Crystals for Energy Protection - Judy Hall 2020

Introduction: Feeling Safe in an Uncertain World

’It is not the strong that survive, nor the most intelligent.

It is those with the ability to adapt to change.’

CHARLES DARWIN

In this rapidly changing and stressed-out world, we’re all looking for security and certainty, and there is one thing that gives you an unshakeable feeling of safety. That is a sense of inner peace, of being at home and, therefore, protected in your own skin. Once you have that, no matter what happens around you, you’re ready to meet challenges with excited anticipation and the confidence of being in charge of your own destiny. Rather than taking a defensive stance, you open yourself up and meet the world with joy and optimism. And, as what you focus your attention on manifests, your world becomes better and better as you adapt to change. Fortunately there are some wonderful tools available to support that feeling of inner peace, the foremost being crystals.

There is an enormous difference between energy protection that creates inner safety and the fear-based defences that lock you up behind a wall, and you’ll probably be surprised what your mindset can do. We create and attract to ourselves what we fear most, but we can equally well attract positive and beneficial vibes if we put our mind to it. A positive attitude quickly overcomes a negative one and creates a natural feeling of safety. Once you have this, once you no longer worry or fear, you naturally trust the universe around you — and yourself. If you feel safe inside, the outer world won’t appear threatening — challenging maybe, but in a good way. It’s simply a question of changing how you view things.

As you will discover, the things that tend to trip us up are the expectations we have, the toxic emotions we hold on to, the ingrained belief patterns and obsessive thoughts that go round and round in our head and the language we use to express what is going on in our life. Change those, and make a deeper connection to our spiritual self, and we change our life.

What also trips us up is getting caught up in the glamour of contact with the ’spirit world’ and the excitement of spells and incantations. Chanting for wealth and asking the cosmos to provide, for instance, have their own pitfalls, but common sense, discretion and a few pointers to sensible working in the relevant field soon overcome these.

This book contains numerous tools to help you help yourself, but the greatest is one you already possess: the power of your own mind. If you look positively at the world, you have natural energy protection. Being able to laugh at yourself and at the idiosyncrasies of all worlds is also an excellent deterrent. Little that’s toxic survives the benevolent glow of good humour.

There are many simple — and effective — ways to enhance your energy level and boost energy protection that have been used for thousands of years, which include crystals, but the focus has to be on taking charge of your own thoughts and feelings. When you trust and believe you’re safe and power-full, you are.

But isn’t there a paradox here? Yes, there is, because what is being suggested is that if you feel safe you won’t need energy protection and yet this book is giving you protection tools. This may seem contradictory, but there are good reasons for it. I know, for instance, that it’s possible that you may unknowingly harbour a terrorist in your inner self, or you may be on the receiving end of a psychic mugging, or live in an area of geopathic stress, or suffer from electromagnetic stress, and so need to take remedial measures. I know some people experience serious psychic attack that devastates their wellbeing, but I also know a sense of proportion is essential if you are not to overreact and exacerbate a situation.

✵ Geopathic stress: Stress created by electromagnetic radiation, ley lines, underground water and such like. It’s also present in ’sick building syndrome’. Injurious to health, it can affect the immune system as well as the body’s innate psychic protection and may attract ’ghosts’ or hold impressions of previous events.

✵ Electromagnetic stress: Disharmony caused by the subtle emanations of electrical, microwave, computer, phone and radio frequencies and power lines.

I’m aware there is what might be deemed paranoia in some quarters about alien or evil entities bent on destroying us, and it’s easy to get caught up in this — although an old meaning of ’paranoia’ is ’knowledge at the edge of awareness’, so a judicious application of common sense is needed, together with discrimination about what you read and where you put your attention. There’s an enormous amount of doom and gloom being put out in the media, together with a great deal of psychic drivel. I also know that if you put too much of your attention into thinking about protection, constantly worrying about it, you draw to yourself that which you fear, and yet there may also be times when you inadvertently walk into something energetically noxious or unexpectedly trigger someone’s wrath or envy, and then it’s a little late to be learning energy protection methods.

So how do you resolve this? Well, you practise protection techniques in a spirit of fun, with a ’let’s try this and see how it makes me feel’ kind of approach, and you trust that you’re protected and so don’t need to worry. You also pay attention to your subconscious self, hoicking out any mental programs or toxic emotions that are undermining you. Crystals can help you to do this, and these and the other easy-to-use techniques given here can be applied to all areas of your life. Then, if you do need protection, it comes into play automatically.

✵ Crystal: All-embracing term for a gem, precious or semi-precious stone, mineral ore, resin or fossil.

So What Exactly Is Energy Protection?

The techniques in this book were previously referred to as ’psychic self-protection.’ This has been changed to ’energy protection’ to better reflect a deeper understanding of the subtle energetics that underlie the techniques. As I said, perhaps we should first look at what it’s not, in order to dispel some common illusions around the word ’psychic’. It’s not weird, flaky, new-agey — or godless and superstitious. And it doesn’t mean checking your common sense into cold storage for the duration. Psychic gifts don’t belong to the devil, no matter what you might have been told. They’re an innate part of humanity’s toolbox for dealing with change and understanding the world. ’Psychic’ means ’belonging to the psyche’: the fusion of mind, soul and spirit at the heart of a human being. But being psychic is also about being aware of subtle levels of reality, the (usually) unseen energetic dimensions that surround and interpenetrate with the physical. In other words, using your intuition.

Energy protection is not about fighting anything off or battling with evil forces or any other such nonsense. It doesn’t need spells and it certainly doesn’t involve black magic or witchcraft. While it’s dynamic in its effect and uses the power of intent, it’s not threatening, and it’s most definitely not about hurting anyone else or being aggressive towards those who don’t have your best interests at heart. Energy protection is about feeling secure within your own self.

Energy protection is about creating a safe space in which to live, work and have your being. It creates healthy boundaries and a calm, quiet centre in which to simply be. It’s about having positive emotions and constructive thoughts that create a benevolent world. It isn’t really about doing, it’s all about creating through allowing. Energy protection creates a tranquil space in which others cannot disturb your equilibrium — either deliberately or by what they think or feel spilling out into the atmosphere around them, an atmosphere to which you are inevitably sensitive to some degree. Body language, stance and facial expression and other subtle clues can alert you to how someone is feeling, but a part of your energy field, your intuition, will have already picked this up and given you signals in your own body. The trick is to be aware that it’s done so but not to be overwhelmed by it. You can then choose to respond constructively. It’s the same with places — we have all felt those chills down the spine or that headache that develops almost instantly in a particular place. If we recognize these feelings as signals that all is not well energetically, we can quickly take steps to transform the energy and to protect ourselves if necessary.

If you feel you’re too open to other people’s energies and vulnerable to psychic invasion, you can quickly close off with a traditional body posture that creates an energy circuit around your body that cannot be breached by outside influences:

TRY THIS

When travelling on crowded public transport or sitting with a needy friend or at work, cross your arms over your solar plexus and cross your legs at the ankles to create an energy circuit that cannot be breached. This is enhanced by wearing a Labradorite pendant.

A time-honoured, constant and reliable means of protecting yourself is by wearing a crystal or keeping one in your pocket — although if you don’t ask the crystal to work with you and keep it energetically clean afterwards, it can end up doing the opposite of what you intended it to do, so do remember to cleanse all your crystals regularly. Labradorite is particularly good for protecting your energies.

Why Crystals?

The ability of crystals to harness the power of your mind and enhance the tools given throughout this book is truly incredible. They amp up the energy and boost whatever you do, and they have a unique ability to absorb negative energy, which is why the energy protection tools in the book have ’treasure chests’ of specific crystals and ’crystal tips’ to lead you to other useful stones. A choice of stones is given because you might well already have a suitable crystal at home and because certain stones are suitable for particular people and other stones are more suited to someone else — not all people resonate at the same frequency or have the same sensitivity. Do remember, though, that crystals pick up the vibrations of everyone who handles them and is in their vicinity. This is why they need regular cleansing.

Crystals have been used for thousands of years to protect and enhance personal energy and to instil the qualities, such as confidence, that help you to feel safe in an uncertain world. Recipes for crystal protection have been found that are over 5,000 years old and the same crystals are still being used today. Bloodstone, Hematite and Carnelian, for instance, were placed around the wrists of newborn babies in Mesopotamia and Egypt to ensure a long, prosperous and safe life, and the same combination is still effective in modern times. In the Neolithic period — ’the Stone Age’ — stones literally were the modern technology of the time. There is evidence from graves over 40,000 years old that crystals were used to protect the dead on their journey to the next world and we can assume that they were also used to protect the living. This tradition passed into Greece, Arabia, India and the Far East. This means such crystals are imbued not only with their own inherent properties but also the power of intent, expectation and long tradition.

So, you might well be asking, what inherent power does a crystal have? The honest answer to this is no one fully knows — yet. Although crystals may look solid, like everything else in the universe they are a seething mass of the orderly vibration of a few particles and a lot of space and, as the ancients would have argued, that space is filled with consciousness. The ancients believed that crystals, as with everything else on and in the Earth, were alive and, therefore, had sentient awareness. They were said to live on a different timescale from humans, taking a breath every hundred years or so. Many indigenous peoples believed they were the brain cells of Mother Earth.

Quantum physics, which comes closest to understanding the interaction of matter and consciousness, may eventually supply the full answer to how crystals work, but in the meantime we can definitely talk about their ability to focus energy — which is why they are used for lasers and computer chips — and the effect of vibration and colour. Colour is essentially a vibration of light and the human body is innately responsive to it. We also know that many crystals are piezoelectric — that is, they generate minute electrical currents that interact with the currents in the human body or the environment. Some contain traces of therapeutic minerals that pass through the skin barrier to bring about physiological changes. Kunzite, for instance, contains lithium, which is used by doctors to medicate depression and bipolar disorders. Crystal enthusiasts simply hold Kunzite or place it on their heart and feel uplifted. Other crystals, particularly black crystals such as Tourmaline or Smoky Quartz, have an internal lattice that traps energy within it. This means they soak up negative energy, but crystals also make the perfect receptacle for — and reminder of — your positive intention.

Further on in this book you’ll find the basic information you’ll need about choosing and caring for your crystals, together with tips on the crystals that are suitable for specific exercises and tasks. If you need further information, you’ll find all you need to know about the specific properties of crystals in my books The Crystal Bible Volumes I, II and III, 101 Power Crystals and Crystal Prescriptions, Volumes 1—8.

Why Might You Need Protection?

There are many ways in which your natural energy protection can be undermined by both yourself and other people. Every time you say something negative, feel a lack or have a detrimental expectation, you weaken yourself. Every time you allow someone to draw on your energy, you become unhealthily vulnerable, as you do when you upset someone or attract their envy. And, without a doubt, there are some decidedly negative energies simply hanging about. A participant on one of my astrology retreats came back from a visit to Glastonbury town looking decidedly wobbly.

’I’ve been psychically mugged,’ he said.

Glastonbury, like many spiritual centres, attracts a hotchpotch of people, from the highest to the most negative, few of whom are in charge of their own unsavoury energies. Many are spaced out and wide open to invasion and leak their energy wherever they go. The town has a strong drug culture and black as well as white magic is practised on top of ancient earth energy and spiritual sites: a recipe for psychic disaster.

This guy had unwittingly walked straight into a patch of extremely nasty energy which had hit him in the heart. He literally felt as though he’d had a heart attack — and this despite my having emphasized to those on the retreat that, having opened up higher levels of consciousness and their chakras, they needed to be meticulous in closing down and protecting themselves before they went into town. This was his first retreat and he’d only just got into spiritual work, having had his healing capacity open up rapidly. So, while he thought he was coming to learn about astrology, clearly he was also on an accelerated learning experience concerning energy protection and energy cleansing — essential for every healer. I also discovered later that he thought a safe distance for his aura was several feet out from his body — not a good idea in any crowded place, as we will see.

It was a useful object lesson for me, too. One of the first tasks for me when starting a retreat is to create an energetically safe space for the group and I’d put a grid of protection over the gateway to the house and all around the grounds, but he had been able to walk through it with the energy still attached. It showed that if someone who belongs in a safe space comes into it with something nasty attached, safe space alone isn’t enough. After that, I also deliberately placed a crystal filter to catch anything negative at the gates.

✵ Safe space: A place, large or small, which is protected and cleansed so that nothing negative or untoward can penetrate or interfere with what goes on in that space.

Fortunately, 15 minutes with a piece of Tugtupite on his heart drew out the shaft of energy, dissolved the psychic pain and restored his well-being. In the meantime, I was able to use crystals to dissipate the energy rather than sending it back out into Glastonbury where it could do more harm.

Other forms of ’psychic mugging’ are more subtle. You’ve only to realize how the media relish inflating ’problems’ to see that if you listen to the news or read a newspaper, you can be infected by doom and gloom, just like getting a nasty dose of ’flu standing in the checkout queue at the supermarket (put yourself in the bubble of light; it works wonders). It’s an extreme example, but I had a friend with bipolar disorder who obsessively watched the coverage of the first Gulf War, which sent him over the edge into paranoid illusions and delusions from which he never really recovered. If you bombard yourself with those kinds of images and naïvely believe all you’re told without questioning it, at the very least you will worry and fear — and these are two of the greatest underminers of security there are. But your own mind can create enough doomful scenarios to end the world by itself if you indulge in pessimistic thinking or allow negative emotions or thought patterns to prevail.

There’s also the possibility of getting caught up in the huge psychic excitement that’s being generated at the moment. I was asked to write a book called Revelations of a Psychic. The brief was to be as sensational as possible because, so I was told, this was what the mass market wanted. I refused, because I know that kind of thing draws prurient curiosity — and even animosity — from many levels, including the envious living and the unquiet dead. If you are going to engage with the over-sensationalized psychic world, it’s best to have some protection tools at the ready first. I’ve seen too many overconfident, untrained people go into a haunted house ’to clear it’ and return with the spirit attached to them rather than ’banished’ to the other world. If they have the kind of unresolved issues within their own being that we’ll be looking at later in the book, they’re especially open to such attachment. The same goes for the alien world. It’s my experience that many of the ’alien encounters’ people have are actually with hidden parts of their own psyche, although I’m not discounting that there’s other life out there in the universe, nor that, if people are unwise enough to open themselves up to it, there may be interference and manipulation of life here on Earth by such beings. But personally, I’d rather stay away from that area unless I had no choice but to engage with it, and if I did, I’d want to know I had the right tools to hand to deal with it sensibly and effectively.

It’s easy to get caught up in the prevailing zeitgeist or to enter more fully than you expect into the belief system or mindset of a book, film or fantasy. It’s also easy to believe in something and actually create it — a thought form that takes on a life of its own.³ Such a creation can feel all too real and can easily create havoc until dissolved. It can be used by discarnate spirits, too, so always check out any messages that are apparently being sent to you through channelling or clairvoyance. You should always thoroughly ’test the spirits’.

We also all have our inner demons and may sometimes be prey to feelings of vulnerability, self-blame, guilt and lack of confidence, or a bad case of ’poor me’. ’Poor me’ victims experience a lack not only in finances but also in friends, resources, social opportunities, the job market and health, so it’s not a happy frame of mind. There can be a part of ourselves that is at odds with the rest — what I have long dubbed the ’inner terrorist’ — and that can wreak even more havoc than a terrorist in the outer world, as it makes us defensive, suspicious, aggressive and prone to attack ourselves and others rather than being healthily vulnerable and open where other people are concerned. But it doesn’t need to be like this. The secret is in how you see yourself — and how quickly you turn a defeatist attitude into a positive one. Turn your attention elsewhere, put your intention on something positive, feel safe inside and your world changes.

Similarly, there are currents of negative energy out there, whether the thought or emotion streams of other people and their fears and expectations, or natural or man-made vibrations. Certain places have a bad atmosphere, literally ’bad vibes’, or fall within the energetic pollution of electromagnetic or geomagnetic stress, and this can affect your well-being. Block these vibes from reaching you and your natural equilibrium returns. You may also, inadvertently or otherwise, trigger conscious or unconscious acrimonious or envious thoughts, either from someone else or, unrecognized, from your own self. And finally there are the vampires, those energy pirates who steal other people’s energy to boost their own life, and the ill-wishers who are envious, angry or vindictive. Cut off these energy drains whilst holding forgiveness and compassion in your heart, and your own well-being is enhanced.

Many people believe energy protection isn’t for them because they haven’t upset anyone or don’t do anything ’weird’ — by which they usually mean psychic. They assume that because they don’t see ghosts or aren’t consciously intuitive they’re not open to the psychic realm. However, it can be in the small everyday things of life that energy protection is most needed.

You may not realize how objects such as letters, photographs or gifts can tie you to someone after a relationship has finished, for instance. If there was any acrimony or power struggle in that relationship, the objects will still carry that charge. Even when the relationship finished on good terms, there might be hidden links. For this reason, it’s wise to clear out such things regularly, either giving them away to a charity shop or jumble sale or recycling or burning them if this is more appropriate. If you really want to keep something, cleansing it with an appropriate essence or putting a crystal on it diminishes the possibility of anything still attaching to you through it — or of someone else holding on to a part of you or you to them. If you come under psychic attack from someone, it’s essential to get rid of any gifts they gave you or objects belonging to them, as these are strong links through which they can reach you.

In fact, we could say it’s all too easy to get caught up in negative energy. Working on this book, I’d been concentrating on writing Part III when I began to feel as though I was wading through treacle — a sign I am generating or in the presence of negative energy. I quickly turned my attention to Part IV and the writing soon transmuted into a positive joy. Only when I felt completely anchored in that positive vibration was I able to return to the section on eliminating negativity. So, if you feel in need of a lift, it may help to move between sections as appropriate, but don’t overlook the negative totally, as denial and repression create their own psychic mire.

Are You Giving Your Energy Away?

If you’re feeling exhausted, the physical, mental or emotional depletion you’re suffering could be because you’ve given too much of yourself to someone else. Giving yourself away can occur at work, at play and in relationships. Whenever you become aware of being depleted after being with a particular person, ask yourself:

✵ ’Have I given away too much of my energy?’

✵ ’Did I detach when our contact finished?’

✵ ’Have I taken on negative energy or emotion?’

✵ ’Am I allowing this person to have undue influence over me?’

✵ ’Am I taking enough time for myself?’