Holistic Health Practices/Part 15
| By: Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon; ©2007 |
| Crystal healing, currently one of the most popular New Age practices, is the use of a supposed “power” inherent within crystals for healing, developing psychic abilities, spirit contact, and other New Age goals. |
What is Crystal Healing/Crystal Work?
Crystal healing, currently one of the most popular New Age practices, is the use of a supposed “power” inherent within crystals for healing, developing psychic abilities, spirit contact, and other New Age goals. Crystals supposedly contain the ability to focus and direct psychic energies for healing and other occult pursuits.
Crystal work is a form of animism in which inanimate objects are held to possess spiritual powers that may be contacted, utilized, or directed. But in animism any supernatural power contacted originates from the spirit world. Thus, crystals per se have no magical powers and only become an implement behind which spirits may work. When pressed, most crystal healers we have talked with concede that the power behind crystals is spiritistic.
Many similar objects are also believed to possess magical properties (amulets, magical stones, or gems), but one fact discounts this belief: Psychic abilities and powers remain once the implement is dispensed with. In other words, these objects are only contact material – a disguise through which spirits work to gain influence over people’s lives.
All divinatory methods utilize some principle object that becomes the focus and/ or vehicle through which spirits work to serve the client and produce the needed answer to questions, character analysis, future prognostication, supernatural power, etc. Common forms of divination and the objects they use include astrology (the horoscope chart); tarot (a deck of cards with symbols); I Ching (sticks, printed hexagrams); runes (dice); Ouija board (an alphabet planchette); radionics/psychometry (the divining rod, pendulum, “black box,” etc.); palmistry (the hand); crystal-gazing (the crystal ball or crystal rock); metoscopy/physiognomy/phrenology (the forehead, face, skull); geomancy (combinations of dots or points); water dowsing (the forked stick or other object).
Is it logical to expect that mere pieces of paper bearing symbols (horoscopes), simple forked sticks, cards, hands, dice, letters of the alphabet, rocks, facial lines, or dots could ever supply supernatural power or miraculous information about a person or their future? Even the practitioners of these arts refer to “supernatural influences” – to “gods” and spirits who operate through these methods.
The potential problems arising from crystal healing include those of New Age Medicine in general: misdiagnosis, mistreatment, and occultic influence.
