Crystal Prescriptions: The A-Z Guide to Over 1,200 Symptoms and Their Healing Crystals - Judy Hall 2006

The divided soul
Soul Retrieval and Spirit Release

I awoke in the deepest night to find I had been divided from myself. There lay my body sleeping and dreaming, and I was outside it; awakening. When we dream we may take shapes other than our own; a man may be his brother, a woman a king, and never question it. So, with the certainty born of a dream, I knew I’d become my own shadow.

Sarah Micklem, Firethorn

I’ve been using crystals to facilitate spirit release and soul retrieval for over 45 years. Whilst I believe that these activities are best carried out by trained specialists, there are times when you may suddenly be confronted with the need to retrieve lost soul parts or release attachments. Emergency action has to be taken there and then. This is where crystals come in, especially when supported by purpose-made essences. I find these gentle, compassionate tools invaluable for three reasons:

✵ They protect my own energies, creating an objective interface at which I can work safely. The crystal stands at the border between my personal energy field, the other person and the soul part or attachment, creating a barrier so that nothing can attach to me. Crystals also maintain a sacred and energetically clean space in which to work.

✵ Crystals energetically heal and purify a soul part that is returning. They facilitate release and call in higher helpers and divine light to move a spirit on, facilitating the work. Crystals can, when needed, provide a ’home’ for a spirit or entity until it can be moved on or returned to whence it came. They also act rather like a net to hold anything undesirable until it can be moved on to an appropriate place, rather than setting it free to attach to another vulnerable soul.

✵ Crystals energetically integrate the soul part back into the auric field, or seal the site of an attachment once it has been cleared, purifying and healing the aura, object or environment so that nothing else can attach.

So, what do I mean by soul retrieval and spirit release?

Soul loss, soul splits and soul fragmentation

It may surprise you to learn that souls are not ’all of a piece’. Part of the soul, the Higher Self, remains less deeply incarnated than the rest and can, therefore, have a much wider view of the purpose, potential and outcome of an incarnation. But souls can also fragment. Soul loss, sometimes known as a soul split or fragmentation, is a condition that leaves you particularly vulnerable to psychic attack and to spirit attachment as it creates a vacuum in the auric field. Souls can split, combine and recombine with other members of an overall soul group, for instance. Parts of the soul can detach at moments of trauma, high drama, or even at points of extreme joy. They may remain in a previous life, especially if there has been a traumatic death or if a body has not been given appropriate burial rites. But souls can also split into two or more pieces and appear to be totally different entities.

It is not uncommon to find that a soul has parts in different physical incarnations at the same time. Soul loss almost invariably accompanies post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Thinking of the soul as a hologram helps in understanding this process. A hologram can be both here and there, split and yet still cohesive. Soul retrieval, bringing together and reintegrating lost soul parts, helps you to feel centred, balanced and whole once more. Experiencing the light carried by the crystal penetrating every cell of your being, at all levels, not only returns your soul to your body but also helps to heal the repercussions of soul loss in the ’junk-DNA’ and karmic etheric body.

Gathering up pieces of the soul so that it can reintegrate has been practised by shamans and soul retrieval practitioners throughout aeons of time. It may be extremely helpful in cases where someone is not fully present or in certain psychiatric illnesses. Pieces of a soul may be left earlier in the present life, or in other lives, and it is part of soul retrieval and past life therapy practice to retrieve and reintegrate these fragments as appropriate. Bringing them back through a crystal purifies, heals and re-energizes the soul fragment. However, there are times when reintegrating a soul part is not appropriate, in which case a crystal can act as a container for that soul until it becomes apparent where to direct the soul or putting it into the care of the Higher Self.

Soul loss

Parts of the overall self may remain at past life deaths, traumatic or joyful moments and so on rather than incarnate with the main soul at birth into the present life. Soul loss may also occur during the current life.

A soul split over two lives

Soul loss can also occur when a past life or ancestral persona breaks through and is acted out. Especially if the soul part left in the previous incarnation is still extremely active. We’ve seen how timelines can intertwine and interweave. Sometimes the barrier between two timeframes thins to the point where one can intrude into the other. In extreme cases, this can feel as though two people are inhabiting the same skin, or that you have been taken over by someone else. In The Book of Why I quoted the case of Donovan, a Vietnam vet. He was a soul who had a ’foot in both camps’. Although Donovan was apparently living in a present life as an alienated outsider (itself a symptom of soul loss and past life persona breakthrough), he was also concurrently living a life as a soldier in the Vietnam war. That life had broken through in spontaneous regression, but in the previous life, he had also taken a huge amount of drugs which facilitated the time travelling. His soul was split between the two lives and there was a huge crossover so that Donovan didn’t really know where he belonged. He couldn’t function properly in his ’present’ life because so much of him was ’back there’ stuck in a life that was cut short — and so much of ’back there’ was operating in his current life.

Donovan’s vivid dreams, recollections and intuitions tried to take him to a point where his soul could reintegrate and heal the past. Had he had a therapist facilitating this, it could have been quicker — and smoother — but ’doing it himself’ was a part of the alienated outsider persona he’d carried over, and he needed to reach the insights himself. It was a part of his soul intention.

There are many people walking around in a similar fogged, fragmented and disconnected state as a past life persona has taken over part, or all, of their present life personality. Soul fragmentation leaves such people open to psychic attack or attachment from ’lost’, ’stuck’ or ’alien’ souls and such like. Complex soul release, reintegration or past life healing may be required in addition to soul retrieval. This really is a job for an expert (see Resources and page 214 for how to move a stuck soul on in an emergency).

Subtle soul splits

Widely differing past life experiences may create a subtle soul split within an incarnated soul who is apparently all of a piece but is actually experiencing an inner split within the same lifetime. The sexuality-spirituality axis split is common and powerfully affects the ability to be intimate in the present life, or to form a parental or other bond. If someone has taken a vow of celibacy in a previous life, for instance, and not rescinded it, it may be re-enacted through a subconscious past life memory borne deep in the soul. The person will feel guilty during a sexual act. But equally, another part of the soul, which has enjoyed sexual engagements in the past, may be pushed to the fore as a reaction against the celibacy. The two personas will battle it out, one appearing uppermost and then the other. Similarly, an ancestor can intrude in something that is stronger than a light spirit attachment. This is particularly so when the ancestor has a vested interest, or unfinished agenda, in certain situations coming to fruition. In such cases, the ’ancestor’ may be an earlier incarnation of the same soul.

Sometimes, however, a soul ’splits’ and comes into incarnation in two distinctly separate bodies. This is generally because ’one half’ incarnates to assist or facilitate the ’other half’ in a specific task. Nevertheless, soul splits can occur for more traumatic, less deliberately planned, reasons. Some ’splits’ reintegrate after death, but others continue as separate souls and cannot be reintegrated during the present lifetime. These types of soul splits may need the assistance of expert help, but the symptoms and first aid treatment are the same.

Crystals help to purify the soul part and to reintegrate it. Calling the soul home, whether it’s a split-off child part, an earlier past life part that hasn’t incarnated, or the result of trauma or abuse in the present life, is facilitated with either a Brandenberg or Spirit Quartz, but Fulgarite was traditionally used by American shamans to collect the soul part and blow it back into the heart.