Category: gemstones and crystals

Bling Crystal Box (Monthly Subscription) by Zen with Gems

On By benebellIn gemstones and crystals, personal spirituality, promotional4 Comments

Melodie of Zen with Gems, an amazing Etsy store for all your gemstone and crystal needs, by the way, has just launched a monthly subscription box, the Bling Crystal Box, which I’m totally in love with.

There are two options, the Medium (for the 7-inch wrist) or Large (for the 8-inch wrist). If your wrist circumference is over 7 inches, go with the Large. I went with the Medium and it was perfect.

I was sent the October 2019 launch box for review and, if I like it, to also help promote. Normally I decline to receive and review overly-commercial products. Before I said yes to Melodie, I did a little bit of research. I really liked what I saw. I liked her work ethic, her passion, her incredible knowledge of gemstones and crystals, I liked her Etsy shop, and wanted to see her Bling Crystal Box succeed. It meant something to me to be part of this, so that’s why I said yes to Melodie, whereas I more often than not say no to such promotional offers.

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Planetary Lithomancy by Micki Klein

On By benebellIn astrology, divination, gemstones and crystals, holistic horoscopes, Magical in the Mundane, personal spirituality6 Comments
Click on any of the photographs for an enlarged close-up view.

I can’t fully convey to you how excited I am about Micki Klein’s Planetary Lithomancy divination set. A while back she had launched a crowd-funding campaign over on Kicktraq to self-publish the divination set, but sadly it did not gain the traction it absolutely deserved. I wish she had reached out to me at that time to help her signal boost, because I would have promoted the heck out of this! I’m so in love with what Klein has created. This YouTube video, “Planetary Lithomancy” by Micki Klein, explains the divination system pretty well.

I confess that I got to tinkering with the divination system before even opening its companion guidebook, but don’t worry– I’ll be reviewing it with the guidebook and getting to Klein’s approach. First, my own. =)

As soon as I saw the board with the astrological houses and keywords, as an astrology enthusiast I felt I immediately knew how to operate this thing. I was so excited by the concept I didn’t even continue rummaging in the kit that Klein had sent me. Instead, I ran upstairs and started picking out gemstones all on my own, from my personal stash, for the seven sacred planets and two of the main Hermetic Lots.

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Cultivate Qi and How to Strengthen Your Life Force: Essential Guide to All Metaphysicians

On By benebellIn Bell Chimes In, feng shui, Fu talismans, gemstones and crystals, holistic food, Magical in the Mundane, opinion, personal, personal spirituality15 Comments

This is the supplemental post for Bell Chimes In #39, which you’ll find on my YouTube channel. Check out all previous Bell Chimes In episodes here.

Most Eastern esoteric paths espouse that a practitioner of any esoteric art should proactively cultivate and strengthen the personal Qi, or life force, because when you do any form of intense metaphysical work, you’re drawing from that pool of personal Qi. If you’re not mindful of replenishing that Qi, then the constant weakening of your life force from the occult work that you do (this includes divination) can cause physical and mental health concerns. So to maintain optimal wellbeing–and that’s physical, mental, and psychic-spiritual wellbeing–cultivation practices are necessary.

Image source: pxhere.com

The Metaphysician’s Qi

Divination, ceremonial ritual, mediumship, channeling, pathworking, spell-crafting, astral journeying—these practices are believed to exhaust a lot of your personal life force, and so as a metaphysician, you want to establish a routine practice of cultivating and strengthening your Qi, or life force, to maintain your wellbeing. Otherwise, you can become more susceptible to illness, both of the physical and mental variety.

Taking measures to cultivate and strengthen personal Qi is a practice everyone and anyone can benefit from, much like how everyone and anyone should be mindful of nutrition and physical exercise. However, the nutritional needs of your everyday office worker is very different from the nutritional needs of an Olympic swimmer. So we can make the comparison here of an occultist to the Olympic swimmer, because it’s considered an out-of-the-ordinary lifestyle, and so your nutritional needs– in this case psychic-spiritual nutritional needs– will be different from the average person.

Let’s cover six ways a metaphysician can cultivate Qi:

  1. Qi Gong
  2. Basic Meditation
  3. Diet, Herbology, and Traditional Chinese Medicine
  4. Warding Your Living Space
  5. Ancestor Veneration
  6. Beneficence

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Architecture of Sacred Space | Tinkering Bell #3

On By benebellIn feng shui, free download, Fu talismans, gemstones and crystals, opinion, personal, personal spirituality, Tao of Craft (book), Taoism, Tinkering Bell5 Comments

This is the third installment of a video series on my YouTube channel called Tinkering Bell where I showcase my personal esoteric tinkerings.

Episode #3 Description

There is a common denominator among mystery traditions across the world that instruct on a perfected way for harmonizing human architecture with deity and with nature. In “Architecture of Sacred Space,” I share with you the basic criteria I follow for ensuring a sanctified living space.

This is Part 2 of 2 videos on the architecture and design of sacred space. Part 1 covered harmonic resonance. Part 2 (Episode #3) will cover magnetism, orientation, water, and anchoring. In touring each of these fundamental principles, we also touch down into feng shui, spell-crafting, and so much more.

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Harmonic Resonance | Tinkering Bell #2

On By benebellIn feng shui, free download, Fu talismans, gemstones and crystals, opinion, personal, personal spirituality, Tao of Craft (book), Taoism, Tinkering Bell4 Comments

This is the second installment of a video series on my YouTube channel called Tinkering Bell where I showcase my personal esoteric tinkerings.

Episode #2 Description

This is Part 1 of 2 videos on the architecture and design of sacred space. Part 1 (Episode #2 in the series) will cover the first of the five fundamental principles: harmonic resonance.

Whether you are designing the blueprints for a church or temple, seeking out a home and living quarters that will be empowered as sacred space, or setting up your altar, “Architecture of Sacred Space” from the Tinkering Bell series will cover the five fundamental principles for constructing sacred or sanctified space.

There is a common denominator among mystery traditions across the world that instruct on a perfected way for harmonizing human architecture with deity and with nature. In “Architecture of Sacred Space,” I share with you the basic criteria I follow for ensuring a sanctified living space.

Continue reading “Harmonic Resonance | Tinkering Bell #2” →

Expelling Malefic Attachments | Tinkering Bell #1

On By benebellIn feng shui, free download, Fu talismans, gemstones and crystals, opinion, personal, personal spirituality, Tao of Craft (book), Taoism, Tinkering Bell21 Comments

I’m starting a new video series on my YouTube channel, called Tinkering Bell. I’m Bell (or at least that’s what people who can’t seem to pronounce “Benebell” call me) and throughout these videos, I’ll be showcasing my metaphysical and esoteric…tinkerings. Hence, Tinkering Bell. The videos are going to be practicum-centered tutorials that share my particular idiosyncrasies in the Craft.

This is the first installment of the series, on expelling malefic attachments.

Episode #1 Description

When I say “expelling malefic attachments,” I’m keeping that terminology overbroad to cover a lot of different ground. If you’re feeling energetically weighed down, unduly influenced in a way you intuit yet can’t explain and it’s been detrimental to you, or you’re sensing atrophic, less-than-positive vibes around you that you’d like to get rid of, then consider trying what I do for myself: a fifteen-day integrated self-cleanse.

This total mind, body, and spirit self-cleanse is meant to eradicate any string of bad luck, negativity in your life, remove hexes, exorcise unwanted spirit attachments, neutralize the evil eye, and detox from what Chinese feng shui masters would call poison arrows.

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My Go-To Knick Knacks in a Reading Space

On By benebellIn divination, gemstones and crystals, I Ching, personal, personal spirituality, professional tarot, tarot, tarot community4 Comments
Sandalwood mala prayer beads and a smoky quartz cintamani stone.

My earliest memory of a psychic reading was in Taiwan with a nun at a monastery that my aunt, who is a nun, resided at. (Do I still refer to her as my aunt if she’s now a nun? I have no idea…) When you’re an Asian kid, grown-ups, especially grown-ups of the holy variety, don’t have names. They only have titles. So in Chinese, since we only spoke to her in Chinese, she was Shi Fu, or Teacher, and in English, privately amongst ourselves, she was The Psychic Nun. The aunt who is a nun is Auntie Nun. Auntie Nun is a little bit psychic while The Psychic Nun was full-on knew-your-past-life and knew-your-future psychic plus could-speak-to-the-dead so also medium. The Psychic Nun is referred to in the past tense because she’s no longer with us. I heard of her passing a few years after my maternal grandmother’s passing. It’s okay. She was like a billion years old already anyway and with all that good karma, is off to somewhere awesome.

Anyway, that introduction was way off-track from the subject matter of this post. This post is about go-to knick knacks in a tarot or divinatory reading space. I’m not asking about what you need to get your read on (because inevitably some holier-than-thou advanced tarot reader master will pipe up and say, “I don’t need anything but the power of my mind… I am not bound to materialism… toot toot“)–right, right, we all know that. But I’m asking what kind of knick knacks do you like in your reading space. I don’t need a pink toothbrush for effective dental hygiene but I like it when my toothbrush is pink, so I have a pink toothbrush. Get it?

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Altar Kit in a Tin (A Mini Travel Altar or Prayer Box)

On By benebellIn divination, Fu talismans, gemstones and crystals, personal, personal spirituality12 Comments

Travel Altar Kit in an Altoids Tin 01

I’m new to the craft idea of an altar-in-a-tin. The other day while surfing Pinterest (that never ends well for me), I came across photos of people who DIY-ed their own miniature altar kits or prayer boxes using a candy tin. These photos were incredible. The Pinterest excursion led to Etsy and three and a half hours later that lazy Sunday, I get the brilliant idea that I can DIY my own altar kit (or prayer box).

Travel Altar Kit in an Altoids Tin 02

Above you see my initial proposition of contents. Given limited parameters (e.g., don’t want to leave the house to buy anything; must finish this crafty project today so must utilize what I have in my house right now; must be itty bitty tiny because this f****** tin of mints is itty bitty tiny; etc.), this project turned out to be harder than I expected.

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Gemstones and Crystals Glossary

On By benebellIn free download, gemstones and crystals, grimoire, Magical in the Mundane, personal, personal spirituality, promotional18 Comments

gemstones

I love gemstones and crystals. I also like to keep a personal glossary of metaphysical correspondences for the gemstones and crystals I acquire. That’s what this document for free download is. I’m sharing with you my personal glossary in hopes it might be of use to you.

I’m providing both the PDF and DOCX for free download below. Both the DOCX and PDF versions have “smart headings,” so if you open the left-bar navigation pane in either Microsoft Word or your PDF viewer (in Adobe Reader they’re called bookmarks), you should be able to navigate between the alphabetically listed entries with ease. All correspondence reference tables at the back of the document are also enabled as “smart headings.”

glossaryofgemstones-jpg

glossaryofgemstones-pdf

The docx file is given to you so you can edit or redesign the document to suit your own needs.

You can also download a program, like Calibre, and convert one of these files to a PUB or MOBI file for your e-book reader.

Updates

  • First Posted: 2016 Aug 3
  • Updated: 2017 Aug 6
  • Updated: 2017 Sep 27
  • Updated: 2018 Sep 21
  • Last Updated: 2019 Oct 21

The Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards by Jade-Sky

On By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, gemstones and crystals, oracle deck6 Comments

Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards 02 Whole Set

The Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards by Jade-Sky and illustrated by Jane Marin is a beautifully produced high-gloss deck that features 44 gemstones and crystals. Jade-Sky is a self-professed psychic-medium and channel and Jane Marin, in addition to being an artist, is a healer and life coach. The two have come together to create a visually spectacular deck.

Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards 04 Box Cover Open

No complaints here about the packaging. You’ve got a sturdy, high-gloss deck with an equally impressive companion guide.

Let’s start by having you choose a card, shall we? See below. Choose a card– left, center, or right, and remember which position you chose. We’ll revisit this reading later.

Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards 05 Three Cards Select

The deck features mesmerizing photographic art, mostly abstract, and selected I’m guessing in large part to invoke color therapy. These cards are incredibly calming to gaze at. Cutely, I sort of used this deck as a checklist of the gemstones I have in my collection. In the below selection of cards, I’m missing apophyllite, cerussite, and chiastolite, admittedly stones I’ve never even heard of before.

Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards 10 Cards

The imagery for each card is specifically selected to facilitate a connection between practitioner and the crystal in question, and by concentrating on that connection, you can experience the healing vibrations of the crystal… or so goes the companion guidebook.

Continue reading “The Eternal Crystals Oracle Cards by Jade-Sky” →