The Essential Guide to Crystals by Simon & Sue Lilly
A handy sized magical reference for rocks, gems, minerals, and crystals. The introductory material ‘The Power of Crystals’ includes healing traditions, a bit of geology, taking care of your collection, healing techniques, correspondences such as chakras and colors, and meditations. The bulk of the book are entries detailing each crystal. The word crystal is used as a synonym for all kinds of rocks and minerals. Since this seems to be the norm in the neopagan/new age genre I’ll not argue about it here. The crystal entries are arranged by color which is useful for identification purposes. Each entry has information such as the chemical composition, locations where the stone is found, identification and care, healing, practical ideas, magic ideas and a list of similar stones. The list of similar stones is particularly helpful for identification purposes. Great care has been taken to warn readers against doing things to the stones that would degrade them or using them for purposes that would harm the reader. I know there is no book that can include every polished stone found on the market, but this book lists howlite twice in the ‘similar stones’ section but does not give howlite an entry for itself. On the other hand objects such as coral and pearl are included though they are not stones. I appreciate these inclusions because the items can be used in many of the same ways and are found near each other in bead stores and rock shops. The Lilly’s have packed the book with a lot of useful information for anyone wishing to work magic and/or healing with stones. I would recommend this book to my friends.
Lirala's Letters 