Learn how to cleanse crystals and gemstones with our expert guide. Discover methods like water, salt, sound, and sage cleansing to restore your stones’ energy and enhance their healing power. Perfect for maintaining the vibrational balance of your chakra stones.
When you cleanse your gemstones, you reset them to their natural frequency.
If you take care of your crystals, they will output their full energy potential when you use them.
The best time to cleanse your crystals is around sunrise or sunset, or during annual occurrences like the winter and summer solstices, full moons, etc.
Nevertheless, any other time is also appropriate.
You should cleanse your stones at least once every three months.
Cleanse them more frequently if you use the stones often or if you use them on other people.
You can use a range of methods for cleansing your crystals, such as cleansing with water, salt, smudging, or with sounds and frequencies.
With continuous practice, you will learn to ‘feel’ the energy of the crystals, and they will help you relax and guide your intention when you are working with them.
When you’ve mastered a particular level of concentration and some degree of working with intention, you can use any cleansing technique or combination of methods that suit your purpose, and they will be effective.
The most significant aspect—no matter what type of cleansing you are doing—is to keep the right intention and state of mind when you are cleansing your gemstones.
However, don’t try to forcefully concentrate or visualize the energy too hard if it doesn’t work the first few times. It will come to you naturally.
It is better to be joyful and relaxed than tense and concentrated.
There are quite a few methods and techniques you can use. Below are useful tips that will help you effectively cleanse your gemstones:
Cleansing crystals with water is one of the fundamental techniques you will find described in many books or texts. The essence of this method is ‘washing’ your crystals in water.
It is important to emphasize the quality of water you use for cleansing your stones. Water has its energetic properties and must be energetically clean to work effectively.
There is a big difference between tap water and natural water sources. It is best to use clear spring water or clear sea or ocean water.
Some crystals (for example, malachite) should not be cleaned with water. Water can cause an unwanted reaction due to the stone’s molecular structure. Some gemstones can form cracks or even break, especially if the stone is already cracked.
If you use running spring water, simply hold the crystal under the flowing water and rub it with your fingers. You can do this as you would wash the dirt from the surface of the stone. Do this for 20 to 30 seconds. Then hold the crystal between your forefinger and thumb and let the water flow freely over the surface of the stone. You can turn it around a bit and imagine the water flowing through the crystal, washing out all negative energies. Do this for the next 20 seconds or so, until you feel that the stone is energetically clean. If you’re unsure, you can ask in your mind, “Do you need more cleansing?” and if you get an intuitive hunch that more cleansing is needed, continue the process until you are confident that the crystal is energetically clear.
If you are cleaning your chakra stones in salt ocean or sea water, make sure that the water is clean of any waste or dirt. Hold the crystal between your fingers and swipe it left and right while holding it just under the surface of the water. Imagine the negative energy dissipating between the bubbles and waves you create. When you feel that the gemstone is clean, you can lay your crystal on a sunny spot on the shore and leave it to charge with the energy of the sun.
If you have no alternative but to use tap water, you can add some sea salt or other mineral salts to the water and leave it exposed to sunlight (or moonlight) for a day before you use it the next day. Pour the water into a glass bowl or other appropriate container, and use the same method as when cleansing the crystal in the sea or ocean. You can do the cleaning outside in the sunlight. If you are doing it in the evening, you can also light some candles and create an appropriate atmosphere—set and setting.
Salt is a mineral with protective and cleansing properties. It has a tradition in various folklore beliefs and shamanic healing ceremonies, and it is believed that salt deflects harmful energies and brings protection.
You can clean your crystals by placing them on dry sea salt piled around each stone, or you can nestle each piece in its little mound of salt in a large bowl or plate. Leave them so for a day or two, but be aware that sea salt can damage the surface of many softer stones.
To take it a step further, you can mix the salt with different herbs and plants, such as sage, rosemary, or thyme.
Some gemstone users believe that crystals do not need to be cleaned by other means, except with sound. According to their opinion, it is enough for the crystal to be reset with loud sounds that shake its frequency, and the crystal will reset itself to its natural vibration.
While I agree with this view, I also believe that intention, used with other crystal cleaning techniques, helps establish a personal connection with your stones. Working with intention is the core of all shamanic practices, and most of these also work by transmitting the intention to ‘power objects.’
While my personal preference is working with ‘intention’ or ‘willpower,’ sound is also a very effective medium for cleaning your chakra stones. To make the cleaning more personalized, use a tuning fork, Tibetan singing bowl, crystal singing bowl, or a struck bell and play it near the gemstone. A very efficient instrument is a gong. A gong produces a sound that includes all the frequencies our ears can perceive and even the frequencies beyond that spectrum. It is so-called ‘white noise.’
As an alternative, you can also use computer-generated sounds and specific sound frequencies for cleaning your crystals. You can find the most effective crystal cleaning sounds below.
Before you play the instrument or sound clip, always state your intention. Say something like: “Let the sound cleanse you of all negative and foreign energy, and restore your original vibration!”
When using a sound instrument, imagine the sound waves traveling through the crystal, cleaning it of harmful and unnatural vibrations, and resetting it to its core frequency and vibration.
If you are resetting the stone with computer-generated sounds, simply place the gemstone in front of a loudspeaker and play the preferred sound(s) quite loudly for a minute or so.
Chakra frequencies are provided as a tool for aligning the crystal vibration to a specific chakra frequency. If you plan to use a specific crystal for aligning with a particular chakra, you can reset it with the frequency sound of that chakra.
A frequency sweep from 0.1 Hz to 20,000 Hz will send all the audible frequencies through the stone and help it reset to its core vibration. Humans can generally perceive only frequencies between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, so most loudspeakers do not extend much below or above this range. Still, this range is enough to help with resetting your stone.
The white noise signal is the sound that contains all the frequencies of the sound spectrum at equal volume. It is a great sound for meditation because it ‘stops’ your inner dialogue, and it is also effective for cleaning crystals. You can use the audio sample below to clean your crystal with the white noise signal.
Smoke from natural incense made from sage or rosemary is a very efficient energy purifier.
Also very good, but perhaps a bit harder to find, are dry sticks of the Palo Santo tree and indigenous tobacco (Nicotiana rustica), also known as ‘Mapacho.’
You can also use any other natural incense that you feel good about.
Just hold the gemstone above the burning sage incense or blow Mapacho smoke into it, and envision the smoke blowing away all harmful energies, cleaning the stone, and protecting it.
