for many mental and spiritual, as well as undiagnosed issues), and I also think that symbols and rituals are important stimuli for the human brain, and it doesn't hurt. But I also think the symbol loses power if people don't really understand where these meanings came from.
If someone had a piece of hematite and was told it was good for blood circulation and never understood why; then where is the story and the culture and patina of understanding that helps to give something mental power? I have problems with the lack of education, when it comes to gemstones; where they came from, how the tumbling process works, where the stones are found, was slave labour used to find these stones or mine them?, are they being taken from a geographically sustainable site?,are they irradiated or treated or dyed to resemble something more 'spiritual,' can a tumbled stone ever offer as much as the stone in its natural setting, not chipped away from its original source? These are things I wish people who worked with stones in a spiritual manner asked themselves and I don't think...often, that they do.
I don't like people blindly using anything without thinking about it; stones, animal totem dictionaries, and so on. I'm in a business of ascribing esoteric 'meanings' to animals, though many are extremely logical - the dingo represents extinction of something important in someone's life because it is going extinct, and that's a pretty straightforward symbolic interpretation which - imho - carries more power as a symbolic interpretation precisely because it can be traced back to the nature of the animal and the way it exists in our current world.
I don't actually work with tumbled stones, because I prefer to work with most stones in their natural environment (i.e. granite outcrops at Bell's rapids, instead of the rainbow rock informing my front pathway). But over the years I've been gifted with stones from people; labradorite, which I enjoy on a purely visual level (I love chatoyance), among others. The stone I actually do ascribe a very spiritually significant meaning to is eudialyte, as it's sacred in the shamanism I practice. It is connected to specific stories in folklore, and it's colour gradations are said to have come about due to specific reasons (kind of like how, in Aboriginal Dreaming, the raven turned black for specific reasons that are also sacred reasons or teach sacred lore).
I'd be the first person to call my practices crazy, y'know? They are. It's hard to explain journeying to the otherworlds, and totemism, and believing that animal spirits talk to me, without taking it all with a grain of salt myself - especially as someone who enjoys studying science and psychology (and anthropology and other things completely unrelated), and understands that where I see a real animal totem that manifests as a spirit, others see an archetype, and others see a burst of chemical creativity that is given meaning because humans like to create meaning from chaos.
And I also think that for now, it works for me. It's made me healthier as a person. I wouldn't ever push it on anyone else, because it might not always work for me, and it might never work for anyone else... but, yeah. Definitely not offended. It might make me a hippy that pisses you off, and I'm okay with that. Lots of things I do and believe piss other people off. It doesn't bother me. I'm not hurting them. I think I behave in a responsible manner to my environment and I'm trying to improve it. And that's the best I can do, and that's good enough for me. :)
/ramble.
PS: No, I don't think tumbled stones and so on cleanse auras by default. For a start, as an animist, I think stones are sentient creatures - why would they want to? Why would a certain colour or shape make them want to cleanse human auras? (Rhetorical, and something that a lot of people can't answer, unless they assume the world serves us, which is when I switch off) And then secondly, do they really know this? Or is it something a book told them? And was it a book that was well-researched, with references? Or was it a book published to appeal to laypeople for maximum profits? So... yeah, I think there are hippy elements to using stones that I disagree with as well. Mostly, about how people apply thinking to using anything relating to nature; and whether they do or not.
/ramble for real this time.